Often today we see articles and programs where groups of scientists are trying to explain the beginning of the universe, “how we got here”. And so many times they strain and struggle to explain this beginning without a beginner, namely, God. So how does the Bible account stack up to modern science?
Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Until the twentieth century it was believed that the universe had always existed, and there was not much known about what it consisted of. In the last century we determined that the universe consists of space, time and matter as a “continuum.” What was even more startling and disturbing to some was that scientists such as Einstein and later Stephen Hawking and others found evidence that the universe had not always existed but came into existence at a finite point in time in the past. They also found evidence that matter, space and time all began simultaneously, called “space-time.” They concluded that prior to this beginning space and time did not exist.
Look at Genesis 1:1 again. “In the beginning (time) God created the heaven (space) and the earth (matter).” The Bible is the only religious or ‘holy” book that says matter, time and space all began simultaneously at a finite time in the past. All other ancient cosmologies start with eternal matter or chaos. It appears that the Bible shows remarkable scientific insight on the beginning of the universe. Some scientists have taken note of this. Robert Jastrow, a NASA astronomer, commented: “Most remarkable of all, astronomers have found proof that the universe sprang into existence abruptly, in a sudden moment of creation, as the Bible said it did” (emphasis theirs).[1]
There is also a relevant verse in the New Testament, Titus 1:2: “In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” The word for “world” is the Greek word aionios, which is where we get the word “eons.” The idea is that of a space/time continuum. Again time is portrayed as having a beginning, with something/someone transcendent to it.
How do we explain how the ancient authors of the Bible knew that time had a beginning, simultaneous with matter and space, when the science of that time thought matter was eternal and so was time?
The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics confirm creation:
The very well established First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics actually demand that there be a transcendent creator of the universe. What do the first and second laws of thermodynamics say about matter and energy?
The first law of thermodynamics, simply put, states that matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed one into the other. No new matter appears without a corresponding decrease in energy, or vice-versa. The second law states that things break down and wear out over time, as the matter and energy in the universe go from order to disorder. The energy available to perform work decreases over time, which is called the law of entropy. The result of the second law is what is called the “heat death” of the universe, when all energy is evenly spread out and no more is available to perform work. So we see that if the universe past eternal, this heat death would have already occurred. So this demands that the universe came into existence at a finite time in the past. But the First Law says that matter and energy doesn’t create itself or spring into existence by itself, so a transcendent creator at this past creation point is needed also.’s
The impossibility of a universe that is past eternal:
All cosmological models have to deal with the problem that time cannot stretch infinitely back into the past. Even the so-called multiverse models, where there are supposedly many universes popping in and out of existence, with ours just happening to be the ‘lucky”one that has the right parameters for life, have this problem of not being past eternal. Why?
First, you cannot have an infinite series of past events. We can speak of a potential infinity, such as the future, but an actual infinity leads to some absurd results, as illustrated in “Hilbert’s Hotel”. {2} In this hypothetical illustration, you can add and subtract like quantities, but get different results. For example, Hilbert’s Hotel has an infinite number of rooms and they are all filled. But if a guest wants to come and check in, there is no problem, because all the guests can just move up one room number, 1 to 2 , 10 to 11, etc. and the visitor is accommodated. So infinity plus one equals infinity. But let’s say an infinite number of guests want to check in. No problem! Just have all the guests in even number rooms move to the next up odd number, 6 to 7, for ex., and you have room for all the incoming guests. So infinity plus infinity equals infinity. Now all the guests in the even number rooms check out. So now you have an infinite number of empty rooms. No problem, just move all the guests in odd number rooms back into the even number rooms they were in originally. So infinity minus infinity equals infinity. Finally, lets say all the guests from room number 4 on up check out. Now you have infinity minus infinity equals 3. You can see the absurdity that having an infinite number of things, or past time events, leads to.
You also cannot pass through an infinite series of past events. So even if you could have an infinite number of past events actually exist, you could not actually form this number of events by adding them one after another. So you cannot pass through an infinite number of moments to reach the present day. Otherwise, having begun an infinite amount of time ago, you would have finished already. Other absurdities also result. {3} Note that this does not cause a problem for God to have existed from eternity past, since He would be timeless and transcendent to the time which He created, and He also enters into time when the universe is created. A good book explaining this idea is William Craig’s book Time and Eternity, exploring God’s relationship to time, Crossway, Wheaton, IL, 2001.
The Laws of Thermodynamics are in the Bible:
So are the First law and Second law of thermodynamics in the Bible? Yes!
The First law: Genesis 2:2 says, “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” The word “rested” simply means “ceased,” and it implies that the work of creation was finished from that time on and no new space, time or matter is now being created. This is exactly what we observe in the first law of thermodynamics―no matter or energy can be created. Hebrews 1:3 says that God is “upholding all things by the word of his power.” Nothing can be annihilated.
