Genesis 1:1

How can the universe have a “beginning” when modern science says energy is eternal?

PROBLEM: According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, “Energy can neither be created nor destroyed.” If this is so, then the universe must be eternal, since it is made of indestructible energy. However, the Bible indicates that the universe had a “beginning” and did not exist before God “created” it (Genesis 1:1). Is this not a contradiction between the Bible and science?

SOLUTION: There is a conflict of opinion here, but no real factual contradiction. The factual evidence indicates that the universe is not eternal, but that it did have a beginning just as the Bible says. Several observations are relevant here.

Second, another well-established scientific law is the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It states that “the amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing.” According to this Law, the universe is running down. Its energy is being transformed into unusable heat. If this is so, then the universe is not eternal, since it would have run out of usable energy a long time ago. Or, to put it another way, if the universe is unwinding, then it was wound up. If it had an infinite amount of energy it would never run down. Therefore, the universe had a beginning, just as Genesis 1:1 says it did.

Genesis 1:1 — How could the author of Genesis know what happened at creation before he was even created?

PROBLEM: Traditional Christian scholarship has maintained that the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. The first two Chapter s of the Book of Genesis read as an eyewitness account of the events of creation. However, how could Moses, or any man for that matter, write these Chapter s as if he were an eyewitness since he would not have existed at the time?

SOLUTION: Of course, there was an eyewitness of creation—God, the Creator. These Chapter s are obviously a record of creation which God specifically reported to Moses by way of special revelation. The tendency to ask questions like, “How did the chronicler know that minerals preceded plants and plants preceded animals?” betrays an antisupernatural bias and a refusal to consider alternative explanations other than those proposed by naturalistic science.