cosmic microwave background Archives

November 21, 2025November 20, 2025

Evidence for the Existence of a Creator in the Big Bang

Cosmology offers compelling evidence for the existence of a creator God. Many people in both religious and skeptical communities see the Big Bang theory as a threat to the credibility of the Genesis account and the existence of God. However, this is unfortunate because the Big Bang theory actually aligns with the Genesis account and presents a cause of creation that skeptics cannot explain.

Technology has confirmed the Big Bang. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides the oldest record of the universe’s temperature and density from the very beginning. The latest CMB data show that the universe began with a hot Big Bang. Data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe verify that time started at the Big Bang.

The words of Genesis 1:1 fully correspond to this data. The first word in the Bible is “reshith,” meaning an absolute starting point. The next word refers to God, followed by “bara,” a term used exclusively for acts only God can perform. Then, we see the word is “shamayim,” meaning “heaved-up things.” The rapid expansion of the universe aligns perfectly with this wording.

Further study of the biblical record reveals the ongoing battle between good and evil and God’s creation of humans through whom that battle occurs. (See Job 1 and 2.) Skeptics cannot explain why humans exist. The greatest failure of atheism is that it offers no reason for the existence of the cosmos or human life. When science and religion conflict, it often indicates either poor science, poor religion, or both. Historically, this has been the case with the Big Bang theory, but as science progresses and people deepen their understanding of what the Bible truly teaches, we see that both science and Scripture provide strong evidence for the existence of a Creator.

Reference: American Scientist, November/December 2025, pages 353 -359.

May 8, 2023May 7, 2023

Revolution in Astronomy Shows God’s Handiwork

Before the introduction of electric lights, the darkness of the night allowed people to observe the sky much more clearly. For thousands of years, people looked up at night and marveled at what they saw. Of course, they saw the Moon and stars, but they could also see other objects. Those included the “wandering stars,” which we know as planets, “shooting stars,” which we know as meteors, and occasional stars with tails, known as comets. But understanding the night sky was limited by the resolving power of human vision. Then something happened to create a revolution in astronomy.

The revolution began in 1609 when Galileo put some lenses together and made his first telescope. Still, it was limited to observing visible light. People assumed that the only light was what they could see with their eyes. After all, what other kind of light could there be? Then, in 1800, British astronomer William Herschel accidentally discovered infrared light. After that, scientists discovered ultraviolet, radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, and gamma rays in the following years.

Astronomers today use all of those forms of electromagnetic radiation or “light” to explore the universe. You might wonder why we can see only a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. There is a good reason for that. Electromagnetic radiation surrounds us. That includes natural radiation and all frequencies transmitted from radio, television, mobile phones, wi-fi, Bluetooth, and other sources. If we could see all of those electromagnetic frequencies, our vision would be more limited than what we experience in a dense fog.

In God’s wisdom, He limited our vision to the rainbow of colors we need to see the world. However, science has given us the ability to “see” the other frequencies of light, and that has opened up a new revolution in astronomy.

Radio waves were the first portion of the invisible spectrum astronomers used. In 1933, Karl Jansky, a young American radio engineer working for Bell Labs, was searching for the source of “hiss” that interfered with radio transmissions. He found that some of it came from sources outside our solar system. That led to using radio telescopes to explore the vast reaches of space through the new science of radio astronomy.

Microwaves are the next frequencies above radio waves, and astronomers first detected them using radio telescopes. When we hear the word “microwave,” we think of a way to cook our meals quickly, but in astronomy, microwaves help us learn about the early universe. In 1965, American astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working for Bell Labs, were trying to find the cause of noise picked up by a radiometer they were using. They thought it was a defect in the system, but they had accidentally discovered what scientists call cosmic background radiation. It’s energy left over from the cosmic creation event, or the “big bang.” The cosmic microwave background proved that the universe had a beginning, as the Bible clearly says in verse 1.

Sometimes “accidental” discoveries lead to our learning more about how God created and sustains the universe. The revolution in astronomy today involves all of the various portions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and we will continue to consider that tomorrow.

December 8, 2020December 7, 2020

What Is the Shape of Space?

A question that astronomers have been working on for years is, “What is the shape of space?” The latest technical tools have answered this question, and it has significant apologetic value for those of us who believe in God.

Let us try to understand the issue. There are three possible shapes to space. It can be elliptical, hyperbolic, or flat. A mathematician would express this in geometric terms using Euclid’s fifth postulate. You have probably forgotten the postulate, but it merely said that through a point, there could only be one line drawn parallel to a given line. The other choices would be that there could be no lines drawn parallel to a given line or that there could be any number of lines drawn parallel to a given line. The fifth postulate assumes that the universe is flat. This is true for all terrestrial purposes, so no one is throwing away the high school plane geometry textbooks.

