God created man, but He placed into man the ability to realize that there has to be a God. Initial attempts to explain a mysterious, arbitrary, and often dangerous world generated notions of divine causors.
God revealed Himself to a “chosen nation/tribe/race” in the context of an extensive Semitic culture that contained a thousand-year-old version of Creation; we know of this as the Gilgamesh Epic. Some of the Jewish Pentateuch consists of a re-write of that. The critical differences are that God reveals himself as tolerant (to a point) of human frailty, a tender and patient (to a point) nurturer of His chosen people, and promises of a Savior.
Bits of those promises pop up all over the Jewish Scriptures (what Christians call the ‘Old Testament.’) In God’s own time the part of the trinity we refer to as “The Word” took human flesh, taught us that love is the correct way to find and appreciate both God and His creations, then died in our place on the cross.
This idea is illustrated well in a DVD called “Star of Bethlehem.” Of course there are folks who want to deny what it contains – judge for yourself. For me, there is such a sweeping connection of Scripture and astronomy, and hold your hats astrology (see Job, where God names the constellations) that the story sweeps all doubt away. Better to believe without seeing, but here you can actually see it.
In short, some say “reason defeats belief” – when in fact that’s the other way around. Belief that there can be no divinity defeats reason.
Oh, and Another Thing 