Narrative Thoughts: 

If I had another life to live and could pursue another career or passion, I would have loved to have been a wildlife conservationist or ranger of some sort, I think. Why? Because I could have studied zoology and learned how creatures are sustained and upheld by the creation upon which they are dependent, and perhaps played a role in wisely stewarding the earth, and perhaps encouraged others to do the same.

How one can study the intricacies and beauties and mysteries of nature and not be moved to contemplate who and what lay behind all of that beggars belief.

But I suppose that theology is the queen of the sciences for a reason. How so? Because the various ologies (biology, zoology, immunology, geology, archaeology, etc.) and schools of thought hinge upon the supreme artist and craftsman, the unmoved mover, the transcendent, God.

No intellectually honest person can study butterflies or hummingbirds and say to himself, “Yep, purely accidental. No rhyme or reason. Just matter in motion.”

The Word for the World:

Psalm 8 is among the most beautiful poems in the Bible:

1 O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
²     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
    to still the enemy and the avenger.

³ When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor.
⁶ You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under his feet,
⁷ all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
⁸ the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

⁹ O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Some Questions:

1. How can an atheist explain, much less justify, the existence of beauty?
2. Isn’t it interesting how we long for beauty? (We vacation at beaches, snap photos of sunrises and sunsets, and water and shells, and of our loved ones on the sands, for example. Or we go to the mountains and try to capture their glories in similar fashion.)
3. Isn’t it interesting that not only do we as a species love and admire beauty, but we also have the means with which to explore it? If we were just accidental unguided cosmic fizz, the odds we’d have eyes to relish the pastiche of colors this world affords would be quite called into suspicion, would it not? And the fact that we have ears to hear the trilling of the birds and the sounds of our children coo, that does seem to call for an intelligent designer, does it not?