Atheists - a question

[San_Patricio]

Religion (and specifically God) as human invention may be a simplification but it is essentially what I believe as an atheist.

Just out of curiosity, you believe that all that is came about… how? Just curious.

 

[GoldenArrow]

I used to be a hardcore Atheist. The real deal. After death was nothingness.

One day in my Biochemistry class, our teacher was droning on about the Calvin Cycle (the process by which glucose is processed in plants) and the Kreb’s Cycle (the process by which glucose is processed in animals).

One moment, I was sitting bored to tears.

The next moment, a light came on!

I was looking at a BLUEPRINT!

And in fact, at that moment, it occurred to me that the Genetic Code is just that … a code! And it’s the least common denominator, existing in all living things.

So how can “survival of the fittest” a theory based on chance explain that? It can’t. In fact, when I was in college, many of my classmates and the teachers were questioning the whole Darwinian system.

OKAY, Atheists … if there is a DNA CODE … that exists for all living things and if the Calvin Cycle in plants and the Kreb’s Cycle in Animals are essentially the same chemistry, then WHO wrote the CODE and WHO wrote the BLUEPRINTS?

Science led me me back to God because a HIGHER POWER must exist. A HIGHER POWER must be responsible for the design of Creation.

I believe that Higher Power to be God.

The only argument against this is that Space Aliens created Mankind and all its creatures. Thing is … have you seen a Space Alien? You haven’t seen a Space Alien and you haven’t seen God, so why choose the Space Alien as your creator? If you’re willing to believe in the existence of something you’ve never seen (Space Alien) then why aren’t you willing to believe in God? And … for that matter, if Space Aliens are responsible for this little playpen called Earth, then WHO created the Aliens?

Just think on it.

When I was an Atheist, I remember waking up in the middle of the night … often … in a cold sweat because I was afraid of not existing after death! I’d lay there in the dark, trying to imagine the nothingness that was to be my eternal destiny, and it made me afraid.

The day I discovered God in His Creation was the happiest day of my life! That night, I slept very well, and have ever since.

I testify to you all that I am still a Scientist, but I am also a very fervent Catholic who believes in God and love Him above all things. You do not have to choose between one or the other. You CAN be a Scientist and a Catholic.

God Bless!

 

[celluloid]

celluloid

It’s true that religions present different concepts of God. Some of them are wildly contradictory. There have also been several wildly contradictory theories of evolution. Would you say for that reason that God does not exist and evolution didn’t happen?

I’m not using the old argument of contradicting religions. That’s a dead horse.

I only meant to point out that one or the other must be wrong because of contradiction. If you honestly say there is life on other planets and I say there isn’t, we have proven that people may have beliefs that are utterly false, without determining who is actually true. There is either life or their isn’t and in either case one of us is wrong.

My point is that atheists only assert the following:

Generally
a) there are imaginary beings that occur in the human mind.
b) people may believe things that are not true.
c)people may believe in imaginary beings.
d) God as manifested by ancient human literature and current human experience resembles an imaginary being.

…therefore theists are probably wrong.

Theists assert the following:

a)gods may exist (may be only one)
b) gods are omnipotent, omniscient etc, within logical limitations.
c) people may believe in things that are not true, such as atheists.
d) people may deny the existence of particular things, such as gods, that do exist.
e) God as manifested by ancient literature and current human experience resembles an omnipotent, omniscient being.

…therefore atheists are probably wrong.

How do you know one of those Gods does not exist? You don’t. There isn’t any way to prove atheism true. That’s why it’s a belief sytem, rather than a fact.

I don’t know that any one god does not exist, but we can be pretty sure that at least a few gods are purely imaginary because I know from experience that imaginary beings do occur as invented ideas. From what I know about human imagination and credulity, I would expect there to be some imaginary gods. And I think we both agree that there are.

