From: “Farewell to God; My reasons for rejecting the Christian faith” by Charles Templeton
Man – the Creator
Man, not God, created the world – our modern world.
According to the book of Genesis, Elohim created the world in six days and on the seventh day he rested. “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold it was very good.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
God’s plan for the world was a ticking time bomb, a scenario destined for disaster. Almost immediately the first man and first woman were disobedient; they ate of the forbidden fruit. The Creator, giving them no second chance, no opportunity to learn from experience, cursed them, their world, and their descendants, and cast them out of Eden.
Suddenly, these progenitors of all humankind were on their own in a world filled with pain, jeopardy, and death. Despite this, the first humans and their descendants increased in number and the most adaptable survived and multiplied. Across the centuries they developed skills and transformed their dangerous, hostile world to the point where a man with a superlative gift for expression would describe a part of it as “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.” It was a case of men and women working to correct the horrendous problems they encountered and about which the Creator seems indifferent.
AS ANYONE WHO HAS travelled widely would agree, it is a wonderful world, and this despite the fact that there are droughts, famines, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and millions of men, women, and children ailing in mind or body or ridden by disease.
But if it is a pleasant place it has become so, in large part, through the endeavors of men and women, not the Creator. Across the centuries our planet has been changed almost beyond recognition through improvements in housing, transportation, medication, life expectancy, creature comforts, and convenience. Although it is far from being One World, and despite the fact that many parts of it are marked by poverty, sickness, and violence, it is a pleasant place.
The improvements were not, however, the result of interventions by the Creator; they are the product of the creativity, ingenuity, cooperation, and toil of humankind. Faced with the hostility and indifference of the universe, men and women moved to overcome the problems that plagued them. Recognizing the Creator’s apparent unconcern, they committed themselves to solving the problems that beset them and have been able to allay much of the pain, poverty, and heartbreak that has bedeviled the world since time began.
It was the efforts of men and women, not a mythical god, that made this a better world.
