In his book Faith vs. Fact, atheist Jerry Coyne remarks, “religion and science are engaged in a kind of war: a war for understanding, a war about whether we should have good reasons for what we accept as true.”¹ For whatever reason, the mantra that science and faith are opposed to one another keeps making the rounds, despite evidence to the contrary.

In fact, it must be pointed out that Christianity has always had a positive view of science. After all, it was Christians like Newton, Faraday, and Galileo who initiated the modern science movement. For these Christians, science never made their faith irrational. Rather, science presupposed a creator who gave order to the universe. Imagine a world where gravity or the second law of thermodynamics were constantly in flux. Scientific inquiry would be impossible.

The notion that science and faith are at war is simply a myth. And to make my point, allow me to demonstrate how modern science points to the creation event described in Genesis 1:1.

EINSTEIN’S EQUATIONS

The year is 1917. The prevailing theory amongst scientists is that the universe is static and eternal. But that all changed with a very famous scientist and very famous equation. The scientist — Albert Einstein. The equation — General Relativity. Much to Einstein’s chagrin, his mathematical equation did not permit an eternal, static universe. Instead, it supported a universe that was, in fact, expanding.²

This realization troubled Einstein greatly because if the universe was expanding, then the universe could not be eternal as he previously thought. Rather, the universe must have had a definite beginning — a creation event. Imagine if we had a video recording of the history of the expanding universe. Now imagine we could rewind it back in time. Eventually the universe comes back to an infinitesimally small point. And then, of course, it’s nothing. 

Einstein was so troubled with the theological implications of this view that he fudged his numbers to allow for a static universe. But his fudged numbers only held up for so long. Russian mathematician Alexander Friedman and Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre independently corrected his error in the 1920s and predicted an expanding universe.³

HUBBLE AND HIS TELESCOPE

Einstein wasn’t fully convinced by the math until he had empirical evidence. That evidence came in 1929. It was then that the famous astronomer Edwin Hubble observed through his telescope that distant galaxies are flying apart at rapid speeds. Hubble reached this conclusion because he observed a red shift on distant galaxies. 

To illustrate the significance of this red shift, imagine yourself at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As the cars circle the track and head in your direction, a high pitch frequency occurs. But as the cars move past and head away from you, a low pitch frequency occurs. You see, as sound approaches, the sound wave frequency is higher, thus the higher pitch. But as the sound moves away, the sound wave frequency is lower, thus the lower pitch. That’s known as the Doppler Effect.

A similar phenomenon occurs with light. As light sources approach, light waves occur with higher frequency which cause the light to be a bluish color. But as light sources recede away, light waves occur with lower frequency which results in a reddish color. And so, as Edwin Hubble looked through his telescope and saw the red color on those distant galaxies, he became convinced that they were flying away. And if the galaxies are flying away, that confirmed that the universe is, indeed, expanding. Hubble even invited Einstein to come and look through the telescope himself. Once Einstein did, he changed his equations back to what he had them originally. He later admitted that fudging his numbers to avoid an expanding universe was the biggest blunder of his career.

COSMIC BACKGROUND RADIATION

After Hubble’s discovery, scientists began to speculate what the initial conditions of the universe must have been like. The prevailing theory was that since the universe burst into existence from nothing, the initial starting point must have been a state of “near infinite density, temperature, and pressure.”⁴

Scientists reached this conclusion based on the fact that the universe itself is cooling off. Since it’s cooling off, it must have been extremely hot in its initial stages at the creation event. This infinitely hot state was also the best explanation for the existence of lighter elements in our atmosphere such as helium which must be forged in a furnace much hotter than the stars in our galaxy.

This theory remained merely a speculation until 1965 when two scientists — Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson — accidentally discovered the residual radiation from the initial cosmic explosion. At first, they thought the strange radiation detected by their antenna was the result of bird droppings, but they quickly realized that they stumbled across remnants of the initial creation event and were soon the recipients of Nobel Prizes.