So I only assert that none of those gods have been proven to exist which would have helped the theist’s case but that imaginary beings do occur as inventions of the mind. That is the model that atheists use.

As I stated in my previous posts, atheism is a belief and that there is no proof of it being true. It’s only the general concept of atheism that is proven, but how they are applied by atheists in the particular case of each god (including Christian God) is not proven.

The best way to put it is that it is my humble yet firm opinion that God is one of those typical, purely imaginary beings that we both know can occur in the human mind.

Generally speaking, people believe what it suits them to believe.

I agree with that on a personal level. I don’t speak for other atheists, but I believe there is no God because it suits me personally. I can assert that I have no strong desire to believe in God and that is probably why I’m an atheist. The rational reasons came later.

Most people believe in God. Some people do not. Given the relative rarity of atheism, I think the more democratic idea is the more superior idea.

There is only limited merit to that. I think that theism may exist in a similar sense that pain exists. It may be unpleasant (because it is false to atheists) but it serves as an aid to survival.

If God is an invention, it could be a useful device for transmitting cultural values, providing some insolating comfort for highly aware beings, and for generating other useful beliefs (heaven, moral authority etc.) But the pure truth of it is going to depend on objective reality, not world opinion and there are enough atheists in the world to say that the existence of God is controversial.

So it becomes the lifelong task of atheists to visit places like Catholic Answers and keep looking for the God they deep down want, even though they still have issues with Him.

I have no interest in believing in God but it is important to seek the truth through discussion, wherever it may lead.

 

[GoldenArrow]

I can assert that I have no strong desire to believe in God and that is probably why I’m an atheist.

I think you’re lying to yourself.

I used to be an Atheist. I strutted around, telling myself, “I don’t need God. I have no need of Him. Why should I believe in a fairy tale, etc …” I told this to others too.

But you know … deep down inside … I envied those who believed in God. I SO MUCH wanted to believe in God. But I just couldn’t. The world was just too bad a place.

I’ve been through a lot of heartache in my life, and during those times, when I was an Athiest, deep down inside, I prayed in my heart that justice would be done. In fact, I hoped for this.

I’m sure you, as an Athiest, HOPE for things to happen. For example, if someone kidnaps your daughter or son, you hope to get them back and if you don’t you wish justice would be done.

The fact that you NATURALLY do this (which I assume you would) means that you have, as part of your human nature, the faculties to believe in a Higher Power. We are all born inclined to believe in God, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.

So I say you’re lying to yourself because I KNOW you have nightmares. I KNOW you fear the nothingness, the blackness.

I say that you need not fear.

The reason I envied those who believed in a God is because I didn’t see the fear in their eyes that I observed in my own.

If you really get to know who you are, you’ll realize that you WANT to believe in God, just as I did. And when you realise that the Creator of the Universe is MADLY in LOVE with you, it changes everything.

God Bless!

 

[celluloid]

Just out of curiosity, you believe that all that is came about… how? Just curious.

I think that there were and are many causes of the origin of God and sustained belief.

I’ll run through ones I’ve thought about.

1. Misinterpretation of natural phenomena.

People of the past were at the completely mercy of the natural environment and tried to understand its complex workings via conscious agents. We could make tools to make pyramids, so it must be something greater than us that builds mountains.

1. Psychological/vestigal memory origins.

My own speculation is that God is a projection of our selves, based on our early lost memories and that an infant confuses discovery with invention or creation.

The first awareness is the self and that there is a dark void (womb). He comes into the world as the only being he knows, then discovers light (and sees that it is good), other things in its first environment, his parents (i.e. Adam and Eve), who at first provide what the child demands. All this discovery is conflated in the child’s mind with creation and the child takes credit for all existence. The child cries and the parents feed him (sacrificial offering). The child does not understand the meaing of crying, only that it wills a meal and it is provided. Later the parents upstage and betray him by showing superior knowledge (fruit from the Tree of Knowledge) and going against the child’s wishes by imposing limits. (Which may explain the terrible twos.)

