What They Want Me to Believe
by James D. Bale
via Sentry Magazine, Vol. 21 No. 3, September 1995
I know that I am a dependent being who has not existed forever. I was born to mighty fine parents. They, too, had parents, and so on ad infinitum. Since each of us was dependent, it was obvious that there could not be a line of dependent creatures existing forever. Someone or something had to start this fine of dependent creatures. And science agrees with this. Science agrees that life did not exist forever on this earth. But it does exist now. Human beings have not existed forever, but they are here now. So man had an origin in Someone or Something.
And thus it occurred to me that the difference between my atheistic friends and me... was not that I believed in a creator and that they did not. Instead, we differed over the nature of the creator. They believe that the creator was matter; I believe the creator is Spirit (God).
Why is it that the atheist and materialist must believe that matter is the creator of life? The answer is evident when you realize two basic facts. First, something now exists. Second, you cannot get something out of nothing. Out of nothing comes nothing. Since out of nothing one gets nothing, and since something now exists, something must always have existed. If there was a time when absolutely nothing existed, nothing would exist today, for nothing could not be the cause of something, and yet something exists today. I, for one, am here, and so are you. The material world around us is here. So, since something now exists, something has always existed. The real question between the atheist and the believer in God is: What is the nature of that eternal something? Is it a thing or a Being? Whatever it is, it has been the cause of all else.
The fact that something has existed eternally shows that a problem which some unbelievers have raised is not really a problem for the believer in God. They have asked: How is it possible to really grasp the idea of an eternal God—One who had no beginning but who has always existed? I confess that it is difficult for the human mind to grasp the idea of eternity, but everyone must accept the idea that something has existed from all eternity. Otherwise, at one time, there was nothing that was the cause of something. Thus, the atheist faces the problem of how to grasp the idea of the eternal existence of matter. It seems obvious that since each of us must accept an eternal reality, there is no reason for either of us to make an argument against the position of the other on the ground that the other person has to accept something eternal.
