An Essay on Nature and Creation

What do we, scientists, and/or theologians mean by the concepts ‘nature’ and ‘creation’?

In very simple terms, we can specify ‘nature’ as:  Nature = the (physical) universe + life.

Nature then certainly includes matter/energy (the physical universe) and programs/information (life/mind).

Nature is one of the ‘nonterms’ of the modern world. For example, turn on the television and watch a nature program and you will be bombarded with all the wonderful things nature does. ‘Nature’ is responsible for the giraffe’s neck, the eagle’s talons, and the anglerfish’s lure. Nature gives us rain forests, roses and rutabagas.

Nature feeds, clothes, and entertains us. Nature spans everything from ‘quarks’ to galaxy clusters. Most significantly, we are part of nature. With nature fulfilling so many vital roles, it is fair to ask, ‘Who or what is nature?’

Definitions abound. Nature is the material or physical world. Nature is the ‘biophysical universe’ (the physical universe + life). Nature is the natural order. Nature is the realm of space, time, and energy. Nature is that part of reality described by natural laws.

Nature is what physical and life scientists study – the domain of science (‘in fact, natural science studies physical nature at most!’). Scientists always only study the hardware aspect of reality (matter/energy and its derivatives).

Maybe nature is even a God or some godlike entity! What is the distinction between nature and the universe then?

Or is nature ultimately “… immanent in heredity and in populations” and is called evolution as Gregory Bateson states it in his book Mind and Nature (1988:161) perhaps?

Each of these definitions of nature is plausible as far as it goes. Implicit in these definitions, however, is a telling omission. In no instance do we find nature identified with creation (or a Creator). To be sure, in common parlance we often merge the two, referring to nature and creation interchangeably.

But creation is always a divine act, whereas nature is a self-contained entity independent of any creator. ‘God’ (the Creator) is (according to modern science and secular thinking in general) irrelevant to nature.

Nature treats the world, as though it was self-sufficient and not in need of a creator. ‘Creation’ at all times requires a creator, but ‘nature’ requires no creator. A Creator might exist, but one need not exist for the world to be nature. Nature is what the world would be if there were no ‘God’ – the world minus a creator. Creation minus a Creator is then equal to the modern scientific universe!

There is something profoundly (overwhelmingly) unsettling about conceiving the world as nature, and we are apt to miss it because of the technological, mechanistic success of modern science. We humans are excellent engineers; we physically engineer, that is, bioengineer, genetically engineer, chemically engineer, mechanically engineer, electronically engineer, and structurally engineer everything around us – we reverse engineer everything! However, humans still cannot create any type of life from whichever chemical soup with the help of whatever kind of radiation.

This fact somehow has then made us believe that everything else in the world is also (accidentally, mechanically) engineered in one way or another. We are still extremely primitive, archaic in our thinking about life and creation. For us everything is then hardware, there is for us no software in nature.

Thus, we are likely to view the distinction between creation and nature as purely pragmatic or realistic – mechanistic. Whereas the theologian studies a creator (‘God’), the natural scientist studies nature (creation minus ‘God’). The scientist wants to study the order that God has placed in the world, but does not want to study God’s relation to the world.

The scientist therefore ignores all questions about ‘God’, and a Creator, and looks at the world (the universe) in and for itself, independently of ‘God’ or a Creator of any kind. This is a self-imposed constraint on the side of science and is a kind of neurosis!

In An Anatomy and Physiology of the Human Spirit (2007:64), I have proposed the following scheme, namely:

• Reality = Everything that exists = Creation + God (‘the Creator’). [God’s transcendence.]


• Universe = The totality of space and time = matter/energy (+ information?).


• Nature = The material universe = The universe + all immaterial things. [Nature = the Physical universe + Life]


• Cosmos = The ordered universe. [The opposite of Chaos.]


• Creation = Everything (material, immaterial things, and ‘time’) minus God. [God’s immanence.]

There clearly is a difference between ‘nature’ and ‘creation’ and it is important to take cognisance of this fact.