One of the things I admire about DKOS is that however you resolve—or don't resolve—the title question, you are still part of the community, and your views are very generally respected by fellow Kossacks. A diary with this title might seem out of place on a political blog, but when you think about it the question really has a great deal to do with politics. I could give dozens of examples, most of them obvious. Our friends (?) at Redstate.com generally have a much different approach to this question than we do. But the better we understand each other, the more harmonious will be the democracy we aspire to build. This diary tries to explain the view of this particular non-believer. It is not meant to be an attempt to convert the believer, but rather to foster understanding.
Many arguments have been proposed for the existence of God. ("God" is understood to mean "God or gods") The fact that they seem to convince those who are already believers doesn't elevate these arguments to the status of proof. Still, the modern question “Why is there something instead of nothing?” is an interesting one. Modern cosmology points to a specific beginning—the Big Bang—and it seems natural to ask how that happened. However, addressing the question doesn't imply that we must propose an answer. My view is that we don't yet know, and we may never know why there is something. Of course, many others posit God. Is that a viable theory?
Introducing God to explain the existence of the universe seems to be a natural, almost universal human reaction to explain stuff. We seem to be naturally disposed to devise an explanation, even a bad one, for every phenomenon that has no obvious explanation. Most cultures appear to have decided on God as the cause of the universe. Some think that that we are hard-wired to do this, but that isn't evidence of God's existence.
If we decide upon God to explain the origin of the universe, we have to answer the question "Where is he?" It becomes obvious very quickly that God is nowhere to be seen. The solution is to posit a supernatural realm of existence in which God exists. Note that the supernatural is a separate assumption from the assumption that God exists. The supposition of a supernatural realm is not, in itself, unthinkable. We could, for instance, imagine it as a fourth spatial dimension. But what rationale is advanced for this? Just because a thing is imaginable, it doesn't follow that it must exist. We can imagine all sorts of things—the list is literally endless. Why, for example, should we not believe that there is a hierarchy of realms of existence? We might posit a supernatural realm, a hypernatural realm beyond that, and perhaps any number of trans-natural realms beyond those. Why stop at just one?
Since we are attempting to explain the origin of the universe, we must, it seems to me, suppose that God is eternal, else we encounter the problem of explaining his origin. This suggests an awkward question. Why did it take God so long to create the universe? If God has always existed, what did he do during the infinity of time before creation? It is absurd to suppose that he was idle for an infinity of time. But the Christian God is generally thought to have created but one universe. So, why did he wait so long?
So long as we posit a God who experiences time, this question is unanswerable. Some theologians (William Lane Craig is one) have proposed that God exists outside of time in order to avoid this paradox. This may be valid as far as it goes; there's no reason to believe that time must be one of the dimensions that God is measured by. We don't, after all, ask "How tall is God?" or "What does God weigh?"
Of course, the Old Testament is filled with examples of God as a being who experiences time. The very creation story, as told in Genesis, tells us that God took six days and rested on the seventh. In order to adopt the idea of a God who exists in a timeless supernatural realm we almost have to reject the entire Bible. The Biblical notion of God is incompatible with a God who is not measured by time.
If God doesn't experience time, if he exists beyond time, then he sees every point in space-time (x,y,z,t) equally. To deny this is to deny his omniscience. If God operates outside the confines of time, then his creation is known to him from East to West, North to South, top to bottom, beginning to end. This is to say that if his creation includes, say, Adolf Hitler, he knew from the start—at the instant of the Big Bang—that Hitler would murder six million Jews. In fact, the very existence of Hitler and the holocaust is implicit in his creation. In a very real sense, God deliberately created the holocaust because he created every point in space-time with one creation act. He cannot be said to have created just the initial conditions, and watched to see how this creation played out, because this implies that God experiences time.
Of course, it's possible that an omnipotent God operating in a timeless supernatural realm created the universe as we see it. This would be the God of Spinoza or Deism. He is entirely indifferent to our existence. He knows every detail because he created every last point in space-time. How could he possibly care which beings worship him and which beings spit in his face? He specified, at the instant of creation which would do so, and which would not. The God of Deism doesn't ask you to fly airliners into buildings or burn witches at the stake, or stage prayer meetings to combat drought, because he already created those events. I regard such a deity as philosophically consistent; I could believe in such a deity if I bought into any of the various "first cause" arguments. Obviously, I don't.
If God exists outside of time, it would be irrational to suppose that he would hold us responsible for the actions that he himself created. If he is measured by time, then there is no answer to the notion that he waited for an eternity before creating the universe. My conclusion is that a personal God who demands our adoration and obedience cannot exist.
I said in the intro that this diary is an attempt to promote understanding. I hope it has convinced the believers that non-believers are not evil, but rather we are merely human beings that struggle to make sense of all of this [waves hand at the universe]. Not all non-believers would agree with what I have written, and I certainly don't pretend to speak for them. There are atheists, such as PZ Myers, who are downright hostile to religion; I am not one of those, although I think the views of PZ serve a rational purpose. I recognize that many believers have done a great deal of good (Dr. Martin Luther King comes readily to mind), and much of that good is a result of their belief.
One of my aims is to convince believers that non-believers are not necessarily evil people who hate God. Possibly, some of us are, but others of us have given this important question a good deal of rational thought. I do not deny that there are atheists that are/were evil people, any more than the believer should deny that there are/were evil religious people.
However you resolve the title question, you must take a stand on the question of how belief in a deity should affect the way we govern ourselves. This is my purpose with this diary. The very first clause in the Bill of Rights speaks to this important question. That clause—the establishment clause—seems unambiguous to this writer, yet every day it seems that we we must fight those who wish to impose their theological beliefs on us. By the way, there is an organization called Americans United for Separation of Church and State that is headed by Barry Lynn—a Christian minister.
The single most bitter controversy of our generation, that of abortion, is, I believe, essentially a question of theology. Were it not for theology we would have no rational reason to oppose abortion, or gay marriage, or selling alcoholic beverages on Sunday for that matter. Theology is more or less neutral. When it urges us to love one another, it is good. When it urges us to ignore climate change because "the Lord will provide", it is bad.
The title question should have no more impact on the way our nation is governed than the controversy over Coke or Pepsi has. Meanwhile, I would be happy to further discuss in the comments the points I have made. It's just possible that we atheists have some good arguments, don't you think? If you are willing to concede this, then I am willing to consider your arguments.