Origin of the Universe

One-Time Beginning

Since the dawn of civilization man has gazed in awe at the stars, wondering what they are and how they got there. Although on a clear night the unaided human eye can see about 6,000 stars, Hubble and other powerful telescopes indicate there are trillions of them clustered in over 100 billion galaxies. Our sun is like one grain of sand amidst the world’s beaches.

However, prior to the 20th century, the majority of scientists believed our own Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe, and that only about 100 million stars existed.

Most scientists believed that our universe never had a beginning. They believed mass, space and energy had always existed.

But in the early 20th century, astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the universe is expanding. Rewinding the process mathematically, he calculated that everything in the universe, including matter, energy, space and even time itself, actually had a beginning.

Shockwaves rang loudly throughout the scientific community. Many scientists, including Einstein, reacted negatively. In what Einstein later called “the biggest blunder of my life,” he fudged the equations to avoid the implication of a beginning. [3]

Perhaps the most vocal adversary of a beginning to the universe was British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who sarcastically nicknamed the creation event a “big bang.” He stubbornly held to his steady state theory that the universe has always existed. So did Einstein and other scientists until the evidence for a beginning became overwhelming. The “elephant in the room” implication of a beginning is that something or Someone beyond scientific investigation must have started it all.

Finally, in 1992, COBE satellite experiments proved that the universe really did have a one-time beginning in an incredible flash of light and energy. [4] Although some scientists called it the moment of creation, most preferred referring to it as the “big bang.”

Astronomer Robert Jastrow tries to help us imagine how it all began. “The picture suggests the explosion of a cosmic hydrogen bomb. The instant in which the cosmic bomb exploded marked the birth of the Universe.” [5]

Everything from Nothing

Science is unable to tell us what or who caused the universe to begin. But some believe it clearly points to a Creator. “British theorist, Edward Milne, wrote a mathematical treatise on relativity which concluded by saying, ‘As to the first cause of the Universe, in the context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him.’” [6]

Another British scientist, Edmund Whittaker attributed the beginning of our universe to“Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness.” [7]

Many scientists were struck by the parallel of a one-time creation event from nothing with the biblical creation account in Genesis 1:1. [8] Prior to this discovery, many scientists regarded the biblical account of creation from nothing as unscientific.

Although he called himself an agnostic, Jastrow was compelled by the evidence to admit,“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.” [9]

Another agnostic, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize winning scientist in charge of the COBE experiment, also admits to the parallel. “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”[10]

Scientists who used to scoff at the Bible as a book of fairy tales, are now admitting that the biblical concept of creation from nothing has been right all along.

Cosmologists, who specialize in the study of the universe and its origins, soon realized that a chance cosmic explosion could never bring about life any more than a nuclear bomb would—unless it was precisely engineered to do so. And that meant a designer must have planned it. They began using words like, “Super-intellect,” “Creator,” and even “Supreme Being” to describe this designer. Let’s look at why.