When we hear of the Abrahamic God, it rings true because it resembles those early vague memories.

1. A byproduct of social/interactive instincts.

All animals must interact with their environment, but the most important interactions are with other creatures. They must deal with mates, predators and prey to survive. Yet those instincts are not exact and are flexible enough to allow for inanimate objects to be confused with animals. Examples are a kitten chasing crunched up paper or a dog chasing its tail. Humans may also do the same when in a very bad mood and we stub our toe on a chair and kick it over angrily as if the chair had conspired against us. We tend to anthropomorphize because we are social beings and we look at the world through a social lens. That lens influences us to look for personal beings as causes of important events that have no other ready explanation.

4 Gradual evolution of religious ideas.

All the elements of modern religions have primitive roots. The Bible wasn’t written all at once but is a compilation of writings over centuries.

Christian beliefs can be found in other religions and vice versa. God as a supreme being developed from local gods and became increasingly more powerful. An omnipotent, omniscient God is superbly adapted to compete against other lesser gods that are pathetic by comparison.

Of course all these are speculative but I’m sure the origins of belief are complex and no single explanation accounts for all the features of modern religions.

 

[celluloid]

I think you’re lying to yourself.

I used to be an Atheist. I strutted around, telling myself, “I don’t need God. I have no need of Him. Why should I believe in a fairy tale, etc …” I told this to others too.

We are different people so your post makes no sense to me.

I’m an atheist because I don’t want to be a theist. I can’t be more honest than that!

 

[Gilbert_Keith]

celluloid

*All the elements of modern religions have primitive roots…
*
Christian beliefs can be found in other religions and vice versa.

Which only goes to support the Catholic view that religion is built into our nature by God. There is a universal and everlasting desire for God. Most religions satisfy that craving in one degree or another. Some religions, however, are hijacked by unscrupulous people for their own purposes. But that in itself does not invalidate the reason why people crave a relationship with God.

Atheism wants nothing to do with God. It’s the motive of the atheist that I find interesting. Why doesn’t he want a relationship with God? Because God is a fiction? I don’t think so. He uses that notion as a cover for some deeper motive. I have been there and done that.

But this is not a view that any atheist will ever buy so long as he is not in touch with his own deepest God-denying self.

 

[Liberian]

What do you say to atheists who believe God is a human invention? Thank you so much.

Irish Becca,

If you want gods who are human inventions, look at the Greco-Roman pantheon. The gods there behave just like people do. The true God is totally different.

• Liberian

 

[Liberian]

I would say that it is much more parisimonous to believe in that than to say that God exists. Suffering exists in the world, and Christianity has evolved to exploit that by offering comfort and eternal salvation to palliate humanity. Of course, some realize that their is no basis in reality for this comfort, and conclude that Christianity is merely a human construction.

Ribozyme,

Your worldview would be very nice if it explained everything, but unfortunately it does not. And like most scientific theories of more than a century ago, those few things that it does not explain will eventually unravel the whole structure.

In particular, the idea that God is purely a human creation does not explain …

(1) the resurrection of Jesus, easily the best-documented event in ancient history
(2) the miracle of the sun at Fatima in 1917, predicted in advance, seen by thousands, and reported in that afternoon’s newspapers (none of this “legend developed over time” stuff here)
(3) the fact that the universe follows scientific laws
(4) the existence of an objective truth and falsehood; modern atheistic philosophy has had to abandon the idea of objective truth and with it, its own raison d’etre

• Liberian

 

[tdgesq]

I would say that it is much more parisimonous to believe in that than to say that God exists. Suffering exists in the world, and Christianity has evolved to exploit that by offering comfort and eternal salvation to palliate humanity. Of course, some realize that their is no basis in reality for this comfort, and conclude that Christianity is merely a human construction.

Irish Becca, always remember that people can claim whatever they want. Of course, it doesn’t make it true. Take the above as an example.

