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Why Snowflakes and Nothingness
Point to the Existence of God
By Michael J. Cummings
It is well known that every snowflake is different in dimensions and structure from all other snowflakes. Each is unique. You cannot find two identical snowflakes.
But all snowflakes are the same in one respect: each has six sides to form a hexagon. If you examined snowflakes on mountains and flatlands throughout the world, you would find only hexagonal flakes.
How could each snowflake be different from, and similar to, all other snowflakes at the same time?
My answer is that the extraordinary properties of snowflakes suggest the existence of a supernatural and omnipotent designer, God. So do all the other wonders of the universe, including these:
1. There are about as many stars in the universe as grains of sand on all of Earth’s beaches.1
2. Each human being can store a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) memories in his or her brain.2
3. There are tiny neutron stars so dense that a teaspoonful of their matter would weigh 10 million tons.3
4. All stars, planets, and moons are spherical.
5. All the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe.
Despite these and other signs pointing to a divine creator, atheistic physicists, astronomers, and biologists assert that there is no verifiable evidence for the existence of a supreme being. They hold this position even though they cannot explain how the universe came into existence via the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago. (The age of the universe is determined by calculating how long it takes light to travel to Earth from the most distant stars.)
The Big Bang was the rapid expansion of an incredibly dense piece of matter about the size of a tennis ball, causing the formation of chemical elements, galaxies, stars, planets, moons, and other matter. It was a Catholic priest—Georges Lemaître, a highly educated scientist—who hypothesized in a 1933 speech that the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe and time. Scientists in general—both atheists and theists—accepted his findings and continue to approve of them today.
What existed before the birth of matter? Only God (as the Trinity) and his timeless spiritual realm, according to Catholic theology, philosophy, and the bible. What about angels? The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 posited that God created them at the same time that he created the universe.4 Before the Big Bang, no physical matter existed; there was nothing.
Atheistic scientists dismiss all Christian accounts of creation as superstitious poppycock. But they have failed to invalidate the ancient dictum that all physical matter must have a cause. Catholics believe that an omnipotent God, existing outside the laws of physics, was that cause.
In recent times, atheistic scientists have attempted to demonstrate that something can come from nothing without a supreme being. In so doing, they defined nothingness as a vacuum, a space empty of all matter, enabling them to suggest that a vacuum existed before the universe. Synonyms for vacuum in the Collins Online Dictionary are “emptiness, space, void, gap.” The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary’s primary definition of a vacuum is “a space absolutely devoid of matter.”
But being “devoid of matter” does not mean that a vacuum is empty. On the contrary, every vacuum contains gravity, electromagnetism, energy, subatomic particles, and the potential to produce something. True nothingness, on the other hand, is the absence of everything. It has no light, no darkness, no sound, no smell, no shape, no space, no boundaries. It does not have emptiness, either; that which does not exist cannot be full, half-full, or empty. You cannot pierce nothingness because there is nothing to pierce. You cannot imagine nothingness because there is nothing to imagine.
Therefore, the only plausible explanation for the existence of the universe and its wondrous designs is that a preexisting, intelligent entity in another reality created it.
Sources
Berman, Bob. "The everlasting question: more sand or stars?" Astronomy, 23 Jan. 2019, <https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-ever-lasting-question-more-sand-or-stars/>.
Zauderer, Steven. "Memory Capacity of Human Brain," 2 Feb. 2025, Cross River Therapy, <https://www.crossrivertherapy.com/memory-capacity-of-human-brain>.
Roche, Paul. "A teaspoon of neutron star," BBC Sky at Night Magazine, 4 May 2025 <https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/space-science/teaspoon-neutron-star>.
"Angels." Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent, 2023 <https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01476d.htm>.
Before retiring, Michael J. Cummings was a public-school English teacher, a journalist for 17 years, an adjunct instructor of English for 19 years at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, a freelance writer, and the author of more than thirty e-books and five print books. He was born in 1941 in Williamsport, Pa.
