For skeptics and believers, it's turtles all the way down

In his book "A Brief History of Time," Stephen Hawking famously tells

the story of turtles all the way down. "A well known scientist (some

say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy.

He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in

turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our

galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the

room got up and said: 'What you have told us is rubbish. The world is

really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.' The

scientist gave a superior smile before replying, 'What is the tortoise

standing on?' 'You're very clever, young man, very clever,' said the

old lady. 'But it's turtles all the way down!'"This story has

been told many times, often changing the name of the philosopher or

scientist. The story can be traced as far back as the philosopher John

Locke in the late 17th century. The important aspect of "turtles all

the way down" is it is almost always used by skeptics and secularists

to demonstrate the concept of God cannot be proven and, therefore, if

accepted at all, must be accepted on faith.A recent issue of

Discovery magazine carried an article, "Turtles all the way down,"

which attempts to debunk the idea that God has always existed as a

valid argument for God. The writer is responding to criticism of the

"Big Bang" theory. "When a person like this is asked who or what

created God, the standard answer is that God always existed. But why

can't we say the same thing about the universe itself? It's entirely