I take it that we are back to Occam’s razor again ribozyme with your reference to parsimony. It has been demonstrated to you again and again why that doesn’t work. Please don’t make me quote those posts here.

Suffering exists in the world and . . . . .? So what? If you seriously wanted to debate the problem of evil, you would have done it by now. I have asked you to give me your argument before, to no avail. I even offered references to what I consider to be very compelling arguments against it.

And the boldest you have been yet. Christianity is merely a human construction. Care to back that up? I thought not. Why make the statement then? Let me guess, eternal inflation. A theory that even your own colleagues won’t claim destroys theism.

You see Irish, just ask a few questions and then see what the answers are. They usually aren’t very good.

 

[jbuck919]

I am late to this thread, and I am not responding as an atheist, so, apologies.

In my opinion, and I know there are those who still disagree, belief in God in modern times cannot be entirely intellectual, meaning it cannot except through intellectual igorance be based upon scientific and rational argument. Belief is a matter of something terribly, terribly indirect, and it also cannot be based on ignorance, an evil, or emotionatlism, which can be a near occasion of evil.

I had a very brilliant pastor a few years ago who was a gifted preacher (they do still exist, though they are rare). He said that while God overwhelmed some people with his presence in a mystical sense (a legitimate but rare way of finding God), to him God always spoke with a still, small, but always certain voice. It is not rational, logical, or scientific. It is just there, and we must always struggle to discern it from superstition.

Is it easy? No, of course not. Half of me thinks that the moral message of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden and the doctrine of original sin is that we were condemned to spend our days finding indirect ways to know God when we were intended to know him more directly. If you will, that we are condemned to sin because God is shadowed from us, when it was originally possible to talk to him directly, a privilege given up voluntarily and unworthily.

 

[San_Patricio]

I think that there were and are many causes of the origin of God and sustained belief.

I’ll run through ones I’ve thought about.

1. Misinterpretation of natural phenomena.

People of the past were at the completely mercy of the natural environment and tried to understand its complex workings via conscious agents. We could make tools to make pyramids, so it must be something greater than us that builds mountains.

1. Psychological/vestigal memory origins.

My own speculation is that God is a projection of our selves, based on our early lost memories and that an infant confuses discovery with invention or creation.

The first awareness is the self and that there is a dark void (womb). He comes into the world as the only being he knows, then discovers light (and sees that it is good), other things in its first environment, his parents (i.e. Adam and Eve), who at first provide what the child demands. All this discovery is conflated in the child’s mind with creation and the child takes credit for all existence. The child cries and the parents feed him (sacrificial offering). The child does not understand the meaing of crying, only that it wills a meal and it is provided. Later the parents upstage and betray him by showing superior knowledge (fruit from the Tree of Knowledge) and going against the child’s wishes by imposing limits. (Which may explain the terrible twos.)

When we hear of the Abrahamic God, it rings true because it resembles those early vague memories.

1. A byproduct of social/interactive instincts.

All animals must interact with their environment, but the most important interactions are with other creatures. They must deal with mates, predators and prey to survive. Yet those instincts are not exact and are flexible enough to allow for inanimate objects to be confused with animals. Examples are a kitten chasing crunched up paper or a dog chasing its tail. Humans may also do the same when in a very bad mood and we stub our toe on a chair and kick it over angrily as if the chair had conspired against us. We tend to anthropomorphize because we are social beings and we look at the world through a social lens. That lens influences us to look for personal beings as causes of important events that have no other ready explanation.

4 Gradual evolution of religious ideas.

All the elements of modern religions have primitive roots. The Bible wasn’t written all at once but is a compilation of writings over centuries.

Christian beliefs can be found in other religions and vice versa. God as a supreme being developed from local gods and became increasingly more powerful. An omnipotent, omniscient God is superbly adapted to compete against other lesser gods that are pathetic by comparison.

