“God created everything.”

“Everything arose by chance.”

Neither of these statements explains how reality developed.

In the first place, we have no way of testing either one. The Creator God is notoriously invisible and undetectable; there are no discoveries that prove or disprove the Creators’ existence. Chance is equally elusive; some phenomena are random, but others are orderly. Did the universal law of gravitation arise from chance? That question has no meaning, let alone an answer.

In the second place, neither statement says anything about exactly how reality evolved. No matter how educated we become, we’ll never find God or happenstance in the equations that describe gravity, electromagnetism, atoms, relativity, or the Big Bang.

The claim that God wills things to happen in our universe doesn't explain anything about how reality develops. If God created everything and governs all of Nature, then, leaving human free will aside for a moment, there is little difference between saying “God willed it,” and “It happened.”

Atheists shouldn't gloat at this point. When it comes to cosmic evolution, the idea of "chance" is equally devoid of explanatory power. If we ask "How did reality happen?", the atheist's answer, "It happened to happen," is neither clear nor helpful.

Our two great statements about the origin of reality make no sense if we take them as discoveries. But they make perfect sense if we take them as statements that invest reality with personal meaning.

If God created everything, then we all have a parent, a destiny, a place, and a number of duties to ourselves, our fellows, and the world.

If reality is a product of absolutely amoral impersonal forces, then we are all spiritual orphans who must choose our own destinies and make our own rules about how to treat ourselves, our fellows, and the world.

We shouldn't confuse interpretations of life’s meaning with explanations of how the world works. The confusion is tempting, because both kinds of ideas may require belief in things unseen (gods or chance on one hand and four-dimensional space-time on the other). Still, if we received a telegram, would we confuse the meaning of the message with the details of how it was sent? Would we argue about whether the telegram came from our parents or from the telegraph?

Discovery without Faith..... Some people claim to believe only in confirmed facts. At first blush, this position may seem sensible, but there’s a catch. Humanity lives in a state of ignorance. Our pool of confirmed facts isn't large enough to give us a complete picture of reality. Who can prove that the sun won't explode tomorrow? Who can prove that yesterday wasn't humanity’s first collective dream? Who can prove that we have any grounds for making judgments about what is real?

People of faith don't have to worry about these questions, because they don't need proof to believe in the continuity of reality and the arrival of tomorrow. But people who believe only in confirmed discoveries have little choice but to become profound skeptics, unable to decide what is real. Only a god can examine all of space and time. Human beings can't see everywhere at once; we can't confirm that all reality behaves itself while we’re asleep. That’s why we need to believe in more than confirmed discoveries.

Mistaking Seeing-the-Point for Faith..... Interpretation can be fun. It exercises the mind. We can get good grades in school, or some personal satisfaction a