The one thing keeping me from total atheism/theism

easyreader1970

I hate riding the fence. If someone asked me right now if I believed in a creator (or creators), I would still say I don't know, in spite of everything I know about current science.

What's my hangup? Believe it or not, it's one thing. The beginning. My stupid, human mind is far too primitive to conceive of either of the two possibilities:

1. Everything came from nothing.

2. Something always existed.

I'll break it down.

Everything came from nothing. This is, in short, the big bang theory. First, there was nothing and then there was a speck, which exploded. I'm not saying it's not possible, it's just something that I cannot conceive. I know there are other easily proven things that I can't conceive. I can't conceive 500 trillion dollars. I can't conceive 800 quadrillion miles.

Something always existed. Even allowing for the idea that maybe some powerful being evolved over a ridiculously long period of time, maybe some super alien with creative powers who makes worlds on some planet factory, where did it come from? Religious texts tell us that it always existed. Once again, my brain collapses on itself when I try to imagine that something had no beginning.

Now I know most people just say, why worry about that? Just live life. But for some reason I feel like I need to define what I believe as something other than "I don't know" when so many other people are sure. You've got astrophysicists like Neil Degrasse Tyson. No question in his mind. Big bang. Doesn't matter where the speck came from. Then you've got the deeply religious. God did it. Doesn't matter that they can't answer where he came from or how he could always exist.

Why can't I just settle on a position and hold to it? I don't feel like I can be deeply entrenched and/or passionate about my beliefs when they are so shaky.

Robert7

I also agree with "I don't know". Evolution and Atheism are both theories that cannot be proven as much as God cannot be proven.

There is a big possiblity that man has no idea about creation, and there's nothing wrong with trying to find out, but there's also nothing wrong to say that we yet don't know.

rebel8

When I use the term Atheist to describe myself, I am thinking it means "no one knows but I don't have any evidence to believe in supernatural beings".

I am still wondering where the particles in the Big Bang came from. But then I ask myself, "Who says it has to come from somewhere?"

Decided

I sort of feel like you do about life and where it came from. Some other questions, where does space begin or end? What is time? Is life just some chemicals in the brain with a few electrical circuits? Why don't animals concieve life as humans, or do they? Why are there so many forms of life? Why so many viruses, bacteria, parasites to live on us? If there is a God he doesn't care too much about his creation.

I'm tired of trying to figure it out and can't just have blind faith in something I can't understand. If there is a God I hope he can understand my disbelief in him.

Ken P.

I quit!

Maybe it comes from being a witness were every question had a nice little prepackaged answer. For me a lot of the enjoyment of being out of a group like the Watchtower is being able to have my own beliefs and adjust when I feel I need to. It doesn't have to be either or, religion or science like some would have us believe. Right now I'm reading a book "Questions of Truth" by John Polkinghorne Nicholas Beale one of Polkinghorne's former students. Another good book by him is Belief in God in an age of Science.

troubled mind

Thank you Ken , you stated this very well I think :

' I'm tired of trying to figure it out and can't just have blind faith in something I can't understand. If there is a God I hope he can understand my disbelief in him.'

BurnTheShips

Something always existed. Even allowing for the idea that maybe some powerful being evolved over a ridiculously long period of time

This will really bake your noodle, what if before the beginning there was no time? Then whatever was before, if there was something before, just was, without Time.

BTS

Awakened at Gilead

@Robert: Why do you say atheism is a theory?

Also,

Do you believe in atomic theory? germ theory?

jam

i DO BELIEVE IN THE CREATOR, IT,S HARD TO IMAGINE SOMTHING CAME FROM NOTHEN..THE PROBLEM

WITH RELIGION IS WHAT IS TRUTH OR JUST STORIES AND FABLES..I CAN NOT SIT IN CHURCH AND

LISTING TO A MAN TELL ME , ADAM WAS THE FIRST MAN, THERE WAS A WORLD WIDE FLOOD LESS

4000-500O YRS. AGO AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WERE KILLED BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT THE CHOOSE.

IF MAYBE THEY WOULD SAY ,ADAM WAS THE FIRST SPIRITUAL MAN RECORED,.A FLOOD TOOK PLACE

BUT ONLY IN THAT LAND,NOAH WAS A SPIRITUL MAN ,SAVED BECAUSE GOD WANTED TO PERSEVER HIS

WORD BUT THERE WAS OTHERS IN THE WORLD AT THAT TIME...AND MILLIONS WERE KILLED BECAUSE

OF GREED. THEN I MIGHT SIT AND LISTING ,If not I can stay home watch fantasy on tv..

drwtsn32

Um, the Big Bang doesn't say there was nothing, then a speck which exploded. The Big Bang theory says that at some point in the past, all matter and energy was condensed into a singularity which exploded. The Big Bang theory doesn't say what happened before that point. And it certainly doesn't say that there was "nothing" before the explosion.

But I do see where you're going. Logically we have to accept that there was something that was not caused. Now was that "something" an infinitely complex, intelligent being? Or was it something much more basic, like energy? Personally the latter seems more probable to me, but I admit to having atheistic biases. ;)

The one thing keeping me from total atheism/theism

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