I got into apologetics as a graduate student twenty years ago, shortly after I’d turned my life over to Jesus Christ. Before that, pursuing a career in science was my entire raison d’être. But an encounter with a student one evening changed all that. After an astronomy tutorial session, a student approached me and sheepishly asked if it was okay to believe in God and science at the same time. I told her yes, of course, and that I was living proof. Visibly relieved, she described how one of her professors told her she couldn’t have both and had to choose. I felt a sudden surge of anger. I couldn’t believe a professor would use his position of authority to try to strip a young, vulnerable person of her faith. In that moment, I launched into a mission to save other Christians from attacks on their beliefs.

I’ve spent the last two decades helping Christians hold onto their beliefs in spite of “scientific” challenges purporting to “destroy” faith. I’ve written hundreds of articles and given countless talks on how to respond to these challenges, which are usually in the form of not-particularly-good science-flavored arguments against core beliefs of Christianity (especially the existence of God) or just denying the evidence.

Most believers—myself included—are used to being on the defensive. We spend our energy building and defending arguments for God. If you’re reading this, you’ve likely felt the pressure to explain or justify your belief in light of this or that objection many times. Scripture tells us to be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15), and that’s important. But after years of operating this way, I began to notice something odd: the other side is rarely called upon to defend their beliefs. A few years ago, while preparing for a speaking event, I started wondering what would happen if Christians flipped the script and required challengers to examine and defend their own worldviews. I’ve since become convinced that a robust approach includes both giving reasons to believe and inviting others to articulate their own worldview and test whether they live consistently with it.

When I press atheists on this point they usually insist there is no atheist worldview. I hear the claim so consistently that it must be coming from a common source. But it’s not true. Everyone has a worldview. It’s simply a comprehensive idea of the world—a broad personal perspective on life and the universe that includes philosophy, attitudes, values, morality, and ethics. Whether or not someone has ever examined it, that perspective shapes how they interpret evidence, experience, and claims about reality.

Worldviews are never neutral. In the United States, even most atheist outlooks are still colored by the Christian values that permeate the culture, whether they’re aware of it or not. At the same time, an atheistic worldview rests heavily on the non-existence of God. If no God created the universe, if humans are not made in His image, if there is no divine source of morality, if there is no salvation and no life beyond death—how could that fail to shape a person’s entire picture of reality? Yes, there is an atheist worldview. It may come in variations, but the difference between a God-centered view and one built on God’s absence is real and consequential.

My story

My own journey to Christianity began with examining the atheistic worldview I had inherited. I was raised atheist in secular Canada by lapsed Catholic parents. For the first twenty-six years of my life I simply assumed certain things that were important to me: the existence of individual rights, the sanctity of human life, and the importance of rule of law. When I finally tried to trace those beliefs back to their foundation, I experienced a crisis. I couldn’t reason my way from the most foundational thing I could think of—fundamental forces and particles in the first moments after the Big Bang—all the way to the present-day conviction that every human life has intrinsic value. There was no rational, natural progression from one to the other—it was as though some unexplained leap occurred somewhere in the middle, and suddenly human life, cobbled together from quarks and electrons and the forces of nature, possessed intrinsic value.

When I turned to atheist intellectuals for answers, I was sorely disappointed. Their arguments offered little to no help. They usually asserted that rights just exist, or make some utilitarian argument, or effectively stated that harming someone unprovoked is always wrong just “because.” I was shocked by how meager the philosophical underpinnings of my values were. Here is a recent example of this lack of reasoning toward objective morality.

Two years later, while working for the first time in astrophysics research, I spontaneously became a theist. I suddenly realized God’s existence solved two major problems at once: why the universe appears so exquisitely designed and where objective morality comes from. As I later moved toward becoming Christian I discovered that the biblical worldview was comprehensive and coherent. It answered the problems that had troubled me most—particularly the source of human dignity.

