Apologetics
Adam and Eve
by Robert McCarty
The story of Adam and Eve portrays them eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Subsequently, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Humans were innocent, like the other animals in the Garden, until we became aware of good and evil. We then became accountable for our actions. Anatomically modern Homo Sapiens appeared approximately 300,000 years ago1. Humans were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern2" until around 50,000 years ago.
It is possible that this is when the awareness of the concept of right and wrong developed.
The documentary television series “Cosmos: Possible Worlds,” (2020) states that “Charles Darwin debunked the story of Adam and Eve.” On the contrary. Genesis chapter three provides powerful evidence for the existence of God, simply because it is correct. Approximately 50,000 years ago, humans differentiated themselves from other animals, by demonstrating moral sentiments, a culturally universal human trait3.
The Big Bang
by Robert McCarty
Albert Einstein believed in a changeless, static Universe. Over the intervening 100 years however, the consensus of cosmologists has come to accept the Big Bang theory of the creation of the Universe. Here, the Universe begins expanding from a miniscule point, a singularity, with infinite density and temperature.
Via a phenomenon called inflation, it underwent a phenomenally rapid, faster-than-light, burst of expansion during its first split-second of existence (lasting from 10−36 seconds to 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang). The Universe was also cooling at an exponential rate during that time.
Spacetime is not a massive object, therefore the fabric of spacetime was able to expand faster than the speed of light. Thus, the observable Universe was about 500 lightyears across after one minute4.
Who or what, initiated the Big Bang? There are many possible explanations. Explanations involving parallel universes may have a flaw: What created these other universes? This explanation appears to leave us with the same question.
So, for now, let us look at just two popular explanations:
1. By random chance, a bubble formed on the membrane of nothingness. This initiated the Big Bang.
2. God created the Universe through the Big Bang.
Starting with explanation number one: The Big Bang happened by random chance or for no particular reason.
Okay, let’s say you are a fire investigator. You go to the site of a previous fire, and ask someone there, “How did this fire start?” The witness answers, “By random chance.” While that may be true in some ways, it still does not answer the question. A fire is usually started by lightning, carelessness, arson, or some other specific cause. Another witness answers, “Perhaps there’s no cause at all. Things can happen randomly, spontaneously, and for no particular reason.5” While the philosophical nature of this answer is impressive, the fire investigator sees it, like the first answer, as a nonspecific answer to a specific event.
Let’s move on to explanation number two: God initiated the Big Bang. Consider the analogy of the Universe as a bullet: Who fired this bullet? A ballistics expert, who did not witness the gun being fired, can take an expended bullet out of the ground, and tell you what kind of firearm it came from. The expert can even compare the bullet to a particular gun.
Some of the striations on this bullet (the universe) are the immense power that it took to launch the entire Universe into existence from a tiny speck at lightning speed and unthinkable temperatures. The marksman must be omnipotent. Another marking on this bullet is timelessness. Space and time are initialized by the Big Bang so whatever or whoever fired this gun must be outside of time and space, it must be eternal.
Romans 1:20 NIV
"For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."
We now see that God is a likely candidate as the initiator of the Big Bang. Additionally, the Big Bang provides us with evidence for the existence of God, without whom we would have no such candidate.
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