So very true, metmom.
Which basically puts them in the identical position as that of the ancient Greeks, who thought that the birth of "the grey-eyed Athena" -- the goddess of reason and intellect and cultic deity of Athens -- consisted in springing forth "fully formed from the brow of Zeus." Don't ask any questions about that! That's just the way "it happened."
Such men as think this way reject the Christian God as the foundation of truth; but Zeus would probably be okay for that purpose. :^) Any foundation at all for some sort of ersatz truth will do in the end, so long as it is not the God of the Christian Bible.
However, Zeus, like all the Olympian gods, is a created being. That is to say, all the Olympian gods (according to Plato) have a divine origin beyond themselves. They are intramundane gods. Yet it is to the extramundane, to the "Beyond" (i.e., beyond the Cosmos) or Unknown God that one must look for the Source of truth and reason, not to Zeus, who himself derives his existence from it.
Somehow I continue to find Greek mythology relevant to our own disordered times....
Thanks so much for writing, metmom!
"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
"Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man's design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead."
When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, "We want to hear you again on this subject." At that, Paul left the Council.