One Free Miracle

“Modern science is based on the principle: ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’”

– Terence McKenna

I often meet people who are hesitant to affirm or accept the Bible as true and authoritative because (they claim¹) they cannot get themselves to believe in the miraculous.

“Do you really believe that Noah built a giant boat for all the animals?”
“Do you really believe that Moses parted the Red Sea?”
“Do you really believe that Jesus turned water into wine?”
“Do you really believe that Jesus walked on water?”

Miracle – an event or effect in the physical world beyond or out of the ordinary course of things, deviating from the known laws of nature, or transcending our knowledge of these laws.

Many of these same people, though likely unaware, have constructed and found “comfort” in their own atheistic and materialistic worldviews while neglecting to acknowledge or account for one major event, for which any complete worldview should be able to offer an explanation. This event, the very first miracle, is the beginning of the universe.

I vaguely remember something of a church service I attended with my family probably close to twenty years ago. Pastor Rob was preaching out of the book of Genesis on the creation of the world. I was young and did not understand all that was being said, but I do specifically remember the mention of the “Big Bang.²” Was it, “In the beginning, God…” or, “In the beginning, a Big Bang…?”

The congregation would certainly say that it was the former, and I was inclined to say the same. I thought about it for a little while, however, a bit confused how or why these two views were actually in opposition. If science says there was a Big Bang at the beginning, and the Bible says that God created the universe at the beginning, then can we not conclude that perhaps the Big Bang is the very event that God caused when He began to create?

A closer look reveals that this problem is often posed as a false dilemma³. The fallacy arises when we are presented with a choice (either one or the other is true, but not both) between God and the Big Bang. Again, what if God, a transcendent being, caused the Big Bang, a physical event?

We can also identify a category error here to further reject the question. Not only are we not limited to only the two options we’re given, but the two options we’re given, God and the Big Bang, do not even belong in the same logical category. For the sake of argument, God is conceptually an immaterial, metaphysical “cause,” while the Big Bang is a physical event, or “effect.” The Big Bang may be “what happened,” but God may be “how it happened” or “why it happened” or “what caused it to happen.” We will see later that we cannot have a “what happened” without also having a “what caused it to happen.”

When engaging in debate or conversation with others on such matters, it is important to truly think before we respond. As Christians, when presented with the question as it was originally stated, we are likely inclined to choose God quite quickly and give the question no further thought. But notice this: based on the either-or nature of the original question, when we answer “God” immediately without challenging the question itself, we accept the framework of the question, and simultaneously deny the Big Bang. Why does this matter?

“God created the universe out of nothing in an act which also brought time into existence. Recent discoveries, such as observations supporting the Big Bang and similar astronomical phenomena, are wholly compatible with this view.”

– Henry Margenau

The science of the 20th century has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that something like the event we call the Big Bang occurred. It was once suggested alternatively that perhaps the universe is infinite in the past, always existing, and therefore never “coming into existence,” eliminating the need for a creator, or a “First Cause” (more on this later). There are now five major evidences that have been observed, ultimately putting to bed any doubt that the universe (and therefore space, time, and matter) had a definite beginning. It is important that we align ourselves with the truth and draw conclusions accordingly, so we need to work this truth into our world view. If we go around insisting that something is false when it has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be true, we will not likely be taken very seriously in conversation or in light-hearted debate.

To summarize up to this point, we first saw that any complete worldview must account for the first miracle, the beginning of the universe. We have seen that we are not faced with a dilemma as we may have originally thought; we need not choose between God and the Big Bang. They are categorically different, and instead of being competing alternatives, we find that they are logically compatible; it is possible that God caused the Big Bang. We have finally seen that the event known as the Big Bang is grounded in strong evidence, and therefore cannot be dismissed, and it need not be. Again, we have seen that the existence of God as a cause is not incompatible with the event or effect known as the Big Bang.

