Let there be light - and there was

I was thinking about the Genesis story of creation, that God spoke the universe into being out of nothing. You know, without form, and void, and darkness on the face of the deep. This is not an advertisement for the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim views on or beliefs in creation. Nor is it an attempt to include any explanation of inconsistencies in these creation stories, it is merely a statement of thought -

I wonder why it so difficult for people to believe that the universe was brought into being out of nothing, when we ourselves were brought into being out of nothing. I am not speaking of the conception of our bodies, creations that were brought into existence after the union of two other previously existing biologic particles that carried the life with them at their union and had it before their union. After all, the sperm and the ovum came alive from other living creatures; the life "created" at their joining to become a zygote was not an actual creation, but a continuance of the lives that came before.

What I am speaking of (well, writing) here is the "us" that came into existence out of nothing. The "me" and "you". Even upon fertilization, there is no guarantee that the zygote will become a human. It could merely keep dividing and not differentiating and turn into a hydatidiform mole, a cancer resulting from conception. It is alive, certainly, but alive as a tumor is alive and not as an individual. And even if the zygote does become human, there is no guarantee that the fetus or infant will have an intellect sufficient to become a discrete person.

Yet for most of us, somewhere in this process of fertilization, dividing, and differentiation, an individual with intellect and personality begins. At what point does this happen? Which two cells form an electric connection that allows this to begin? And from where does this nascent personality come? At what point does the fetus become charged with the ability to become someone?

I mean, even before there is a brain, there is a heartbeat; certain cells differentiate into cells that will become a heart, and they begin to beat as a heart will. THERE IS A FIRST HEARTBEAT. What makes this heartbeat want to occur? Is there an energy of anticipation before the first spasm of the cells? The heartbeat was not there before that point, and then suddenly it is there. It wasn't anywhere before, and then it exists. Out of nothing.

Similarly, there is a first spark of personality, a first spark of intellect, a first enabling of the differentiated cells to become someone different from all others on the planet. This person was not there before. Yet one day, out of nothing, a person exists, a person who has never been any other and who will never be any other. Out of nothing.

This is the way of humanity. This is the way of all life. So why is is so difficult to believe that God can call up the universe out of nothing?

Genesis 1: 1-5 (King James Bible)

1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
3. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

What about the Big Bang and a belief or a desire to believe in creation without a creator? From http://www.comereason.org/sci_bible/sci040.asp I got this:

What exactly was it that "banged" to cause the universe to come into existence? If matter, space and time are all a part of our universe, then what was before that? Out of nothing, nothing comes is the logical dictum, so there must have been something out there, but that something must not be material, it must not be spatial and it must not be time-constrained. Well, God fits these criteria. He is spirit, not matter and as spirit He transcends space. Also God is defined as eternal; therefore He can be outside of time.

There is a lot more to this article that is good, thoughtful reading.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, applies only to the corporeal. "We" are the mysterious creation made from nothing, just like the universe.

Fiat lux.