Posted July 23, 2026
Where I live, Wednesday afternoon felt like 117 degrees outside. Today will be much better: the afternoon high will only feel like 106 degrees. We’re not alone: parts of Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri are as hot as we are in Texas.
Welcome to the “dog days of summer,” when it’s so hot outside that dogs hide in the shade. At least that’s what I assumed the phrase meant. It turns out, it refers to Sirius (the Dog Star), which is part of the constellation Canis Major (the Greater Dog).
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky and literally means “scorching.” When people in ancient Greece and Rome watched it rise with the sun after the summer solstice, they thought the sweltering days were caused by our planet’s proximity to the star. They therefore referred to the period of July 3 to August 11 as dies caniculares, or “dog star days.”
Whatever the origin of the phrase, it seems as though the days it describes are interminable this year. We’re right: if Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of summer and Labor Day is the unofficial end, we are now in the longest possible unofficial summer. May 25 was the earliest possible Memorial Day, while September 7 is the latest possible Labor Day.
If I were God, our seasons would be much shorter than they are. When Independence Day comes and goes, it would be time for Labor Day. When Halloween is done, Thanksgiving and Christmas would be at hand. When Valentine’s Day is over, Mothers’ Day would be the next week. And so on.
I could do this by speeding up or shortening our planet’s rotation around the Sun. I could also eliminate our planet’s 23.5-degree tilt, which would eliminate the seasons.
If I sped us up, however, we would climb to a higher, colder orbit and could leave the solar system entirely. If I eliminated our tilt, the colder regions of our planet would become so cold as to be uninhabitable, while the warmer regions would become too hot. Areas that receive rain would be covered in forests or experience continuous soil erosion; those that do not would become desert wastelands.
This is an example of what philosophers call the “anthropic principle,” the belief that “the universe is structured in a way that permits the emergence of life.” Examples abound:
None of these facts are in dispute. The question has to do with how things got to be the way they are.
Many consider our planetary existence to be the result of cosmic chance and coincidence. As one scientist stated, “Earth has got very lucky, it’s in this really nice little slot in the solar system.” The first verse in the first book of the Bible disagrees: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
There’s a reason this is the first sentence in God’s word.
I am reading Mark Buchanan’s marvelous World War II novel, What is Left of the Night. In it, he has the French existentialist writer Albert Camus say that he is “trying to make sense of the senseless, find meaning in the meaningless.” But if our existence is without meaning, as Camus alleges, how can his allegation be meaningful?
How we see the world does not change the world, but it can change our experience of it. To illustrate in the most mundane way I can imagine: I walked past an ant mound in our front yard yesterday morning. When I returned with ant poison, however, I couldn’t find it. I walked back and forth, back and forth, to no avail.
In that moment, if I agreed with Camus that the universe has no meaning, perhaps I would have abandoned my quest as meaningless. If I thought Zeus and the gods intervened, perhaps I would have prayed to them for guidance. If I thought ants had agency to know I was coming with ant poison and moved their mound accordingly, I would have hunted for them elsewhere. If I thought I was hallucinating earlier, or now, I would have given up.
As it was, I assumed I was mistaken in thinking the mound was on the side of the sidewalk where I was looking. When I looked on the other side, I found it.
If we genuinely believe that God existed before existence and that he created all that exists today, four results logically follow:
If we say we believe Genesis 1:1 but do not do what I’ve listed, we are in practice what Camus was in theory.
Choose wisely today.
“It is absurd for the evolutionist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.” —G. K. Chesterton
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