The defensive habit

For years I, like many believers, focused almost exclusively on defending the faith. Cosmological arguments, the fine-tuning of the universe’s parameters, the teleological and ontological arguments, the historical case for the Resurrection, the reality of morality and justice, near-death experiences, personal testimonies, the cumulative weight of evidence—these became familiar territory. The best that critics could muster were maybes—maybe a multiverse explains fine-tuning, maybe the appearance of design is all in our heads, maybe morality is a human construct. It all hangs on mere possibilities, no matter how remote, of alternate explanations. The Kalam cosmological argument is one of my favorite examples of this. It goes like this: Premise 1: Whatever begins to exist has a cause; Premise 2: The universe began to exist; Premise 3: Therefore the universe has a cause. Combined with the argument for a personal cause, it becomes a powerful defense of the existence of God. The logic of the argument is airtight, so critics resort to attacking the first two premises. But here’s the kicker. Few people live as if those premises are false. Ask someone who disputes the first premise to prove where his lunch came from and the special pleading begins almost immediately. “I made my lunch! People make lunches all the time!” But how do I know that for sure? I didn’t see you make it, and if entire universes can pop into existence uncaused, then why can’t sandwiches also?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t defend our faith—1 Peter 3:15 makes it part of our mandate, and these arguments are both individually and collectively powerful. But the imbalance is striking. Have you ever noticed how believers are expected to justify every claim while non-believers often remain unchallenged on their foundational assumptions? It’s time to change that.

Flipping the script

The remedy is straightforward: Require challengers to examine and defend their own worldview. Why? Because it puts skin in the game. It costs a challenger nothing to press you endlessly about your beliefs while offering nothing about their beliefs. Next time, tell your challenger you agree to answer his questions, but only if he’ll answer yours. It also forces clarity. Turning the tables quickly reveals whether a worldview holds together or collapses under scrutiny.

I usually begin with simple questions. What is the basis of your worldview? Where did it come from? What assumptions does it rest on? Does it explain the things that need explaining? Does it hold together without any contradictions? If you do this, you’ll discover that most people have never been asked these questions in a serious way.

What I typically receive from naturalistic challengers is a clumsy patchwork of cultural inheritance (much of it still Christian), educational and media influences, and personal preferences. It’s rarely intentional and even less often coherent. And when pressed, it struggles to account for the very realities its adherents care most about.

Here’s a concrete example. Without some kind of cosmic Law-giver, there’s no good reason to assume evolution would wire human brains to perceive reality accurately. Natural selection favors traits that promote survival and reproduction, not necessarily traits that track the truth. A striking illustration of this problem is the fact that the vast majority of human beings across history and cultures have believed in God or some higher power—despite the common atheist claim that no evidence for such a being exists. We also have evidence that strong belief in God or a higher power is linked to higher reproductive rates. So if nature routinely selects for belief in things that (according to the naturalist) do not exist, and if that belief is itself tied to reproductive success, then on what basis can we trust our senses, our perceptions, or our capacity to reason about anything at all?

A mere Christian alternative

By contrast, a mere Christian worldview centers on a transcendent, eternal, all-powerful, and loving God who created a lawful universe, intentional life, and human beings made in His image, who confronted the catastrophe of the Fall and provided redemption through Jesus Christ. This framework is not an abstract philosophy, but a view concretely tied to the real world. It explains why the universe is finely tuned for life and why it’s intelligible to rational minds—because a rational Mind spoke it into existence and supports it every moment. It accounts for consciousness and the deep human longing for meaning— because we are more than mere matter. It grounds morality and justice—because every person bears the image of a just and personal God who wrote His moral law on our hearts. It addresses the problem of evil without denying its reality, and it offers genuine comfort and motivation for living differently than the world. It’s coherent—no part of the Christian worldview seriously contradicts any other part—and it has historically produced lives of remarkable transformation.

The challenge itself

If a challenger agrees to examine and defend his own worldview, I invite him to lay out his core beliefs, the assumptions underneath them, and the grounds for those assumptions. Then I ask how his view organically and coherently explains the full spectrum of reality: a universe with a beginning in time, the fine-tuning of the cosmos, the presence of design and order, existence itself, life, consciousness, rationality, near-death and out-of-body experiences, morality and justice, and the person and claims of Jesus Christ. A hodgepodge of partial or ad-hoc answers is not enough. A serious worldview must cohesively speak to all of it.

I also ask two further questions: Does this view offer any real comfort or consolation to the average person? And how does it motivate most people to live better?

I want to clarify something here. This should not be an exercise in “gotcha” or an attempt to trap or humiliate someone. Rather, it’s an opportunity to encourage someone to fully think through their view of existence. In practice the exchange might sound like this: “Here’s what my worldview explains (list everything). Help me understand how your worldview accounts for all of these things. I’m not trying to pin you down—I genuinely want to see how the pieces fit together.” Tone is important. If the questions are rooted in loving curiosity, it can open doors that a hostile approach would otherwise close.

