Conceived Without Sin (30 page)

"Why did they believe He was God? Jesus rose from the dead. Was Jesus a magician? Or did He really perform miracles all his life, then rise from the dead? Quite a trick."

Buzz sat down. Their faces were not far from each other.

"Before we go on, Sam, tell me
why you're so interested all of the sudden?"

"I, uh, want to have it out, be done with it. I know I'm
not
going to believe you," Sam replied. Then he smiled. "And Ellie wants me to go to Mass with her. It was your suggestion. Then I suggested it to her. I want to be sure that I'm going to keep her company, not because I'm trying to talk myself into believing something I know isn't true. If I talk
with you, I know you'll convince me I'm right, despite your best efforts to the contrary."

Buzz whistled. "And you accuse me of using twisted logic? Let me get this straight: you want to talk with me about Jesus so you can shoot my arguments down, and thereby be sure of your disbelief."

"Right," Sam said. "For Ellie's sake. I don't want to give her false hope. This might seem strange, but I do
the same thing right here, at work. When I'm really sure of something, I ask my workers to shoot holes in it. If the idea survives the gauntlet, I know I'm right."

"I see," Buzz said, shaking his head. "I'm not sure I want to have this conversation. You see, I
want
you to believe."

"I know. Here's your chance. Make me believe," Sam said evenly.

Buzz looked up to the drop ceiling, his tongue on
his lower lip.

Is he praying?
Sam thought disjointedly.

"Wait a minute," Buzz said dropping to the floor at Sam's feet. He began to do push-ups.

"Buzz?"

"Shut up, Sam, would ya?" Buzz ordered, continuing his push-ups. Buzz did fifty push-ups every morning, so these were not taxing. He began praying one word, then another, over and over inside his head:
reparation… inspiration… reparation… inspiration…

At push-up number thirty-eight, his prayer was answered. He did one more push-up for good measure, then popped to his feet.

"What was that?" Sam asked.

"I'd like to keep that to myself. I don't know if I could explain it even if I wanted to," Buzz said breathlessly. "But I'm ready now. Watch out, Sam. I might just surprise you today. I feel like such an underdog.

"But never mind that. Here are
the ground rules: Let's start with God, and work our way over to Jesus," Buzz suggested. "I'll give you one proof of God's existence, then I'll talk about Jesus very, very briefly."

"That's all?" Sam asked, feeling distantly shortchanged.

"We'll miss our basketball game otherwise," Buzz observed.

"We can finish our discussion after the game–at Applebees, where it all started."

"I'm all for going
to Applebees," Buzz said, an indecipherable gleam in his eyes, a game-player's grin on his mouth. "For old time's sake. But we'll be done here in ten minutes, maybe less."

One-two punch,
Buzz thought.
One-two punch
. Those were the words that came to him at push-up number thirty-eight.

He had seen in his mind's eye an image of a fat, out-of-shape, poorly-trained boxer battling a larger, faster,
highly-skilled champion. He couldn't see anything besides their legs at first. The ragged boxer was against the ropes. He was practically beaten. The champion was closing in for the kill. Then he saw the face of the champion; it was Sam Fisk's face. The words
one-two punch
popped into his mind. The whole image happened in a breath between the
push
and the
up.

What must the underdog do in order
to win?

"Then shoot," Sam said, feeling confident.

There was a coffee cup holding several pens and pencils on the desk. Buzz snatched a pencil from the cup.
World's Best Mom
was printed on the side of the cup.

Almost forgot,
Buzz told himself.
Hail Mary, pray for us sinners.

Not enough time for the whole prayer.

"Where did this pencil come from?" Buzz asked.

"Huh?"

"Just play along, Sam. Trust
me," Buzz pressed.
Speed is a weapon,
a little voice told him.

"Sure," Sam said. "Sorry. I started this. Okay, the pencil came from the store."

"And how'd it get to the store?"

"Warehouse first. And it got to the warehouse from the pencil factory."

"Right. You see where I'm going. And before the factory, where did the wood in the pencil come from?"

