Did God Create the Universe? Science vs. Scripture

With a Subtitle: Comparing leading scientific theories of cosmic origins with the biblical worldview.

A brief Excerpt: From the Big Bang to the multiverse, secular theories try to explain how the universe began. Only the biblical worldview explains why it exists and who brought it into being.

The Author is: Debra Hodges

Introduction

When it comes to understanding how the universe began, a person’s worldview plays a major role in how they believe it began to exist. If they have a Christian worldview, many believe the universe began at the Big Bang, which supports theism. If they have a secular worldview, they may present alternative theories of its beginning that fall into one of three categories: scientific materialism/naturalism (undirected processes), pantheism (an impersonal deity or force permeating all), or deism (an intelligent God who created the universe but doesn’t intervene in it). [1]

Background

The Christian worldview, supported by Scripture beginning in the book of Genesis, teaches that the universe was created by God “ex nihilo” (out of nothing) by His sovereign will and the power of His Word. Secular worldviews seek to explain the birth of the universe in naturalistic or mathematical frameworks. Let’s explore these scientific theories and see whether they explain the universe’s purpose and origin better than the view that an all-powerful, intelligent mind (God) created it for His purposes.

The Oscillating Universe Theory

Also known as the Cyclic Universe Model, the Oscillating Universe Theory was first proposed and mathematically developed by Alexander Friedmann while studying Albert Einstein’s equations of general relativity in the 1920s. His work showed that the universe could expand and contract rather than remain static. During the 1930s, physicist Richard Tolman expanded this theory, studying how thermodynamics would affect these repeated cosmic cycles of expansion and contraction.

However, in a 2026 web article from AllAboutCreation.org, they stated that the latest scientific data doesn’t support this theory, as it shows that the universe is expanding rather than contracting. They pointed out that the theory doesn’t account for the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that, due to entropy, energy continually decreases. This means that if you traced the cycles backward far enough, you would end up with a finite beginning of the universe rather than an endless series of past cycles. [2]

Contrasting this theory with what the Bible teaches about the fate of the universe, we see that the universe had a single beginning and will have a definite end:

Long ago, you laid the foundation of the earth and made the heavens with your hands. They will perish, but you remain forever; they will wear out like old clothing. You will change them like a garment and discard them (Psalm 102:25–26).

The Steady State Theory

The Steady State Theory is an alternative to the Big Bang theory on how the universe began. It was proposed in 1948 by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold and states that the universe is eternal and unchanging on a cosmic scale. The theory proposes that new matter is continuously generated to maintain a constant density as the universe expands. However, in 1964, radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson detected a persistent faint “hiss” coming from every direction in the sky. After ruling out possible natural causes for the phenomena, they realized they had discovered the long-predicted remnant radiation from the Big Bang, i.e., the cosmic microwave background radiation. This immediately disproved the steady state model, confirming that the universe did indeed have a beginning.

The Bible had already declared the truth about the beginning of the universe thousands of years earlier in the book of Genesis, proving that only God is eternal; the universe is definitely not.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

Before the mountains were born, before you gave birth to the earth and the world, from beginning to end, you are God (Psalm 90:2, NLT).

The Multiverse and Brane Cosmology

Parallel Universes and the Multiverse

There are different versions of the Multiverse Theory, which is the notion that our universe is just one of many universes. In 1957, Hugh Everett III invented the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics to explain how the finely-tuned values of the universe’s physical constants came to be without the need for a Creator. This interpretation holds that every time a quantum event occurs, it spawns a new parallel universe with different physical laws. [3]

The inflationary multiverse model is another interpretation of this theory invented by Alan Guth between 1979 and 1980 and expanded on by Paul Steinhardt and Alexander Vilenkin in the 1980s. They proposed the idea that eternal inflation in space constantly creates “bubble universes,” each with its own values of the constants of physics. [4]

In his book Return of the God Hypothesis, Stephen Meyer argues that some form of cosmic inflation may have occurred in an early phase of the universe, but the idea of eternal inflation is highly speculative and difficult to test directly. He also points out that this model doesn’t adequately explain how the laws of physics needed for a universe-generating mechanism began to exist in the first place. [5]

Brane Cosmology

Brane Cosmology is a cosmological theory developed in the 1990s and 2000s by physicists Joseph Polchinski, Lisa Randall, Raman Sundrum, Paul Steinhardt, and Neil Turok. Polchinski provided a framework for the theory through his work on D-branes (open-ended objects in string theory that must be attached to a D-brane (Dirichlet brane) and can carry energy and charge). [6] This theory proposes that our universe is a membrane floating in a higher-dimensional space (called the “bulk”). Some versions of this theory contend that the Big Bang occurred when two branes collided, releasing massive amounts of energy that created the hot, dense early universe.

