Who Made The Moon?
Isaac Newton: “Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.”
Our family was gathered on the deck on a hot summer evening to listen to the coyotes. Nearly every evening at dusk, one pack begins howling from the top of a hill to the west, and almost always another pack would answer from the east.
As the sky darkened, the top of the circle of a full moon began to edge over the horizon. It was a moment as wonderful and fragile as dust on butterfly wings. The rest of the moon slowly appeared, with the music of the coyotes as a haunting background symphony, until the moon hung above the hills, so bright that the shadows of the lunar mountains were visible from a quarter million miles across a void, yet seemingly so close that Savannah, who was three years old, reached toward it and whispered, “Daddy, who made the moon?”
What an instinctive and profound question, imbedded into our DNA so that even at three years old, the night sky leads us to search for a Creator.
Who made the moon?
**
The night skies speak to us.
Away from the city, away from all that is made by man and surrounds us and dulls our senses, when we stand beneath a clear dark sky and behold the vastness of the stars, our souls respond like a harp string plucked by an invisible hand. We yearn with a homesickness to be somewhere else, an unknown place as difficult to define as the yearning itself.
The Genesis account resonates so strongly with our souls because it simply and elegantly helps us understand the night sky and the yearning that comes with it, giving us the answer to the question imbedded in our DNA.
When Savannah is old enough to read Genesis, it will tell her that that God made the moon. From that foundation, the Bible proceeds to with all the other major questions of human existence.
From Genesis, Savannah can understand that her sister and parents and her future children are more than complicated packages of protein and carbohydrates and fat and water, doomed to become dust when their life forces are extinguished.
Because of the foundation of Genesis, she, like me, will be able to hold emotions that are uniquely human.
Peace. Hope. Purpose.
**
Who made the moon?
Waiting for Savannah will be answers to this question that disagree with Genesis. Scientist and outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins would tell Savannah that God did not make the moon. That the universe is random and meaningless event, that we are merely assembled stardust, that our lives have no purpose. Or hope.
For in the introduction to his best-selling and highly publicized book, The God Delusion, Dawkins states, “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”
(When I put it down, I was not. The book makes strong points against flaws of religious institutions, and demolishes poor and obviously cherry-picked arguments for the existence of God. But believers could, and perhaps should, do the same.)
One of my goals as a parent, and in writing my work in progress, Who Made The Moon?, is to ensure that by the time Savannah faces books like this, she will also be able to see that Dawkins does not have the intellectual honesty to fairly and squarely face the 21st century’s most compelling argument for the existence of God:
Science.
**
Who made the moon?
Until he was 81, Antony Flew, perhaps the world’s most famous atheist philosopher, would have also given Savannah an answer similar to the one presented by Richard Dawkins.
No longer.
Antony Flew made global headlines, when at that age of 81, he publicly renounced his atheism with the conclusion that, despite what he had taught and argued and published all his adult life, he had to finally conclude God did exist. What would cause a man with so much vested in an atheistic worldview to make that stunning reversal?
Science.
**
Who made the moon?
That summer evening on the deck, as the last of the chorus of coyotes faded, it was easy enough to pick up Savannah and whisper back the answer. “God made the moon.”
It was an answer she accepted and trusted because it was Daddy’s answer. But almost certainly will come the day when she’ll wonder if Daddy’s answer is enough.
When that day comes, I’ll beg her to read a book by Dr. Francis Collins, The Language Of God. It does the opposite of what Dawkins attempts in The God Delusion. By the time you finish The Language of God, it’s very difficult to believe this universe is an accident.
Highly recommended.