Again, this discovery affirmed what the scientists had been saying for decades. The universe is not eternal but had a definite beginning. And that beginning state was really hot. Skeptics of the model derogatorily labeled it the “Big Bang” and, for better or worse, the term stuck.

What’s interesting to note is that two opposite groups vociferously fought against the notion of a Big Bang. First were atheists who deplored the idea of a cosmic beginning, because it implied a beginner — or as some have quipped, the Big Bang requires a Big Banger. Consider the words of the British cosmologist Arthur Eddington. He remarked, “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me… I should like to find a genuine loophole.”⁵

The second group of opposition were certain people of faith who associated the Big Bang with blind, random chance. That is to say, they believed it implied a godless universe. In response to this assertion, astrophysicist Hugh Ross states:

In truth, this “bang” represents an immensely powerful yet carefully planned and controlled release of matter, energy, space, and time within the strict confines of carefully fine-tuned physical constants and laws that govern their behavior and interactions.⁶

That is to say, there’s nothing random or godless about this initial creation event. It strongly suggests that an intelligent creator is responsible. In fact, further scientific discoveries demonstrate that this creation event was much more precise than originally thought.

These discoveries came from the COBE satellite in 1992. Not only did this satellite show leftover radiation from the creation event, but it also showcased variations — or ripples — in the radiation which were fine-tuned with such precision to bring about future galaxies and life itself. 

George Smoot, the leader of the COBE team remarked, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God.” He goes on to declare that these ripples in the background radiation are “the fingerprints of the maker.”⁷ The significance of the COBE discovery cannot be overstated. 

SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS

Perhaps the strongest piece of evidence that suggests the universe is not eternal but had a definite beginning is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Essentially this law states that the universe is slowly running out of usable energy. In fact, if the universe continues for enough time, it will suffer a heat death (don’t worry, it’s still a long way off).

But this raises a significant question: If the universe has existed for eternity, why hasn’t it run out of energy yet? The very fact that the universe still has energy proves that the universe isn’t eternal but began a finite time ago.

Think of the universe like a flashlight. Pretend that you wake up tomorrow morning to find a flashlight shining dimly on your living room floor. What would you conclude about the flashlight? You would probably assume that someone turned it on last night and forgot to turn it off before bed. This explains why it’s not shining as bright as it once was, yet it still has some energy left. In other words, if the flashlight started shining in the eternal past, it would already be dead by now.

In the same way, since our universe is still shining — it’s still using up energy — it’s impossible that it’s eternal. It must have had a definite beginning.

WHO CAUSED THE CREATION?

Based on the empirical evidence, space, time, and matter all burst into existence at the same time in the finite past. This means whatever caused space, time, and matter must come from beyond those things. In other words, the cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial. Think about it this way. Since nature didn’t exist prior to the creation event, the cause must be beyond nature — it must be supernatural.

Of course, this spaceless, timeless, and immaterial cause must also be personal in order to make the free will choice to create the universe. Furthermore, this spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and personal cause must be all-powerful and supremely intelligent to create a universe like ours. 

The implications of these scientific findings are abundantly clear. So much so that Robert Jastrow, famed astronomer and self-proclaimed agnostic observed:

Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover…. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.⁸

Astronomer Robert Wilson also retorted, “Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.”⁹

What these astronomers — and many others — recognize is that all the scientific evidence points in the direction of a creator. After all, what else can be classified as spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal, all-powerful, and supremely intelligent? That sounds a lot like the God of the Bible to me. 

Thousands of year ago, Moses wrote, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Jews and Christians have been making this claim for centuries. Instead of being at war, Christianity and science appear to be friends after all.

1. Jerry Coyne, Faith vs. Fact, xii.
2. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 125.
3. William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, 125.
4. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 34.
5. Arthur Eddington, “The End of the World” in Nature, 127 (1931): 450, doi: 10.1038/127447a0.
6. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 29.
7. Fred Heeren, Show Me God, 168.
8. Robert Jastrow, Interview in Christianity Today “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths” August 6, 1982.
9. Quoted in Fred Heeren, Show Me God, 157.