Arrogance Defeated, One Less Atheist In the World

I am not quite sure how old I was the day that my world view was changed. My sister is seven years older than I am. And on this particular Sunday, as was the case whenever my sister came home from college to visit, my dad would have to drive her back to the college for the beginning of the next week's classes.
I do not remember if I was asked to go along, or was told I was going, but the trip to her college usually took about an hour and a half to drive. My sister, was the oldest sibling in the family. Her name was Marsha and I was very proud of her. I would have never told her so, however, since there was a little sibling rivalry taking place between us; at least there was in my mind. I was probably 12 or 13 years old and she was probably in her sophomore or junior year at Georgetown College.
Georgetown College was in Georgetown, Kentucky. Georgetown , at the time, was a small college town near Lexington, Kentucky. It has since grown in population and fame. Its population and fame changed practically overnight when the Toyota Motor Corporation chose to locate a new car plant there to make the Camry. However, before they chose to locate their newest car plant there, most people would have never heard of the town or the college.
I do not recall how the conversation on this particular trip was turned to the question of the existence of God, but it did. I was a very arrogant, know it all kid. I had become quite the bookworm by this time in my life. I had been introduced to a love for reading from a teacher in elementary school. And as with many endeavors in my life, when I do something, I do it to an extreme. The inflated opinion of myself ,intellectually, was won from the many victories, while playing head games with peers. There were very few that had read as many books as I had. I was the perfect walking example of the foolish kid "who thought he knew it all".
The arrogance and the smugness that I had about what I believed was in full display in the car that Sunday, once the conversation turned to the existence of God. I knew what I knew, and I was going to prove it. I knew there was no God. Somewhere along my journey of devouring all the books, I had become an atheist. My parents had quit attending church when I was nine or ten years old. So the only influence I was receiving about world view issues was through books, newspapers, television shows and school.
I started my case for the non-existence of God by telling my sister there was no proof that he did exist. I pointed out to her, that scientists could not find him, that he had no address where we could go visit him, or no phone number where we could call him. I went on to tell her that no one that I was friends with, actually believed in God.
My sister, easily defeated this assertion, she had already had a philosophy class or two at college. Arguing with her was not going to be as easy as arguing with my class-mates at school. She simply pointed out that I could not prove that he did not exist. Trust me, I tried. She replied, "have you been every where in the universe and made sure he was not there". Of course, I had no retort worthy to refute this simple statement of hers. I countered, well if he exists, how come he does not make himself visible to every one? She gave me no direct answer to this question, other than pointing out there were those in the religious community that believed he had revealed and made himself visible. My sister was not a practicing Christian either back then. But she did want to win the debate with me. We both were a little competitive. This is the point in the debate/conversation where she went on the offensive. It probably was relatively easy for her. After all, she had those classes in philosophy at school to augment her knowledge base and simple strategy to prove me wrong. My sister stated in basic terms the cosmological argument or causal argument for the existence of God. I am pretty sure she did not use those names for the premise to her argument, but she did ably present her case. The cosmological argument, stated simply, is that every effect has a cause. In our world, we can see constant confirmation of this simple premise. In nature, for example, if a predator is hungry, it motivates the predator to hunt for prey. If the animal is thirsty, it searches for a drink. If an acorn falls from a tree, and lands on good soil, with adequate rain, it will become an oak tree. If the tectonic plates shift hard enough and fast enough there will be a sizable earthquake. These four examples of effects, each have a previous causal factor that initiated the action. Hunger, thirst, the wind blowing through the trees and the shift of the tectonic plates are the immediate causal factors for the action that took place in our examples. My sister then made several observations of the relationship between cause and effect. She pointed out that the universe could not have created itself. There had to be a cause for it to spring into existence. I had no reply to her simple argument, other than to say, "well then, who created God"? Her comeback, though I did not like it, again was simple. She pointed out it would be irrational to believe that there was an endless series of regressions of creators creating the next creator. At some point, some entity outside of the chain of creators and creations, had to be completely and wholly other than the endless stream of regressions of creators and creations. This entity, this first cause, had to be the "uncaused" cause. She said this is what we call God.
So I had a choice to make. I had to decide if staying an atheist made sense. I asked her what did it mean to her that there had to be a first cause. She said that she felt that it made more sense to be an agnostic. I had never heard the word used before. To be an agnostic she stated, means to acknowledge that there is not enough evidence to disprove there is a God. She said an agnostic simply questioned his existence. So I became an agnostic that day.
I did not stay an agnostic for long, that changed a few years later, when I accepted Jesus as God and Savior, but that is another story.
If you want to read more about the cosmological argument simply insert the words into Google or click the title of this blog and it will take you to an embedded link that has an academic article.