Of course all these are speculative but I’m sure the origins of belief are complex and no single explanation accounts for all the features of modern religions.

What are you talking about? Of course the Bible wasn’t written all at once. It’s record of humanity’s relationship with God and takes on many different writing forms. That in no way lessens the possibility that it may be TRUE! The fact that “Christian beliefs can be found in other religions and vice versa” is evidence for, not against those beliefs. The truth of God is present to greater or lesser degrees throughout the entire world in all periods of human history. God of necessity would be infinite, omniscient and “superbly adapted to compete against lesser gods”, because the “lesser gods” aren’t the true God, only interpretations of him (or malevolent forces masquerading as “gods”), and God is, after all, the Creator of All. He is of course superior to everything else. Kittens chase paper and dogs chase their tails for entertainment/development of hunting skills. How is God a hunting skill? That was a horrible example. What evidence do you have that our first awareness is ourselves in a dark void (the womb)? And even if this is so, it makes more sense that God would create us and our world in such a way that it reflects His creation of the world, rather than us making up a religion that reflected pre-birth memories. Feeding a crying child is a “sacrificial offering”? You’re certainly creative. What would you call it if the child was crying because he needed a new nappie? As far as the idea of God coming from “people of the past were at the completely mercy (sic)” of nature… been to New Orleans lately? We still are!
All of your arguments for how religion came about may have some relevence in the development of cultures and or understanding of God, but none do anything to deny God’s existence. Anyhow, my question wasn’t “how do you think religion came about?”, but rather “how do you think WE (and the universe around us) came about without a Creator?” Nothing happens without a cause.
P.S. Your premise that because two people disagree one must necessarily be wrong is utterly false. Until a certain something is determined to be true, all legitimate possibilities are equally viable. Read up on your quantum physics.

 

[San_Patricio]

I don’t speak for other atheists, but I believe there is no God because it suits me personally. I can assert that I have no strong desire to believe in God and that is probably why I’m an atheist. The rational reasons came later.

You could choose not to believe in walls as well, but you’ll still hurt yourself if you walk into one. What suits you really isn’t at all relevent.

But the pure truth of it is going to depend on objective reality, not world opinion and there are enough atheists in the world to say that the existence of God is controversial.

I thought you just said you were going with what suits you? If objective reality matters to you then why do you deny something that is entirely possible? And since when did consensus define truth? That’s not very rational or logical

I have no interest in believing in God but it is important to seek the truth through discussion, wherever it may lead.

You may not have an interest, but without a First Cause, you’d be homeless. Not to mention non-existent.

 

[San_Patricio]

In my opinion, and I know there are those who still disagree, belief in God in modern times cannot be entirely intellectual, meaning it cannot except through intellectual igorance be based upon scientific and rational argument. .

I totally disagree (hey, you predicted that! That’s cool ). The non-God crowd generally attack our beliefs as unscientific and illogical, but science itself shows that effects don’t happen without causes. It is irrational and illogical to think that the universe and all in it just happened by accident. Things don’t get more complicated when left alone, they get simpler. Like the tomato I left in the fridge too long. It’s not turning into a reptile or a bird or any other animal. It’s being broken down by a mold that is simpler than the tomato once was. Things left on their own deteriorate. Remember? Science and reason themselves are arguments for, not against, God. Anyway, I’m still waitin’ fer somebody to tell me how they think all that is came to be without a cause…

 

[GoldenArrow]

Originally Posted by GoldenArrow View Post
I think you’re lying to yourself.

I used to be an Atheist. I strutted around, telling myself, “I don’t need God. I have no need of Him. Why should I believe in a fairy tale, etc …” I told this to others too.

We are different people so your post makes no sense to me.

I’m an atheist because I don’t want to be a theist. I can’t be more honest than that

" Liar, liar, pants on fire! "

Seriously though — you don’t have nightmares about dying and facing nothingness? I used to regularly, for YEARS, have terrible nightmares where I’d wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning. I’d wake up in a cold sweat. Heart pounding. All in utter terror of dying!