What a coherent worldview can produce

History gives us vivid illustrations of the power of the Christian worldview to transform people. John Newton, a former slave trader, rediscovered the Christian faith he’d been raised with, became a pastor, and wrote the iconic hymn, “Amazing Grace,” as a direct description of his own journey from wretchedness to redemption. William Wilberforce grew up wealthy and idle, entered politics, and underwent a profound spiritual transformation. He devoted the rest of his life to abolishing the slave trade and advancing a host of humanitarian causes. Neither man was improved by the notion that the universe is a cosmic accident. They were changed by belief in a living God who is the source of human dignity, justice, and purpose.

The hidden cost of naturalistic alternatives

Naturalists sometimes reach for the multiverse to explain the origin of the universe, its apparent design, and fine-tuning while removing any need for God. As an astrophysicist I understand its theoretical appeal. Yet the multiverse remains, at present, unobservable and unfalsifiable, with far less evidence for it than for God. More importantly, whatever someone might gain by accepting the multiverse, the philosophical price it exacts is very steep. To embrace it consistently requires giving up human uniqueness, genuine choice, the reality of love, objective justice, morality, meaning, and even the reliability of reason and the senses. Even science goes out the window, because if there are ultimately no causes, the foundation of science itself is gone.

Some versions of the multiverse remove choice and replace it with alternate realities in which each possibility is realized. But no real choice means no meaningful justice. On what basis could you punish someone for an action the multiverse chose for them? Yet I have never met any proponent of the multiverse who actually lives as if any of its consequences are true. They continue to hold people accountable, to grieve losses, to love the people in their lives as irreplaceable, and to rage against gross injustices. The multiverse may appear to explain away God, but it does so by emptying the world of the very realities that make life worth living.

Encouraging someone to confront these realities and contradictions can be one of the most loving things you do for them. Some won’t care. But others—like me, when I first began questioning the beliefs I had been raised with—may be startled into reconsidering their worldview.

An invitation

It’s fine for skeptics to try to poke holes in the claims of Christianity, but that’s not enough. Every worldview must finally account for the full scope of reality without special pleading or partial answers. The first step is to examine our own worldview with the same rigor we expect from others. Then, with love, patience, and genuine curiosity, invite others to do the same. I have found that when people are asked to put skin in the game, the conversation changes. Sometimes, by God’s grace, so do the people in it.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my content free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

Myth #1: Science has disproved God

No, it hasn’t. Not even close. But this myth persists for two reasons:

1. Its proponents are dazzled by the power of science.

   Whenever I think about the power of science, I’m reminded of the time Star Wars director George Lucas said, “The biggest trap people fall into … they go too far.”1 He was talking about big, grand spectacle type movies, but it’s a general principle: people have a tendency to go too far with anything powerful, including science. Yes, science is powerful in describing all kinds of natural things, from the progression of the universe since the big bang to the weird behavior of quantum systems. But it can only describe what happens in the universe after it’s created. As much as scientists would love to extend the scientific method to cover everything, from how to get girls to like you to what lies beyond the universe, it’s just not possible. Whatever caused the universe is beyond the universe—untouchable by science. So, no. Science has not disproved God.

2. Some of them really, really want to avoid the mess of dealing with something beyond the universe.

   Most physicists would prefer a tidy, self-contained universe that is its own explanation, all wrapped up with a neat theory of everything.2 Dealing with a universe with a beginning, with a cause that lies beyond the reach of science, is like having an itch in that part of your back you can never quite reach. Even worse, a universe with a beginning leaves the door wide open to God—and some atheists would prefer that door never existed. But since it does, desperation at times leads extremely smart people to say monumentally silly things, like when Stephen Hawking declared in his book, The Grand Design, that “because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.”

That’s like saying, because there are laws like Newton’s, jet engines can and will create themselves from nothing. Stephen, buddy, you should’ve thought that one through.

As mathematician John Lennox put it:

…Hawking’s claim is misguided. He asks us to choose between God and the laws of physics, as if they were necessarily in mutual conflict.

But contrary to what Hawking claims, physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.

What Hawking appears to have done is to confuse law with agency. His call on us to choose between God and physics is a bit like someone demanding that we choose between aeronautical engineer Sir Frank Whittle and the laws of physics to explain the jet engine.

