It costs the (post)modern man to look at the waves and see God. The pre-modern human would have seen, in the cresting foam, an unexplainable force which could rise in fury to destroy, or, in turn, yield a rich bounty. Behind it were god(s) who must be placated or served.
But we can look at the waves and see fluid mechanics, gravity, and the protean force of life, evolving steadily: the selfish gene reproducing itself. We peer into the depths of nature and see bits or vectors, beautiful, chaotic, elegantly ordered, or dangerous.
But to look up, to God? Why would we look upwards to a Creator-God? We have all the miracle we need inside the very atoms that comprise us.