Are You Religious?

[ManipulatorGeneral]

Back over to James: My initial exploration is whether an infinite temporal regress is possible. If not, this would entail that the first cause could not exist within time, else it would contradict itself because it would also be part of the regress and thus not the first cause. I simply find the timeless, changeless, spaceless, immaterial, enormously powerful, personal, and eternal qualities of God most suitable for a first cause, offering the most reasons why the infinite regress could be averted, why it could and should create the universe, and even why existence has progressed from its initial form to the point it did today rather than fizzled out (because it's under the control of a being who knows how to prevent a fizzle). Do you have any origin theory at the moment? Other atheists I've questioned on this hold to the Hawking spontaneous creation model, but I find this unsatisfactory. I find it failing to overcome the initial infinite regress problem, an inadequate motive for ever creating anything, a wholly inadequate reason why it arbitrarily produced a universe, and no particular reason why such universe would have survived this long either.

You have stated that you don't yet know the origin of everything and will just wait for the problems to be worked out, but that's precisely why potential issues with the theistic model don't bother me much. I can trust that God has an answer for something I don't know or understand (and there are dark personal events I still don't know the reason behind) and could dismantle any of my objections with that answer, merely because of the nature of the God concept. What I'm unable to accept is the idea that this universe is the chance result of an astronomical chain reaction of contingencies when it could instead be an astronomical chain reaction of intelligent planning. Following from that, I could also introduce separate ideas about how we deeply search for an objective purpose and what that means, whether we would be as likely to feel that need if there was no cure, and why no other species feels the need for purpose if it's natural to want such knowledge; I've heard well-written explanations of this (evolution progressed to the point of philosophical thought in humans), but they again depend on contingency rather than God's deliberate effort. It's all dependent on what you have the capability to accept, one or the other; after philosophical and also personal inspection (this thread will definitely reach this area next, thanks Dave), atheism became beyond my scope to reconcile with existence as I perceived it. (Thanks again, there were new crevices of these thoughts I hadn't explored before, and I'll want to have them challenged and thus developed.)