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   "The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament showeth his handiwork" (Ps. 19:1).

   There are but two alternatives relative to the origin of the universe: natural creation (that all the amazing, imponderable, multitudinous phenomena were the products of an infinite number of accidents and blind chance), or supernatural creation ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," Gen. 1:1). The only specific thing the Bible says about atheism is found in less than one-half of a verse, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. 14:1; repeated in Ps. 53:1). And there is never any discussion in God's Word that He may not exist!  The evidence that "God is" is overwhelming; the Word simply states this fact, without argument or debate. How can anyone question His existence in light of all that is manifest in the physical universe (as well as in the Sacred Scriptures)?

   To question that "there is a God in heaven" (Dan. 2:28) is to be deceived intellectually and spiritually.

A self-important college student said to his eldest brother: “What would you think if I told you that in ten minutes I could produce arguments that would utterly annihilate the Bible?” The brother replied: “About the same thing I would think if a gnat crawled up the side of Mount Everest and said, 'Watch me pulverize this thing with my left hind foot.’”1

   Never is a reasonable, intelligent answer given by the atheist relative to the origin and purpose of this vast, intricate, orderly universe. Intelligent human beings are simply asked blindly to accept the assumption that nothingness got busy and produced matter and that, denying "intelligence, will and personality in creation,...a blind, fortuitous concourse of atoms...created themselves, shaped themselves, and finally produced our minds and souls, without reason, without purpose, without destiny."2 Very regretfully, many are so prejudiced against the idea that an infinite, all powerful, all intelligent Being is behind the universe that they summarily, irrationally rule out even the possibility that He exists. They are unwilling to objectively look at the evidence.

   It reminds one of the man who, seeing an elephant for the first time, said, "Why, there ain't no such animal."3

   In his book, Ideas and Opinions, Albert Einstein wrote:

I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without profound faith...Science cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends; they come into being not through demonstration but through revelation. The highest principle for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition...Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.4

   Without God, man is but a graduate beast, "floating over the briny sea of life without purpose, without meaning, and without goals.  We become merely “a hunk of flesh and a hunk of hair.” Nothing really matters.  But if God does exist, everything matters."5 The glory of God is seen in the heavens, i.e., "things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth" praise His name (Phil. 2:9-10).  

Astronomy is unique among the sciences. In scope it includes the entire universe, including much of the earth itself. It is the most limited of sciences in the sense that it can perform no experiments--it can only observe.  Astronomy is possibly the most intriguing of all the sciences....

What does astronomy have to do with the Christian?  Does a Christian see anything different through a telescope than does the non-Christian?  In a way, yes....David [in Psalm 19:1-3] saw God's glory in the heavens; they spoke to him in a language understandable to all.  However, most astronomy textbooks do not devote any space to the glory of God. Clearly most astronomers have missed something—they see something different in the sky than David did....even though most astronomers have been blind to the glory of God in the heavens, they have enabled us to see it better.6  

   Dear reader, what do you hear when you listen to the speech, the language of the heavens?

For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity (Rom. 1:20).

   Paul saw that the marvelous precision, the indescribable beauty, and the immeasurable vastness of the sky, the sunlight, the solar system, the stars, and galaxies could not create themselves; he saw the Uncaused Cause, the Prime Mover, the infinitely powerful, wise, Mind, He Who is so abundantly evident that those who reject Him shall stand before Him at the last day "without excuse."  On the other hand, the evidence is not so forceful that mankind is so overwhelmed as not to have the choice of rejecting the evidence if he is so determined.  Even God cannot/will not infringe upon man's free will!  One can reject the truth, receive "a working of error, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be judged..." (II Thess. 2:10-12).  There is the atheistic interpretation of the evidence (the facts of science, what is actually observable in the empirical realm), as well as the theistic interpretation.  One's responsibility is to be able to separate, distinguish each interpretation from the evidence and determine which interpretation is warranted by the evidence (much like with a jury in the courtroom, except that one is dealing with his immortal soul in this decision).  Biases, prejudgments, and/or the refusal to look objectively at the evidence is the height of folly.

ENDNOTES

1       W. A. Criswell, In Defense of the Faith (Grand Rapids, Ml: Zondervan Publishing House, 1973), pp. 17-18.

2       Ibid., pp. 18-19.

3       Fred John Meldau, Why We Believe in Creation not Evolution (Denver, CO: Christian Victory Publishing Company, 1961), p. 19.

4       Russell V. De Long, So You Don't Believe in God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), pp. 9-10.

5       Ibid., p. 11.

6       Paul Steidl, The Earth, the Stars, and the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1979), pp. 1-2.

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