I was about fifteen years old when I began deeply questioning the Christian mindset I'd been raised with. Up until that point, I'd regularly attended Sunday School, as well as Youth Fellowship meetings. I was never much for church itself, since it was right after Sunday School, and I figured one hour at a time was enough.
One of my friends in the church was my Sunday School teacher, Bill. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I used to visit Bill at his home. We'd play chess or just talk. And when I got to the point where I was questioning my faith, and therefore his, we'd talk about religion.
I'd told him that I had a problem with the idea of a Creator. It seemed a bit far-fetched to me. I didn't understand why people felt there needed to be one.
"Look around you," he said to me. "What do you see?" I told him I saw cars and buildings and roads and so on. "Where did they come from?" he asked. I told him that we built them. "From what?" I saw where he was going with this, but decided to play along. I told him they were made from raw materials taken from the Earth. "And where did those come from?" he asked.
"Okay," I said. "For the sake of argument, I'll say that God made the Earth and all the resources we have taken from it." He smiled, as if this were the end of the discussion. "You're saying that everything has to come from somewhere, right?" Bill voiced his agreement. "Okay, then. Where did God come from?"
"God didn't have to come from anywhere," Bill told me. "God has always been."
I thought that was a cop-out then, and I think it's a cop-out now. What sense does it make to have rules if God is always going to be the exception to them?
People find it very hard to believe that our Universe could have happened without design. It's just too organized and wondrous. They can't believe that something as complex as the human being could have evolved from an amoeba. We're just too complex and miraculous. Yet these same people do not have any problem swallowing the notion of a being powerful enough to create the Universe and everything in it.
An all-powerful Creator being would, by definition, have to be far more complex than anything it would create. Why is it that people can believe in something more complex than that which they say is too complex to believe?
In science, it is said that the simplest explanation for something is usually the correct explanation. It is easier to believe that everything around us is cosmic coincidence than it is to believe that a being capable of creating everything could exist.
There is enough wonder in the Universe itself to keep me in awe for the rest of my days. It's hard enough to ponder its origins without having to ponder the origins of its Creator. For me, a Creator is not the answer. It only poses more questions, and ones that are not difficult, but impossible to answer.
I'll subscribe to the more sensible concepts, thank you, and leave Creators to those who don't know any better.