Myth #2: The Church persecuted scientists

Whenever I talk to atheists on social media about how Christianity is not actually hostile to science, they usually bring up the same three people as a counterargument: Galileo, Bruno, and Hypatia. But do these cases really show that Christianity has historically feared and hated scientists? Let’s take them one by one, starting with the easiest.

Giordano Bruno (1548 - 1600 AD)

An atheist friend of mime in grad school named his son after Giordano Bruno. This 16th-century Italian Dominican friar and philosopher is famous in atheist circles for having been centuries ahead of his time, proposing an infinite universe, stars as distant suns, and extra-solar planets with living beings on them. As the story goes, he stood tall even as the Church tried to force him to recant these scientific ideas, ultimately being burned at the stake in the name of science. If that were really how it went, then naming your child after such a person might carry real meaning. But this version of history leaves out important details.

The truth is, in Christian terms, Bruno was a categorical weirdo. He took vows to become an ordained priest, a position that carried the responsibility of teaching official Church doctrine. It’s not that the Church was overly rigid and hostile to new ideas—it had incorporated much of Aristotelian philosophy when it was rediscovered in the medieval era and largely let Copernicus’ book slide—but it wouldn’t tolerate the promotion of blasphemous or heretical ideas. And Bruno promoted some really blasphemous and heretical ideas. Just how bad were they? For starters, he denied the divinity of Christ—one of the fundamental pillars of Christianity. He also denied Mary’s virginity, taught a pantheistic view that God is identical with the universe and that souls transmigrate after death (entering another human, an animal, or a body on a different world), and that Satan would be saved.

The irony for those who hold him as some sort of scientific saint martyred for the cause? He also believed in magic, in a form that’s very similar to the Force in Star Wars, but includes spirits. His scientific views overlapped with these heresies, but they were not the primary reason he was tried and killed.

Hypatia (c. 355 - 415 AD)

The truth about Hypatia is uncomfortable, but not for the reasons atheists think. She was a well-known mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who lived in Alexandria, Egypt in the 4th–5th centuries AD. In the year 415 she was dragged into a church and brutally killed by a mob of Christians. Contemporary atheists hold that it was for the twin crimes of being a female scientist and having science-based heretical views. But the truth is more mundane, if still unsettling.

The broader context is that Alexandria was notoriously violent and factional at the time. Cyril, the ambitious Christian patriarch of Alexandria, was aggressively trying to expand the Church’s power against both the imperial civil authorities and the pagan institutions that still remained. According to the Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus, Hypatia was a close adviser to the Roman prefect Orestes, who was locked in a feud with Cyril. Rumors spread that Hypatia was preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril, and, well… cue the murderous mob.

Socrates framed this purely in terms of political jealousy, not anything to do with science. It’s worth noting he thought this episode brought great disgrace on Cyril and the Alexandrian church.

Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642 AD)

We all know about Galileo Galilei. He was the early-17th-century Italian scientist who was brought before the Inquisition and found “vehemently suspect of heresy” for holding and teaching that the Earth goes around the Sun. But is this case as simple as Christianity vs. science?

Consider these words by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a central figure in the 1616 proceedings:

While experience tells us plainly that the earth is standing still, if there were a real proof that the sun is in the center of the universe … and that the sun does not go round the earth but the earth round the sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and rather admit that we did not understand them than declare an opinion to be false which is proved to be true. But this is not a thing to be done in haste, and as for myself, I shall not believe that there are such proofs until they are shown to me.

Bellarmine’s approach is a model of sensible procedure. He assumed there’s no inherent conflict between science and Scripture, because God authored both. He believed any apparent conflict showing we might be wrong about how we’ve interpreted Scripture should be approached carefully, and only with conclusive scientific proof in hand. If you strip away the religious element and frame Bellarmine’s comment in terms of modern strongly-held beliefs (maybe climate change for some, the binary nature of sex and gender for others) most people would say careful consideration of scientific proof is the only way they’d change their minds.

Unfortunately, Galileo did not provide conclusive scientific proof for his view that the Earth goes around the Sun, but a case the Church rightfully at the time saw as flawed and not sufficient for changing centuries of Church doctrine. (Bellarmine died in 1621; the final trial was in 1633.) If Galileo had provided the evidence we have now, it’s likely Bellarmine would’ve been convinced.