The Big Bang functions as both a cause (many things follow naturally from the event) and an effect (both physically and philosophically, every event is an effect). The Law of Causality states that every effect has a cause. So, functioning as an effect, we can reason (from Causality) that the Big Bang must have a cause. This is formally known as the Cosmological Argument, which serves as the foundation of one (there are many) strong philosophical argument for the existence of God. The argument goes like this:

1. (Premise 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
   • True, based on the Law of Causality.
2. (Premise 2) The universe began to exist.
   • The Big Bang, grounded in a wealth of observational evidence.
3. (Conclusion) Therefore, the universe has a cause.
   • We can quickly and effectively reason that this “cause,” sometimes called the “First Cause,” resembles God. See the link above to the Cosmological Argument for more on this.

And there it is. We have now seen that the Big Bang in no way opposes or disproves the existence of God, but rather, it does the exact opposite. The Big Bang has provided tangible, observable evidence for a beginning of the universe, which logically points to a “beginner.” What originally appeared to be a potential threat to God’s existence has now been shown to serve as strong evidence for His existence.

We can now assess the real issue… the true dilemma.

The problem is not that Christians (or theists in general) need to choose between God and the Big Bang. The problem is that atheists and materialists (if they wish to remain consistent), as a consequence of their world view, have to accept and defend the position that nothing caused the Big Bang… that the universe and all that is in it in fact began to exist with no cause… the only event of its kind ever… the first and the last exception to the Law of Causality. There is no natural law, no physical explanation, no mathematical model that can describe what caused the Big Bang. By definition, the Big Bang, the explosion of space, time, and matter into being out of nothingness, is a miracle.

So, granted that the miracle of the Big Bang occurred, the dilemma falls on the atheist and the materialist. Either nothing caused the Big Bang, or something caused the Big Bang. Science is about making observations to prove or disprove hypotheses about the physical world. If we have never observed an effect that didn’t have a cause (and we have not), then to posit that nothing caused the Big Bang is completely anti-scientific. It is a conclusion not drawn based on any observation whatsoever. In fact, from the start, the question is not even a scientific question, since we cannot observe what caused the Big Bang. We can only reason about it. And it is far more reasonable to conclude that something caused the Big Bang than to conclude that nothing caused it.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

Genesis 1:1

Under the atheistic/materialistic worldview, there is no reasonable explanation for the miracle of the beginning of the universe. It follows then that under these worldviews, there is also no reasonable explanation for any of the miracles described in the Biblical text. By contrast, the Christian worldview aligns with the logical conclusions drawn from the Big Bang and provides a framework which renders all of the miracles described in the Biblical text “at least plausible,” as Frank Turek often puts it. If God created the heavens and the earth from nothing, then could He not assist Noah in the construction of a giant boat? Could He not also usher the animals onto that boat? Could He not part the waters for Moses and His people to cross the Red Sea on dry ground? Let us not forget that it was not Moses who parted the waters, but God.

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.”

Exodus 14:21

Could He not trivially turn the water that He created into wine, or walk upon the water that He created?

If anyone struggles with believing some particular miracle in the Bible, it stands to reason that they are ultimately struggling with believing Genesis 1:1. If we truly believe that God created the heavens and the earth out of nothing, a most miraculous feat, then it follows that there is nothing He cannot do.

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

– Robert Jastrow

1. By definition, to claim means “to state or assert that something is the case, typically without providing evidence or proof.” I use the language “they claim” here to highlight the fact that there is a subtle inconsistency underlying the notion that the atheistic worldview is “miracle-free.” In other words, if I were to expand the phrase in the parentheses: they claim that they cannot accept the Bible as truth at least partially because of the miracles described therein, simultaneously (probably unknowingly) assuming that their own worldview need not address any such events.
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2. The “Big Bang” as defined by NASA (for kids): “The big bang is how astronomers explain the way the universe began. It is the idea that the universe began as just a single point, then expanded and stretched to grow as large as it is right now—and it is still stretching!” In other words, the Big Bang is an event. It is the event characterized by space, time, and matter bursting into existence all at once. ↩︎
3. A false dilemma is a type of logical fallacy. By definition, a false dilemma arises “when only two choices are presented yet more exist, or a spectrum of possible choices exists between two extremes.  False dilemmas are usually characterized by “either this or that” language, but can also be characterized by omissions of choices.” ↩︎