First Cause

© Tom Ebacher
January 30, 1999

As long as we've been people we've asked the question, "Where do we come from?"  It seems such a simple short circuit to say, "God made us. ".  I have two children and I know where they came from.  I watched them being born.  I was there when they were conceived.  I didn't see a god.

There are so many people that have had the same experiences as I have had.  Yet we come up with such different answers.  I've been asked, "But where did your parents come from? ".  And then it's always up the line.  And where did they come from?  And where did they come from?

They came from their parents.  And they came from their parents.  How long is the line? Sooner or later you're asked, "And where did the first people come from? ".

What came before people? Some monkey like creature.  That's what they say.  How would I know for sure?  That's what I was taught.  I haven't found a credible argument against it.   It isn't knowledge.  It makes sense.  I believe it's true.

It goes back farther.  Where did the first monkey come from? Where did the first fish come from? Where did the first algae come from? Where did the first life come from?

You know where it leads.  The moment you can't answer they pounce and say, "God made it.  ".
I didn't see God make my son.  And they weren't around to see God make the first life.

Avoiding argument, I continue on.  Life came from the substances of the Earth.  The earth was formed as the stellar matter coalesced into our solar system. Our solar system was formed from the stardust of super novas in the early days of our galaxy.  And our galaxy was formed from the matter expelled in the Big Bang.

And here we are at the beginning.  We don't know from here.  Do we live in a universe that alternately explodes and contracts? Did our universe start as a single little point? If one way, we explain the universe always was and always will be.  Sounds like God.  The other way they say, "Something can't come from nothing. "

Maybe I could go on a little more.  The result would be the same in the end.  Is it all right that at some point I say, 'I don't know. '?  When you don't know is there a reason to assume that God did it?   You weren't there.  You didn't see it.  No one saw it.  The only way to know is to look at the evidence and decide.

For most of us, we just believe.  We leave the deciding to someone else.  But, it's all right to say, " I don't know " and not believe. We don't have to know everything.  We're just a little bit of stardust.  A small part of it all.