First Cause. In answer to the 'cosmological argument' for the necessary existence of a willful First Cause (as when Leibniz asked "why is there something, rather than nothing?"), atheism's reply is that the question should not be considered too seriously, because the answer cannot be known. Consider carefully both the question and the response, they are quite interesting. In all the history of human thinking, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is a man with extremely few peers. He is known first as the great mathematician who was Isaac Newton's intellectual rival and who provided the world with his mathematical symbols (notations) which have been universally used ever since. He is generally recognized as the central figure in the emergence of mathematical logic. One of his contributions to the great works of philosophy was his cosmological argument for the necessity of God as the unavoidable First Cause. (The argument had been formulated differently by Thomas Aquinas, by Arabic philosophers, by Lao-tzu, Plato, Aristotle, and many others). A generalized formulation of the argument is this: the kosmos (physical "world" or "universe") is a physically closed system of cause-effect relationships. Although they may provide certain inferences, these relationships cannot themselves provide an ultimate explanation for the existence of the "world" because they are internal to the system. The system cannot cause itself to exist, just as I cannot bring myself into physical existence, therefore, in the brute fact of its existence, the universe requires an external Ultimate cause. (I am aware of two attempts -- including Hawking's "no boundaries" proposal -- to relieve the cosmos of this necessity, but both fail so absolutely on points of logic that I won't waste time with them here. [The theological response to Hawking was been well stated by Craig, Polkinghorne and others].) That a supposed atheist would find his best response to the ultimate question (why does a context for any question even exist?) to be that this question isn't important because only the physical universe can be known -- is a revelation of the logical difficulty of atheism. We recall that an atheist claims that God does not exist while an agnostic claims that it is not known whether God exists. To the question "why is there something, rather than nothing(?)" it seems that atheism's best response -- that the answer cannot be known -- is an abrupt retreat from atheism to agnosticism, leaving one to wonder if there is such a thing as reasoned atheism, or if atheism must be simply an emotional state arising from rationally flawed presuppositions.1 Of course there are claims of rational arguments against God, and we'll consider this as well. Transcendent 'laws'. Beyond the cosmos. Within the culture which serves the amusements of the god of self, the God of the monotheist is held to be nonsense, much as it was thirty-five centuries ago. In most cases, the concept of a single, super-dimensional, most necessary entity is not honestly explored. A popular simplistic caricature of the Christian theist paints him a delusional throw-back to an era of ignorance. In the culture of self, the Absolute Infinite is willfully discounted as being "unnecessary." The culture of self claims that human knowledge, human wisdom, human goodness, human greatness has replaced the idea of an Absolute Truth from beyond space-time, of a Mind beyond matter. The claim is that "enlightened" thinkers have evolved a sufficient pool of human wisdom that the idea of an external Ultimate has been replaced by the new magnificence of the human intellect. But who is it that deceives themselves? Cambridge physicist and mathematician James Jeans describes the emerging insights of cosmological science with these words: "The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine... We discover that the universe shows evidence of a designing or controlling power that has something in common with our own individual minds."2 In contemplating the laws of nature (without which nature cannot exist), physicist Barry Parker wonders: "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed."3 Twenty-four hundred years ago the answer to the question 'who created these laws' was recorded -- "Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you."4 Yet the human mind finds that it cannot 'flesh out' this Infinite entity within the limitations of our four dimensional experience. Empiricism cannot venture beyond its limited access to our single time dimension, yet reason suggests that something supra-exists "the Beginning" of what we call "time." Mathematics offers an interesting glimpse into a realm of extra 'time' dimensions: in two (or more) dimensions of 'time' we discover that it is possible for something to be understood as having no beginning and no end, in three large dimensions of 'time' (or the functional equivalent of such a description) we discover that it is possible for an agency to act infinitely at every point within every dimension.5 If conscious, such an entity would not only be omnipresent (at once everywhere in both 'space' and 'time'), it would be omniscient, that is, given that nothing could be "hidden" from it, this entity would, of logical necessity, have all knowledge of all things, extant and potential. The only thing that could limit such an agency would seem to be itself [and it may be logically deduced that there is reason to