Genesis 1:2 describes the earth as:

> "without form, and void."

Skeptics ask, 'How can something material exist without some kind of form?' The Hebrew phrasing (tohu va-bohu) does not connote a lack of physical geometry or material shape. Rather, it refers to something being desolate, uninhabitable, or in a state of confusion. For instance, the same concept is used in Deuteronomy 32:10 to describe a 'waste howling wilderness.' The earth was simply empty of life and undeveloped, not a formless philosophical abstraction.