The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

May 1996

The first verse of the Bible states that God created the heavens and the earth. The second verse describes this earth that "was" in existence for an undisclosed period of time. It was in a primitive, unprepared state. Not until the third verse is the work of the first creative day commenced. Important to notice is that the work on the first creative day was not the creation of the earth itself, but God causing light to penetrate the "darkness on the face [surface] of the deep [the waters that already covered the unfinished earth]."

The work of the seven creative days did not begin until the third verse. Because the creation of the heavens and the earth was before the seven creative days, the first two verses are not within the time frame of the seven creative days. Thus the actual age of the "heaven [universe] and earth" are not indicated. Between the creation of the heaven and earth and the commencement of the seven creative days, the earth literally "lie waste" and was "empty" of life for an undesignated period of time. These two characteristics of the primitive earth waste and empty of life only anticipate the coming work to be accomplished on the seven creative days.

This global waste would have to be transformed into a habitable host planet capable of sustaining life. Then all the life forms up to and including humans would be created.

For the scriptural reasons already considered, the length of the seven creative days in no way indicates the age of the universe or even that of our planet earth. Theories about a "young earth" or one billions of years old are not relevant to the Genesis account of the seven days of creation.

Age of Universe and Planet Earth

Certain other scriptures, as a matter of fact, indicate the universe and the earth have existed for a long period of time. The Psalms compare the antiquity of the founding of the earth as a suitable metaphor for God's existing from eternity (Psalms 90:1,2). "Lord...before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God." If the forming of the earth is compared to God, from everlasting to everlasting, a very ancient earth is suggested. The earth, indeed, did exist long before its preparation for life began.

Proverbs (8:22-23) compares "wisdom" as existing for a long time and before the earth was created:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning or ever the earth was...

Whether "wisdom" is applied in these verses to the literal wisdom of God or to the Son of God as the personification of wisdom, the logic of these verses is that the wisdom of God has existed for an extremely long period of time. Why? Because the wisdom of God was in existence before the heavens and the earth were created. If the universe and the earth are only 6,000 or 7,000 years old, as some believe, the logic of these verses is meaningless. A comparison of just more than six millennia is not very long. A young universe and earth of only 6,000 years old is just as absurd as the many arbitrary speculations of phenomenal lengths of time.

Who Fine-tuned the Universe?

Many of the recent discoveries of the universe support Biblical creation. Ironically, some of these discoveries were by scientists pursuing their atheistic quests to prove evolutionary life on many of the other planets of the universe. The eminent cosmologist, Fred Hoyle, aggressively opposed theism and Christianity. But Hoyle discovered that an incredible fine-tuning of the nuclear ground state energies for helium, beryllium, carbon and oxygen was necessary for any kind of life to exist. If the ground state energies of these elements proportioned to each other were just 4 percent higher or lower, there would be insufficient oxygen or carbon for life on the planet earth.

This fine-tuning forced Hoyle to conclude a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology. Another scientist, Paul Davies, who once promoted atheism, wrote:

[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature's numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming.

Astronomer George Greenstern wrote in his book, The Symboiotic Universe:

As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency or, rather, Agency must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?

The theoretical physicist, Tony Rothman, concluded a popular level essay as follows:

The modern cosmologist who gazes at the same sky through the eyes of Einstein and sees the hand of God not in angels but in the constants of nature. . . .When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it.

In an article on the anthropic principle, cosmologist Bernard Carr wrote:

One would have to conclude either that the features of the universe invoked in support of the Anthropic Principle are only coincidences or that the universe was indeed tailor made for life. I will leave it to the theologians to ascertain the identity of the tailor!

Physicist Freeman Dyson, also dealing with the anthropic principle, concluded:

The problem here is to try to formulate some statement of the ultimate purpose of the universe. In other words, the problem is to read the mind of God.

MIT physicist and former president of the Association of Women in Science, Vera Kistiahowsky, commented: "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." Arno Penzias, who shared the Nobel prize for physics said:

Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan.

Cosmologist Edward Harrison evaluates the end conclusion of cosmology:

Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God—the design argument of Paley—updated and refurbished. The fine-tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one....Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument.

The winner of the Crafoord prize in astronomy, Allan Sandage, relates his recognition of God:

I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.

The agnostic astrophysicist, Robert Jastrow, narrates the ironic twist of his colleagues' research of the universe:

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.

The Fingerprints of God

Incredibly, scientists in their atheistic quest to find evidence of self-starting evolutionary life in the universe have found fingerprints all over the universe the fingerprints of God. Life on earth did not just happen by chance. Our habitable planet is here for man in a friendly universe because of design. Our planet is a livable place because God designed and fine-tuned the many laws which govern and set parameters for the universe.

For example, unless the number of electrons is equivalent to the number of protons to an accuracy of one part in 1037, or better, electromagnetics in the universe would have so overcome gravitational forces that galaxies, stars and planets could never have come into existence. One part in 1037 has been illustrated as follows:

Cover the entire North American continent with dimes stacked up to the moon (230,000 miles). Make a million other piles of dimes of equal size. Paint one dime red and hide it in the billion piles. The odds that a blindfolded person would pick the red dime are one in 1037. This is only one of the delicately balanced parameters that is necessary to allow life on the planet earth.

Since 1966 scientists have discovered over 40 fixed parameters—the fingerprints of God—where the universe must have values falling within narrowly defined ranges for life to exist on earth.

While paleontologists, geologists, botanists, biologists were stumbling around in the 130-year-old overly researched fields of fossils and genetic variation trying to refurbish old tired-out concepts with new phraseology to resell evolution as fact Darwinian cosmologists and astrophysicists were out to conquer new frontiers also. But when they scaled the universe for evidence of evolutionary life, the unexpected befell them. They ran headlong into the inexplicable miracles of a Creator. Often this encounter with God made them believers. If some scientists have failed to hear the united testimony of the fossils or have failed to hear the wonderful witness of molecular harmony, they should at least look up in the heavens to see the harmonious evidence of an amazing Creator. They should notice what their colleagues have discovered. They should not be the last to know that creationism has always triumphed over evolution.