For centuries, we’ve been told that science and faith are bitter rivals, locked in a war over the truth of our existence. But what if that’s just not true? What if the single biggest scientific discovery of the 20th century—the very theory many believe killed the idea of God actually gives us some of the strongest evidence for the Bible’s oldest and boldest claim? The idea that our universe had a beginning. The story of the cosmos, as told by science, might sound a lot more familiar than you’ve been led to believe.
The Eternal Universe That Wasn’t
For most of human history, the origin of the universe wasn’t really a question for scientists. It was left to philosophers and theologians. The Bible, in its very first verse, makes a clear statement: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This presents a finite universe, one that was brought into being at a specific moment.
But for a long, long time, the scientific world had a totally different idea. The main scientific consensus, well into the 20th century, was something called the Steady State theory. This model suggested that the universe was eternal and unchanging. It had no beginning, and it would have no end. It just… was. For a lot of thinkers, this was a much more comfortable, and maybe even a more atheistic, point of view. An eternal universe doesn’t need a creator or a first cause. It neatly dodges that tricky question of “what came before,” because there simply was no “before.”
This scientific view was in direct opposition to the biblical account. The conflict seemed clear: either the Bible was right and the universe had a beginning, or science was right, and it had been here forever. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground. And for a while, it really looked like science was winning the argument. That is, until an astronomer started looking a little closer at the night sky.
A Startling Discovery on a Mountaintop
His name was Edwin Hubble. In the 1920s, from a mountaintop observatory in California, he made a series of observations that would completely change our understanding of the cosmos. Back then, most scientists believed our Milky Way galaxy was the entire universe. But Hubble, using the most powerful telescope of his day, found something incredible. He saw that distant, fuzzy patches in the sky, which they called “nebulae,” weren’t just clouds of gas. They were entire galaxies, just like our own, millions of light-years away. The universe was so much bigger than anyone had ever imagined.
But that wasn’t even the most shocking part. As he analyzed the light coming from these distant galaxies, he noticed something odd. The light was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, a phenomenon we now call “redshift.” Working with data from other astronomers, Hubble realized that this redshift was basically a cosmic Doppler effect. It meant that these galaxies weren’t just sitting still; they were flying away from us at unbelievable speeds.
And here’s the kicker: he discovered that the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away. The only way to explain this was that the very fabric of space itself was expanding. The universe wasn’t a static, unchanging thing; it was growing, kind of like a balloon being inflated. In 1929, Hubble published his work, and just like that, the idea of an eternal, unchanging universe was gone.
An Expanding Universe Needs a Beginning
The implications of Hubble’s discovery were mind-bending. If the universe is expanding, then that means in the past, it must have been smaller. And if you rewind the clock far enough, everything—all the matter, all the energy, even space itself—must have come from a single, impossibly dense and hot point.
At first, this idea was met with huge resistance from the scientific community. British astronomer Fred Hoyle even mockingly called it “the Big Bang” to make fun of the idea, because he thought it sounded way too much like a religious creation story. The concept of a beginning from nothing just didn’t sit right with many scientists who preferred an eternal cosmos. It sounded a little too much like Genesis.
But the evidence was just too strong to ignore. Over the next few decades, more and more discoveries confirmed the Big Bang model. Scientists found the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. This is a faint glow of radiation that fills the entire universe, no matter where you look. It’s the leftover heat, the ancient afterglow of that initial, fiery explosion, which has cooled over 13.8 billion years. It’s literally the oldest light we can see. Other evidence, like the amount of light elements like hydrogen and helium we see in the universe, also perfectly matched what the Big Bang model predicted.
Through years of careful observation, science had led itself to a conclusion it couldn’t avoid: our universe had a beginning. It burst into existence from a single point in a flash of light and energy. A truth that, funnily enough, had been sitting in the opening lines of the Bible for thousands of years.
“Let There Be Light”
So, let’s go back to the Bible. Genesis 1, verse 3: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” For millennia, people understood this in a purely spiritual way. But let’s look at it again, with our modern understanding of cosmology. The Big Bang theory says the universe began with a singularity, an event that created all space, time, and energy. In that first moment, the universe was an intensely hot, brilliant flash of light. Light wasn’t just part of the beginning; it was the beginning.
