The Scientific Consistency of the Bible

The Bible is not a science book. But if it is what it claims to be—the inspired word of God—we would expect it to be scientifically accurate and consistent in what it teaches. While clearly at variance with atheistic and anti-theistic hypotheses of how life, morality, and the physical universe came to be, the message of the Bible is consistent and readily accords with the evidence available for experimental and observational scientific confirmation.  

Our physical universe is something we can all observe, so how is it to be explained? Either (a) it is just an illusion and doesn’t really exist; or (b) it spontaneously arose out of a void of nothingness; or (c) it has always existed in some form; or (d) it was created by an intelligent and powerful force beyond and superior to itself. The first option is not taken seriously by most rational thinkers, and the second has been debunked since the mid-nineteenth century. The third option has had a much longer tenure. 

Atheistic Naturalism

From the 1960s to the 1990s, astronomer and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Dr. Carl Sagan was widely acclaimed as “the most brilliant scientist of our times.”¹ In his 1980 book Cosmos, spending seventy weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, he made the bold claim, “the Cosmos is all there is or was or ever will be.”² He apparently considered the physical universe to be eternal. But Sagan’s confident assertion, which fellow-scientists and non-scientists alike have taken as fact, is an unproven and unprovable assumption that cannot be verified by scientific observation or experimentation.

Atheistic naturalism begins with impersonal, mindless matter that either came into existence from nothing (physically impossible) or is eternal. Life is allegedly a freak accident of nature, governed by nothing and going nowhere. Outside the natural world nothing is believed to exist. 

Theistic Supernaturalism

During the sixteen centuries the documents comprising the Bible were produced, rather than emulating the popular myths and legends of their day and contrary to the eternal-universe model, biblical writers consistently affirmed the finite beginning of the material world and all lifeforms on earth, including intelligent life. 

•       Moses (1500 BC): “In the beginning …” (Genesis 1:1).

•       Psalmist (1000 BC): “in the beginning …” (Hebrews 1:10).

•       Solomon (950 BC): “at the beginning …” (Proverbs 8:22).

•       Isaiah (700 BC): “from the beginning …” (Isaiah 48:18).

•       Jesus (AD 29-30): “since the beginning …” (Mark 13:19); “at the beginning …” (Matthew 19:4).

•       Paul, Silvanus, Timothy (AD 50-51): “from the beginning …” (2 Thessalonians 2:13).

•       Paul (AD 62): “from the beginning …” (Ephesians 3:9).

•       Peter (AD 65): “from the beginning …” (2 Peter 3:4).

•       John (AD 90): “In the beginning …” (John 1:1).

Rethinking the Eternal-Universe Model

The year following the publication of Dr. Sagan’s book, physicist and cosmologist Dr. Stephen Hawking, who was also deemed “one of the world’s most brilliant minds,”³ gave a lecture at a cosmology conference at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences about “the possibility that space-time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation.”⁴

Just a few years later, however, in his 1988 book A Brief History of Time, Hawking wrote: “The old idea of an essentially unchanging universe that could have existed, and could continue to exist, forever was replaced by the notion of a dynamic, expanding universe that seemed to have begun a finite time ago, and that might end at a finite time in the future …. Einstein’s general theory of relativity implied that the universe must have a beginning and, possibly, an end.”⁵ In 1996, the year Carl Sagan died, Hawking stated in his Cambridge Lectures: “All the evidence seems to indicate, that the universe has not existed forever, but that it had a beginning …. probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.”⁶

Conclusion

Hawking never abandoned anti-theistic evolutionary theory, but the indisputable evidence of physics, mathematical calculations, and cosmology finally led him and most of the scientific world to conclude what the Bible has consistently affirmed all along, even if touted as “the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology.” 

--Kevin L. Moore

Endnotes:

     ¹ The Associated Press in the opening pages of Cosmos by Carl Sagan (New York: Random House, 1980).  

     ² Ibid. p. 4. Sagan compared the question of the universe’s origin to the question of God’s origin, reasoning that if God is said to be eternal, why couldn’t the cosmos be eternal? “Where did God come from? If we decide that this is an unanswerable question, why not save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question? Or, if we say that God always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe always existed. There’s no need for a creation; it was always here” --“Carl Sagan on God and Creation,” <Link>.

     ³ University of Cambridge, <Link>. 

     ⁴ Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam, 1988); chap. 8, “The Origin and Fate of the Universe,” <Link>.

     ⁵ A Brief History of Time, chap. 2, “Space and Time,” <Link>.

     ⁶ Stephen Hawking, Publications and Lectures <Link>.

Related Posts: Are You Sure About God? (Part 1) 

Related articles: Jeff Miller, God and the Laws of Thermodynamics, Kyle Butt, Science and the Bible 

 

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