I'm just going to say it.
For a long time, I thought faith was basically a crutch. Something people leaned on because reality was too hard to face.
I figured religious people were either raised that way and never questioned it, or they hit rock bottom and needed something to hold onto.
Smart people, I thought, didn't need that.
Then I actually started looking into it.
The Thing That Started Everything
It started with a simple question that wouldn't leave me alone. Why is there something rather than nothing?
Think about it. The universe exists. Matter exists. Energy exists. But why? What made it all start?
Science can tell us what happened after the Big Bang. But science can't tell us why there was anything to bang in the first place. At some point, something had to come from nothing. Or something had to always exist.
Both options are mind bending. But the second one points toward something eternal. Something outside of time and matter. Something that started it all.
Philosophers call this the First Cause argument. It's been around for thousands of years. And honestly? I couldn't dismiss it.
The Universe That Shouldn't Work
Then I learned about fine tuning.
The physical constants that govern our universe are set with insane precision. If the force of gravity was slightly different, stars couldn't form. If the strong nuclear force was off by a fraction, atoms wouldn't hold together.
The odds of all these constants landing exactly where they need to be for life to exist are astronomically small. Like, throwing a dart across the universe and hitting a target the size of an atom small.
Some scientists say it's just luck. We happened to be in the universe where the numbers worked out. But that felt like a cop out to me.
The more I looked at the data, the more it seemed like the universe was set up on purpose. Like someone wanted it to work.
The Thing Inside Us
But the thing that really got me wasn't cosmology. It was consciousness.
How do atoms arranged in a certain way become aware? How does matter start asking questions about itself?
Science can map the brain. It can track neural pathways and measure electrical signals. But it can't explain why there's an "I" experiencing all of it.
Consciousness shouldn't exist in a purely material universe. And yet here we are. Thinking. Wondering. Asking why.
It felt like evidence of something more. A signal that we're not just biology.
The Longing That Won't Go Away
And then there's this. Every culture throughout history has had some concept of God or the divine. Every human heart seems to reach for something beyond itself.
C.S. Lewis wrote that if we find in ourselves a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.
That longing. That sense that there has to be more. Maybe it's not a bug in our programming. Maybe it's a feature. A homing signal pointing us toward the One who made us.
Where I Landed
I'm not saying I have all the answers. I don't.
But I stopped seeing faith as a crutch for the weak. Now I see it as a reasonable response to evidence that points beyond the material world.
The universe had a beginning. It's fine tuned for life. Consciousness exists. We all long for transcendence.
None of that proves God exists. But it makes the existence of God more plausible than the alternative.
And if God does exist? Then maybe the most rational thing you can do is talk to Him and see what happens.
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