expect such a self-limiting, i.e., God cannot be not-God, etc]. Of course this entity would not be a material object, we might best understand it as being an Infinite Mind supra-existing "matter". Because it would be all-knowing and capable of infinite action it is apparent that such an agency must also be all-powerful (excepting the previously mentioned self-limitations), capable of imposing specific constraints and parameters, which is to say "laws", through which a mysterious corporeality ("matter") might emerge! Should this agency be super-dimensional, that is, not constrained within any number of 'space' or 'time' dimensions or their equivalents, and in fact 'pre-exist' any such possible dimensions (and this is the more rational understanding of God described in scripture and by thinkers like Plato or Augustine), then we find that we are considering a very awesome God indeed for whom even a human concept such as Infinity is small and inadequate. Indeed one physicist has characterized the qualities of this "putative entity" as the product of infinity to the power of infinity, raised to the power of infinity ad infinitum! A dim but fascinating understanding of the Almighty emerges... yet, to we who are confined to a single time dimension, it remains a profound mystery.6 Such an agency would know the exact number of quarks, gluons and photons in our four-dimensional (or eleven dimensional) 'universe,' would know their positions and their momentum (could not be bound by quantum uncertainty, i.e. the "measurement problem"), would know the number of hairs on my head, might 'right now' exist ten billion trillion years from 'now' just as someone reading these words exists at this moment. To such an agency, the concept of a billion years might be strangely similar to the concept of a billionth of a second, neither one having any effectual influence upon it. No level or degree of information could tax such a Mind. Here is Transcendence. Might it also be reasonable to believe that such an entity would care deeply about that which it creates and must know so intimately? It is immediately apparent that this might be the case -- after all, does a mathematician care about his equations or an artist care about his compositions? Might there be evidence that this supra-cosmic, omnipresent God does indeed care? Does human suffering refute the idea of a caring (personal) God? These are very reasonable questions, and some of humanity's most ancient and persistent. Are there reasonable answers? If one is willing to honestly search for them, I believe that there are.

Atheism's greatest argument. In answer to the 'design argument' (as when Paley asked -- does not the existence of a watch infer the reality of a watchmaker, and are not the mechanisms of nature more powerful, precise, and beautiful than anything the human mind could ever design, thus inferring the existence of an extra-cosmic designer?), atheism puts forward [what is hailed as] it's greatest argument against the existence of God. The 'argument from imperfection', more recently called the 'argument from suboptimality'. The idea is that the existence of 'pain and suffering' and certain features of nature which the arguer pronounces to be "suboptimal", serve to describe a physical world too imperfect to be the product of an ultimate perfection. The argument is logically suicidal; in fact the argument is neither an exercise of pure logic nor of science (science asks questions of nature, it does not impose 'answers' on it). Not science, not strict logic, the 'argument from imperfection' is -- like it or not -- a theological argument (all arguments 'against God' are theological arguments). The argument is thus not so much a refutation of God's existence as it is a statement of disdain for a First Cause that does not submit itself to human 'wisdom.' Recall that by definition, First Cause must exist beyond, as well as within nature, and by definition this Supreme agency is all-knowing. Should any human arguer claim to be so enlightened as to pronounce an authoritative judgment on an all-knowing being, we see that this human arguer inherently claims to be all-knowing himself, ultimately having knowledge even beyond that which can be accessed from within our physical space-time constraints. He must anoint himself God! An atheist philosopher sneers "God is love? Not bloody likely!" But what would the atheist's "perfect" world look like? Most notably, the concept of 'free will' would present an unsurmountable problem. Decisions which would cause imperfect outcomes could not be allowed, thus free will would be precluded. Even in this deterministic world of human automatons, the laws of nature -- gravitation, inertia, causality, electromagnetism, symmetry, and beauty itself -- all, at times, might allow for pain and suffering, so that the laws of nature would have to be subject to frequent supernatural suspension. Nature would be reduced to an ugly self-contradiction. We see also that the human mind would have to be less capable, lest [the imperfection of] dissatisfaction be allowed to come to mind. We also recognize that this "god" whose world struggles so to win human approval is not much of a god! He is 'running scared,' hiding from analysis, tinkering constantly with the flaws of his dangerous creation, forcibly controlling the human mind and will. The confused rose-colored haze of the human mind's "perfect" world begins to look like a