at times they say, “This universe came about through nature—that is, through the very essences of things themselves: plants, animals, and inanimate objects. In their view these beings are ‘nature,’ and they brought themselves into existence.”

Or they say, “Nature is simply the properties and qualities of things—heat and cold, moisture and dryness, roughness—together with their capacities for motion and rest, growth, pairing, and reproduction. These attributes and capacities are ‘nature,’ they claim, and it is nature that produced all things.”

This contention is false on both counts. On the first definition, nature would be both creator and created: the earth would have created the earth, the sky created the sky, and so on—an impossibility. If creation issuing from nature in this sense is impossible, it is even more so on the second, for if the very substance of a thing is unable to create itself, then its attributes are, a fortiori, still less able. An attribute exists only in relation to the entity it qualifies—how could it create that entity when it is dependent on it? Once reason proves that the entity itself is originated, its attributes must likewise be originated. Moreover, nature is devoid of awareness; it is a mere instrument. How, then, could such magnificent acts—marked by the highest artistry, perfect precision, consummate wisdom, and intricate interrelation—issue from it?

Some of these atheists maintain that the universe arose by sheer chance, meaning that the random assemblage of atoms and particles produced life with no plan from a governing Creator and no wisdom behind it.

This claim, too, is false, repudiated by sound reason and innate human disposition. When you contemplate this well-ordered cosmos—its heavenly bodies, earth, and sky, and the precisely regulated movement of its creatures—you realize that it can only proceed from an All-Wise Creator.