Yeah, we’re different people, but we’re of the same nature. I think that any Atheist, if he’s truly and sincerly honest with his heart, fears death more than anything.

But … maybe you’re made of tougher stuff than me.

God Bless!

 

[celluloid]

All of your arguments for how religion came about may have some relevence in the development of cultures and or understanding of God, but none do anything to deny God’s existence. Anyhow, my question wasn’t “how do you think religion came about?”, but rather “how do you think WE (and the universe around us) came about without a Creator?” Nothing happens without a cause.

Sorry, I misunderstood your question. I was just throwing out some speculation which had to do with the topic of this thread, and that is how atheists think God was invented. Nothing of what I said was meant to offer any proof that God is an invention, just how one atheist speculates about the very complex and mysterious origins of ancient religions.

But to answer your actual question, whatever you believe about the origin of the universe, you have to accept a brute fact. Theists accept that God always existed and caused the universe.

Atheists may believe that the universe always existed in some form, that something may have existed before the Big Bang that is able to produce universes. It’s my opinion that our universe is one of many.

This universe exists and whatever thing or set of circumstances (or “whoever” if you wish) produced it or something like it is probably capable of producing more universes. At least I can’t see why not. There are countless grains of sand, mountains planets, stars and up the scale to billions of galaxies. Why not universes?

But we both must accept the brute fact of something or someone always existing. The alternatives are that either God popped out of nothingness, or the first bits of primitive matter and energy popped out of nothingness.

From there is 1st generation stars producing the first heavy elements which lead to planetary systems, abiogenesis as a product of chemical evolution (I realize the naturalist’s case is speculative here.) and then on to well-supported biological evolution.

 

[celluloid]

" Liar, liar, pants on fire! "

Seriously though — you don’t have nightmares about dying and facing nothingness? I used to regularly, for YEARS, have terrible nightmares where I’d wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning. I’d wake up in a cold sweat. Heart pounding. All in utter terror of dying!

Yeah, we’re different people, but we’re of the same nature. I think that any Atheist, if he’s truly and sincerly honest with his heart, fears death more than anything.

But … maybe you’re made of tougher stuff than me.

God Bless!

Well, I did go through a period 25 years ago when I had severe anxiety attacks. The problem gradually lessened over time.
It could have been my atheist insecurity, but my other theory is that it was lead poisoning which will produce paranoia and anxiety. I worked as a temp for a metal manufacturer that produced lead products. I was literally knee deep in lead dust for one day.

I’ve very rarely experienced nightmares, just the usual weird dreams and most of them pleasant.

 

[MichaelLewis]

" Liar, liar, pants on fire! "

Seriously though — you don’t have nightmares about dying and facing nothingness? I used to regularly, for YEARS, have terrible nightmares where I’d wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning. I’d wake up in a cold sweat. Heart pounding. All in utter terror of dying!

Yeah, we’re different people, but we’re of the same nature. I think that any Atheist, if he’s truly and sincerly honest with his heart, fears death more than anything.

But … maybe you’re made of tougher stuff than me.

God Bless!

When I was a Christian, I would sit up at night worrying about Hell. Religion did have its psychological benefits, and there are depressing aspects to being a non-believer (for me anyway) but the fear of what comes after life isn’t amoung them. I do fear the transistion to oblivion, but I don’t think that has ever kept me up at night.

In any case, I don’t want to believe falsehoods, whether they are comforting or not.

 

[hasikelee]

I used to be a hardcore Atheist. The real deal. After death was nothingness.

One day in my Biochemistry class, our teacher was droning on about the Calvin Cycle (the process by which glucose is processed in plants) and the Kreb’s Cycle (the process by which glucose is processed in animals).

One moment, I was sitting bored to tears.

