Phoenix Maplewood Why did God create atheists?

Post 100 goes to John!

I have time," Esma replied. John's remark on, how she should trust that the god created the Earth made her smile and prompted her to ask: "Isn't the Earth one, who knows for sure, how it came to be? Rather than looking for someone from outside, maybe I should learn to listen, what the Earth herself is telling me?" She looked down at her dusty paws, her gaze stopped at the fresh green stalks of grass sprouting from the brown soil below. Wasn't that the true wonder? On, how life could be created again. And again. 

"I will remember that," out of everything John had told her about his god, she liked this idea the best. That sometimes things happened because they happened. Maybe it was not the way he had intended it to sound, but she would memorize it that way. It gave her a sense of freedom instead of the perils that came with predestination and one's inability to escape that. 

"Oh, that must be unfortunate," Esma responded, but it was more out of politeness than actual understanding of, why this was so important to the man. Her siblings had left and disappeared early on and only now had they showed up again. And - she may have missed it - but she did not remember Ash Star sending anyone out to look for them. Less so go anywhere herself. Or maybe she had and Esma just had not noticed. In any case - she was under impression that people just appeared and disappeared and, whether you worried about them or not, did not make much of a difference. 

"Are you their father?" she asked. Having grown up only with a mother figure to fill the shoes of both parents, a father was a mystery to her. Perhaps... it occurred to her, that looking for lost children was, what fathers did. Maybe her father was looking for Esma somewhere else? While she had never truly cared about, who her father had been, the idea that someone would care enough to search for her, was oddly gratifying.