From Atheism to Intelligent Design

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19

I was an atheist until I was 30 years old. My decision to be an atheist was emotional and not an intellectual one as I look back on my life. I suspect most atheists have become atheistic because of an emotional event or events that has happened to them in their lives.

Something that occurred when we were children or even later in our adult years. Painful experiences that have colored our view to such an extent, that we are no longer willing to even entertain the idea of a God. Angry at what has happened to us in this life at the hands of others or events out of our control.

How could there be a God if He would let this happen to me?

Many times, our anger is so great it turns into rage. A quiet rage is still rage nonetheless. The rock group Pink Floyd said in their song, ‘Time’, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way”. Quiet desperation is deep seated repressed rage and it’s not just the English that suffer from this. Almost all of us have at one time or another in our lives.

God cannot get past this rage that has turned into ambivalence in many, unless we fall on hard times once again in our lives. Funny how bad things that turned us away from God have a way of turning us back to Him once again.

Everyday life has a way of beating down on us as we grow older, to the point that we start asking questions we thought were long gone.

There has to be more to life than this! 

That is not to say I did not pick it back up again from time to time.

I wanted to be angry and pissed off. I wanted to be angry at humanity in general and my childhood. I became co-dependent to rage as that was the only emotion I trusted to make me feel alive. I trusted no human. I trusted no authority because I felt they had all lied to me throughout my life and could not be trusted. That is also how I felt about a supreme being called God. He was right at the very top of the list. I remember flipping Him off in the worst times of my life.

Sound familiar?

I caused so much pain and left a wake of destruction in my life from this anger that I harbored. I consider myself a smart man, but you would never know it from all the bad decisions I have made in those angry times. I was emotionally spent. I wanted peace in my life. I wanted to breathe.  

Why are we here? Is this ALL there is?

When I finally took a breath, those question surfaced among others. What was behind ALL of this. I always believed in the Big Bang or the start of the universe, but I did not really understand much of the science. How did it start? Who pulled the trigger? Was there an Intelligent Designer behind it or did it just pop into being all on its own? That didn’t make much sense.

To be honest, as I investigated my atheism, I realized that it did not make much sense either. It raised more questions than answers. My atheistic logic was failing. The crack was becoming wider and wider.

I began experimenting in different new age religions to see which ones fit my mental framework. It was like a buffet table of attributes that my mind could entertain. God could be like this and he could be a little sprinkle of that. I liked some of attributes of Hinduism and Buddhism especially reincarnation that they both shared.

There were many off shoots of this new age religious movement and I wanted to check them out since my mind was open to a god like entity. Could I be a god too or work my way to nirvana? 

I was exploring God or so I thought. At least now I was becoming a theist or someone who at least entertained the thought of a god behind the curtain. This was my first step and I think God honored that to some degree because I was now open to go much further.

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

When I deal with atheists,…

…I first deal with the idea of Intelligent Design behind the very fabric of the universe and life on this planet. I have heard some astronomers say the universe looks designed but its not. Biologist say plant and animal life looks designed but its not. Scientist say DNA and RNA looks designed, but they are not.

Where else can you go on this planet at look at something and in your mind say it looks like it was designed by something or someone, but it was not. What kind of mental gymnastics do you have to play to come up with that conclusion unless you have already come up with a conclusion without really look at the proof.

One of the things that archaeologist does when excavating past civilizations at an archaeology site is to look at artifacts and other physical remains and decide if these objects appear to be different from the surrounding ground. In other words, were they designed or come from something else? What sets these things that they are searching for apart from the natural surroundings?

When the probes landed on Mars and began roving around this planet and snapping photographs, did they detect anything that looked like it was designed by other civilizations?

Now that would been BIG news!

Not only is the start of this universe a BIG question and how it began but also the question of Fine Tuning or the razor edge that all these elements sit to make life possible here on earth. The Fine Tuning of our small solar system on the edge of our galaxy called the Milky Way is truly remarkable in this Fine Tuning. All these pieces have to fit in just right without much playroom or life does not happen.

That is how you detect if the universe had an intelligent design behind it. When you take these and many more proofs of design in our universe and reject them out of hand then another emotional bias is taking hold.

From Atheism to Intelligent Design

The story goes that the great Albert Einstein…

…and virtually all the scientific world believed that the universe was a static universe or cosmological constant meaning that the universe had always been here and not moving.

When he met Alexander Friedman in 1922 and then George Lemaitre in 1927, they introduced him to an expanding universe which would later be called the Big Bang.

The cosmological singularity is at that point at which the Big Bang got its start. In January of 1931, astronomer Edwin Hubble meet with Einstein and personally convinced him that the universe was in a state of expansion.

Why is this a big deal you might ask?

The fact that the universe began at one specific point in time was hard for many scientists to deal with because it came with a huge question. Who and what started it? Who pulled the trigger on the Big Bang? The expanding universe theory was not fully excepted by astronomers and the scientific community until the 1970’s for pretty much the same reason. Most scientist and astronomers are atheists and believe in natural causes. Darwinian Evolution piggy backs off this natural cause belief system.

That was the question that I had to grapple with just like the scientist and astronomers. I may not be as smart as them or have prestigious degrees like they do but, can reason things out really well once I study and research the core of something. Most people have this ability also if they really want answers.

Atheists have faith that there is no God and faith that the natural world will hold all the answers. Is it not interesting that this faith resembles a religion?

My next step went from Intelligent Designer to Jesus Christ. But that is for another time and blog post.

If you would like to read some interesting history about Edwin Hubble, AlbertEinstein and George Lemaitre and the Big Bang. What does it take to convince Albert Einstein he was wrong?

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From Atheism to Intelligent Design

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