How Did We Get Here? The Science of Faith
Photos by Alex Wolf
Having lived a majority of my life as an atheist, I’m well versed in what people without faith do and don’t believe. For instance, a core belief of atheism is the acceptance that the universe, our planet, and all the life on it came into being by accident. If there is no God, then no God and no plan was ever involved in the creation of anything. The end point of this philosophy is that you and I are the result of a fantastic series of accidents. In short, we are all a cosmic mistake.
From kindergarten through medical school, my secular education taught me that life is common and inevitable. Leave the raw ingredients of the universe lying around long enough and a Shakespeare, Bach, or Newton will inevitably pop out of the primordial ooze.
Add to “you are an accident” the belief that nothing exists after death, and it becomes difficult to make a rational argument to keep going when facing a hard time. “Why am I here?” doesn’t have a compelling answer without God.
It is not just individuals who come up short when they ask what the meaning of life is; society does too. If everything that exists is just the result of a series of random events, then what is the significance of humanity? For that matter, what is the significance of anything? It doesn’t take an advanced degree in psychiatry to understand how “we have no ultimate reason for being” fails to bolster the human spirit.
I recently listened to a PBS show about traveling to Mars. Thus far, unmanned missions to Mars have failed to find life. Manned missions, the scientists on the show believed, would be more successful at locating life on the Red Planet. One of the show’s experts estimated that a manned mission to Mars would cost a half trillion dollars, give or take a half trillion. And what kind of life could we expect to find? A new species of orchids? Little green men? Not quite. Many atheists believe that the discovery of life beyond Earth will put to rest the notion that God is the creator of life. “See?” they will say. “No need for God. Life just randomly happens.”
By contrast, the Christian faith offers a very different perspective on humanity. The Bible is not intended to be used as a science textbook, but it nonetheless offers us some clear direction on cosmology. One example is found in the New Testament book of Hebrews: “By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen” (11:3).
In other words, the Bible tells us that once there was no universe, and then God spoke the cosmos (the Greek word often used for the universe in the Bible) into existence using nothing that existed before.
Photos by Alex Wolf
Science didn’t agree with the Bible in this area until roughly a century ago. Before that time, scientists insisted that matter could not be created or destroyed and that everything that is seen had always existed. Finally, after thousands of years, the Bible and science are in agreement about the universe being formed out of nothing.
However, there’s still a profound difference between the biblical and scientific view of how we got here.
In the biblical worldview, behind every star, every starfish, and every stargazer is an omnipotent God who creates according to a plan. You and I are not the result of a meaningless cosmic accident. We are the result of a divine design.
The Bible includes two accounts of Creation. The first Creation account begins at Genesis 1:1 and continues to Genesis 2:3. This seven-day account generally follows the developmental pattern of life on Earth that any modern evolutionist would accept. It is told in the measured tone of a song or poem, with the repeated refrain, “And God saw that it was good.”
The first account is linked to the second Creation account with this sentence: “These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and heavens” (Genesis 2:4, esv).
Up to this point, God has spoken everything into existence—in seven days, generations, or an instant. This ambiguity reminds me of the zigzag architects put on a straight line when they wish to signal that the line continues, but NTS, or “not to scale.”
Indeed, the second Creation account switches scale and perspective: God makes Adam and Eve with his own hands and in his own image. He blows the breath of life into Adam’s nostrils. The implication is clear. Adam and Eve are special, outside the timeline and the normal course of the rest of creation.
Humanity is the work of God’s own hands. If you think that life on Earth took four billion years or so to get where it is now, the Bible gives you room to hold this view. If you believe it took seven days, the Bible gives you a solid place to stand. What it does not yield to either camp is that we are a cosmic accident.
Photos by Alex Wolf
The notion that I was here for a purpose was implanted in my brain when I was five. My 103-year-old great-aunt took me by my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “God has a plan for you, Matthew. He knows how much mischief you can get into. That’s why he’s given you two angels.” And then she glanced over each of my shoulders as if she could actually see my guardians.
Recalling her words over half a century later still brings me great comfort and joy. She wasn’t saying I was a good little boy or telling me I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. She was doing something far more important:
She was giving me a philosophy of life, the philosophy of purpose. She was nourishing my soul.
My aunt could have taught me how I was made up of 37 trillion cells, each of which was made of 100 trillion atoms, which were in turn composed of countless protons, neutrons, and electrons, which in turn were made up of . . . and so on. That knowledge, though true, would not have nourished me as much as telling me I was made by God for a purpose. In short, my great-aunt was the first to tell me clearly and definitively: you are not an accident!
Whether you are a man or a woman, you are made in God’s image. You are not an accident or a mistake. You are exactly what God intended you to be. Moreover, you don’t have to choose between science and God, fact and faith. God invented science, and science is just catching up to God.
You may read the opening chapters of Genesis to mean seven twenty-four-hour days, an instant, or billions of years, but that does not impact why you are here. What must be taken literally is that we are the intentional masterpieces of an omnipotent God—made in his image. We are not mistakes in a vast, seemingly meaningless universe.
This article was taken from the upcoming book Hope Always: How to Be a Force for Life in a Culture of Suicide by Matthew Sleeth, MD. Hope Always is the first practical, biblically-based, scientifically-grounded book that takes a holistic view of suicide. It explores why God is unequivocally for life, and what forces tempt us to choose death. Through the stories of patients and timeless truths of Scripture, it equips us to ask questions, seek help, and advocate for life. Learn more and pre-order at matthewsleethmd.com.
Copyright ©2021. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.
