Recent polls show that as many as 96 percent of all Americans strongly believe in the existence of a God who is holy and perfect, and who created the world and rules it today. But is there really a God? You cannot prove that God exists, at least by normal scientific methods. If it is beyond our five senses to examine, then you cannot use science to either prove or disprove. But think about it, no one has ever seen love, yet we all know it is real. No one has ever smelled freedom, but it exists. The key is to look for evidence that would support whether or not it is reasonable to believe in the existence of God. Christians believe that such evidence exists in abundance.

For example, the leading hypothesis for the beginning of the universe is the “Big Bang” theory, which maintains that at one time all matter was packed into a dense mass at temperatures of many trillions of degrees. Then, roughly 4 billion years ago, there was a huge explosion. From that explosion, all of the matter that today forms our planets and stars was born. The great cosmological question is

“What caused the Big Bang?”

Even more important, where did the matter come from – you can’t have something come from nothing! Dr. Robert Jastrow, professor of Astronomy at both Columbia University and Dartmouth College, director of the Mount Wilson Institute and manager of the Mount Wilson Observatory, and for twenty years director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made the following comment in regard to the Big Bang:

“Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.”

But there is far more than “cause and effect” to consider, there is the great order and design of the world as well. Imagine you came upon a space shuttle sitting in the middle of the desert. You could reason that it came together by chance through a chaotic sandstorm. But your initial thought would likely be that someone made it and placed it there. Buildings imply an architect, paintings suggest a painter. There is design in the universe, so it is reasonable to assume that there is a Great Designer. The alternative is that infinite time plus chance, in the context of chaos, created incredible order and purpose. This would be akin to having the software for the latest windows application result – by chance – from an explosion in a computer warehouse. Physicist Stephen Hawking once told a reporter that

“The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the big bang are enormous…I think clearly there are religious implications.”

And so do Christians.

The debate is hardly academic. More consequence for thought and action flow from this one question than any other question you can raise.