Jasmine Elise Photography: Lord of all creation. of water, earth, and sky.

it wasn't until recently that i started admiring nature. i owe my recent nature admiration to my philosophy course.

while in college, i had to take philosophy. at first, i wasn't too thrilled about it. not quite sure why, but it didn't seem too appealing. after completing the course and completing the education program altogether, philosophy ended up being one of my favorite courses. one reason, my professor was quite a handsome and comical gentleman (i know. not very jasmine of me. lol.) and secondly, i had to prove anything of my choice to my professor through a term paper. what i chose to prove was God's existence. it was a bit challenging; i had always accepted God's existence just simply because of my faith. how was i going to convince someone else of His existence solely based on MY faith? there's no justification. and justification is what professor wanted.

i visited google and searched for justification. a lot of what i found was the science of human survival. there was information on such intricate details needed in order for human life to be even possible. i combined this information with thomas aquinas' "the five ways". in summary, aquinas was a philosopher from the 1200's who stated that God's existence can be proved using five arguments.

i was simply fascinated with some of the pieces of information i found. here's some of the goodies:

the earth's atmosphere has the perfect combination of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and several other gases. the size of our earth corresponds perfectly with all the gases in our atmosphere. if the earth were any bigger or smaller, life would be impossible.

although the approximate distance between the sun and the earth is 93,000,000 miles, if we were any closer, we would all burn; if we were any farther, we would all freeze.

the earth is at a perfect distance from our perfect-sized moon. we have the gravitational pull from the moon, creating perfect tides at the right times. if the earth didn't correspond with the moon, we may have certain issues like flooded land.

water. the earth's most abudant resource. without it, we would not survive.

so, what does this have to do with God's existence? there must have been someone intelligent enough to know the exact combination of the size of the earth and the mixture of gases in our atmosphere. there must have been someone smart enough to know the perfect distance of the earth from the sun and moon in order for any type of life to be possible. there must have been someone powerful, knowledgeable, and good enough to allow humans to live in such a beautiful and perfect creation. God. it is all God.

i find beauty in the most simplistic things. i find beauty in things i've seen my entire life, but never gave much time to. i find beauty in everything my God has created for us.

rock at look out mountain, ga. i found this fellow while hiking the trail. he's so lovely. and happy.