Now, I must admit that this didn’t sit well with my rational mind initially. After all, it looks like the ultimate cop-out argument. “Ok, so you Christians can’t explain how this world came about scientifically so you just cop-out and say ‘God did it’.” How does anyone argue against that?

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The Bible doesn’t tell me the mechanics of how God made the world but it does say God made the world by commanding it into existence with His powerful word. Furthermore, it tells us why He did it: God made this world and us so that we might respond to Him in loving relationship. For example, the Bible says:

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.26 And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27 that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:24-27).

You see, that explains to me why every single civilization since the dawn of time has had an innate desire to worship a Being external to ourselves. We look at this marvelous world – the billions of uncountable stars in the sky, the vastness of the ocean, the majesty of mountain ranges – and we instinctively know that this is not the work of blind random chance but of an intelligent purposeful Creator.

No wonder British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle said that the probability that life could emerge through random mutations of dead matter is as far-fetched as a hurricane bursting through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 airplane!

Indeed, Dr. Francis S. Collins, a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and his leadership of the international Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God, said that his research into the human genome allowed him to “glimpse at the workings of God”.

“When you have for the first time in front of you this 3.1 billion-letter instruction book that conveys all kinds of information and all kinds of mystery about humankind, you can’t survey that going through page after page without a sense of awe. I can’t help but look at those pages and have a vague sense that this is giving me a glimpse of God’s mind.”[i]

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that staunch atheists like world famous philosopher Antony Flew now believes in the existence of God. Said Flew in his book, There is a God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind:

“I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and production originate in a divine Source.

Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science.”[ii]

If you think about it, God as Creator makes sense of lots of other things, too. It explains why love and relationships are important to us – because God made us for a loving relationship with Him and one another. It explains why we appreciate abstract things like music and art and natural scenery – because God is the ultimate creator of music, art and natural beauty. It explains why we value morality and justice and know innately that we should do good to one another – because that is how God intends for us to live. You can’t explain all of that in any other way except that that is how God made us. And thank God He made us with such wonderful capacities!