{"id":5250,"date":"2026-02-25T07:45:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T12:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5250"},"modified":"2026-02-25T07:45:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T12:45:14","slug":"creator-of-heaven-and-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/creator-of-heaven-and-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Creator of Heaven and Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here<\/a>
\u00a0
Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.<\/em>
\u00a0
The Apostles\u2019 Creed begins, \u201cI believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth\u2026\u201d
\u00a0
In the hearts and minds of Christ-followers, that\u2019s an exquisitely compact statement of extraordinary power and beauty.
\u00a0
In more than a few 21st<\/sup> century institutions of higher learning, those are fighting words.

One of the not-so-secret hopes\u00a0of many scientists\u00a0over the past 50 years has been the creation of\u00a0a plausible Theory of Everything that\u00a0excludes the supernatural. The ongoing dream is to explain the cosmos as the product of natural, arbitrary processes that are entirely based on chance.

No miracles.\u00a0No angels.\u00a0No creation.\u00a0No purpose. Just particles and the laws of physics.
\u00a0
Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg recently asserted that \u201cthe world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion. Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilization.\u201d

But something unexpected happened on the way to the confident announcement of a 100% God-Free Universe.
\u00a0
Around 100 years ago, most astronomers believed in the \u201csteady state\u201d model of the cosmos. The universe is simply there<\/em>. And it\u2019s always been there, seemingly immune from change.
\u00a0
But then evidence began to emerge that the universe actually has a fixed beginning \u2013 a dramatic, one-of-a-kind event that brought everything into existence.
\u00a0
The dawning realization of a so-called Big Bang has had\u00a0a jarring effect on religiously skeptical scientists and philosophers – for the simple reason that it seems uncomfortably reminiscent of\u00a0Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”). \u201cThe heavens and the earth,\u201d by the way, is a Hebrew idiom that means, \u201ceverything you can think of.\u201d
\u00a0
The tipping point in the accelerating case for the Big Bang came on April 24, 1992, when a team of astrophysicists reported the findings of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite.\u00a0
\u00a0
No matter which direction they point their most powerful instruments, astronomers have been able to \u201chear\u201d the background hiss of radioactivity \u2013 essentially the all-pervasive \u201csound\u201d that is still reverberating from a primordial explosion that occurred about 13.78 billion years ago.

Scientists were awestruck.

\u201cIt is the discovery of the century, if not of all time,\u201d said Stephen Hawking, the world\u2019s most celebrated physicist.\u00a0The discovery was \u201cunbelievably important,\u201d said Michael Turner of the University of Chicago.\u00a0\u201cThe significance of this cannot be overstated.\u00a0They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology.\u201d

So, what exactly is the Big Bang?
\u00a0
It\u2019s the notion, as one astronomer puts it, that \u201cthe entire physical universe \u2013 all the matter and energy, and even the four dimensions of space and time \u2013 burst forth from a state of infinite, or near infinite, density, temperature, and pressure.\u00a0The universe expanded from a volume very much smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, and it continues to expand.\u201d
\u00a0
Scientists are not na\u00efve.\u00a0If the Big Bang really happened, they immediately grasped the implications.
\u00a0
The universe had a beginning.\u00a0<\/em>This discovery was completely unexpected.\u00a0
\u00a0
Here we need to pause and address a misunderstanding. A number of Christians have received the news of the Big Bang with dismay, imagining it to be a secular alternative to the notion of divine creation. It is anything but<\/em>.
\u00a0
The Big Bang has provided, for the first time, plausible evidence that a singular act of creation is how the cosmos came into existence.\u00a0This has elated theists, but irritated skeptics.\u00a0Geoffrey Burbridge of the University of California at San Diego complained that his fellow astronomers were rushing off to join \u201cThe First Church of Christ of the Big Bang.\u201d
\u00a0
But wait.
\u00a0
In the words of Ron Popeil, the late great pioneer of TV infomercials, \u201cThere\u2019s more.\u201d
\u00a0
In recent decades, astrophysicists have begun to make discoveries about the fine-tuning of the universe.

Currently, more than 100 physical constants – everything from the strength of gravity to the shape of the carbon atom to the number of protons in the cosmos – are so precisely configured that even the slightest variation would eliminate the possibility of life.

That’s gotten a lot of attention.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

The late astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, who was not a person of faith, reported,\u00a0\u201cA common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.\u201d\u00a0He went on to admit he was “greatly shaken” by the fine-tuning discoveries.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0

It seems increasingly hard to fathom, in other words, that the special features of the cosmos just happened.

We know of exactly one universe, and it appears to be exquisitely crafted for life.

But scientists who get queasy at the mention of a super-intellect have made a counterproposal.\u00a0What if this isn’t the only universe?\u00a0What if ours is just one of countless\u00a0universes that somehow “bubbled up” – all by chance – and we lucked out and drew\u00a0the one in which life is possible?

It’s called the Multiverse Hypothesis.\u00a0And it’s sharply dividing the global physics community.

A number of theoreticians, like Hawking, have pointed out\u00a0that the idea of a multiverse is plausible, and it leaves in place the all-important possibility that everything can still happen by chance.\u00a0\u00a0

Other well-known\u00a0physicists, like Paul Davies, aren’t having it. “The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith.”\u00a0The same leap of faith, that is, as believing in the Apostles\u2019 Creed \u2013 that God the Father Almighty created the heavens and the earth.
\u00a0
When you think about it, it is impossible (by definition) for us ever to find out if there is another universe.

That’s because all the tools at our disposal\u00a0\u2013 our senses, our minds, our best technology \u2013 are confined to this universe, which means\u00a0we can never “go outside” and have a look around to see if there’s anything else to see.\u00a0

Even the advocates of the Multiverse Hypothesis admit we can never actually confirm its validity through scientific experimentation.\u00a0All of which suggests that cosmologists\u00a0who are eager to embrace this intriguing\u00a0new idea aren’t necessarily doing\u00a0do because it’s good science, but because it’s a way of not<\/em> falling back onto the tired old notion of God.

Actually, it’s\u00a0not entirely true that God cannot be verified experimentally.

You can always try\u00a0two experiments.

First, wait until you die and see what happens. It’s worth noting that you and I\u00a0will<\/em>\u00a0in fact\u00a0have that very experience, whether we’re particularly curious about God or not.\u00a0

Second, if you don’t want to wait that long, try Jeremiah 29:13:\u00a0“If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.”\u00a0
\u00a0
Look around. Ponder the world to which you awaken every morning. Consider its stunning beauty. Its biological complexity. The unshakeable sense that this is not an accident, but a work of art.
\u00a0
The work of an extraordinary Creator.
\u00a0
The odds are high that such an experiment will turn out to be far more transforming than anything you learned back in high school science.\u00a0
\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here\u00a0Throughout the season of Lent, we’re taking a close look at the Apostles’ Creed – one of the earliest and most concise summaries of what followers of Jesus believe.\u00a0The Apostles\u2019 Creed begins, \u201cI believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth\u2026\u201d\u00a0In the hearts and minds of Christ-followers, that\u2019s an… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5251,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1080,1031,602,217,1081],"class_list":["post-5250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-apostles-creed","tag-big-bang","tag-cosmology","tag-creation","tag-multiverse-hypothesis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5252,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5250\/revisions\/5252"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}