Before the Beginning

Recently I watched a BBC Horizon programme entitled "What Happened Before the Big Bang?" The interaction between science and faith is interesting for me. I have been an electronics designer for much of my life, and now I am a minister in the Church of Scotland. I care about science, and I want to know more about God.

The Bible begins by declaring that the Universe came into being through the action of God. The book of Genesis records the earliest understandings of our place in that Universe. In Genesis we see that God was involved in the development of life on the Earth, culminating in the arrival of mankind. God breathed his Spirit into humanity, and He gave us the ability to communicate with Him, to have a relationship with God himself.

Scientists have often struggled to give any credence to the Genesis story. Scientific experiments have been unable to prove anything about God. Nor have they been able to disprove the existence of God. Millions of people have claimed to experience God, but that experience is not scientific.

The nature of the Universe, and mankind's place within it, have been the subject of our curious minds since the dawn of history. Every culture has its traditions about how they came to be here.

During the first half of the 1900s, there was a great scientific debate about whether the Universe had always existed. If it hadn't always existed, then how did it get here? Of course, that question is equally relevant even if the Universe always existed!

By 1950, the argument had been settled. The Universe began with a Big Bang, and expanded into its current condition. The Universe continues to expand. Indeed, scientists think that the expansion of the Universe continues to accelerate.

Cosmologists continue to analyse and study the Big Bang. Sensitive microwave telescopes can detect Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. It comes from everywhere, but it has variation and structure. The current understanding is that this background energy is left over from the Big Bang. Studying the CMB radiation can give clues about the Big Bang.

Recent discoveries suggest that before the Big Bang, there was Something. There are a range of opinions about the nature of that Something. The Horizon programme presented the ideas of about ten different researchers. It was interesting to see how these scientific folk grapple with something that happened so long ago and so far away, when no-one lived to record what happened.

I did wonder if one of those people might turn out to be a theologian, someone who studies and thinks about God. But 'No'. After all Horizon is a science programme, not a religious broadcast!

But I wonder just where that blurry line runs, between science and religion, when talking and discussing such an intangible subjects as the Big Bang and the Creation of the Universe.

Perhaps if people considered the claims of religious folk throughout the world, both those living today, and those from former generations, they might enlarge their understanding of how we all came to be here and what we are here for.

Religious folk must also take seriously the work of our scientists. We have much to learn from them about this world that God has given us to look after. It's the only world we have just now. Scientists too are seeking to understand Life, the Universe, and Everything.