Today at work, amidst conversation about smoothies, hamburgers, and Darwinism, a co-worker asked me if I believed in "an old man in the sky". I pointed out, as gently as I knew how, that if some primordial thing existed before all other things, and brought the universe into being, an "old man" would hardly be an adequate description.

Of course, it was the same description Carl Sagan used on "Cosmos", where he described God as, if I recall correctly (it's been nearly 30 years) "an old man who counts sparrows."

You can tell something about an atheist's intellectual honesty (or anyone's really) by how fairly they portray their opponent's views. Do Christians and Jews really believe God is actually an "old man"? I've yet to meet one who does. Yet many atheists seem pretty intent on that depiction, and emotionally resist any correction -- quickly changing the topic to some other comforting-sounding argument. (And switching again, the moment you start to address that.)

I also don't understand why there's this seemingly endless circular assumption about the cause of the universe: you're "logical" and "rational" if you are absolutely sure the the universe came out of something unthinking and blind, and you're somehow stupid and "irrational" if you suspect the timeless thing before time and space could reason, and said: "Let there be light."

Boys and girls, we can directly evaluate nothing before the beginning of the universe. Unless you claim to have some evidence, one assumption is as good as another. You could claim it's a series of vibrating branes; I could claim there's an infinite number of universes being generated by something unknown; George could claim that the thing which brought the universe into being was also capable of doing computations and math -- and would appear to us as intelligent.

I don't see where anyone in that picture gets to laugh at the next guy and say: "Well, that's totally irrational." To do so is to not realize how precarious any other alternative is.

My friend also insisted it would be absurd if God intervened in the universe. Ummm... why? Again, I've never heard a rational answer. I've heard people insist that God would be "contradicting himself." Err, sure. And if I put something on the dresser, left it there for a while, and then picked it up again, I'm sure I'd be "contradicting myself" as well.

But my friend wasn't up for that discussion either. It was: "Here let me state my case and flee." Well, alrighty then. A true sign of intellectual conviction if e're I saw one.