Q&A - Scripture and the Universe
August 8, 2021 Sunday Evening Study

One of the things that can be very difficult about arguing in favor of the Bible is the same issue that science often runs into - there are some things we simply can’t explain. For believers, that means we take what we know about God and about the world and we discern right through prayer and the guidance of the Holy SPirit. With science, usually when they cannot explain something with established methods - they will simply create new methods and new “facts” under the name of “discovery.”

The Bible is the history book of the universe - it tells us how the universe began and how it came to be how it is today. The Bible is not, however, a science textbook. Textbooks are based on the ideas of human beings who are fallible, which is why science textbooks are changing all the time. The Bible never changes because it never needs to, because it is the infallible Word of God. So as we investigate these questions, we are looking at the only infallible source of truth we have available to us.

What Does the Bible Say About the Universe? 

We are actually going to tackle several things tonight about astronomy, space, and life.

The Earth is Round: The Bible indicates clearly that the earth is round. One verse we can look at is Isaiah 40:22 where it mentions the “circle of the earth.” We know from human trips to space that the earth appears round from space, and from air travel that there is a pronounced curvature. In this science and the Bible match.

Another verse to look at comes from Job 26:10 where it teaches that God “inscribed” a circle on the surface of the waters at the boundary of light and darkness. That boundary is where morning and evening occur, and it is a circle because the earth is round.

The Earth Floats in Space: Job 26:7 states that God “hangs the earth on nothing.” Although written poetically, it suggests that the earth floats in emptiness, and indeed it does. However, believe it or not, other religions believe different things:

• Hindus believe the earth is supported on the backs of four elephants, which stand on the shell of a gigantic tortoise floating on the surface of the world’s waters. (wrap your head around that one.)
• Vedic priests taught that the earth is set on 12 solid pillars; its upper side the only habitable side
• The Altaic people of northern Siberia affirm that their mighty Ulgen created the earth on the waters and placed under it three great fish to support it
• The Tartars and other Eurasian tribes believe the earth to be supported on the back of a great bull.

Is the Universe Expanding? The Bible indicates several places that the universe has been “stretched out” or expanded. Isaiah 40:22 teaches that God stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to dwell in. This would suggest that the universe has actually increased in size since its creation. 

This can be hard to measure, because when you look at the night sky, it looks the same from night to night, year to year, and does not appear to be expanding. At one time scientists believed that the universe was eternal and unchanging. An expanding universe was nonsense to science, making many Christians attempt to explain away Isaiah 40:22 as an unnatural event - something done by God in a singular event or really just the allegory it sounds like. However, when science tells one thing and the Bible another, while it may be easier to think the Bible is wrong, we know the track record there.

Today, most astronomers will tell you that yes, the universe is expanding. They can observe clusters of galaxies that are moving away from all other clusters in a uniform way, indicating universal expansion. It’s like the points on this balloon. As the balloon expands, the points move away from each other uniformly. The Bible was right about this idea thousands of years before science accepted it.

How Old is the Universe? Scripture of course addresses this, and that right in the very beginning. Exodus 20:11 affirms that the entire universe was created in six days. We know from genealogies and other historical events that this creation happened approximately 6000 years ago.

Yes, this is different from what schools teach and scientists believe. Science believes the earth is billions of years old, and they hold to the Big Bang Theory of creation. The Big Bang is a pseudo-scientific attempt to explain creation without God. Those who believe in the Big Bang form all of their other views about the universe after that belief. However, we can look at facts about the universe regarding its age - facts consistent with 6000 years but do not make sense if we hold to the Big Bang.

• Recession of the moon - the moon is slowly moving away from the earth.As the moon orbits the earth, its gravity pulls on the oceans causing tides, which in turn cause the moon to spiral gradually outward. The moon moves an inch and a half away from the earth every year, and has been since creation. 6000 years ago, the moon would have been 800 feet closer to the earth, which is not overly significant and entirely possible. However, if the earth were actually 4 billion years old, there would be major problems, since it would only take 1.4 billion years for the earth and moon to have occupied the same space. Scientists get around this by suggesting that the moon’s rate of recession may have been lesser in the past, though there is nothing verifiable.
• Magnetic fields of the planets - Planets in the solar system have strong magnetic fields.These are caused by electric currents that decay with time - this is actually measurable - around the earth it gets weaker and weaker every year. If the planets were really billions of years old, the fields would be too weak to maintain orbits, moons, etc. This too matches with a 6000 year old universe.
• Spiral galaxies - Galaxies are enormous assemblies of stars, interstellar gas, and dust. Our galaxy is called the Milky Way and houses over 1 billion stars. Some galaxies are round or elliptical or have an irregular shape. Some, like ours, are spirals, and are beautiful. Spiral galaxies slowly rotate, which causes the inner regions of the galaxy to spin faster than others. After billions of years, spiral galaxies would collapse inward creating a singularity
• Comets - comets are balls of ice and dirt. Many of them orbit the sun in elliptical paths. They spend the vast majority of their time distant from the sun, but at times they come close, and they lose mass due to exposure. Comets have a life expectancy of approximately 100,000 years based on the rate of decay. If the universe is billions of years old, comets would have been extinct long since.

