“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, what is man that you are mindful of him, or the Son of Man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4)
Our Hebrew ancestors wrote the Bible informed by their observations of creation. Because their reflections on God were written within that context, they possessed a wisdom about the material world that can be amazingly accurate. Through three examples from the sciences of chemistry, astronomy and physics, we can see that even though they lacked sophisticated modern technology, our Biblical ancestors were keenly astute in their perceptions and descriptions of creation. Such renewed respect for the authors of the Bible can inform and strengthen our faith in God as Creator.
Genesis and the Big Bang
“In the beginning … darkness was upon the face of the deep … there was light … and God separated the light from the darkness” (Gen 1:1-5).
These first words of the Bible set the stage for all of the succeeding manifestations of God in creation. They beautifully describe the primacy, action and purposefulness of one God, the central theme of Jewish faith and a recurring theme throughout the Bible.
These verses, minus the reference to God, are also and beautiful and economic description of modern scientific theory about the origin of the university and its early stages of existence. Metaphorically labeled the “Big Bang,” this theory postulates that all of the matter in the universe was initially present as an inconceivable dense source of energy within an infinitesimally small space, the size of an electron. At t=0 (13.7 billion years ago) this source of energy exploded, marking the beginning of space and time. Following t=0, an unimaginable period of expansion occurred, called “inflation,” during which matter came to dominate antimatter, dark matter was created and protons and neutrons were formed. About two seconds after t=0 atomic nuclei were formed. The physical conditions of the universe were so chaotic during this early period that light, as defined by different wavelengths of energy, could not emerge out of the darkness. It wasn’t until the universe was about 400 million years old that light was emitted and separated from the darkness and the universe developed the stars, planets and galaxies that we see today.
Origin of The Human Person
“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground…” (Gen 2:7)
This verse describes God’s creation of man from physical material, an observation very close to the discoveries of chemistry and physics.
We now know that all matter is composed of an infinite combination of over 100 different elements. These elements range in weight from the lightest, hydrogen, to the heaviest naturally occurring element, uranium. All of the elements in the universe are created by a process called nucleosynthesis. The atoms of the lightest elements in the universe, i.e. hydrogen, helium and lithium, were created within the first few minutes of the Big Bang via a process called “Big Bang nucleosynthesis.” All of the other naturally occurring elements have been created through “stellar nucleosynthesis,” that is during the life span of stars. During explosions of gigantic stars called supernova, these elements are released into space in the form of clouds of gas and dust. These clouds contain the elements that form new stars, planets, and eventually, even life.
Thus, what begins within the interior of giant stars becomes the building blocks of the world and life as we know it. This process was beautifully described by the astrophysicist Laurence Krauss: “Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand … You are all stardust” (A Universe from Nothing).
The Fine-Tuned Universe
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight” (Eph 1:4).
This sense of being “chosen” is a consistent theme throughout the Bible. From the beginning verses of the Old Testament through the books of the New Testament, individuals, tribes and peoples are portrayed as chosen by God. The concept of “chosenness” comes to its fullest expression in the Letter to the Ephesians, where St. Paul writes of our “chosenness” even before time began.
This concept of being chosen before the beginning of time is beautifully illustrated by scientific discoveries made during the last century. As Frederick Dyson, a well-known and respected scientist, said, “As we look out into the universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems that the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming” (The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John D. Burrown and Frank J. Tipler).
What Frederick Dyson described is what modern scientists have called the “fine-tuned universe principle,” the “anthropic principle” or the “cosmological principle.” This principle holds that after the Big Bang the entire universe developed along an extremely narrow range of physical constants within mathematical equations. These mathematical constants were required for the universe and life as we know it to emerge. If these constants were not exact as they are, life would not exist.
In comparing some aspects of the Bible with modern science we can explore both the wonders of science and the wonders of our faith. It adds another dimension to our understanding of the Bible and the people who wrote it. These selected verses demonstrate that although our Hebrew ancestors lacked the technological tools that scientists use today, they lived in a time in which people observed and thought about creation within the context of their faith in one God. Their framing of the natural world is, in these selected examples, surprisingly perceptive. They demonstrate once again that the Bible, written between 2,000 and 3,500 years ago, is a rich source of evidence that God is intimately present in our past, present and future.