Yesterday I attended a talk about the Hubble Space Telescope and God. I know this sounds like a strange combination, but it was very interesting. The talk was by a retired NASA engineer who headed the Hubble Project. The talk centered mainly around him showing us pictures taken from the Hubble Space Telescope and explaining about different space phenomena. But I am not going to go into that here. I want to talk about the two things that struck me when he tied the space phenomena back to God.
The first was about the Big Bang Theory. For those of you unfamiliar with the Big Bang Theory it goes something like this: The universe was created when a primeval atom exploded sending debris in every direction. This debris would later be the substance that would form the various galaxies, planets, stars, and other astral bodies in the universe. This NASA engineer theorized that it would be completely plausible to say that this "Big Bang" happened at the point in the Bible that coincides with Genesis 1:3. This verse states, "Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." In other words, the explosion and subsequent light given off by it was the light that God first created. God then goes on to form the Earth in verses 9-10. And later in this chapter (verses 14-19) it states that God creates "lights in the firmament of the heavens" and "two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night." All of this could have been formed from the substances left over from the original explosion.
The second was about other life in space. I am by admission generally a non-believer about life on other planets. Most people consider it conceit to think that we are so important that we are the only life in the whole galaxy. I never thought about it as conceit so much as the Bible doesn't mention life on other planets. But seeing the pictures of other galaxies taken from Hubble got me to thinking. We may be the only life in this solar system, but even our puny solar system only comprises one arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. And beyond that there are at least thousands of galaxies in the universe. Who's to say there aren't habitable planets in those galaxies. Maybe those people have their own Bibles, containing their own histories. Maybe they are living existences similar to our own. Maybe at this very moment someone is writing a blog about life in other galaxies. Maybe the Bible doesn't say anything about them, because we don't need to know about them. Maybe it was concerned with showing us how to find salvation and become better Christians, rather than revealing all that God knows. Otherwise, why would God waste His time making all of those other galaxies and filling them with planets and stars?
That's right, you heard it here first! This self-proclaimed skeptic has changed his feathers. I am now pondering the possibilities. There is an obvious order and complexity to the universe that cannot be denied. So, maybe I was not being conceited...maybe I was living without the information that would open my eyes to the possibilities. Maybe I was just too busy to look beyond our solar system and see the big picture.
I would love to hear what you think about all of this. Especially those ideas that deal with the universe in relation to God.
