© 2025, All rights reserved.

Historically, science claimed that the universe was created 13.79 billion years ago.  New research suggests that it may be almost twice as old as that.  Either way, the prevailing belief is that an explosion in space sent all of the cosmos into orbit long, long ago.  According to Joe Roberts, “Physicists simply don’t know what was happening at the single moment just before the universe began to exist…”[1]  According to Robert Lamb and Patrick J. Kiger, “Some astrophysicists speculate that our universe is the offspring of another, older universe.”[2]  However it occurred, the prevailing wisdom is summed up in the theory known as the Big Bang.  We do not know what existed just prior to the Big Bang, but, according to Brian Cox, “some sort of infinitely dense tiny ball of matter started to expand and would eventually give rise to the atoms, molecules, stars, and galaxies we see today.”[3]  But all of this begs an important, obvious, cosmological question: if there was something that expanded to create the universe, what created that?  Where did it come from?

 

There are many arguments that are used to try to prove the existence of God — just as there are several that try to disprove his existence.  In the past, I have taught classes in the Philosophy of Religion, which, among other things, assesses the arguments on both sides.  The truth is, you cannot prove or disprove God, but the point of such a course is to ask which arguments make more sense.  There is the teleological argument, the cosmological argument, the ontological argument, and a whole host of other “ological” arguments that spin the heads of undergraduate students into a tizzy.  For me, the cosmological argument is probably the strongest, especially when we posit that God is the Creator of all that is, all that was, and all that will be.

Let’s go back to the Big Bang Theory for a moment.  What caused it?  Part of the cosmological argument is that every effect has a cause.  Something can’t come from nothing.  If there were tiny atoms or molecules or matter that sparked the Big Bang, how did that “stuff” get there?  Furthermore, if the Big Bang did cause the creation of the universe, what caused the Big Bang?

A similar question is found when people of faith reflect on the theory of evolution.  Did God create us the way we exist now and have existed throughout human history or did we and all other life evolve from Luca: the name scientists use for the last universal common ancestor.  I am not a scientist.  That claim was confirmed when I looked into Luca and read that Luca “is the hypothesized common ancestral cell population from which the three domains of life — bacteria, archaea, and eukarya — originated.  The cell had a lipid bilayer; it possessed the genetic code and ribosomes which translated from DNA to RNA to proteins.”[4]  I understand about half of this, and this is from Wikipedia, not a scientific textbook or journal!

Believers of a more conservative theological ilk reject this.  They do not believe in evolution.  They take the story about Adam and Eve literally, some claiming that the earth is only 6,000 years old.  We know that the Earth is older than 4000 BC and that dinosaurs roamed the Earth about 230 million years ago.

My contention has long been, can’t we embrace belief in God as the creator of the universe and the theory of evolution?  Might it be that God’s creative designs are unfolding through the delicate cycles of evolution?  The debate that ensues between these fields is somewhat of an apples-and-oranges argument.  Science is interested in discovering how certain things happen: whether it is how the earth was formed, or how a virus develops and spreads, or how monarch butterflies migrate.  They focus on natural phenomenon.  Theology is interested in figuring out why things happen.  Their questions are of a spiritual nature.  They focus on supernatural phenomenon.

My contention is that with the how that science offers and the why that comes from theology, do we not get a fuller picture of who and what we are and why we are here?  Science and theology should see themselves as two sides of the same coin — as sister disciplines that illume the truth, rather than spiteful combatants who are vying for the truth as if one of them possesses it completely.

We read the first chapter of Genesis this morning.  It is a well-known and gorgeous piece of literature that was written by ancient people, some 3500 years ago.  They used the language they knew: saga, myth, and poetry.  They tried to give voice to the awe that filled their hearts as they looked at stars and sunsets, at the complexity of human beings and the simple elegance of a flower, and realized that this existence is not just an accident.  There is more.  There is much more.

There is God that is wholly separate and holy.  At the dawn of time, God decided not to be alone — to share his life.  This is not something God had to do out of some sort of divine lack.  God is not just holy, but he is wholly separate from creation itself.  As Karl Barth writes, “The proposition that God created heaven and earth and man asserts that this whole sphere is from God, willed and established by Him as a reality which is distinct from His own.”[5]  Alister E. McGrath reminds us that, “Many Christian writers, from various periods in the history of the church, speak of creation as the ‘handiwork of God,’ comparing it to a work of art which is beautiful in itself, as well as expressing the personality of its creator.”[6]  Indeed, anyone who has ever gazed upon a beautiful sunset that seems to set the sky ablaze, or has admired the stillness of a forest covered with fresh snow, or the foliage that blankets New England landscapes in autumn, is well aware that creation is a work of art.

And get this: if God is an artist, that makes you a work of art.  You may not feel like a work of art.  In fact, sin has stained God’s artwork, much the same way radical climate change activists threw paint on masterpieces in a museum.  (Footnote: I have no problem with people protesting, but defacing classic works of priceless art is atrocious.)  But sin has defaced us, hence the need for redemption, which is next week’s sermon.

Hold fast to the fact that we are (that we exist) but did not have to be (that God did not have to create us).  Our creation is an act of pure love on God’s part.  It is something that can be seen by the most devout religious person as well as the most learned scientist.  I’ll give the final word to the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, who said, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.  Science brings men nearer to God.”[7]  And may we see their work as giving us even more insight into what we believe.  Amen.

© 2025, All rights reserved.

John Tamilio III, Ph.D.

[1] Joe Roberts, “The Substance That Might Have Existed Before the Big Bang,” from Sciencing (online).  Published April 1, 2025.

[2] Robert Lamb and Patrick J. Kiger, “What Was Before the Big Bang?” from How Stuff Works (online).  Published September 6, 2023.

[3] Brian Cox, “What Was There Before the Big Bang?” from YouTube.

[4] From Wikipedia.

[5] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III.1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 7.

[6] Alister E. McGrath, Christian Theology: An Introduction, 5^th ed. (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 222.

[7] Louis Pasteur, from The Literary Digest, October 18, 1902.