Genesis 1:1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
A number of years ago our two older sons were into “Legos”; the plastic snap-together toys that can be shaped into everything from space ships to small towns. One particular Christmas we gave each of them a 350-piece Lego set. As I recall, each set could be shaped into some kind of military vehicle of mass destruction; either a tank or an attack helicopter. Just good old fashioned boy fun!
Just a day or two later I walked into their bedroom and found a fully assembled attack helicopter in the middle of the floor. What do you think I assumed?
Do you think I assumed that one of our younger sons, the 2 year old or the newborn, had been able to crawl into their bedroom, read the multi-page instructional booklet and then carefully assemble all 350 pieces without making a mistake? Uh, no. Either one of them would have probably eaten more Lego pieces than they snapped together.
Do you think I assumed that our dog built the Lego attack helicopter? No, for just about the same reason.
Or, maybe I would have assumed that the window had been left open and a powerful wind blew into my sons’ room and had – swoosh! – assembled the pieces in exactly the right order by random chance. Of course not.
The only assumption to be made would be that one of our older boys, who was able to read the directions and was manually dexterous enough to physically manipulate all those tiny pieces, had, in fact, assembled the attack helicopter with great intentionality.
This leads us, of course, to the account of creation in Genesis 1.
There are two fundamental positions when it comes to answering the question, “Where did the universe come from?”
The first, for lack of a more comprehensive term, could be called the “God created” position, which begins with Genesis 1:1: “God created the heavens and the earth…”
The second could be called the “No God” position; or the “naturalist” position, which begins with the assumption that there is no God and that, therefore, everything that exists came into existence through natural means, the random forces of nature.
Now, of course, that summary is a gross simplification as each of those camps contains a multitude of factions. Creationists, for example, are divided into “Old Earth” and “Young Earth” camps, divided not over God as creator but rather over how long God took to create all that he created. Yet another creationist position is sometimes called “Historical Creationism” which seeks to synthesize “young earth” and old earth” theories.
Likewise, naturalists are divided into sub-camps as well; from dyed in the wool evolutionists to complicated and exotic theories like “panspermia” (which I can’t begin to describe here but seems to claim that certain elements necessary for the evolution of life on earth were planted by space aliens).
But, in essence, there are two forks in the philosophical and astrophysical road and we must choose one. The lego attack helicopter either had an intelligent and intentional creator or it did not and simply evolved by random processes.
Now, I am definitely not a scientist, and I do not believe that science is the enemy of faith, but the “Not God” or “naturalist” position on the creation of the universe has a couple of very large problems that have not gone anywhere in the past, oh, three centuries or so.
The first is the problem of the First Law of Thermodynamics which asserts, basically, that matter, under natural circumstances, can be neither be created nor destroyed. Natural law also dictates that every effect must have a cause; that there is no uncaused motion. Therefore we must conclude either that matter is eternal, which is difficult to argue if you accept the concept of the “Big Bang” theory and current scientific evidence that the universe is still expanding; or, we conclude that matter was created in an unnatural manner, that is, by a supernatural creator.
The second problem is that all science, just as all theology, ultimately comes down to faith. In his book, “What’s So Great About Christianity”, Dinesh D’Souza quotes an agnostic biologist named Franklin Harold who wrote,
“Life arose here on earth from inanimate matter, by some kind of evolutionary process…This is not a statement of demonstrable fact, but an assumption….It is not supported by any direct evidence, nor is it likely to be, but it is consistent with what evidence we do have.”
That sounds surprisingly like faith to me.
And Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, an enormously accomplished scientist, and non-believer in God, believes that the complexity necessary for life to begin on earth could not have arisen through simply natural processes; therefore, he suggests, life must have been brought to earth by space aliens from another planet (the panspermia theory mentioned earlier).
See what I mean about science and faith?
I know that these examples are somewhat simplistic and that people way smarter than me believe the origin of the universe can be explained apart from the Bible. But I keep going back to that Lego attack helicopter.
It seems common sense to me to conclude that it was built either by random natural processes or by an intelligent and intentional being.
And it seems to me that either answer requires faith.
Brian Coffey
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