Reason and religion can co-exist
Although “coming out of the closet” normally requires a calculated risk for the one courageous enough to reveal their true identity, in America, it can hardly be seen as courageous, or a risk, since the closet door of atheism in this nation has been wide open, for decades.
Reasonably challenging Ms. Mease and the tenets of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is imperative for a nation, “So conceived and so dedicated” that it may continue to “long endure.” Ms. Mease and the FFRF want us to believe they just put up a few billboards in the northwest to reveal how normal the atheistic worldview is and how we can all get along. If our heads button up the back, that sounds fine. Here is what some of the billboards read: “The truth is real, God is imaginary” ... “Evidence and science trump myth—reason wins” ... and from an ex-minister, “Now preaching reason, not religion.”
The Press editorial for Aug. 1 suggests we in North Idaho should be “Grateful to the (FFRF) for their campaign to remind us that places of worship and government should never occupy the same space.” (As if that was their real agenda). The suggestion is that they are just a bunch of “Good Ole Boys” from the free thinking left, wanting to play in the sandbox with everyone else. Reality, however, reveals they are trying to put “old wine into new wineskins” — they continue using the same old rhetoric and weak science, not reason and evidence, with an underlying objective to tear down our nation’s Biblical foundations.
Ms. Mease states, “There is not one shred of scientific evidence that would show or prove there’s a being that doesn’t have to follow natural laws.”
Believers are obligated by Scripture to, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” (1 Peter 3: 15)
Given the guideline above, I ask you to allow me to respectfully offer a reasonable challenge to Ms. Mease and the FFRF: The universe itself is evidence that God exists. There are only three options to explain the existence of the universe. One, that it has always been. Two, that it created itself. Three, that it was created.
The first option, that the universe is eternal, has been utterly rejected by the scientific community. The motion of the galaxies, the background echo, point to a universe that sprang into existence at a particular point in time.
Option two, that the universe created itself, is philosophically impossible. Of course, before the universe existed it would not have been around to do the creating. Obviously, a non-existent universe could not have done anything. It did not exist. We all know that nothing can not do something. So option one and two can be thrown out on scientific and philosophical grounds.
Option three, that something or someone outside of the universe created the universe, is the option that both reason and the evidence point to.
Where is the evidence that “Matter by itself arranged itself into information?" According to Ms. Mease, in the last line of her article, “Once your reason is turned on, it is pretty hard to turn it off.” Let us continue to reason together.
Bob Holliday is a Post Falls resident.