Free 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God by Guy P. Harrison

Global Security.org, 2007.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending. htm.
    State of the World's Children 2008. UNICEF report, January 2008.
http://www.unicef.org.
    "Water Sanitation and Health: Health through Safe Drinking Water and Basic
Sanitation." World Health Organization (WHO). http://www.who
.int/water _sanitation_health/mdgl/en/index.html.
    The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). https://www.cia
.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html.
    Zimmer, Carl. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures. New York: Free Press, 2000. Required reading for all
those who think nature is nothing more than sweet-smelling flowers and
pretty waterfalls.

     

aap&'r 9

    For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is
than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
    -Carl Sagan
    Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does
knowledge. It is those who know little, and not those who
know much, who so positively assert that this or that
problem will never be solved by science.
    -Charles Darwin
    classic justification for believing in a god is simply the existence of the universe and everything in it. How can anything
other than a god, say believers, be responsible for trillions of planets
and stars spread across billions of light years of space? It is inconceivable that all of this just happened by itself, they say. How could life
have sprung up without a god, they ask.
    This is a very appealing reason to believe for many people and it
is easy to see why. Any thoughtful person who looks up at the stars,
stares across the Grand Canyon, or simply watches a butterfly in flight
cannot help but wonder how it all came to be. The explanation, "my
god did it," is simple, convenient, and reassuring. The problem, of
course, is that there is absolutely nothing to justify crediting a god for the existence of the universe. Yes, it seems incomprehensibly large
and complex, and, yes, there are many questions that have stumped
scientists so far. Some mysteries of the universe may never be solved.
But this is ignorance, not evidence.

    Unfortunately, the best scientific explanation we have today for
the origin of the universe can be difficult to understand for many
people and, for some, just too weird to believe. It's called the big bang
theory and the mere mention of it causes some believers to laugh.
They dismiss it as nonsense and refuse to consider the evidence for it.
Other believers, however, embrace the big bang as "proof' of their
god's creation. A sudden start like the big bang fits nicely with many
religious creation stories. But is the big bang the handiwork of a god?
Is there any reason, any hint that points to a divine being behind this
big event?
    First, we need to understand a little bit about the big bang. Charles
Seife offers a fine account in his book Alpha and Omega:
    At first glance, the history of the universe, as told by scientists, will
seem almost as farfetched as the stories told by Greek mystics or
African storytellers. However, unlike the ancient myths, every part
of the scientific narrative is backed up by hard scientific evidence.... And as strange as this tale may seem, scientists were
forced to accept it to explain their observations of the heavens. Like
many ancient myths, the beginning of the universe as seen by
modern science, begins with nothing at all. There is no space; there
is no time. There is not even a void. There is nothing.
    In an instant, the nothing becomes something. In an enormous
flash of energy, the big bang creates space and time. Nobody knows
where the energy came from-perhaps it was just a random event, or
perhaps it was one of many similar big bangs. But within a tiny seed
of matter and energy is all the stuff of our current universe. For a fraction of a second the universe expands at an incredible rate; it is
inflated by an energy that scientists do