The Church wasn’t telling Galileo that he couldn’t teach heliocentrism, but rather that he couldn’t teach it as fact. Discussing it as a hypothesis was still allowed. If he hadn’t been so stubborn about presenting it as established truth, he could’ve continued and almost certainly avoided the worst of the prosecution.

History treats the Church unfairly about Galileo, because hindsight is 20/20. We have the proof now, and we don’t have any problem reconciling Scripture with the Sun at the center of the Solar System. But it wasn’t so in Galileo’s time. There are lessons to be learned from this legendary dust-up between Galileo and the Church, but “Christianity hates science” isn’t one of them.

Conclusion

These kinds of myths make for pithy, science-flavored talking-points against Christianity, but they’re mostly lies spawned from kernels of truth. In general, it’s not a good idea to take what an opponent of your faith says at face value. All you have to do to counter stuff like this is investigate the truth. I have yet to find a single case where a myth like these has held up to scrutiny. Sometimes it’s nuanced, sometimes it’s not. But rest assured, science and Christianity are not at odds.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my content free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

Are we there yet, in terms of the origin of the universe? We’re about as close as we can get. God invites us to explore his universe, but there’s a limit—some things, by their nature, impose a hard boundary to human knowledge.

The process of scientific discovery is often a long and winding one. It took about two thousand years, and a lot of drama, to get to where we are now in cosmology, the study of the overall structure and history of the universe. The story begins with Aristotle (384 - 322 BC), who proposed an eternal cosmos. This view, which was formalized by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (c. 100 - c. 170 AD), persisted for about two thousand years and became the default assumption of physicists, especially by the early 20th century. It also became a cornerstone of atheist thinking—the universe is eternal and therefore needs no God to create it.

Aristotle’s case for an eternal universe rests on three main points:

• The inseparability of motion and time—if there was a first motion, then there would have to be a “before” that is itself outside of time, an impossibility in Aristotle’s view.

• Everything that comes to exist is made from pre-existing matter. Nothing comes from nothing, so matter must always have existed; therefore the cosmos is eternal.

• The heavens appeared to move in perfect circular motion, the only motion that can continue forever. Because this motion is eternal, the cosmos in which it continues must be eternal.

Aristotle held that whatever is eternal is therefore necessary, not contingent. The cosmos is necessary—it must exist.

Aristotle’s thinking became highly influential. In the 12th and 13th centuries the Church rediscovered Aristotle’s works and became so enamored of them that some medieval thinkers, like Thomas Aquinas, wrestled with how to incorporate Aristotle’s eternal universe into Christian theology. By the 19th and early 20th centuries, the default assumption was that the universe was eternal and uncreated. This became synonymous with “God is not necessary,” and was a real problem for anyone who had a foot in both camps—scientific and theological. The opening chapter of the Bible makes it clear that God created the universe—it’s temporal, not eternal. The universe is contingent, not necessary. How do you reconcile this with the Aristotelian idea of an eternal cosmos? As the Church realized, it ain’t easy.

Aristotle’s reach extended all the way to the 20th century, beginning with Albert Einstein. Though Einstein is known as a towering figure in modern physics, he was essentially a 19th-century scientist, raised and educated in the philosophy and science of the previous century. He was a staunch believer in an eternal universe. And it was poor Einstein who became an emblem for the battle between an eternal and a finite universe.

Most physicists and philosophers at the turn of the 20th century preferred the eternal-universe model. It’s philosophically tidy—the universe is self-contained and self-explanatory—and it seemed to make God irrelevant. Surveys from the early 1900s already showed that a substantial minority of scientists—around 40 percent or more among the more eminent—leaned toward disbelief or doubt, far higher than the general public. Many rested comfortably in the belief that God was unnecessary, at least as far as the existence of the universe was concerned. Meanwhile, Protestants and Catholics mostly stuck to their guns and held that the universe was created ex nihilo. Atheist me, if I had been around at that time, would’ve been fine with that, probably even exultant. Christian me would’ve found it very distressing. But things were about to change.

Shortly after Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, a mathematician and Jesuit priest named Georges Lemaître solved the theory’s complex set of differential equations and discovered that Einstein’s theory had a mind of its own—it predicted the universe was not static, but expanding with time. This was a profound shock, especially to Einstein, who initially resisted it, telling Lemaître his calculations were correct but his physics was abominable. He even went so far as to arbitrarily wedge a correction factor into his equations to exactly cancel out any overall motion of the universe. It was only after Edwin Hubble, along with his assistant Milton Humason, published their observations showing nearly all galaxies in the universe rushing away from each other—strongly suggesting the universe is expanding—that Einstein grudgingly gave in.

