God's Outrageous Universe
Faith and Science
Faith
Genesis 1.1In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth
John 1: 1-2In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning.
Job 38.4-6Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? …. Who marked off its dimensions?...Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set?
Ps 90.1-2Lord you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
Isa 42.5This is what the Lord says – he who created the heavens and stretched them out. Who spread out the earth and all that comes of it.
Isa 44.24This is what the Lord says- your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb: I am the Lord who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself,….
Isa 45: 12-18It is I who made the earth and created mankind upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens, I marshaled their starry hosts.
Ac 17:24The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of Heaven and Earth and does not live in temples built by hands. (See the purpose that follows)
Heb 11:3By faith we understand the Universe was formed at God’s command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
Rev 4:11You are worthy, our Lord God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and by your will they were created and have their being.
Science
In the beginning not only did all the stuff of the universe come into existence but space and time had a beginning as well. See the universeadventure web site for the standard comological model of the history of the universe.
The sun is one of about 100 billion stars making up our Milky Way Galaxy and there are about 100 billion galaxies in our universe. From our vantage point the horizon of our universe appears to be 13.7 billion light years in all directions.
All the everyday material stuff of our world can be shown to be made up of electrons, and up and down quarks and governed by four forces; gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear strong force and weak force. See particleadventure web site to understand the structure of matter.
It is possible to explain the origin of the elements through nuclear fusion in stars starting with hydrogen and eventually with the help of supernovae arrive at all the elements in the periodic table.
It is not possible to explain the rotation of stars in galaxies or in the clustering of galaxies without assuming there is 8 times as much dark matter as the matter we are made of and can see. We have no idea what is the dark matter only that it has gravitational attraction and does not emit, reflect or diffract light.
In the first three minutes all that came to be in the universe was stretched out into sphere of 6 billion light year radius from an infinitesimal point.
Accelerators built to smash protons together at very high energies always result in nearly equal numbers of new particles half of which is matter and half of which is anti-matter. The Anti-matter eventually finds its matter counterpart and the two annihilate each other. We do not know why there is now only matter left in the universe except that most matter must have annihilated with the antimatter formed at the start.