According to quite a few people we are nothing but the latest rung on an evolutionary (macro-evolutionary, that is) ladder. We're enlightened animals, aware of our own animal ancestry. Let's allow, for sake of argument, that they are correct. Ok, why make laws based on a sense of morality? Let's say that you arrest a person for rape. How do you know that it wasn't just imbedded in that persons nature to procreate and forcing himself upon a woman was just his way of doing what nature dictates that he should do? Dogs do it all the time. You'll see a male mounting a female simply because she is in heat. Should we arrest that male dog? How dare it defile her sanctity!? However, we don't arrest dogs. Since that is the case, why do we arrest the human? The point is that we judge things every single day of our lives on non-empirical standards; things that we can't see with our eyes or verify in a lab, yet things that we don't routinely dismiss because of that fact. Oddly, many of these people dismiss the notion of an existence of God on the same grounds that they build their lives upon. The other examples that I could use are endless: murder, theft, gossip, lying, adultery. All things we are outraged by, yet things that fall right into the same catagory. Why care if we are only animals? It only goes against our "survivalist nature".

Evolution explains how we got here (although, not very well in my humble opinion...more on that in a bit), but it doesn't explain why. Regardless of the attempts of some to bury the question, it still remains: why do we exist? Where did the notion of love come from? Oh, and the love i'm talking about isn't gained by eating tons of chocolate in which you get a major sugar buzz. I'm talking about the kind of love that would have you sitting up in the hospital room when your parent, brother, sister, friend, or spouse is dying with some terminal disease. I'm talking about the love that would motivate you to run and knock someone out of the way of an oncoming train. Doesn't evolution hum along on the wheels of "survival of the fittest" - "Hey, if they can't get out of the way of the train in time it's not my problem they aren't fast enough." There is no apparent reward other than death for such an action. So where would the motivation for doing something like that come from? Oh, you could say that it was their child, or some other loved one... but what if it wasn't? Let's use a more direct example. I don't suppose that all of the people in the World Trade Center towers were related to those firefighters going in to rescue them. Why would they do that then? Where on earth could such motivation have come from that they would give their lives trying to save those people?

"Faith is the evidence of things unseen." Does that mean that if you have faith in God, that means He exists because you have that faith? No. That would make God the evidence of your faith. It's the other way around. Faith was the only possession left to the disciples when they were being tortured by the Roman government, even killed, because they would not reject their God. They were tortured, and STILL did not renounce their faith. Who would die for a lie, KNOWING it was a lie??? Who would die for a lie, if they did not know if it was or wasn't a lie; or rather, who would die for uncertainty? You may say that you are certain that there is no God... but would you die for that certainty with a calm, a peace in your mind that your certainty was certain?

What about evolution, though? Shouldn't that put to rest any thougts of whether or not God exists? If the universe can come to exist and function without Him, what need is there for a belief in God? It doesn't, and there is a great need. As i said earlier, evolution is an explanation of how, not why. But is it even a solid, flawless explanation for how we got here? The evidence would say no. Aside from the mathematical improbabilities of the chance that evolution could've happened from mere nothing (if even that much) being unmatched, there is now new evidence being revealed on the smallest of levels of the biological complexity that exists. Certain organs could not possibly function because of it's dependant nature upon other necessary parts.

"In the nineteenth century, the anatomy of the eye was known in detail. The pupil of the eye, scientists knew, acts as a shutter to let in enough light to see in either brilliant sunlight or nighttime darkness. The lens of the eye gathers in light and focuses it on the retina to form a sharp image. The muscles of the eye allow it to move quickly. Different colors of light, with different wavelengths, would cause a blurred image, except that the lens of the eye changes density over its surface to correct for chromatic aberration.These sophisticated methods astounded everyone who was familiar with them. Scientists of the nineteenth century knew that if a person lacked any of the eye's many integrated features, the results would be a severe loss of vision or outright blindness. They concluded that the eye could function only if it were nearly intact." Michael Behe, Darwin's Black Box Pg. 17

If an eye can't even function because of it's interdependency upon seperate, functioning parts, then how could the process of evolution even begin? If these certain parts don't even exist, how could the eye be an eye? You ask what came first, the chicken or the egg, shouldn't the question be "Where did either come from?" For the record though, I still say the chicken clucked before the egg hatched.

In conlusion,
Maybe this life is all there is. If it is, at least i can say that i wasted my life living it as waste free as possible. But as far as i can tell, it would take a lot more faith to believe that this is all there is than to believe that there is actually a God out there who made all this. Many say that God is nothing but a proverbial crutch for people to lean on, but I thank Him for being that crutch. If it wasn't for Him I'd be like the atheist, proverbially crawling on the ground. It's an unnecessary way to live this life.