Ironically, it was this overall motion of the universe that led to the idea that the universe was not eternal but finite in time. Unlike Aristotle, whose belief in the intimate tie between motion and time led him to reason that the cosmos was eternal, the expansion of the universe hinted strongly of a universe with a beginning. If you think of the universe as a movie you can fast-forward and rewind, then rewinding the motion of nearly all galaxies rushing away from each other leads to a moment where everything meets at one point—the singularity, the beginning.

Aristotle’s millennia-old cosmology was cracking. The new science of cosmology was born, not peacefully, but straight into turmoil. Physicists got to work exploring the implications of this new paradigm of a universe with a beginning. Most notably, in the late 1940s George Gamow and colleagues predicted that a universe with a beginning would be born incredibly dense and hot and would therefore still have a lingering heat signature—an echo—of the creation event. After billions of years of expansion (implied by reverse-engineering the motions of galaxies), this cosmic background radiation was predicted to have cooled to roughly 5 K, just a few degrees above absolute zero. At the time, no one had a practical way to test it.

Still, atheist physicists were starting to sweat. Not only was their tidy universe hinting at serious loose ends, but God was nosing his way back into the picture. In the 1950s, physicists devised the Steady-State Model of the universe. Proposed by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi, and Thomas Gold, it was an alternative to what Hoyle flippantly called the “Big Bang” model (yes, an opponent of the theory named it and the name stuck). The steady-state model proposed an eternal universe, without beginning or end. The problem was how to contend with the very strong evidence for expansion. How do you have a dynamic universe that’s unchanging? Their solution: new matter is continuously created to keep the overall appearance and properties of the universe constant forever. Where does this new matter come from? No one knows. Hoyle invoked something he called the C-field (for creation field) to give a science-y sounding name to what was effectively magic. It could’ve been called the F-field for fantasy or faith field. Their predicted rate of hydrogen-particle creation was too small to even be tested. You know what’s cosmically ironic about all this? They never got around the problem of the loose end of where the universe comes from. All they did was create the same problem in a different form.

The writing was on the wall for the steady-state model. In 1961, during a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society in London, astronomer Martin Ryle unveiled new observations in radio astronomy showing the universe was unambiguously evolving with time—something the steady-state model couldn’t cope with. This news was so startling that London’s evening newspapers ran headlines like “Telescope shows ‘Genesis was right.’” It turned out that Ryle’s work had serious source-confusion errors. But people at the time understood the implications—if steady-state was out, God was in.

Later, higher-quality observations confirmed this cosmic evolution. But the big hammer would finally come down in the mid-1960s.

Two physicists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working for Bell Labs in New Jersey, were calibrating a sensitive horn antenna originally built for satellite communications experiments. While they were at it, they noticed a persistent signal with no apparent source. After ruling out everything they could think of, including scraping off droppings from nesting birds inside the antenna, they had a startling realization. They remembered the prediction by Gamow and his colleagues and realized they had inadvertently discovered the predicted cosmic background radiation (also called the cosmic microwave background or CMB). The temperature associated was about 3–4 K, very close to the predicted number. With no way to explain this, the steady-state model was effectively dead. Rising from the ashes of the eternal universe in phoenix-like fashion was Big Bang cosmology.

Not every scientist was happy about this. John Maddox, editor of the prestigious journal Nature, said in a 1989 op-ed not-so-subtlely titled “Down with the Big Bang” that the theory was “philosophically unacceptable” and “an over-simple view of how the Universe began.” He hated the Big Bang because it was philosophically messy—the cause, which was beyond the universe, had the nerve to be forever beyond the reach of science. Even worse, it supported the biblical creation narrative. He predicted it was “unlikely to survive the decade ahead,” but he was wrong about that.

Not only did the Big Bang survive the decade, it thrived as the dominant paradigm of physics. In 1989, the same year Maddox published his opinion, NASA launched the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite to study the cosmic microwave background. COBE delivered the one-two punch that killed the steady-state model even deader: it showed the CMB is a near-perfect blackbody, meaning it is entirely thermal in nature—the distant echo of some giant heat event. Steady-state has no explanation for that, but Big Bang theory predicted it. COBE also first detected anisotropies, or microscopic fluctuations, in the CMB, which the Big Bang model explained as the seeds of the gigantic structures that would eventually fill the observable universe.

