Who Is the Creator of Our Amazing Cosmos?
I remember my physics teacher in high school describing the “Steady State Universe” during the 1960s. According to this theory, the universe has no beginning nor end in time. It was, according to my teacher, a popular theory at that time but since has been pretty much replaced by the "Big Bang" theory (not the TV sitcom). Two other theories that compete with Big Bang are oscillating universe and infinite universe. Neither of these theories require that the observable universe had a beginning, although scientists tend to acknowledge that it did indeed have a beginning.
According to modern science, our cosmos began suddenly about 13 billion years ago (Lumen, 2021). This sudden beginning, known as the Big Bang, probably was first proposed by the Belgian priest and cosmologist Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) who called it the “hypothesis of the primeval atom.” He derived his model in part from the recession of nearby galaxies and the corresponding theory of the expanding universe, which was confirmed by the observations of American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953). The expanding universe and the Big Bang are well accepted among astronomers and cosmologists today. It implies that originally the universe must have expanded from something infinitesimally small. Even space and time are said to have originated in the first moments of the Big Bang. A beginning strongly implies a Beginner.
The sudden appearance of the universe from nothing (or rather something infinitesimally small) corresponds with the ancient biblical doctrine of "creation ex nihilo," creation from nothing. The Judaeo-Christian God of the Bible precedes and creates the universe: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (Genesis 1:1) The Bible also refers to God "stretching out" the heavens (Psalm 104:2). This contrasts with other creation stories such as Greek (chaos precedes everything), Norse (a great chasm is first), Rig Veda (cosmic waters), Chinese (the cosmic egg), and so on. The biblical doctrine has proven to be the correct view of the beginning of the universe.
In the New Testament (2 Timothy 1:9, Titus 1:2) we also read that God was active before time itself.
Of the competing views for the beginning of our universe--and that it had a beginning--the Bible's is correct and the others are wrong. The Big Bang model of the beginning of the Cosmos is scientific evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible.
This blog article is an excerpt from my book: Five Languages of Evidence: How to Speak about Reasons for Christianity in a Post-truth World. Not yet published; available upon request.
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