So what is the shape of space? In an elliptical universe, all parallel lines would eventually meet. If you go far enough into outer space, you would eventually curve back to where you started. In other words, if you had perfect vision and a perfectly clear sky, you could see the back of your head by looking far enough out into space. Light would curve following the shape of space. We all know that a triangle has internal angles that add up to 180 degrees, but in an elliptical universe, the angles would add up to more than 180 degrees.

In a hyperbolic universe, space would be saddle-shaped. Light going out into space would curve because of the curvature of space. But the curve would never close. It would just keep on curving. The sum of the angles of a triangle would be less than 180 degrees, and parallel lines would never meet no matter how far they go. They just curve away from each other.

New instruments can measure cosmic microwave background radiation with such accuracy that scientists can determine the shape of space. That is because the microwaves follow the shape of space. What is the shape of space? It turns out that space is flat or planar. The implications of this discovery are enormous. Since the universe is expanding, the creation is clearly not oscillating. It will not collapse back on itself and start over again as it would in an elliptical universe. In a planar or flat universe, there are no repeats. Physical reincarnation can never happen.

This also tells us that space is a created thing and not eternal. The universe was created with shape and with laws that apply in a flat universe following Euclid’s fifth postulate. Our studies in quantum mechanics are beginning to give us some indication that dimensions outside of space-time are the source for space and time as well as matter-energy. Genesis 1:1 rings more true than we ever imagined. The closer we get to understanding the creation, the closer we get to understanding the methods of the Creator.

(For a further explanation of this, see Astronomy magazine for January 2021 pages 56-58).

November 22, 2019November 20, 2019

James Peebles Wins Nobel Prize in Physics

James Peebles Wins Nobel Prize in Physics Those of us who have an interest in creation have followed the work of Dr. James Peebles at Princeton University for some time. Since 1964, Peebles has been working to understand the scientific evidence of how the cosmos came into being. For his work, he has won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Dr. Peebles predicted cosmic microwave background radiation, which has been a major tool in understanding the beginning of the universe and in realizing that 95% of the matter/energy in the cosmos is unknown. The “big bang” model describing the universe fits well with understanding God’s role in the cosmos. Peebles has shown that the formation of space/time and matter/energy fits with all available observations, and he has discovered several new processes, such as the baryon model, to describe the physics of the early universe.

The Ostriker-Peebles criterion relating to the stability of galactic formation has helped us understand other galaxies besides our Milky Way. Observing the spin rates in those galaxies has led us to realize that the rapid speeds at which they move require a force that has not been identified to prevent them from flying apart. This realization is the starting point for speculating the existence of dark matter. There has to be a missing mass that is the glue of stable galaxies. Research continues to understand what dark matter is and how it works.

Dr. Frank Baxter once said, “the more we know about the creation, the closer we get to the creator.” The fact that James Peebles has been recognized for his work in cosmology is encouraging. Scientists now agree there was a beginning. The cause of that beginning and the properties of that cause are the next steps toward comprehending the creation of the cosmos.

Proverbs 8:22 finds wisdom saying, “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old.” Reading Dr. Peebles’ research is intimidating because God’s wisdom and His works in cosmology are so complex. The study of creation in cosmology has only become recognized as valid science in the last few years. James Peebles has been a major player in accomplishing that, and therefore he received the Nobel Prize in Physics. “In the beginning, God created” may sound simple, but what it describes is incredibly challenging to understand. Dr. Peebles has clearly shown that, but he has also opened the door for more study of how God did the creating.
— John N. Clayton © 2019

March 5, 2018December 20, 2021

Expanding Universe and What It Means

We live in an expanding universe. For thousands of years, from Aristotle to Einstein, scientists thought that the universe was eternal. Einstein’s equations proposed in his general theory of relativity in 1915 seemed to indicate that the universe was not stable. Einstein thought it was a mistake and tried to correct for the “error” by creating a variable called the “cosmological constant.” The only error was the cosmological constant, and Einstein later called it “the biggest blunder of my life.”

Later in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble found strong evidence that the universe was expanding. That evidence was further confirmed in 1964 when radio astronomers accidentally discovered the cosmic microwave background. It was finally confirmed by space-based experiments in the twenty-first century.

The rate of expansion of the universe based on experiments was established and is known as the Hubble constant. On February 22, 2018, a new survey of the expansion rate was released. This scientific paper was based on the most precise measurements of the universe’s expansion rate using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists are surprised to discover that the expansion rate is faster than they thought. This new information may require some re-evaluation of the scientific understanding of the universe.

This is not the first time a re-evaluation was needed. Evidence of an expanding universe indicates that it had a beginning. If you trace the expansion backward through time, you can see that at one point the entire universe would have been compacted into a single point. The evidence of the expansion shows that the universe had a beginning when that expansion began. Since the expansion is accelerating, that means that the universe will never contract back and start over. Therefore, the universe is not eternal. It had a beginning, and it will have an end.

The bottom line is this: What did Moses know that Einstein and scientists before him did not know? That the universe had a beginning. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
–Roland Earnst © 2018