In 1998 another astonishing announcement was made: not only was the universe expanding, it was expanding hard. The universe appeared to be accelerating in its expansion. The light from distant Type Ia supernovae (exploding white-dwarf stars that serve as reliable “standard candles” for cosmic distances) revealed that their host galaxies were too far away for a universe whose expansion was slowing due to gravity. The only way to account for the data was to propose that the universe was speeding up in its expansion. Again, steady-state has no explanation for this.

What Maddox found philosophically unacceptable had developed into the overarching theory of modern cosmology, with an idea that was both simple to understand and rich in complexity. It was now a going concern, a conglomerate of advanced particle physics, chemistry, and astrophysics, all of it testable with particle accelerators, laboratories, and the most advanced telescopes.

There were a few holdouts, like Halton Arp and Geoffrey Burbidge, but nearly every physicist was on board by the 1990s. That didn’t mean they were happy about it or complacent. With no choice but to accept the mountain of evidence, the focus was on getting around the theological implications of a beginning.

In the 1970s, Bryce DeWitt popularized the term “Many Worlds” to describe the work of Hugh Everett III in quantum mechanics. In Everett’s interpretation of the weird world of quantum, all possible outcomes of a quantum event are realized in separate, parallel universes. By the 1980s, the multiverse hypothesis really took off, beginning with the concept of “bubble” universes spawned by the eternal inflation of the universe. This idea was developed notably by Andrei Linde and Alexander Vilenkin (remember this name; we’ll come back to it). The multiverse landscape was expanded by the development of string theory and its implication of an incomprehensible or infinite number of parallel universes, all with different physical laws and constants. This had the double virtue of not only explaining the “beginning” of our universe, but why our universe seems to be so finely tuned for life. It just happened to be one among an infinite ensemble of universes that had the right parameters for life to emerge.

But the multiverse runs into serious problems. Not only is it plagued by a number of absurdities associated with infinities (see Hilbert’s Hotel, Thomson’s lamp, and Gabriel’s Horn) and notoriously difficult if not impossible to test, but a serious nail in its coffin was delivered by none other than one of the proponents of the bubble-universe model. In 2003 Arvind Borde, Alan Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin published their BGV theorem, a mathematical proof showing that, under reasonable assumptions, any universe that has been expanding on average must have a beginning. Even the multiverse, if it exists, must have a beginning. So decisive was this result that Vilenkin remarked, “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.”

There are critics. One of the reasonable assumptions of the BGV theorem is that the universe must have classical spacetime. That does seem to apply to our universe, but Sean Carroll objects that the earliest moment of the universe is so extreme that it defies explanation by known physics—which is true—and requires quantum gravity to explain it and thus violates this condition of the theorem. In effect, the universe could be in some eternal quantum state before spontaneously expanding in a Big Bang. Critics offer that a bouncing-universe model, or baby universes popping spontaneously from some quantum field, can also get around the BGV theorem.

I believe it’s of the utmost importance to challenge all scientific ideas, even ideas as strong and well-supported as the Big Bang. But at what point does challenge become absurdity? This is what happens when you try to deny the obvious because you don’t like the implications. I know ideas like the multiverse are at least partly motivated to compete with God—I was told so by the late eminent cosmologist Steven Weinberg when I was a researcher at the University of Texas. Personal preference plays its part in science as much as rationality. As George P. Thomson said, “Probably every physicist would believe in a creation if the Bible had not unfortunately said something about it many years ago and made it seem old-fashioned.”

Even so, these attempts to get around a beginning are ultimately pointless, because they’re incapable of rescuing atheists from the reality of God. Aristotle, the father of the eternal universe, found an eternal cosmos still very much in need of God, which Aristotle called the Prime Mover.

Aristotle observed that motion and time are inseparable. He wasn’t just talking about something moving from one place to another (locomotion), but any potentiality becoming an actuality. This includes locomotion, alteration, growth or diminution, and coming-to-be or passing-away. The key is that everything that has motion is moved by something. His definition of time (which is notoriously difficult to define) is: “Time is the number of motion with respect to the before and after.” In other words, time can’t exist without motion, according to Aristotle. And this leads to his idea of the Unmoved Mover or Prime Mover. Since every motion needs a cause, there must be a first cause that is itself uncaused, otherwise you end up with an infinite regression of causes, something Aristotle found unacceptable. The Prime Mover is pure actuality without potentiality and doesn’t physically act on things to move them. Rather, the Prime Mover causes movement as a final cause—the result of an object desiring or loving the Prime Mover.