The Bible teaches that the origin of the universe’s fine-tuning is the result of divine, intelligent design, not mere chance, and blind processes:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands (Psalm 19:1).

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth (Psalm 33:6).

These exotic models of how the universe began may explain certain physical phenomena, but they cannot account for the origin of existence itself.

Quantum Cosmology

The theory of quantum cosmology emerged from the quest to understand the early moments of the universe at or before the Big Bang. Scientists were seeking to discover how space and time originated and whether the universe could be described by a wave function as defined in quantum mechanics. In the 1960s, Bryce DeWitt and John Archibald Wheeler developed the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, which gave rise to this theory. This equation (H^Ψ=0) applied quantum mechanics to the entire universe to determine its quantum state. They thought that the universe might have arisen spontaneously from a quantum fluctuation in the vacuum. Some physicists, such as Stephen Hawking, have said that, because there is such a law as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing (from his book The Grand Design) to support the argument that “nothing” can produce “something” through the laws of quantum mechanics.

However, this “nothing” isn’t truly nothing. Scientists in this camp are actually referring to a quantum field governed by physical laws, but where did those laws come from? Quantum cosmology and other naturalistic theories can’t explain the origin of the laws that govern the universe. The fact that these laws have precisely calibrated values to make life possible on Earth infers an intelligent mind behind them. Scientists have faith that the laws of physics and their precise values arose from blind, unintelligent forces.

People who hold a Christian worldview have faith in a supreme Creator outside the universe who created it and established the laws of nature to bring order to the world.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17, NIV).

For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen (Romans 11:36).

String Theory

String theory is the theory that attempts to unify the four forces in nature (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces) in order to merge quantum mechanics with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. It started in 1968 when Gabriele Veneziano discovered a mathematical formula for its basis. The idea was then expanded by physicists Susskind, Nambu, and Nielsen, who noticed that the math described tiny, vibrating patterns of strings. They believed that these strings make up the fundamental building blocks of the universe (electrons, quarks, and photons) instead of particles. [8]

The fact that these strings are incredibly tiny, about the size of a Planck length, which is about 10 to the minus 35 power meters, means that no current instruments have detected them yet. Even if they are eventually found to support string theory, they only describe a mechanism for how the universe operates; they don’t explain the universe’s origin or why it exists.

The Big Bang Theory

Direct physical evidence supports the Big Bang Theory, which states that the universe began approximately 13.8 billion years ago from an extremely dense, hot singularity that exploded, then rapidly expanded and continues to expand today. This evidence includes the discovery of the phenomenon of “redshift” (light from distant galaxies in the red end of the spectrum shows the universe is expanding) by Edwin Hubble in the 1920s, the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, the abundance of hydrogen, helium, and lithium found throughout the universe, and observations of the large-scale structures of the universe, such as galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Since it’s been proven that the universe is expanding, if the process were reversed, it would imply that the universe had a beginning, which aligns with Biblical teaching that it is not eternal. Still, while the Big Bang theory describes how the universe expanded, it doesn’t explain why it began or who caused it to exist. Scripture reveals the clear answer to these questions: the universe began because God willed it into existence.

By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible (Hebrews 11:3, NIV).

Through Him all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made (John 1:3, NIV).

Conclusion

Those with a humanistic worldview usually support secular theories of the universe’s origin, which describe how it might have come to exist (through impersonal forces or chance) but cannot explain why it exists. The Christian worldview holds that a transcendent, personal, intelligent, eternal, first-cause God created the universe for a purpose: to glorify Him and to provide a home for those who bear His image (Isaiah 43:7, Psalm 19:1).

References

Greene, & Brian. (2026, May 8). String theory | Explanation & Definition. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/string-theory

Return of the God Hypothesis: How New Scientific Discoveries Support Theistic Belief — Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies. (n.d.). Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies https://jbtsonline.org/2025/08/return-of-the-god-hypothesis-how-new-scientific-discoveries-support-theistic-belief/

Bill. (2006, February 7). Oscillating Universe Theory. AllAboutCreation.org. https://www.allaboutcreation.org/oscillating-universe-theory-faq.htm

Vaidman, L. (2014, January 17). Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/qm-manyworlds/

Wikipedia contributors. (2025, November 27). Eternal inflation. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_inflation

Miller, B. (2024, October 15). Responding to Meyer without naming him. Science and Culture Today. https://scienceandculture.com/2021/10/critics-respond-to-stephen-meyers-new-book-without-mentioning-him-by-name

Polchinski, J. (1995). Dirichlet Branes and Ramond-Ramond charges. Physical Review Letters, 75(26), 4724–4727. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.75.4724

Wikipedia contributors. (2025, June 9). The Elegant Universe. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elegant_Universe