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How did He do it?
Atheism is a bizarre syndrome. Unbelievers have an ability that many believers lack; they "look at" the material world and somehow can imagine the incomprehensible power and greatness that must belong to any being who could design and create such a wonder. So far so good, but then their imagination fails them and they baulk. How could such a being exist; where did he come from? It's just not possible. If only atheists could accept what appears to be unacceptable (after all, their view of origins is infinitely more unacceptable) they would, in many cases, have a more worshipful attitude than many "believers" whose perception of God falls so awfully short of the reality. Dawn to Dusk is dedicated to helping unbelievers believe and believers to see.
Many believers today have unwittingly capitulated to the atheist's world view, allowing themselves be defrauded by the impious scam that insists everything came into being as a result of a lucky "explosion" ("inflation" is the word the purists would use) of an eternally-existing, microscopic singularity rather than as a result of ex nihilo creation.1 Quelle tragédie. God is real, and the truth is that He is great beyond all capacity of human minds to grasp. Nobody can possibly get a handle on a mind that is capable of knowing intimately and remembering forever the minutest details of the life story of every human being who has existed; God is fully aware of what's going on in the mind of every driver stuck in a traffic jam and every commuter on a Tokyo train (Ps. 139:1-6). Yet that incomprehensible "ability" pales into insignificance when you consider the "method" of creation.
What do I mean by that statement? As best I can figure it out, God created by either one of two methods. The first method involves His "figuring out how" to do it. The second method consists of His "willing" to do it. What's the difference?
The first presupposes that mathematical truisms and laws of physics are realities that exist independently of creation and that God has sufficient processing power to work it all out and the raw power to create in accordance with those pre-existing "things". The second method is based on the notion that absolutely nothing exists of itself independently of God. Even mathematical systems and material laws themselves had to be designed and executed by a superior "thing". Got the idea? So which is it?
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Simple logic requires that if mathematical and physical realities exist independently of God so that God had to investigate them and create only those things that those realities allow for, then those realities are "greater" than God. He is beholden to "obey" them. In that case, God is not God, these higher realities are (taking as one's definition of God that which is the "first cause", the sine qua non2 of everything). The problem is that we mere specks of nothingness imprisoned in our material nature have no way of figuring out for ourselves whether God is God, or whether mathematics and physical laws are God. We could knit with soot way before ever proving by philosophy or science what constitutes the ultimate reality. We really only have one choice, and it's a risky choice: we must believe the word of the One who, by whichever method He made all things, tells us how He did it. If he tells us. Like it or not (and I for one love it), we have only one serious contender in the Creation Confession stakes: the God of the Bible.
Now even if we accept the biblical testimony as our ultimate guide to truth, we are confronted with the challenge of understanding what it means. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to realize that Genesis one, assuming it is an accurate record of creation, is far, far from a complete and exhaustive account of creation.3 The Bible uses a bare minimum of words to express awesomely great concepts and truths. How else could it be? God knows we only have so many hours in a lifetime, and He has accommodated His Word to our limited condition.
Anyway, getting back to the point. Once one grasps the concept of looking for huge concepts in simple words, one can find the answer to our question. Here it is:
And God said. and there was. (Gen. 1)
And here:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap; He lays up the deep in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Ps. 33:6-9).
God spoke and it was done. As far as this author is concerned, you couldn't get a clearer and simpler answer to our question.
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