...or just an inability for an explanation? Perhaps just fear of embarassment.

This is the question I now ask myself about the Dennis Prager radio show more and more. I once adored this man, listened to him at every oppurtunity, went to events where he spoke, and read every article he churned out each week. A liberal turned conservative, he lays claim to personify Judeo-Christian values and exude moral clarity.

I feel like my values are indeed Judeo-Christian based, it is hard not to have values based in Christianity and be from the western world, and I constantly search for clarity in all things.

I called the Dennis Prager radio show today in hopes to continue the search for clarity. He was going on and on about how athiests do not maintain intellectual integrity when they ask where God came from, or how God was made? Prager asserts that all the material and matter in the world could not have created themselves. They could not have just gotten here. They must have been created by a God, the Earth, life, etc., cannot create itself. Here he implies that all material things must be created (not taking into account the possibilities of dark matter). Therefore, there must be a creator. It seems only a logical question in a claim that indeed triggers a series of questions, that one with inquiry would ask where the creator came from? Right?

To Prager, this is somehow intellectually dishonest, because the creator by nature must have always been, and is not physical but of the metaphysical. This is understood throughout the three major religions as a prerequisite for God to be God. However, our minds can not necessarily fathom something having always existed, nor can we imagine anything truly having an end or a beginning because we always ask what came before or what comes next? One can spin in circles.

The question I posed to his screener was, why if it is possible, if there is potential for God or any metaphysical being to have always existed, is it therefore impossible that matter in and of itself has always been, perhas just arranged differently? Is it so impossible that our minds are simply, adaptively, and evolutionarily adjusted to the environment in which we inhabit, preventing us from seing that matter itself is forever and was never created either, that it simply goes through an infinite number of changes and stages for eternity? We know that matter cannot be created or destroyed, yet it is still "here." It exists, and that is a fact. We assume that God can not have been "made" or "born," as well as we assume that He is "here." This is a clear matter of faith.

It seems to me a simple issue, that of faith versus fact, where one makes a decision of the heart and chooses what to believe. Facts don't negate faith, but they don't support it either. Here, Prager insults the intelligence not just of athiests, but any agnostic, beleiver, or what have you that happens to continue the logical thought process that maybe God came from somewhere, and if not, is it then possible that if God can be eternal (and remember what Neitzche tells us, "if God does not exist we would have had to create him"), why can not other things have the potential for eternality, such as the stuff that makes up matter? This reigns especially true for those who question the nature of God, or if God exists.

We know now that an atom consists of at least three different sub-atomic particles, and that these sub-atomic particles are made up of some other "stuff" as well. I am no physicist, but what string theorists suggest is that all the atoms and matter in the unverse are actually made up of "strings" of energy. Making everything we can measure, energetic if you will.

Notwithstanding, I do not truly wish to question the existence of God, I do believe God exists. But I do mean to question the intellectual integrity of Dennis Prager, his staff, and anyone who agrees with him on this issue. It is seemingly evident if I was so easily able to pick apart what Prager asserted, that actual athiests who have thought the matter through much more thoroughly than I, have only strenghtened their positions by listening to an apparent religious and moral leader.

The proper way to address this intellectually Mr. Prager, would not have been to try to explain the unexplainable and insult anyone who questions it but, to engage in the dialogue which leads both parties hopefully closer to clarity of the truth we all idealy seek. Had I gotten to actually talk to Prager and posite my first question, that would have been my second point to him, had his screener not hung up on me.