How Can You Not Believe in God With All the Wonders of the World?
A Reflection on Creation, Awe, and the Fingerprints of God — from Mt. Hood, Oregon to the Ends of the Earth
I have long asked this question of myself and others: How can you not believe in God with all the wonders of the world around us? Most of the time I get blank stares. So I decided to put together what some prominent faith leaders had to say about it.
I live at the base of Mt. Hood, Oregon. With every gaze at that mountain, a feeling of wonderment overcomes me. I am convinced it’s the Holy Spirit stirring my soul — testifying that the One who made it is real, near, and worthy of worship.
— Elder Don Bland | Mountain Veteran Ministries
“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” — Romans 1:20
What Seven Christian Voices Say About the Wonders of Creation
Voice One
C.S. Lewis — Creation as Clue to the Creator
1898–1963 · Oxford · Mere Christianity
Lewis argued that the universe doesn’t just exist — it is intelligible, filled with beauty, order, and meaning that points beyond itself. For him, the longing we feel in response to the natural world is not a coincidence. It is a clue. We were made for more than this world, and the world keeps reminding us of that fact. Awe is the soul recognizing something familiar — an echo of the One who made both us and the thing we’re looking at.
Voice Two
Billy Graham — Nature as God’s Witness
1918–2018 · Evangelist · The Reason for My Hope
Graham taught that creation is a universal witness — available to every person on earth, whether or not they’ve ever held a Bible. The grandeur of nature speaks to the majesty of a Creator who crafted it with care. No theological training is required to hear it. A farmer watching a sunrise, a soldier in a foxhole looking up at stars, a child holding a lightning bug — all of them are receiving the same testimony.
Voice Three
Tim Keller — Creation Demands a Question
1950–2023 · Redeemer Presbyterian · The Reason for God
Keller pressed skeptics not to let their awe go unexamined. The wonders of the world are not coincidences to be admired and filed away — they are questions demanding an answer. The fine-tuning of the universe, the existence of beauty, the moral intuition humans universally share — all of these beg for an explanation that naturalism alone cannot satisfy. For Keller, the best explanation has always been God.
Voice Four
John Stott — The World as a Book of God
1921–2011 · All Souls London · Basic Christianity
Stott saw creation as God’s general revelation — a text written for every person in every language, readable without literacy or translation. Scripture provides the clearest and fullest revelation. But nature provides an unmistakable witness to God’s power and wisdom that is accessible to all people in all eras. The two books agree. Neither needs to be set against the other.
Voice Five
Alister McGrath — Beauty That Points Beyond Itself
b. 1953 · Oxford · The Big Question · Former atheist
McGrath came to faith through science, not despite it. He argues that science and Christianity are not enemies but partners focused on the same reality from different angles. Science can describe the mechanism of a sunset — wavelengths, atmospheric particles, refraction. But it cannot explain why a human being stops in their tracks and feels something profound in the presence of it. Beauty and meaning require a different kind of explanation. And that explanation leads directly to God.
Voice Six
John Piper — Glory Designed to Move Us
b. 1946 · Desiring God · Desiring God
Piper teaches that creation is not merely functional — it is intentionally glorious. Mountains, oceans, and galaxies are not accidental byproducts of a random universe. They were designed to stir worship. When you stand at the base of a mountain — say, Mt. Hood on a clear morning — and feel something rise in your chest that words can’t quite contain, that is not an evolutionary reflex. That is a soul responding to evidence of its Maker.
Voice Seven
G.K. Chesterton — Wonder as the Door to Faith
1874–1936 · Journalist and Apologist · Orthodoxy
Chesterton’s insight is perhaps the sharpest of them all: the problem is rarely a lack of evidence. It’s a loss of the capacity to receive it. Creation is overflowing with signs of God’s existence — but modern life has trained us to analyze and consume rather than to stop and see. People miss God not because He is hidden, but because they have stopped looking. The cure for unbelief is often not more argument, but more attention.
Why This Question Is So Powerful
🌅 It Speaks to the Heart Before the Head
It doesn’t require theological training. It speaks to the farmer watching a sunrise, the scientist examining DNA, the veteran staring at a mountain range, the parent holding a newborn. Faith often begins in awe before it grows in knowledge. Awe is the front door.
📖 It Aligns Directly with Scripture
The Bible repeatedly teaches that creation testifies about God — not as a supplementary whisper but as a clear and persistent declaration. Paul says it leaves people without excuse. That’s a strong claim about how loud creation actually speaks.
Psalm 19:1 — “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
🔍 It Challenges Secular Assumptions
Atheistic worldviews struggle to account for the fine-tuning of the universe for life, the existence of beauty as a category, or the moral intuition that humans universally share. The question “where does all this come from?” is one that honest inquiry cannot simply dismiss.
🙏 It Invites Humility and Wonder
Modern life dulls our sense of wonder — we scroll past the sunrise and drive past the mountain. This question is an invitation to stop. To look. To let the creation do what it was designed to do: declare its Maker, and invite a response.
Christian leaders across centuries and traditions agree: creation is not silent. Whether you’re gazing at Mt. Hood at dawn, holding a newborn, watching a thunderstorm move across an open field, or looking up at stars that dwarf every human ambition — God has left His fingerprints everywhere.
The wonders of the world don’t just suggest a Creator. They shout it. The question is whether we have the stillness and the honesty to listen.
“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” — Psalm 14:1. But the wise look at creation and say: this couldn’t have just happened. And that recognition — that moment of honest awe — is often where faith begins.
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” — Psalm 19:1
— Elder Don Bland | Mountain Veteran Ministries
Key Scriptures: Romans 1:19–20 · Psalm 19:1–4; 14:1; 139:14 · John 1:3 · Colossians 1:16–17 · Acts 14:17 · Hebrews 11:3 · Job 38–39 · Isaiah 40:26
Want to Go Deeper?
This reflection on creation and awe connects to several MVM posts on the foundations of Christian faith and apologetics:
- How Can You Believe in Something Unprovable? — addressing the intellectual dimension of what creation reveals and where scientific inquiry reaches its limits
- Why Does Religion Matter? — the broader case that the human hunger for meaning and transcendence points to a God who made us for Himself
- What Is Truth? — how the same God who wrote the book of nature also wrote the book of Scripture, and what that tells us about truth
- Mere Christianity — C.S. Lewis; the argument from design and longing developed with unmatched clarity and warmth
- The Big Question — Alister McGrath; a scientist-theologian’s account of why science and faith are friends, not enemies
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“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made.” — Romans 1:20
