Looking back at my footprints in the sand, I realized that there is something intrinsically human about wanting to leave the first tracks across an untouched expanse.  The beach is, of course, an ideal place to do this, as each successive wave which washes over the shore erases all traces of human presence and presents your feet with a clean slate to imprint upon.  Turning around after a dozen paces you can look back to see that little line of footprints and know that you were the first to tread across that slate.

Even more magical for me, however, is the still quiet of a perfectly white expanse after a fresh snowfall.  I remember leaving my house at 5:30 in the morning to a dark and silent world where the plows hadn’t even touched my street yet.  With snow everything—stairs, sidewalk, flowerbeds, road, grass—becomes equal, just one flat white sheet.  Trekking across this sheet I could glance behind and see the line of holes where I had marked the snow for the very first time.  Or, if the storm was still raging, I could watch my impressions disappear beneath the blowing drifts.

Perhaps this is why the human soul enjoys creating so much.   When presented with a blank canvas we have the opportunity to make the first marks upon it and then to look at what we have brushed (or written, or sung, or composed, or formed) onto it and realize that we have been granted the great privilege of creation.  We receive this joy because we are created ourselves in the image of the Creator.  God himself created, leaving the first footprints, as it were, upon the universe:

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. – Genesis 1:3-5

Ever since our creation,  humankind has wanted to look behind us at the trail we have made. Those footprints represent a first action, something that has changed the world around us.   We have left our mark upon it and, in the process, created something new.  With grace we can look at our footprints and say, as God did, “It is good.”

1. The Creation: Mythology
2. The Creation: History
3. The Creation: Evolutionary Theology
4. The Creation: Creation vs. Evolution

Being an evangelical Christian, I hold to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, wherein God brought all that exists forth from nothing. This solves, for me, the problem of existence: where we came from. Of course, one could pose the question of where God came from, but for the Christian God falls in another realm, the supernatural, which is a matter of faith.

I recognize, however, the appeal of atheism. In an effort to understand it better, I wish to pose a question to anyone reading this who may be an atheist: How do you explain the fact of existence? Is it that we exist without having been created (just as Christians believe God simply exists)?

To make it clear, I am not trying to start a flamewar here. I am honestly curious about how atheists would answer this question. If I don’t know what the other side of a debate believes, I cannot call myself an educated person. If some of you could help explain the atheist viewpoint to me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Edit (4/1/08): A good comment by NOK shows me that I have not been specific enough.  By existence, I mean the fact that anything exists at all.  We know that something exists, as we are having this discussion.  (Either we exist or something imagining us exists.)  Even if we are talking above the scope of the universe, we know that things exist there.  (If we accept M-theory, for example, we accept the existence of branes that collide to produce universes.)  So my question is how do we explain the fact that anything at all exists, or can it not be explained?