Yes, I believe in God. Is that a problem?

Disclaimer: This will satisfy no one, either theist or atheist. But here goes.

First, I believe in a supreme being, an intelligent first cause. God.

There was a time when this was possibly the most non-controversial thing a person could utter. No longer. Naturally, the hardcore internet atheist sneers at this confession. “There’s no evidence for the existence of a god. You believe in fairy tales and magic,” comes the keyboard taunt.

Fine, if you’re talking about evidence that falls into the category of fingerprints left at a murder scene or a repeatable science experiment, I’ll have to agree. I don’t believe in God based on that kind of evidence because, as our polemicist aptly points out, there isn’t any.

But it’s possible to form an intellectually responsible conviction on many other things based on arguments. To pick a random example, we don’t know why Neanderthals went extinct. Still, it’s possible to formulate a belief as to why this happened by extrapolating on what we do know. It’s not like proving the boiling point of water by actually boiling some water with a thermometer, but it’s a valid foundation for a belief.

Admittedly, it’s not a valid foundation for a dogma and I’m no dogmatist. Still, I can look at the competing hypotheses for the cause of Neanderthal extinction and be convinced by the merits of one of them. In fact, I can be utterly convinced, even while admitting that it’s not provable and that I could be wrong.

That’s where I am with the God question. It’s tinged with an honest agnosticism. I concede that my conviction is more hypothesis than demonstrable reality. And I could be mistaken.

Yes, in a few years, we could learn conclusively that there’s something about the quantum realm that virtually assures the spontaneous creation of whole universes. Or we could discover proof positive that non-living material can and does make the stupendous jump to organic life — life that is immediately capable of reproduction. Or a scientist could show us how it’s a mathematical near-certainty that time and randomness will take a single-celled organism up the hierarchy of life to a human being capable of inventing the intricacies of language, playing Bach on a violin or writing poetry.

That hasn’t happened yet. So, I’m holding my provisional belief that there’s a transcendent intelligence behind the existence of the universe and the staggeringly profound complexity of life. At least until someone disproves it.

But the mention of complexity instantly raises hackles. “That’s the ‘god of the gaps’ argument,” my antagonist will type. “I mean, just because you don’t understand lightning doesn’t mean Thor makes it, right? In the same way, your lack of an explanation for abiogenesis doesn’t allow you to say, ‘The God of Abraham did it.’”

Except that I’m not saying that. I’m not beginning with Genesis 1:1 or any other sacred text. I’m beginning with an argument that you don’t get purposefulness and complexity unless there’s an intelligence involved — at least in our observable reality. Harrumph all you want at Paley’s watch; the man had a point. Nobody would look at the watch lying on the beach and conclude that random, natural forces brought the components together in such a way that it could do something meaningful: keep time. It would at once be evident that an intelligence was involved in its formation.

At this point, it’s customary to dump scorn on such often-invoked concepts as intelligent design and irreducible complexity, declaring they’ve been “debunked.” But saying so doesn’t make it so.

The trouble is, all the scorn takes its toll on the God believers. When you read comments in which people heap ridicule on intelligent design and irreducible complexity over and over, you get the impression that arguing from them marks you as one of the Stupid®. I’m not playing their game, though. Such things are not anti-intellectual and they haven’t been debunked. Trying to cow people into submission by making derisive assertions doesn’t make a person smart or scientific.

Having said that, I find the most support for the idea of a supreme being in philosophy. I’ve seen internet atheists roll their eyes at Thomas Aquinas’ “unmoved mover” argument but they’ve never effectively refuted it.

The argument makes good sense to me: Everything that changes or goes from potential to actual does so via the influence of something else. There must, therefore, be a point at which there exists something that is “pure actuality,” a thing that actualizes everything else.

Imagine you fire up a car by getting a jump-start from another car’s battery. But you notice that car is also getting a jump from another car. And that car is getting a jump from still another. And on and on and on. It’s a vast chain of cars stretching off into the horizon, each getting a jump from another, which gets a jump from another, which gets a jump from yet another.

Here’s the reality: That chain can’t go on infinitely. It would make no sense to assert such a thing. Because at the bottom of it all, there MUST be one battery that doesn’t need a jump, one that supplies the power to jump the first one in the chain. Otherwise, the others would never start.

“But that doesn’t give you the particular god of any particular religious tradition,” the atheist says. “That doesn’t get you to the Judeo-Christian God or to Allah.” But I never said it did. We’ve arrived at a first cause. An unmoved mover.

From that point, people can postulate certain attributes that such an unmoved mover would likely possess, such as intelligence. Or a moral principle. And I’ll admit that we’re in the realm of speculation. But I’m OK with that. A little intellectual humility isn’t a bad thing. There’s plenty we believe that we can’t absolutely prove.

So, my final word to the internet atheists is that my holding THIS hypothesis among the many options (and admitting that it’s a hypothesis, not a scientific law) should give heartburn to no one. If you don’t like it, that’s your problem. If you fret that my belief will prompt me to advocate the transformation of America into a theocracy, you need some serious help.

Let’s practice some of that “live and let live” stuff I keep hearing about. Even on this topic, OK?