"Sawmill. It got there from the lumber company.
I know where this is going, Buzz," Sam said with a tinge of weariness. "I know this proof. You've used it before. You called it the Proof from First Causes."

"I know. But let's go all the way back, anyway. Okay? I'm making another point. It won't take long. Where did the tree that gave us the wood in the pencil come from?"

"From a seed," Sam said, almost impatiently. "And the seed came from another
tree. And so on back to the very first tree–"

"And the first tree?" Buzz continued.

"From another kind of tree," Sam said.

"If you believe in Darwin's theory, yes. I'm not a big fan of Darwin. But let's not get into that. We'll go with your preference. Is it reasonable to say that the original tree came from some other kind of tree, and then that other kind of tree from a plant from another plant,
all the way back to–"

"The ooze."

"Yes, the ooze, where all those amino acids and enzymes magically came together to make up the first life forms," Buzz filled in. "And the ooze, before the life–where did the ooze come from?"

"Well, let's not skip ahead of ourselves," Sam objected. "The first life on earth could have come from an asteroid carrying primitive organisms. The asteroid hits, dropping
life into the ooze."

"That doesn't matter, really, does it? Doesn't the planet the asteroid came from need its own ooze, if you trace everything back all the way?"

After a pause, Sam said, "Yes, you're right."

Buzz smiled. "Great. Let's talk about our earth with the lifeless ooze, zillions of years ago. Where did the earth come from?"

"The earth is a planet that came from gravitational pulls bringing
it together in a cloud of matter," Sam explained, rushing. "It's been a while since I had this in high school. Either way, we're all the way back to the Big Bang. A big ball of compacted matter blew up, forming everything in the universe, including our planet, the sun, the solar system, and our galaxy. Scientists have proven that the universe is expanding, so it must have started in the, uh,
middle, with a big ball of matter blowing up. We're done. We're back to the beginning."

"We are?"

"Yes, and now you ask me where the matter from the Big Bang came from. You'll say it was God."

"Yes, and what's wrong with that?"

"Well, I was watching PBS a couple of years ago, and a scientist was saying that the universe may be the result of several Big Bang-like cycles, expanding and retracting
over time. Our universe will finish expanding, eventually contract, and then it will blow up again."

"Yes, I read about that
theory
in Scientific American. Even if that theory is true, I think the cyclical Big Bang idea begs the question. It basically says that the universe was always there. It still doesn't explain how the big ball of matter got there in the first cyclical bang. In that article,
one guy said that before the big ball of matter, there was a bunch of mindless energy. He didn't explain where the energy came from, or the properties of the energy. The energy was just sitting there, waiting to form into the matter. For a bunch of scientists, it all sounded pretty sloppy and full of conjecture to me."

"Hmmn. I guess you're right. But everything you've said still doesn't prove
that God exists," Sam replied.

"Not for you. Now you tell me something: how come everything in the universe has a cause, or at least a scientific theory of a cause, except for the universe itself? Science provides no answers to the crucial question: where did the original matter or energy that made up the universe come from? Isn't that true?"

Sam thought for a long time. A long time.

"So, okay,
there is no scientific explanation of where the universe started," Sam conceded. "That doesn't prove that God started it. There are no records, no photographs, no evidence from back at the time it happened showing God opening his Jiffy Universe Kit and starting it all up."

"Really?" Buzz asked, the gleam still in his eye.

"Yes. It's a mystery."

"Good. I'm done with the God part of my proof," Buzz
said, throwing his shoulders back.

"You are? But I'm not convinced," Sam said, wondering briefly why he felt disappointment.
Because you wanted to believe–for Ellie's sake.

"I wasn't trying to convince you of God's existence, really," Buzz explained excitedly. "I'm just trying to show you how your whole scientific worldview, the view you put so much stock in, begins with a mystery. The universe's
origin for you is a mystery. Period. You can't prove to me that the universe is anything other than mystery. You said it yourself; there's no proof of how it started. Just a bunch of theory."

"Where are you going with this?" Sam asked.

