Day 1 Devotion – Do you Believe in God and if So what Evidence do you Have?

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

This verse is so famous and so short but contains a wealth of information. Many people don’t realize it but for centuries the truth of a beginning was rejected. Aristotle’s view of an eternal universe was accepted as the standard until the 1960s when scientific evidence proved otherwise. The philosophical line of thinking behind an eternal universe says that if the universe is eternal then it had no beginning; if there is no beginning then there is no need for a beginner or creator. Things started to change when Einstein published his theory of General Relativity in 1915. Einstein was troubled by his own calculations because they suggested that the universe should be expanding and he realized that as you trace this back in time that you will see the universe was smaller and smaller until you reach a point where the expansion had to begin. He knew this would upset the applecart and that he needed an astronomer to verify his theory. This came in 1929 when Edwin Hubble observed a “red shift” in the Andromeda Galaxy, which showed that universe is indeed expanding. In 1963 Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias of Bell Laboratories discovered what is called the “cosmic background radiation”. This is heat left over from the “Big Bang”. If the universe is eternal then there should not be any background radiation. Contrary to many misconceptions, the Big Bang Theory actually confirms that there was a beginning and also confirms a necessity for an explanation for the cause of that beginning. Fred Hoyle was an atheist and he is actually the one who called people that were accepting of the new evidence “Big Bangers”. Astronomer Arthur Eddington actually said the he found the idea “repugnant because we must allow infinite time for evolution to get started”. Believe it or not, the Big Bang Theory is actually our best evidence for the existence of God.