The Cosmic Microwave Background that we can still detect today is the remnant of that very first light. Before that moment, there was nothing that our laws of physics can describe. Then, in an instant, a universe-wide explosion of light and energy. Now, compare that to the simple, ancient words from Genesis: “Let there be light.” The parallel is pretty stunning. An ancient religious text, written by people who had no idea about physics or cosmology, described the beginning of the universe in a way that lines up remarkably well with our most advanced science.
Now, does this mean Genesis is a science textbook? Of course not. It’s a theological account of creation. But the basic idea that the entire universe sprang into existence in a single, brilliant event is the same. Science has given us a mechanism, the Big Bang, that echoes the very first creative act described in the Bible.
What About the “Days” of Creation?
Okay, but what about the six days? This is a common sticking point. Skeptics correctly point out that science shows the universe is billions of years old, not just a few 24-hour days. This is where it gets really interesting if you look at the original language. The Hebrew word for “day” used in Genesis is “yom.” While “yom” can definitely mean a literal 24-hour day, it’s used all over the Old Testament to mean other things, too: a specific point in time, or even a long, indefinite period—kind of like how we’d say “back in my grandfather’s day.”
In fact, the Bible itself uses “yom” to refer to the entire creation week as a single period. For centuries, many theologians and scholars have argued that the “days” of Genesis represent long eras or ages of God’s creative work, not literal days.
When you look at it that way, a fascinating sequence emerges. Genesis describes a progression: first light, then the formation of an atmosphere and water, then dry land, then plants, then the sun and moon becoming visible, followed by sea creatures, birds, and finally land animals and humanity. While it’s not a perfect, one-for-one scientific timeline, the broad strokes are surprisingly similar to the scientific story of a cooling Earth, the development of an atmosphere, and life emerging from the seas and eventually moving onto land.
Stretching Out the Heavens
There’s another clue, and it’s been hiding in plain sight in the Bible’s poetry for thousands of years. In several different books, written centuries apart, the Bible uses a very specific and strange phrase to describe God’s creation. Isaiah 40:22 says God “stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.” You can find almost the exact same phrase in places like the book of Job and in the Psalms.
For most of history, people read that as beautiful, symbolic poetry. But then, in 1929, that poetry suddenly became literal science. Edwin Hubble’s great discovery was that the heavens—the fabric of space itself—are literally being stretched out. The universe is expanding. An ancient writer used the exact phrase “stretches out the heavens” to describe creation, a concept that nobody would understand scientifically for another 2,500 years.
How could the authors of Isaiah or Job have possibly known to use that language? How could they have described a concept so central to modern cosmology? It’s one of the most specific scientific insights you can find in ancient scripture, a hint of knowledge that seems to go way beyond its time.
An Echo of an Ancient Truth
So, what’s the bottom line here? Is the Bible a science book? No, that was never its point. It’s a book about God’s relationship with people. But that doesn’t mean it’s a book that’s contradicted by science. In some pretty amazing ways, it’s supported by it.
Some people will argue these are all just coincidences, that we’re just forcing modern science onto ancient texts. And it’s true, if you demand a rigid, literal 24-hour day interpretation, you’ll find conflicts.
But the central point remains: For centuries, the biggest scientific roadblock to believing the biblical account of creation was the idea of a beginning. The consensus was an eternal, static universe. The Bible’s claim of a creation event was dismissed as an unscientific myth. Then, using its own methods of observation and evidence, science discovered that the universe did have a beginning. It started from a single point, it began in a flash of light, and it has been expanding ever since. The fundamental cosmic framework laid out in Genesis 1 was proven right in its most basic, profound claim.
The Big Bang didn’t kill God. If anything, it gives us a powerful scientific story for how a command like “Let there be light” could have actually happened. It points to a moment before which there was nothing, and a moment after which there was everything. It leaves us all staring at the ultimate question: what, or who, lit the fuse for the Big Bang? By its very nature, science might never be able to answer that, because it can only study what happened after the beginning.
The so-called war between science and faith is often overblown. When you look closely, you don’t find a war, but a fascinating conversation. You find that ancient truths from scripture can echo in the data from our most powerful telescopes. The universe had a beginning. That was an idea first given to us by faith, and now, it’s a conclusion given to us by science.
What do you think? Does the connection between the Big Bang and Genesis point to a Creator, or is it all just an incredible coincidence? Let us know what you think in the comments below. And if you enjoyed this look at science and faith, make sure to subscribe and click that notification bell so you don’t miss our next video. Thanks for watching.
