6. Assume that I accept that God created the Universe. Well, then how? Surely, even if we assume this hypothesis to be true, we should try and find a mechanism.

Even if we were to accept there was a God that really makes no difference to the questions I ask about the origin of the Universe, where it came from and why it is the way it is. To say that "God did it" is the vaguest possible answer, like identifying the killer in a "whodunnit" thriller but without supplying motive or means. Sherlock Holmes would not be impressed. Any 'believer' should surely be interested in how God did it. If one saw a magician produce a rabbit from a hat, and one was convinced that this wasn't just a trick, that it didn't just seem that the rabbit had been brought out of an empty hat but that in fact a rabbit had been materialised out of thin air, then any intelligent human being would surely not just sit there and say "Wow! He created a rabbit out of thin air". He or she would want to find out exactly how this magician made this rabbit appear. And so it should be with the notion of God's creation of the Universe, for this is surely the greatest conjuring trick in history. Of course, I do not believe in the existence of the magician.

God is dead

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives - who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must not we ourselves become gods simply to seem worth of it? There has never been a greater deed - and whoever shall be born after us, for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."