Unsatisfactory responses

While returning from a youth ministry event last night, our foreign exchange student asked me about my personal beliefs. Being unaware that I am an atheist, she was curious to know why I never attend some kind of church service. I have absolutely no fear or shame associated with my stance, but it’s also not something I feel compelled to broadcast. When asked or when pertinent in conversation I am always happy to engage honestly. I did so last night, and we had a brief and intriguing dialog on the topic. However, she was utterly unimpressed with my response to the creation question: If there is no creator, how did everything come to be. Great question, though I am always inclined to put it another way that doesn’t presuppose the answer, There’s stuff. How did that all happen?

My answer was brief. I said my understanding was that thirteen or fourteen odd billion years ago the conditions were right and the universe came into existence by way of an impossible to truly comprehend explosion that spread matter our in time, matter, and space. Yeah, that was unsatisfactory. She instead posited that everything needs to be created. We are each only here because we were made by our forebears. Whether we are plant or animal, there was a process that made us come into being. Our drive ended to soon to get more into it, but the obvious rebuttal here is that her logic also extends to her proposed solution. If everything is created, then what created the creator?

But I get it. The response I offered to that question is baffling and unsatisfactory. Perhaps even less satisfactory is the notion that better, more accurate answers may simply be too much for a human mind to comprehend. And perhaps that’s why when confronted with such throughout the ages we have had to mine answers through means we can more easily grab hold of: story and allegory.