One of the basic questions of life is “How did I get here”? Either evolution is correct (from the goo to the zoo to you) and the universe came into being from nothing by itself, or some god or other being created the universe and life.
If you accept the existence of God, you’ve got answers to life’s basic questions (Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going?). But for the evolutionist, answering the question of where we came from raises two basic possibilities for the creation of the universe:
- The universe is eternal.
- The universe had a beginning.
An eternal universe isn’t accepted much anymore (perhaps Carl Sagan was its last proponent when he said “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be”) — the discovery of an expanding universe crushed the eternal universe idea; most scientists believe the universe is around 15 billion years old (in a nice round number). Of course, that means the universe had a beginning — a time existed when there was nothing (no space, time or matter). Then how did the universe come into existence?
The Evolutionary Perspective
Evolution proposes the Big bang theory — first there was nothing, and then it exploded. The big-bang theory may be wrapped in scientific handwaving and technical terms, but the basic idea remains: first there was nothing, then a singularity, and then an explosion and rapid expansion forming what we now call the universe.
Of course, that can’t explain how or why this happened suddenly, and no experimental data exists. In fact, no experiment has ever been done demonstrating how something comes from nothing (or life coming from non-life, but that’s a whole other problem for evolution).
One of the laws of Physics is matter can neither be created nor destroyed. So how did this explosion occur? If nothing existed (including space itself), what caused the explosion? And where are the experiments showing matter comes from nothing, and explosions produce order?
Not much proof here, and certainly it isn’t science (as it fails to follow the scientific method by not using experimental data). The evolutionist must accept the dogma of the big bang on faith alone as science can never get back to time = 0 (as they run into the Planck time problem). Belief in the big bang certainly is their right, but please don’t call it science — it has no experimental data and is taken on faith alone — wrapping it in handwaving doesn’t count.
The Christian Perspective
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. (Genesis 1:1 KJV)
The Hebrew word for “created” is bara, implying created and assembled from nothing. That solves the issue, and since science can never get back to t=0, God is as good as answer as the big bang theory.
But some may complain God isn’t science! If it fits what we know (the universe had a beginning — at one point nothing existed, and matter can’t be created by itself), so be it. Evolutionists have deftly re-defined science to mean naturalistic, atheistic explanations, and thus leave out areas of knowledge they don’t want to believe in.
So if God exists, and if He is all-powerful, He’s the one who created the laws of Physics in the first place, and can violate them at will. Thus the beginning of the universe isn’t a problem for God.
Conclusion
Some will complain we’re anti-science. Not true. Scientific inquiry is good, and satisfies man’s natural curiosity. Unfortunately, by eliminating entire areas of possibility it’s no longer a quest for fact, but a means to eliminate God from consideration.
And that’s not very free-thinking, is it?