CREATIONISM AND THE BIG BANG- WHY I BELIEVE IN BOTH

There is a misperception that scientists can’t be Christian, especially those who seek the God Particle or preach about the Big Bang and evolution.

Ironically, many scientists have come to accept the notion of God because of their research. There are some things science can’t explain any other way.

Likewise, Christians have grown to realize the importance of science and know scientists will never prove God’s existence or lack thereof. Steven Hawking’s post-death proclamation that there is no God is his theory. He did not offer proof.

In fact, I’d like to think Jesus is lovingly walking with Hawking through a beautiful garden and filling him in on some other misconceptions, too.

That said, there are many fields of feisty debate between Christian scholars and scientists. The oldest and most discussed might be Biblical Creation versus the theory of evolution. The Big Bang theory came up around a century ago and offered a possible starting point for evolution.

What (some) scientists say

According to the Big bang proponents, everything in our universe used to be packed together by tremendous gravitational forces in an infinitely dense and super-hot… thing.

There are detailed step-by-step explanations in the written theory, but for non-scientists like myself, this thing exploded and sent all the smaller things that would make our universe in various directions.

Over billions of years, some of the objects separated during the “big bang” found each other and bound to form stars, planets, and energy fields.

Then other things got together to put bigger things on the planets, like water, air, and microorganisms. Eventually, evolution and further particle melding gave us plants, dinosaurs, and cavemen who eventually morphed into various plants, food, animals and the modern-day human who would be tasked with taking photos of everything for social media enjoyment.

What my pastor told me

Christians believe the Bible is the only book we need in order to understand the mysteries of life we are meant to understand.

The Bible starts off with the creation of the world. It tells us that God basically found a planet, made it habitable and put us here along with all kinds of things we can post pictures of on social media.

Adam and Eve were the first couple and we are all descendants of them. We also believe the earth was perfect until Eve let a snake in the grass trick her into defying God.

Sure, there are some holes in the story. Other people keep popping onto the scene without an explanation of how they got there. Did God actually create a bunch of people?

Or did they all evolve from pond scum or really smart monkeys?

Scientists win round 1

Science had an easy time disputing the Biblical story of the Beginning. Following a Biblical timeline on its face indicates our planet is only 6000-7000 years old.

But we have museums full of bones and fossils that prove life existed millions of years before that.

Some Christians argue that the timeline is abstract. The Old Testament talks of people living hundreds of years. We learned that a year is like the blink of an eye to God. 6000 God-years might be 6 million human ones.

But the Bible is the only fundamental religion book that can be historically validated. Mentions of war and the death of kings are well recorded in other ledgers of their time. Artifacts believed to come from Old Testament cities carbon-date to the Bible’s time frame. We can even trace Jesus’ family tree to King David.

There has to be another explanation. Scientists say the Creation Story is a myth handed down like so many indigenous legends and fairy tales.

Christians believe the Bible. Perhaps it is a story handed down through pre-Biblical generations, but it is true nonetheless. 

Christian antagonists ask sarcastically why there is no mention of dinosaurs if the Bible is a world history.

Scholars know there is virtually no recorded history until Biblical times. The Creation was not written as it happened. No one wrote about dinosaurs unless there is a cave-dwelling artwork we’ve missed so far.

This helps to validate the Biblical account that we all came into being as the most intelligent and ruling species about the same time.

Why can’t everyone be right? (My revelation)

Before I go on, let me remind everyone I am not a scientist. It was always my worst subject, even as curious as I am about things.

Also, while I am somewhat versed in the Bible, I am not a Biblical scholar. I am certainly no prophet claiming to have had a vision of clarity.

I’m just a guy who had something pop into his head that makes sense to my simple self.

One day, while I was teaching at a small Christian school in Central America, I was asked to cover a science class for an ill colleague. The class was studying the formation of the Yucatan Peninsula by a huge asteroid so many years ago.

One of the theories about the demise of dinosaurs is that a meteor like that hit the earth and created such a cloud of dust and smoke that the whole planet became dark and either hot or cold enough to kill off most living things on earth. (I mentioned I’m not a scientist, right?)

Science would have you believe that some micro-organisms survived and eventually formed larger organisms that evolved over time until that cute kitten in the You-tube video happened.

I guess micro-organisms is a better theory than saying we evolved from cockroaches, which I’m sure could survive an asteroid.

But wait… what about the Bible story?

In the kids’ science class, we read a short essay from a reputable scientist who theorized what the world looked like after the big meteor hit. He described rising waters and blinding smoke and dust that blocked out the sky.

The first line of Genesis, which is the first book of the Bible, says, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth.” But it doesn’t say when other than the “beginning”. It could have been 6000 years ago or it could have been a billion years ago.

Then one day, the Holy Spirit was hanging around earth hovering over the dark waters of an otherwise “formless and empty” earth.

God said “Let there be light” and the sun came out. Then, He positioned the sun or the earth in a way to create day and night. He made a sky.

What if He didn’t make the earth at that time, but merely decided to let the dust and smoke of an asteroid go away and bring back the sky?

Then He let the waters recede to create land, followed by vegetation and edible plants.

He followed that up by letting us see stars at night and created the moon to go with the sun. Then came fish and birds, before animals and humans were added to make the world complete.

Scientific rebuttal (kind of)

Scientists might argue these events happened naturally. The dust and smoke of an asteroid would eventually settle, giving us light before eventually clearing enough for us to see stars.

If the sun provided evaporation and warmth, maybe the seas receded. Soon, plants would reappear.

Our earliest fossils are fish and birds. Doesn’t evolution say that man evolved from animals that evolved from fish?

But how? The timeline would be too fast based on most models. Biologists are at a loss to explain how parts of the human form function so well, much less how they were assembled in such perfect fashion without a mastermind (like God) designing it.

Here’s my theory (as I watch for signs of lightning)

Our God is the God of all the universe and every other universe. We have sufficient evidence to believe the universe is much older than the earliest dates of the Bible. Our faith says God has always been. He has no beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it was by God’s hand.

What if God was bored one day and popped a really dense space zit to form our universe, say a few billion years ago? He put things in motion to look nice and when He wanted to interact, he created things like dinosaurs and cavepersons.

Maybe the devil saw God having fun with his creation and sent the asteroid that wiped out life on our planet. Or maybe God decided to start over and ended the world Himself? It wouldn’t be the last time.

Then after a million or more years, God found himself back in our universe and decided to start a new civilization on earth. That was about 6000-7000 years ago.

He restored the planet to a better version of its previous glory and inhabited it with smaller animals and self-sustaining plants before He created a creature that looked just like him.

Naturally, He made that creature the smartest and let him rule over the world. God hung around for a while and regularly interacted with some of his favorite creations before leaving us to our own devices.

Everybody wins!

Scientists can claim victory in their fossil and carbon-dating data. Christians know the world in the Bible means God’s latest infusion of life on earth but “the world” as in our planet, actually dates back much farther.

There is a theory for everything, but scientists can still explore and discover cool facts and history.

Even if someone discovers what they call the “God Particle”, the missing link that gave us life, they still have to explain how it came to be. Who created it and how did it get here.

There is a reason they named it after God. It’s his, not him.

Go ahead! Blow holes in my theory in the comments section below. Because you know, I’m not a scientist and I’m definitely not a Biblical scholar! (and Thanks for reading this!)