What about Aliens and Extraterrestrial Life?

What do you think? What has always been your prevailing assumption? 

This is a hot topic in our culture today.Apart from pop culture which generally assumes that life does exist on other planets, and even science uses projects SETI (search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) to try and discover the truth. Many Christians believe in life on other planets. But is this biblical?

As it happens, the belief in extraterrestrial life stems from the theory of evolution. In the evolutionary worldview, the earth is just another planet where the conditions just happened to be perfect for life to accidentally form and then evolve. If there are countless billions of other planets in the universe, then surely at least some of those worlds would also have the correct conditions, just by the law of averages. This makes extraterrestrial life almost inevitable if you follow the evolutionist worldview.

But the notion of alien life does not square well with scripture. The earth is unique. Isaiah 45:18 states that the earth was designed by God for life. Other planets have purpose different from that of the earth, and so they were designed differently. In Genesis 1 we read that God created plants on the earth on Day 3, birds to fly in the atmosphere and marine life to swim in the ocean on Day 5, and animals to inhabit the land on Day 6. Human beings were also created on Day 6 and given dominion over the animals - but where does the Bible discuss the creation of life on the “lights in the expanse of the heavens?” There is no such description because they were not designed to accommodate life. God gave care of the earth to man, but Psalm 115:16 says that the heavens are the Lord’s. Biblically, extraterrestrial life is not reasonable - this becomes even more problematic when we discuss intelligent alien life.

The Bible teaches that the first man, Adam, rebelled against God in Genesis 3. As a result, sin and death entered the world per Romans 5:12. Genesis 3:20 says that all people are descended from Adam and Eve and have inherited from them a sin nature per Romans 6:6. This creates a sin barrier between Man and God per Isaiah 59:2. But God provided a plan for human redemption because He loves us - the “very good” of His creation.

In Genesis 3:21 God sacrificed an innocent animal to cover the sin of Adam and Eve’s nakedness. This led to the sacrificial system of the OT as a means to atone for sin. Then CHrist sacrificed Himself - as a blood relative, also descended from Adam, shed to cover our sin completely. As He is also fully God and His life of infinite value, it can cover the sins of the multitude.

If we consider how the salvation plan might apply to extraterrestrial beings, we are then presented with some problems. If there are aliens out there - could they be saved? They are not blood relatives of Jesus, as they are not descended from Adam. We might imagine that a similar scenario played out on another World, where Christ visited and died, but this is anti biblical. 1 Peter 3:18, Hebrews 9:27-28, and Hebrews 10:10 make it clear that Christ died one time for all people - once for all.

We might then imagine that alien beings did not sin, therefore not needing redemption. Yet, we know that if they existed, they would still suffer the effects of sin. Adam’s sin affected all of creation - not just mankind. Romans 8:20-22 tells us that the entirety of creation suffers under the bondage of corruption.

Where is everybody? SO far, no one has discovered life on other planets or discovered anything originating from intelligent life outside of our own. This is certainly what a biblical creationist would expect, while secular astronomers continue to search despite only finding rocks and inanimate matter. The real world is the biblical world - a universe designed by God with the earth as the spiritual focal point, rather than a universe teeming with life.

In fact, when it comes to extraterrestrial life, science is diametrically opposed to this evolutionary mentality. We currently have xero evidence of any alien life. This is a big problem - with multiple billions of planets, the law of averages states that many many other planets would be capable of supporting life, and since many are purportedly billions of years older than our planet, reason dictates that they would have developed intelligent life by now - even by accident. According to evolutionary reason, there should be countless numbers of technologically superior civilizations in the universe - yet there is in fact zero evidence of this. This problem is known in scientific circles as the Fermi Paradox.

Why do you think there is so much hype about extraterrestrial life? What do you think about what we’ve discussed here?