Day 19 – the answer of science
[T]he older idea of an eternally existing world is now known to have a problem. These measurements of what scientists call the background radiation that fills the universe tell us that the world is not eternal, but that it actually had a beginning. –ROBERT GANGE
A finite universe, one with a definite beginning, is a nightmare for the atheist. He or she can ignore the Argument from Design if the universe is chronologically infinite. An eternal universe needs no Creator, just as an eternal watch would need no watchmaker. If the universe is finite, however, then there must have been a Designer behind it. A universe with a beginning thus brings the atheist face-to-face with God.
Ironically, the problem today for the atheist is science itself, for the current trend—based on the evidence at hand and espoused by the leaders of the scientific world—is to assume that the universe did have a beginning. From the Big Bang Theory to lesser-known hypotheses, the physicists present to us a universe that most likely is not eternal, one that had a real birth billions of years ago.1
This places the atheist in an obvious predicament. An eternal universe is what he needs to refute the Argument from Design. Science, usually the atheist's megaphone, proclaims a universe with a beginning. To remain an atheist, he is forced to disagree with all the talk about a finite universe and thus turn his back on science, or else he must agree with the scientists that the universe had a beginning and thus turn away from the Argument from Design and his own common sense. There is for him no logical escape.
Daily Quotation
Robert Gange, Origins and Destiny (Waco: Word, 1986), 8.
1I am afraid I will lose a few supporters here. Science’s claim that the universe is finite comes with another—that its beginning took place billions of years ago. All creationists would applaud the former, but Biblical literalists would take offense with the latter. They contend that the earth is no more than a few thousand years old and have written at length in defense of that opinion. If you are among them, I ask that you overlook our disagreement on the universe’s age in deference to our agreement on its finitude. If you think about it, the fact that the universe had a beginning is the more central of the two issues. Whether that birth took place thousands or billions of years ago pales in comparison. Peripheral also is whether God chose the Big Bang to bring the world into being or merely shouted it into existence ex nihilo. The core issue—“in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”—is upheld either way. So if you disagree with the scientists and me about these side issues, I implore you to continue on with the group. I will not ask you to change your opinion; it, indeed, may be right. When we get to heaven and know the whole truth, I may be the one whose opinion must change. What I do ask of you is to save this discussion for a later date. Now is the time to stand on common ground, not to wrestle in peripheral currents.
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