The Second law: The second law of thermodynamics is also in the Bible. For example, the Bible says this about the universal property of decay in the universe: “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner; but my salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished” (Isaiah 51:6). The heavens and the earth are “waxing old,” according to the second thermodynamic law. Another passage that speaks of universal decay is Romans 8:21-22: “Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”
Now when the Bible was written, what did most cultures believe about the earth and the universe? How does the Bible teach differently?
It was unlikely that the ancients believed the earth and the universe, especially the stars, were not eternal. Yet Matthew 24:35 says, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” When the Bible was written no evidence had been discovered that the universe was decaying. In that day they believed just the opposite. The idea that the universe was created from nothing was not in the thinking of the ancients. They always started with pre-existing materials. And they ridiculed the idea that the universe was finite and had a beginning. But some modern scientists have noticed how recent discoveries confirm the biblical perspective.
It’s a lot easier for us today to think of a finite universe with a beginning, since the big bang theory is currently the most widely accepted theory. But the big bang without a creator has some major difficulties. Without a creator the big bang theory is essentially: “Nothing went ‘bang!’ and out came the universe.” The atheist, like the theist, believes that matter and energy came into existence without pre-existing materials and then was ordered against the known second law of thermodynamics which says things naturally go from order to disorder. So either way this event was outside known natural laws and therefore was a supernatural event. The main difference is that the atheist has to believe in a supernatural event without a supernatural cause adequate to explain it. Smith and Eastman comment on this: “The atheist’s model begins with an even more impressive miracle―the appearance of all the matter in the universe from nothing, by no one, and for no reason.” (emphasis mine)[4]
Astronomer David Darling says, “Don’t let the cosmologists try to kid you on this one. They have not got a clue either―despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem. ‘In the beginning,’ they will say. . .‘there was a quantum fluctuation from which….’ Whoa! Stop right there. You see what I mean? First there is nothing, and then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off. They are away, and before you know it they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats.
“You cannot fudge this by appealing to quantum mechanics. Either there is nothing to begin with, in which case there is no quantum vacuum, no pre-geometric dust, no time in which anything can happen, no physical laws that can effect a change from nothingness into somethingness; or there is something, in which case that needs explaining”[5] (emphasis mine)
“The atheist’s model begins with an even more impressive miracle―the appearance of all the matter in the universe from nothing, by no one, and for no reason.” Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark Eastman, The Creator Beyond Time and Space, p. 17. |
Our everyday experience confirms that something does not come from nothing! Also, if this could happen, why don’t we see much less complex things than the universe regularly pop into existence from nothing, since this would be much more probable than an entire universe doing this?
If we say that the universe cannot not exist, in other words, that the universe exists necessarily, we have other problems. For the universe itself is ultimately composed of elementary particles or packets of energy. And it is always possible that a different set of elementary particles could have existed. So the universe is contingent on a cause, which means that it could have not existed at one time. However, God is not composed of elementary particles, but He is pure mind and Spirit, a very simple entity who must be transcendent to time, in order to cause time to exist. Only a mind could cause things and yet be timeless, spaceless, and non-material.
In fact, the cause of the universe must be not only transcendent to space, time, and matter, He must be personal. How else do we explain a finite, temporal effect such as the universe with a timeless cause? This was an argument first put forth by Muslim theologian Al-Ghazali in the 11th century. If the universe was caused by a pre-existing condition, then if that pre-existing causal condition was eternally present, so would be its effect, the universe. The universe could not just come into existence at a finite time in the past. But a mind and a will could initiate those conditions at a point in time in the past. This is because the act of such a will is a free act independent of pre-existing conditions.
The Bible talks about the “stretching out” of the heavens:
There’s another fascinating insight in the Bible about the creation of the universe. One main feature of current cosmologies is that when the universe was formed space itself was stretched out like a material being stretched, rather than matter exploding into empty space that was already there. Space itself, according to current theory, was stretched out from a point of beginning. In the Bible we see an amazing correlation with this idea in over a dozen verses where it says the Lord “stretched out the heavens.” Isaiah 42:5 : “Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out.” Psalm 104:2 says, “Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.”
Several other verses throughout the Bible have this same phrasing. The idea that space was stretched during its creation is a modern scientific idea. Is it something ancient writers would have been able to deduce on their own? We can allow just so many lucky guesses!
So, as always, the Bible was way ahead of its time by simply telling us, “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”
{1} As quoted in The Creator Beyond Time and Space, Chuck Missler and Dr. Mark Eastman, The Word for Today, Costa Mesa, CA, 1996, 7.
{2] William Craig, Reasonable Faith, Third ed., Crossway, Wheaton, IL, 2008, pp. 118-120.