Religious Debate

What’s up everyone? I went to a family birthday party a couple days ago. It was pretty fun. You know, played some games, talked to some relatives I hadn’t seen in a while. But the real highlight was the religious debate I had with my uncle (Primarily, at least. My mom, another uncle, my grandmother, and several of my cousins were involved as well.). Well, that and the delicious cake. It was this triple fudge cake with a big fat layer of chocolate on top that my aunt made…mmmmm. But anyway, back to the story. I don’t know how the subject was brought up, but at one point the conversation turned to religion. It was fabulous! My first uncle (let’s call him Dave) was the only Catholic (and maybe even the only Christian. I’m not really sure.) there. He was very surprised to learn of my more, shall we say, skeptical worldview. He mentioned practically all the key talking points most Christians I’ve talked to use, such as “Where do you get your morals?” This argument was quickly discounted by me asking if, without God, one would decide to murder and rape and steal and be, in general, an immoral person (I said it nicer though. He’s my uncle after all!). He also talked about it being hard to believe that something like the eye (for example) would come about through random chance. This was also quickly discounted with a brief explanation of what evolution and natural selection actually is. The next thing he mentioned was that the universe had to be caused by something. At this point, another uncle of mine (let’s call him Tom) chimed in, agreeing. To tell the truth, I always thought this a very intriguing argument, because I didn’t understand it’s logic. The first question one must ask when told that God had to have created the universe because everything has a cause is, “Well, what caused God?” Naturally, the answer they’ll give you will be something like “Nothing” or “God doesn’t need a cause” or “He’s the Uncaused cause”. Immediately, one starts to (if you haven’t already) see the flaws in the argument. “Well…if God doesn’t need a cause, but your entire point is that God must exist because everything needs a cause…” I didn’t understand why you couldn’t stop a step before that. Say, the Big Bang. If God doesn’t need a cause, why does anything? You know, I was very surprised, because normally my Uncle Tom is very very logical. That’s just who he is. He approaches everything with rationality and logic except the subject of religion. Huh. It turns out that my uncle Tom is a Deist. Meaning he believes that a God created the universe, but one with no sort of divine plan or any sort of micromanaging (like the Abrahamic God). We went on in this way for quite a while discussing religion and various philosophies, such as my mother’s pantheist-type beliefs. But on the whole, it was a major beatdown.

I LOVED IT.

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