What Does the Universe Tell Us About Its Maker?
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
Christians believe God created the physical universe. Things that are made, especially when the maker chooses the project, tell us something about their creator. A painting tells us about the painter: what subjects she likes to paint, what techniques she uses, and what kind of care and attention to detail she possesses. In a similar way, the universe reveals several things about the God who made it.
Creation doesn't tell us everything we need to know to know about God; that’s why we need the Bible and the Church. But it does reveal certain aspects of His nature. Here are a few:
God is big and powerful. The universe is HUGE. The smart folks at NASA, using tools such as the Hubble Space telescope, have discovered that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies, with hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy, and probably hundreds of billions of planets around those stars (astronomers say “hundreds of billions” a lot). Those galaxies are separated by many billions of empty miles of space. So, the God who made all this must be quite large, and incredibly powerful. A small or weak god could not have done this.
God is intelligent and creative. The laws that govern the universe are intricate beyond imagination and perfectly balanced to maintain stability. No ordinary mind could possibly have conjured such incredible order, and the brightest among us can only comprehend little slivers of reality. For example, no matter how hard meteorologists try, they cannot predict the weather with accuracy beyond a few days. We’ve got satellites, sensors, drones, high-tech maps, and all kinds of data, but something as basic as what the temperature will be a couple days from now is just too complex for us to predict. And God sustains all things, from the weather systems of billions of billions of planets, to the movement of atoms in each millimeter of matter on those planets. He’s pretty smart.
God cares about people. Scientists have discovered that the universe has many anthropomorphic properties - which means that the exact conditions necessary for life all come together on our planet, despite astronomically long odds. The force of gravity, the distance from the Sun to the Earth, the elements in our atmosphere, and many other physical properties all align to produce an inhabitable place for humans.
The chances of this happening are so remote that some modern philosophers and physicists have proposed the Multiverse Theory. This theory says that there are an infinite number of universes, and we just happen to be lucky enough to live in one that supports life. There is, of course, no physical evidence for such a theory (though I’ve been told it is mathematically elegant) But when one’s philosophy denies the possibility of supernatural input, such extreme hypotheses become necessary to explain the fact that the universe looks custom-made to sustain a place like Earth, and Earth looks custom-made to sustain the creatures called humans.
God reveals Himself in limited ways. Some people ask why God’s signature on the universe is not more obvious – why doesn’t He just write His name across the sky and avoid all the confusion brought about by religions? Theologians have some theories, and my favorite is that God has hidden Himself in order to respect our free will and create the conditions for real love. If God forced us to acknowledge Him (by being obvious), we wouldn’t be truly free, and we must be free in order to love God or anybody else. So, God is somewhat hidden. And yet, for those who are curious, there is evidence of God’s handiwork everywhere. He is there in the grandeur and magnificence of Creation. And He is there in the miniscule details that make all this grandeur possible. One simply has to be willing to look.
God has done a special thing in humanity. Whether or not you believe the Gospel story – that God created mankind in His image and redeemed us through Jesus – it is obvious that there is something very different and special about humanity. Of all the creatures on Earth, ours is the only species that wonders and reasons and makes complex moral judgments. Ours is the species that builds civilizations. Only a human could have painted the Sistine Chapel or composed the symphonies of Mozart or penned the plays of Shakespeare or formed a team to build the CERN Large Hadron Collider. We are physically much like the other animals, with cells and DNA, and bodies that are very apish (some of us more so than others). But in the ways that matter, we are not like animals at all. And that kind of difference demands an explanation. We Christians believe we have it.
The universe is amazing. That’s why so many people care about science; it is an excellent (though imperfect) tool for understanding the physical universe and what’s in it. And Christians should care more than anybody, because the world that God made tells us things about the God who made it.
Lastly, we should remember that Christians also have a robust theology about why the creation falls short of its potential. For all its magnificence, the world is still marked by death and waste and injustice. We believe that sin entered the world and marred this good thing that God made, and that we are living in a time between the Fall and the redemption of all things when Jesus returns. Creation is broken, but its creator is coming to restore it at the proper time. Until that day, we who believe are called to prepare the way, by learning about creation, making it as good as we can, and participating in God’s redeeming work.Science is one great tool for doing that.