I temporarily stopped believing in God during a short but frightful time my senior year of high school. Although there were many kinds of factors that led me to lose my faith, the one that sticks out most in mind is reason, which pointed me in another direction. Basically, the reasons to doubt became heavier than the reasons to believe. And I was terrified! I very much loved believing in God, and losing that belief was like being forced into a dark cave to live there forever. I felt exposed to an austere, meaningless universe, as if someone were pulling away the curtains to show me that my happy life is only an imaginary play. If losing faith is a choice, it was surely not one I wanted to make, and yet I did lose my faith. I had been offsetting my deep doubts (doubts about why God isn�t more obvious to unbelievers and problems I was finding with freewill) with my sense that a universe that begins to exist must have been caused, and by God. But then I saw a PBS special where S. Hawkins offered an explanation for the origin of the universe that made God unnecessary. He explained that asking what caused a self-sufficient 4-D spatial-temporal universe would be as nonsense as asking, "what�s north of the North Pole"? And with that, I was locked in the cave with only a glimmer of light to give me hope.

Reason, guided by hope, led me out of the cave into a new insight into God and a love for atheists. In self-analysis, the forever skeptic inside me wonders if "hope" beguiles me into credulity. But I do honestly see good evidences for rational belief in God, and yes it�s a belief I love, but it�s also a belief I�ve learned to question, scrutinize, and analyze to no end. My journey through the cave taught me to love healthy skepticism, to love thinking with atheists, and also to go deep in my understanding of God. I want to share some of the reasons that now compel me to believe in God. In other places or if you email me, I�ll look deeper at the philosophical issues involved in these reasons and numerous others, but here I just want to give an overview of two reasons that led me out of the cave of unbelief. A refined understanding of the cosmological argument combined with awareness of the anthropic principle were instrumental in restoring my belief in a Being, perfect in knowledge, power, and goodness.

The basic thrust of the cosmological argument is that the chain of events in the universe must start with a first cause, God. Often people mis-construe this argument to be based on the premise that "everything that exists requires a cause". This clearly makes the argument self-defeating, since then we would require a cause for God too. But even before my trial with faith, I knew the argument only needed to rely on a weaker principle; namely, whatever begins to exist requires a cause. Science tells us the universe began to exist, and therefore, the universe must have been caused, and caused by an uncaused, beginningless being, reasonably called God. What had not occurred to me until the PBS special was that my understanding of "beginning to exist" was imprecise. Normally, we think of things that begin to exist if there is a prior moment in which they did not exist. But in the case of the universe, there was no time prior to the universe. So the universe did not begin to exist in the sense that we are familiar with. The most that can be said is that the universe existed for finite time, but it�s unclear that something that exists for finite time requires a cause. Some theistic apologists (e.g. William Craig) would argue that God has only existed for finite time (since time itself is finite) and yet is uncaused. So why can�t we just say the universe is finite in time and yet uncaused? And also, even if the universe were caused, why must we think the cause is God?

These are probing questions, which I think can be answered by a deeper understanding of the cosmological argument. After further reading and thinking I realized that the nature of a thing that is uncaused is very peculiar to say the least. First of all, it is the sort of thing that if it exists, it exists necessarily without the possibility for non-existence. Whatever has the possibility for non-existence would need a cause to explain why it exists (and continues to exist) when it could possibly not exist. And so by the contrapositive, whatever is not caused doesn�t have the possibility for non-existence.

In addition, an uncaused thing would be changeless. For change involves new properties that previously didn�t exist. The properties couldn�t exist necessarily since they're non-existence would be possible if they ever didn't exist, and so they must exist with the possibility of non-existence and thus be caused. This fits science and common experience since we never observe new entities emerging without supposing that there is some cause of their emergence. Even in the case of virtual particles spontaneously coming into existing, we recognize that energy is required for them to begin to exist even if it is an unpredictable (in principle) event. Now I should point out that the change I�m talking about includes purely relational changes, that is, if energy of one form changes into another form, then there may not exist new substance, but the new form has different properties and so would still be caused (by the previous form). A completely uncaused thing would not be able to change into new forms without gaining parts that are caused.

One might say an uncaused thing would be eternal in the sense of never coming into existence or going out of existence since it wouldn't have the possibility for non-existence.

Also, an uncaused thing would seem to be perfect or unbounded in its attributes. For if a thing has a limit or specified quantity to its attributes, then that thing would have the real potential to increase or decrease in its attributes. But an uncaused thing has no potential for change since it�s a necessary thing as explained above. So if something were uncaused, it would not be partial in any of its attributes.

