"In the beginning was the Universe?" - responding to skeptics and personal doubt.

One day a group of scientists got together and decided that man had come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one scientist to go and tell Him that they were done with Him. The scientist walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man and after the scientist was done talking, God said, "Very well, how about this, let's say we have a man making contest."

To which the scientist replied, "OK, great!"

But God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam."

The scientist said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a handful of dirt.

God just looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!"

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This facetious joke makes a deep statement regarding the reality of our Universe. Whether you're a Christian, Atheist, Jew, Muslim, etc., there is an explanation that is required of your set of beliefs as to what/whom created the Universe. This applies to atheism as much as any religion of the world.

Indeed, the idea of a Universe ex nihilo continually undermines the development of any modern theory of organic differentiation. The controversy gets to the point where only two major premises can be rationally considered: 1) Our universe is eternal. If it is not eternal than it had to have a beginning (scientific research points to the fact that it did have a beginning). If it has a beginning than it must come from somewhere (have a cause). This source/cause must be eternal. If this source were not eternal then it had a beginning and you're right back where you started. If this cause is material (another universe or physical dimension) and it has existed for eternity as it must have, then the basic law of entropy would have been dwindling down the power of this source from eternity past leaving nothing to the modern observer in which to reside. Or (2)This source/cause is eternal, as indeed it must be, and immaterial. This places it in a realm outside of the effects of entropy and other physical laws. The source must be personal because it chooses to act (once there was was no Universe, now there is), and it must be exceedingly powerful and vast in order to create our exceedingly vast and powerful Universe.

A careful read of the second premise to an open-minded observer should cause those genuinely seeking for truth to reconsider a material theory for the problem of origins. It certainly makes room for an immaterial or 'spiritual' source. Perhaps this does not point to Yaweh or Allah specifically at this point of philosophical rhetoric, but you're certainly dwindling down the possibilities, as well as opening some new ones for the skeptical mind.



(Credit should be given to William Lane Craig as the words are mine, but the ideas were taught to me by him.)