small prison administered by a small god. The theist's non-threatenable Author of meaning -- free will -- is quite remarkably superior to the atheist's oddly preferred petty tyrant god that is strangely subject to the human mind. How is a "perfect world" which constrains freedom and denies absolute laws -- perfect? Ah, the wisdom of human minds that don't need absolute Truth! The argument of atheism must assume that the concepts of free will and of perfection are somehow separable, but that assumption is logically untenable.7 True perfection is, for the mortal human mind, simply unfathomable. For the Mind from beyond nature, it would seem to be an absolute inevitability, even where the existence of imperfection is now permitted, whether we recognize it or not and whether it conforms to the small, blind vanities of our approval or not. I think it is far wiser to seek the perfections of an infinite Absolute, even if they are difficult to grasp and often misrepresented by the ignorance of the human mind, than to retreat into the blurry prison of atheism's chaotic and contradictory self-ascribed 'wisdom.' The Mind from beyond nature certainly need not consult four-dimensional, flesh and blood philosophers to know what perfection is, or to learn anything at all. To the suggestion that He might in any way benefit from man's 'wisdom', God asks "who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?"8 The God of the monotheist knows the smallness of human 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' better than humans know it, and for this reason instructs "as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts."9 ...And this is quite logical, even obvious if we consider these issues with an attitude of intellectually honest humility. "Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?" (Job 40:2) "I am the Lord, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens,10 ... who overthrows the learning of the wise and turns it into nonsense." (Isaiah 44:24,25) Atheism's self-deception. Looking for clever means of refuting God's existence, pagans and humanists, both ancient and modern, employ supposed "logical paradox" arguments, like: "If God's will is eternal, then why did he create the universe when he did, and not before he did?" This argument is intended to suggest that God's will is mutable, and thus God cannot be God. Augustine examined and quickly destroyed this argument more than 1,600 years ago11 -- the argument must presuppose that God is restricted by temporal concepts like "before." Augustine called such a fallacious argument against God a "joke." External to time, existence can only be understood as an eternal simultaneity, otherwise it could not be external to time. Thus, the idea of any temporal implications "before" the creation of time, is a logically indefensible proposition. But the nonsense arguments persist today. Cambridge mathematician John Barrow, in an apologia for agnosticism,12 presents a similarly flawed paradox argument: in proposing the statement "This statement is not known to be true by anyone," we quickly discover that, as Barrow says, "by the standards of human reason" there must not exist an omniscient being. The impotence of the argument is evident in its very framing. We see only that an omniscient being cannot be subjected to the limits of "human reason" -- no human can be God. This does not logically address the question of God's existence. Barrow's cited paradox attests merely that no finite being can know everything. [Further, a variation of the paradox attests that no one could ever know that an omniscient being does not exist.] Human buffoonery cannot explain away the infinite Mind, the First Cause, the Reason for reason, the One source, the eternal Truth. Ignorant humans are foolish to try. In anxiousness to elevate self, men have always been prone to self delusion. But we have free will. We can reject the self's penchant for self-deception, we can look much deeper. We can seek the road less traveled, the narrow Way which few find, the Way to the mystery of eternity and the supra-cosmic Truth. "The one thing truly worthwhile is becoming God's friend." - Gregory of Nyssa

Who is God? "The mind of man cannot fittingly conceive how great is God... all eloquence is certainly mute and every mind inadequate... Whatever can be thought about Him is less than He... He who is... more profound than all profundity... more powerful than all power, more beautiful than all beauty, truer than all truth." -- Novatian "Who is God? ... most hidden, yet most present; most beautiful, and most strong; stable, yet mysterious; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new and bringing age upon the proud ... always working, yet always at rest; still gathering, yet lacking nothing; ... seeking, yet possessing all things. God loves without passion; He is 'jealous' without anxiety... is 'angry', yet serene; changes His ways, yet His plans are unchanged; recovers what He finds, having never lost it; never in need, yet rejoicing in gain, never covetous, yet requiring interest. He receives over and above, that He may owe -- yet who has anything that is not His? He pays debts, owing nothing; remits debts, losing nothing. And what can anyone say when they speak of Him? Yet woe to those who keep silent, since those who say the most are as the mute!" - Augustine, Confessions "In condescension to our limited understanding, He is said to dwell in