Whose faith is more warranted? The faith of Christians who believe the Genesis account? Or the faith of philosophical materialism which insists that all that exists is matter, space, and time?
In his book, The God Who is There, D.A. Carson begins by considering a question that comes up very quickly in considering the beginnings of the Universe:
Whether or not you subscribe to the view that this big bang took place under the guidance of God, sooner or later you are forced to ask the question, “Where did that highly condensed material come from?”
This is where some theorists display great cleverness. Alan Guth has written a book called The Inflationary Universe. He proposes that this very condensed material that ultimately exploded in the big bang emerged out of nothing. And if you say that the physics doesn’t work, he says, “Yes, but at the big bang, there is what physicists call a ‘singularity.'” A singularity is an occurrence in which the normal laws of physics no longer operate. That means that we no longer have any access to them. At that point it’s the wildest speculation, which causes a critic named David Berlinski to write, “A lot of stuff that gets into print is simply nonsensical. Alan Guth’s derivation of something from nothing is simply incadescent [horse manure]. [Now he uses another word for “manure” but I spare you.] Don’t tell me you’re deriving something from nothing when it’s transparently obvious to any mathematician that this is incandescent nonsense.
See also Mike Wittmer’s recent, “Against Naturalism.”
Yup, that always leads to awkward silence, that moment when I say “and where did this material for the big bang come from?” . . . . .