First principles matter. As in navigation, a voyage that begins a half degree off course ends up hundreds of miles away from its ultimate destination. It is worse yet if the voyage begins by going in the opposite direction; away from its destination rather than toward it. There is lost and then there is really lost. Nothing could be truer than this in regard to the creation of the universe. First principles tell us how we should think about the creation of nature and what nature is like. Long before the scientific era, the ancient Greeks speculated about the cause of the universe. There were those who attempted to attribute beginnings to purely natural causes and processes. Some ancient philosophers posited that the universe was itself eternal and thus had no beginning at all. Others, like Leucippus and Democritus speculated about the nature of physical existence, developing an atomic theory that was not much different from the twentieth century atomic theory arrived at scientifically. This theory, however, was unable to account for the existence of  atoms. The ancients fairly consistently concluded that blind chance was guiding the creation of things, like the Roman philosopher, Lucretius. The idea of "governing chance" is itself self-contradictory. What unified most of these ancient attempts to describe the nature of the creation was the presupposition that there was no God or gods. Creation then had to be its own cause.

When atheism is the first principle, then all kinds of causative theories arise from it. If one cannot say "God," then the subject of "created" is left quite empty. Basil of Caesarea lauds the clarity of the first principle that there is a God and that He is the Creator of the universe and everything in it. Of course, he was not unaware of the intellectual tradition of the ancient Greeks and Romans. But for him the fact is there is a God and He is the subject of the verb "created." Most theories of the world's existence, then, begin with the fully religious commitment (how can it be falsified?) that there is no god or that there is a God. Their adherents proceed then to show how it is possible that there should be anything at all either with or without the agency of the divine being. At bottom, atheism is a religious commitment. It is a belief, a faith, that can neither be falsified nor verified according to worldly patterns of thought. Let us be clear: atheism is not a neutral or non-religious commitment. Atheism is a first principle that is headed off course right from the beginning.

"'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth' (Gn 1:1). I stop, struck with admiration at this thought. What shall I say first? Where shall I begin the exegesis? Shall I show forth the vanity of the Gentiles? Shall I exalt the truth of our faith?

"The wise men of the Greeks busied themselves in explaining nature, and not one of their systems has remained firm and unshaken, each being overturned by its successor. It is unnecessary to refute them; they are sufficient in themselves to capsize one another's theories. Those who were ignorant of a God, could not concede that an intelligent cause presided at the beginning of the universe; a fundamental mistake that involved them in sad consequences. Some had recourse to material principles and attributed the origin of the universe to the fundamental elements of the world (Col 2:8). Others imagined that atoms, and indivisible bodies, molecules, and their movements, form by their union, the nature of the visible world. Atoms reuniting or separating, produce births and deaths and the most durable bodies only owe their consistency to the strength of their mutual adhesion: a true spider's web woven by these writers who give to heaven, to earth, and to sea so weak an origin and so little consistency! It is because they knew not how to say 'In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth' (Gn 1:1). Deceived by their inherent atheism it appeared to them that nothing governed or ruled the universe, and that all was given up to chance.