"Next time I tell you that the Incarnation of Christ, or the infallibility of the Pope, or the Holy Trinity is a mystery, don't be so smug. Your religion has mystery,
too. You think your position is superior, but I want you to think about this: it's at least equal to mine. We both fall back on mystery when we get to the nub. In fact, I would go as far as to say that you have more faith than me about the origins of the universe. At least I can point to an omnipotent God creating it. That makes sense, at least to me. Your answer for the origin of the universe
is, essentially, 'I don't know. It was just there.'"

Sam had no answer.

"I feel like Columbo," Buzz said suddenly, snapping his fingers.

"Why?"

"Because I just thought of another question for you about the First Cause. Look, I told you I would only talk about one thing…"

"Go ahead," Sam said, not surprised that Buzz's first proof had fallen flat. "I won't hold you to it. What's your question?"

"What's outside the universe?"

"You mean, after the universe ends, what's there? Nothing. There's nothing there."

"What is nothing?"

Sam shook his head and laughed. "What kind of question is that? Nothing is nothing!"

"Look, I'm not trying to get cute. It blows my mind. You just said it." Buzz spoke the next three words clearly:
"Nothing
is nothing. That means, literally, that
nothing
can't exist.
So nothing
can't be
beyond the universe, because nothing is, by definition,
not there."

"And…" Sam prompted, curious, straining.

"And, well, more mystery, eh?" Buzz tilted his head back, the gleam back in his eye.

"That one went over my head," Sam said.

"Mine too," Buzz replied honestly. "Let's just drop it. I think I've made my point. Your religion, agnosticism, is based on faith. You believe
that the universe's origin can't be explained. You take it on faith that it is just here, of its own accord."

"I guess so," Sam said. "I can live with that. I'm not an astrophysicist, or whatever they're called."

"Let's move on to Jesus. This one is easier."

"I hope so. That nothing stuff was hard," Sam said.

Buzz laughed.
Time for the two-punch.

"You tell me if the following statements are true
or false, okay?"

"Shoot," Sam said, his confidence back. So far, this conversation seemed to be like all Buzz's previous efforts; interesting, well-meaning pebbles thrown against a brick wall.

"You are not omnipotent; that is, you, Sam Fisk, do not have the power to do all possible things. You can't create universes, or even one hydrogen atom, from nothingnesses. True or false?"

"True," Sam said.

"And you can't read minds. You can't suspend the laws of nature. You can't feed five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes. You can't make the blind see or the lame walk. In short, you can't perform miracles."

"True."

"Right. This is easy, isn't it?" Buzz asked.

Sam nodded.

"Can we stop and get a Pepsi?"

"Sure," Sam answered. "I'll get it."

He rose and walked over to the small desktop fridge
near the coffee stand.

It's like the fridge I helped Donna bring home the day I met her,
he thought suddenly. Then he heard Buzz's voice from behind him as he reached for the can in the fridge.

"And if you died, you couldn't raise yourself from the dead," Buzz asserted.

Sam was slightly jolted.

"True," he replied, looking into the fridge, his voice lacking confidence. His father's words echoed
in his mind:
After death, there is nothing.
He stood up.

He came to Buzz and held out the Pepsi.

"I'm almost done," Buzz said. "Thanks."

He took the can, popped the top, then sipped.

"What's next?" Sam asked.

"From all your true answers, it's reasonable to say that you are not God, and you are not Jesus. You can't create, and you can't rise from the dead. These are two of the defining traits of
God and Jesus, if God exists, and if Jesus is God's Divine Son. True? Or False."

"True," Sam said.
Where is Buzz going?

"Good, then you would also agree that you are fallible, finite, in one place, imperfect, and not the knower of everything knowable. These are also opposites of God, Who is infallible, infinite, everywhere, perfect, and omniscient. I don't have to walk you through it, right?"

"Right. I agree with all you've said so far."

"So, if God exists, and He's all powerful, it should be easy for Him to prove He exists. Furthermore, since you do not have His powers, the burden of proof should be on the all-powerful being, not the limited, mistake-prone being, which is what you are."