PENnED

A morning meditation on a sofa bed, with violin and piano in the background

This morning, I’m lying on my sofa bed, letting a violin and piano drift through the room like a slow tide. The music settles me into a kind of honest stillness — the kind where thoughts rise without being forced. And in that quiet, a simple question surfaces:

Why am I not an atheist?

It’s not a dramatic question for me. It’s not born of fear or crisis. It’s just the clarity that comes when the world is soft enough for me to listen to my own mind.

My reasons are simple, but they’ve stayed with me.

1. The argument from contingency still makes sense to me

As I lie here, the weight of the sofa bed beneath me and the music filling the space, I’m struck by how everything around me is contingent.

The bed didn’t have to exist.
The music didn’t have to be composed.
I didn’t have to be born.
The universe didn’t have to be here.

And contingent things — by definition — don’t explain themselves.

This isn’t theology for me. It’s just the logic of existence:

• Contingent things require an explanation.
• An infinite regress of borrowed existence explains nothing.
• Therefore, something must exist non‑contingently — something whose existence is not fragile or dependent.

I’m not forcing this conclusion.
It’s simply where the reasoning leads.

2. The resurrection of Christ remains historically disruptive

I know the objections.
I know the comparisons to other traditions.
But the Christian claim is different in one crucial way:

It is rooted in history, not mythic time.

A known Roman governor.
A known city.
A known execution.
A known group of followers who, for some reason, refused to recant.

I don’t need absolute certainty.
I don’t need airtight proof.

I just need to acknowledge that something happened — something with enough force to ignite a movement that should have died with its leader.

And when I weigh the explanations, the resurrection still carries the most explanatory weight.

3. My own limits keep me humble

This is the one that settles deepest as I listen to the violin and piano.

My brain — this small, finite, evolution-shaped organ — is not a reliable instrument for ruling out transcendence. I know the scale of my own mind. I know how tiny it is compared to the universe. And I know how easily it can be wrong.

I believe — not because the alternative frightens me, but because this is where the evidence and my own limits lead me.

Atheism, for me, would require a confidence I simply don’t possess — a certainty about the nature of reality that exceeds the reach of my own knowing.

What all of this adds up to:

As the music swells and softens, I realize my reasons form a simple structure:

• Reason tells me existence points beyond itself.
• History tells me something happened in the first century that still echoes.
• Humility tells me I am not the measure of all reality.

That’s it.
No drama.
No fear.
Just a quiet morning, a sofa bed, some music, and the clarity that rises when I let myself think honestly.