How can a religious person, who believes in the sacred nature of the Bible, accept this latter day creation story assembled by the work of so many over several centuries? Some will say that the Bible is a history of man's relationship with God, which uses the six-day creation story only as an allegory for God's power. To me, at least, the new understanding of the ancient origin and current vastness of the universe is more evocative of God's power than the Genesis story. Scientists now calculate that the original expansion occurred in 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds, a time so short as to make the biblical twinkling of an eye seem like thousands of years. What better demonstration of the creative power of God! If you accept the idea that religion originated with man's wonder at the size and complexity of the earth, how much more reason should we now have to fall down and worship the Creator?

Ecclesiastic authorities of traditional churches have by and large embraced the Big Bang story. Pope Pius XII was enthusiastic and in a 1951 speech reviewed the scientific creation story as it then existed and concluded: " . . . Therefore, there is a Creator. Therefore, God exists!" In our own Episcopal Church in the United States, the Executive Council commissioned a committee of priests and scientists to prepare a Catechism on Creation and adopted their document in 2005. The catechism states that two essential theological principles are derived from the Bible and tradition. First that God created "out of nothing" "Before this act of creation there was, literally, no time, space, energy, or substance of any kind." The second is that "God continues to create." The catechism continues, saying: "Big Bang cosmology seems to be in tune with both the concepts of creation out of nothing and continuous creation."

Although some, including theologians and scientists, insist on a separation of theology and science saying neither one really bears on the other, a number find a relationship. I doubt that science will ever prove by evidence the existence of God. On the other hand, I think that the grand picture of creation painted by scientists strengthens and solidifies belief in a creator. The Big Bang story adds to our understanding of the nature of God. Furthermore, nuclear physics, a cornerstone of our understanding of creation, says that the natural laws that it has uncovered apply all of the time, wherever you go in the cosmos, reinforcing the universality of God, an essential precept of religion.

Let me enlarge on the idea of continuous creation, because I will return to it eventually. There is nothing in the Big Bang story that puts a period on creation. Not the instant after the original expansion, not when hydrogen and helium first appeared, not when matter began to aggregate and the resulting stars kindled to emit light, not when the sun and its planets condensed out of cosmic dust. The process continues. In this, science and theology are in agreement.

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Lecture Index

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