heaven. But strictly speaking, the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him." - John Wesley, Works, Vol. 3 "Your thoughts of God are too human." -- Luther to Erasmus Beyond words. "Nor can any words come up to the inexpressible Good, this One, this Source of all unity, this supra-existent Being. Mind beyond mind, word beyond speech, it is gathered up by no discourse, by no intuition, by no name. It is and it is as no other being is. Cause of all existence, and therefore itself transcending existence, it alone could give an authoritative account of what it really is." -- Pseudo Dionysius, The Divine Names "It is very difficult to explain the deep experience of the inner life. As Goethe has said: 'The highest cannot be spoken.' But it can be enjoyed and put into action... One day, during my meditation and prayer, I felt His presence strongly. My heart overflowed with heavenly joy. I saw that in this world of sorrow and suffering there is a hidden and inexhaustible mine of great joy of which the world knows nothing, because even those who experience it are not able to speak of it adequately." - Sadhu Sundar Singh, With and Without Christ Compassion. "All of our revelations and gifts are little things compared to love... If you are looking for anything else, you are looking wide of the mark. Settle in your heart that from this moment on you will aim at nothing more than that love described in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. You can go no higher than this." - John Wesley, Christian Perfection Alone with the Infinite. "What others do to you should not concern you. You should concern yourself with what you do to others and with the way you receive what others do to you. The direction is inwards; essentially you have only to do with yourself before God." - Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love

1. e.g., Albert Einstein, from his personal correspondence with V.T. Aaltonen. The Quotable Einstein, A. Calaprice, Princeton University Press, 1996.. Although Einstein was not a theist (i.e., he did not subscribe to the idea of a personal God), he clearly saw the contention of atheism (that there is no God) as being a logically indefensible idea, he called it "no philosophy at all."
2. James Jeans, The Mysterious Universe
3. Barry Parker, Creation -- The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe. Plenum Press, 1988.
4. Psalm 119:91, NIV
5. In the case of two dimensions of time (or equivalent), it may be helpful to picture a circle in a temporal "plane" (this picture can NOT be extrapolated to support a "cycling" universe). In the case of three or more dimensions of time, it may be helpful to imagine something like a fully temporal "fabric", conceptually similar to the space-time field of Einstein's theory of general relativity.
6. Note: I do not propose that I have here defined God, I only suggest a theoretical model of God which demonstrates in part what an omnipresent, all-knowing, all-powerful agency might be. Although such an agency would be the ultimate reality, it could never be either proved or disproved within the limited empirical capabilities of four dimensional beings (like you and me). No matter the degree of intelligence beings such as ourselves might possess (real or imagined) we would still need to choose: to believe in the existence of God or to believe in the non-existence of God. A considered choice would have to be made on other indicators... God remains an unfathomable mystery.
7. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Kant says "whence have we the concept of God as the highest good? Solely from the idea of moral perfection, which reason frames a priori and connects inseparably with the concept of free will." Kant, describing the absolute good as the universal "unseen," here presents a form of the 'moral argument' for the existence of God as "the archetype of the good". While it is certainly not his stated intent, he also demonstrates the fallacious nature of poorly reasoned arguments that the concept of a singular originator (God) is an emotional crutch, as atheists generally claim. God rather is found to be unavoidable on a basis of pure reason.
8. Job 38:2, NIV
9. Isaiah 55:9, NIV
10. Notice the claim that God "stretched out the heavens" (see also Isaiah 45:12, Jeremiah 10:12, Psalm 104:2, Job 9:8). In the mid 1980s physicists first became aware that no plausible theory of cosmology works without the "stretching" of space-time trillionths of a second after the creation of space-time. This is called "cosmic inflation" or the "inflationary big bang." It is interesting that several ancient writers record this cosmic stretching in the Old Testament while also stating that it was something that they could not understand. How is it that thousands of years ago these writers recorded an event believed to have occurred fifteen billion years ago and which we have only now recognized to have happened and are only now beginning to understand?
11. Saint Augustine, Confessions. Oxford University Press, 1998.
12. John Barrow, Impossibility, The Limits of Science and the Science of Limits. Oxford University Press, 1999.

"The harmony of natural law... reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." - Albert Einstein

Further consideration: Does the physical universe infer the necessary existence of an supra-cosmic Mind? What is inferred by the fact that science works and seems to have meaning?