Similarly, an uncaused thing would seem to be unique, that is, there could only be one such thing. For if there were many uncaused things, then each would have properties that distinguish them from the others. This would imply that each uncaused being has the potential for different properties than the ones it already has, which implies the potential for change. But uncaused things have no potential to change. So it would seem that if there is an uncaused thing there could only be one such thing.

There is much more to say about the uncaused thing including possible questions and objections. But it�s sufficient to say that it made sense to me (and still does) that an uncaused thing would have to be necessary, eternal, changeless, perfect, and unique. What also became evident was that the series of caused things could not be without a first uncaused cause. For if it were, then you have all sorts of problems, like how an infinite amount of time could have passed to reach the present, or by analogy how a stack of books could rest on nothing even if the stack were infinitely long. So with a first uncaused thing to support or give rise to the series of causes we call the universe, it seemed reasonable to me to think a necessary, eternal, changeless, perfect, uniquely uncaused Cause of everything else exists.

This brings me back to Hawkings� alternative explanation. Basically, Hawkings was viewing time according to a B-theory (a theory I now consider dubious for independent reasons), which basically views time as analogous to space, in contrast to an A-theory, which views the past as "no longer existing". So the first moment could be understood as merely the "edge" of the universe. Even if we allow for a B-theory of time, it�s unclear that the "edge" could be uncaused. And even if it were uncaused, we would still arrive at a first uncaused cause called the "edge" or the singularity. And an analysis of the nature of an uncaused thing reveals that it must be the eternal, infinite Causer of the universe. Wherever we locate the uncaused thing, at the singularity or as the cause of the singularity, we still have an uncaused thing, whose nature is strikingly similar to God.

Where I had remaining doubts about my new insights into the revised cosmological argument, the anthropic principle satisfied my desire for a rational belief in God. According to this discovered principle, life-permitting conditions required for biological evolution can only exist if the various constants and measurements of the universe are within extremely narrow parameters. For example, if the expansion rate was slightly more or less, then either no galaxies would form or all galaxies would collapse before any stars could form. Currently there are 27 (by now there are more) known parameters (the cosmological constant, the ratio of electrons to protons, the electromagnetic force, to name a few) for the universe as a whole and 35 for our galaxy, which must be met for any kind of life to survive. Just to give another example, a stronger nuclear force (by as little as 2%) would have prevented the formation of protons, yielding a universe without atoms. Decreasing it by 5% would have given us a universe without stars. Now when all these measurements are considered together, it becomes evident that only a very tiny number of possible universes are suitable for life. One in 10^50 may have been a good upper limit a few years ago, but astrophysics continues to narrow the number further. What this suggests is that a universe is far, FAR more probable if the universe were selected for life than if it randomly came into being. The response by scientists is especially telling. Some have suggested that there are trillions (if not infinite) other undetectable universes to help the odds so to speak. This goes against occams razor, which suggests that one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything ceteris paribus. Others who were once agnostic or atheists have been persuaded to think Intelligence must have been involved in creation. Pattrick Glynn, an atheist with a PHD from Harvard, actually became a Christian as a result of the anthropic principle among other evidences.

But some have suggested that we shouldn�t be surprised that the universe is suited for the existence of intelligent observers, since we could never observe otherwise. The problem I find with this reasoning is that though we shouldn�t be surprised that the universe is suited for our existence, it seems we should be surprised and amazed that only a very precise (and I mean extremely� imagine a house balancing on a pin� more precise than that) universe is suitable for observers. For me this was quite persuasive in suggesting that the universe was selected by the first uncaused Cause for purpose of our existence.

There are many other reasons that incline me to believe in God such as our sense of right and wrong, particular NDE accounts, and others. I know each of these have many tangles to explore and I also know there are a number of potential problems with God to consider (problems with the coherency of the very idea of God and problems with the consistency of God with evil in the world). And I�d love to go into all these things and go deeper into the arguments I presented here. But for this article, I just wanted to outline why I believe in God now after going through a time of doubt earlier in my life. And my desire is that your mind will see a glimmer of reasons and your heart a glimmer of hope to believe.

You might be interested in an English paper I wrote arguing for God one year after my time of doubt. The person who peer-reviewed my essay had written an essay on why she thought Christianity was false. We had the most wonderful and interesting conversations after that. Anyway, you can view my paper here.

If you have any suggestions or comments on this article, please email me.