Is the Big Bang good evidence that God created the Universe?
Many Christians seem to think so. But the Big Bang model is actually incompatible with Biblical Creation—for multiple reasons.
First, the Big Bang is the consensus model for the vast majority of secular cosmologists today, and many of these cosmologists are strident atheists.
If the Big Bang really supported the idea of Biblical Creation, then atheists wouldn’t promote the Big Bang model so adamantly.
In fact, many atheists claim that the Big Bang model disproves the idea of a Creator God. This should be an obvious warning to Christians that the Big Bang doesn’t require its adherents to accept the Bible.
Also, the Big Bang model is inconsistent with the Biblical account of history.
Most Christians who embrace the Big Bang model also accept the idea of deep time. They believe that the Universe was created almost 14 billion years ago, then the Solar System formed from a cloud of gas about 4.6 billion years ago, and so on.
But the creation account in the book of Genesis doesn’t support this sequence.
Here are just some of the contradictions between a deep-time view and the Bible.
- The deep-time view says that stars and galaxies existed for 8-9 billion years before our Earth was formed. But the Bible says that the Earth was created first, and then the stars and galaxies were created afterwards, on Day Four of Creation Week.
- The deep-time view says that the Sun formed before the Earth did. But the Bible says the Earth was created first, and the Sun created afterwards on Day Four.
- The deep-time view says that the Sun was Earth’s first light. But the Bible says that the first light shone on the Earth before the Sun was created.
- The deep-time view says that the Earth had land before it had oceans. But the Bible says the Earth had oceans before it had land.
- The deep-time view says that the Sun existed for billions of years before plants existed on Earth. But the Bible says that plants were created first.
- The deep-time view says that marine organisms existed long before plants did. But again, the Bible says that plants were created first.
There are other examples of these contradictions, like the order of appearance of insects and birds, reptiles and birds, land animals and whales, and so on.
And I’m not even discussing the major theological problems that a deep-time view creates. For example, if the deep-time view is correct, then animals were around for hundreds of millions of years before Adam. This means there were hundreds of millions of years before Adam when animals were killing each other, dying in mass extinctions, and so on.
But the Bible says that death came into the world as a result of Adam’s sin, and much of Paul’s explanation of the Gospel relies on this fact.
Some Christians try to get around these problems by saying that the heavenly bodies were created in the order that the Big Bang model says, and then they were revealed during the days of Creation Week. But that’s not what the text says. (Nor does it resolve the other problems with death before sin, the order of appearance of plants & animals, and so on.)
And this isn’t even discussing other parts of Scripture, such as Mark 10:6, where Christ said that Adam and Eve were made “at the beginning of Creation” (not 13.8 billion years afterwards).
The Big Bang’s sequence of events is very different than the history laid out in the book of Genesis. We can’t consistently believe in both.
Image credit: skeeze