The next moment, a light came on!

I was looking at a BLUEPRINT!

And in fact, at that moment, it occurred to me that the Genetic Code is just that … a code! And it’s the least common denominator, existing in all living things.

So how can “survival of the fittest” a theory based on chance explain that? It can’t. In fact, when I was in college, many of my classmates and the teachers were questioning the whole Darwinian system.

OKAY, Atheists … if there is a DNA CODE … that exists for all living things and if the Calvin Cycle in plants and the Kreb’s Cycle in Animals are essentially the same chemistry, then WHO wrote the CODE and WHO wrote the BLUEPRINTS?

Science led me me back to God because a HIGHER POWER must exist. A HIGHER POWER must be responsible for the design of Creation.

I

Oh, I really enjoyed your post! I remember learning about the krebs cycle and this semester delving into how genetics affects diagnostic medicine. These experiences just blow me away. The intricate, complicated workings of the human body are beyond our comprehension. Heck, I see passages in my textbooks that essentially say, “We know this works like A, but we don’t know what A is or why or how it works.”

 

[San_Patricio]

Sorry, I misunderstood your question…
But to answer your actual question, whatever you believe about the origin of the universe, you have to accept a brute fact. Theists accept that God always existed and caused the universe.

Yes, God has “always” existed. He is outside of time. And He created everything that is, has been, or will be. He is the one constant in an existence of constant change.

Atheists may believe that the universe always existed in some form, that something may have existed before the Big Bang that is able to produce universes. It’s my opinion that our universe is one of many.

I don’t deny the possibility of other universes, but whether there are or not, all were made by God. Anyway, obviously something had to exist before the “Big Bang” (unless you assume that God began His creation of the universe there), because something can’t come from nothing (unless God puts it there). I have heard the theory that there was probably a universe before, and when it reached it’s limits it collapsed in on itself and formed the matter that eventually became unstable enough to cause our “Big Bang”, and that the whole history of the universe(es) was a series of bloomings and unbloomings. This used to sound good to me, and projected forward out into time it still does on a non-scriptural, conjectural level. The problem is, when you try to used that theory for the origin of things, you get an infinite regress, which is absolutley unscientific and illogical. We know that matter doesn’t (scientifically speaking) come into being from nothing, and that, scientifically or theologically speaking, events must have causes.

This universe exists and whatever thing or set of circumstances (or “whoever” if you wish) produced it or something like it is probably capable of producing more universes. At least I can’t see why not. There are countless grains of sand, mountains planets, stars and up the scale to billions of galaxies. Why not universes?

But we both must accept the brute fact of something or someone always existing. The alternatives are that either God popped out of nothingness, or the first bits of primitive matter and energy popped out of nothingness.

From there is 1st generation stars producing the first heavy elements which lead to planetary systems, abiogenesis as a product of chemical evolution (I realize the naturalist’s case is speculative here.) and then on to well-supported biological evolution.

Except for your statement on “well-supported biological evolution” (do you mean that a species adapts to it’s surroundings and “evolves” over generations as the weaker members die off and the stonger/faster/smarter reproduce,
or do you mean that a fish crawls out of the water, grows legs and becomes a lizard, then grows hair and becomes a dog? The former is true, the latter isn’t), I think if you go back and re-read what you wrote there, you may be on your way to understanding why it is more logical and rational to believe God does exist. He has always existed, but not in a way that our human intellect can fully grasp. Your alternative, however, that the “first bits of matter and energy popped out of nothingness” is absurd. We KNOW this doesn’t happen! God has given us our reason and intellect (and SCIENCE!) so that we may use it to better understand Him and the word He’s given us. I’m not saying that all atheists MUST become Catholic (although ye should!), but to persist in denying the existence of God flies in the face of logic. At some point, something has to exist that doen’t have a cause outside of itself. We know that matter and energy can’t do this. Why is it so hard to accept that God does?