So the Prime Mover does away with the need for a beginning, but not for an explanation for an ordered cosmos in motion. Motion, order, and contingency all require a deeper explanation. Aristotle was not content to assert that an eternal universe “just is”—to him, it still requires something to “move” it, something that is Actuality without potentiality. And interestingly, this uncreated yet God-sustained universe operates according to the least-scientific force imaginable: love. The heavens revolve as they do because they love and desire the Prime Mover.

I strongly suspect many atheistic eternal-universe proponents are unaware of Aristotle’s not-so-secular philosophical basis for his physics. I certainly wasn’t when I objected to the Big Bang as a first-year atheist physics student. I probably would’ve found it repellant. And while I was certainly in favor of love, I would’ve thought Aristotle was crazy for suggesting it as the driving essence of the universe.

But what if it’s true?

As a Christian, I’m startled by Aristotle’s pagan inference that the essence of the workings of the universe is love. I agree with him. But Christianity inverts his relationship between love and causation: the universe doesn’t move toward God out of love; God created the universe out of his own love.

As C.S. Lewis observed, nearly every religion and tradition gets at least some things right, because there are universal and observable truths. Love is one of them. But Christianity is unique in that its God is personal and relational. He freely creates and sustains. There may be a giant question mark at the beginning of the universe in terms of physics, but for those who believe, there is a comforting end to that loose thread—God the Creator, who knows and cares about every detail in his creation, including you. Who doesn’t stand back from his creation, but actively loves and seeks relationship with the people he created, who bestows providential care, who is holy and righteous and commands us and judges us, who reveals himself through his holy written Word and most tangibly through the person of Jesus Christ, the Logos, the Word personified.

Christians since the time of Aristotle’s re-emergence have been searching for a beginning. We finally found it in modern cosmology. But more importantly, we found an end. The long winding road has finally led somewhere. Not to the insanity of an infinite multiverse with no meaning, not to a bottomless pit of unanswered questions. It has led to an end to our striving, our toiling, our burden, our search for meaning, for belonging, for acceptance, for the love that even pagan philosophers discerned as the essence of existence—we have Someone who fulfills it all and gives us rest.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my content free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The last Sunday of each month features Sunday Superposition, historically a special thank you for my paid subscribers, whose generosity helps keep me writing here each week and ensures that my content remains free. Each edition is a collection of candid personal story, my favorite science news of the month, and something to make you laugh. It’s truly one of my favorite things to create.

Access to this feature has changed over the years. Lately it’s functioned as an exclusive perk for my paid subscribers. I decided to make it a free feature again, but would like to retain the perk status. That means premium subscribers get first access (on 7/26) followed by free subscribers after one week (on 8/2). Enjoy, y’all.

My melancholy victory

I posted an article last week about the reality of converting from atheism to Christianity. As of this writing, it’s my third-most-popular article. Every time I see it on the front page of my Substack I wince. I found the experience of writing that piece… unpleasant. Unpleasant not only because admitting hard truths about your life isn’t fun, but mostly because it was scented by the fragrance of failure. There’s an unspoken culture in American Christianity that marks “success” as a follower of Christ by how happy you are. Hands in the air, singing with joy, worry and confusion buried with the crucified Christ and emerging from the baptismal water as joyful serenity.

That’s not me.

“Jesus saved me and turned my life around” is a sentiment I’ve heard over and over, before and after my conversion. I have no doubt Jesus saved me and turned my life around, but that has mostly been through a painful process—more akin to corrective surgery or having a bad tooth removed than being the recipient of a breezy spiritual makeover. People rarely look down on others for needing surgery or dental work, so why do I agonize over this corrective work Jesus is doing in my life? Why does it feel, well… humiliating?

I have never been a hands-in-the-air kind of person, even when I feel happy. I’ve literally danced with joy exactly once in my life, and I don’t remember what it was over. I’m intense, brooding, moody, socially reserved, and tend toward melancholy.1 I’m sensitive, I have issues with control and perfectionism, and I overthink nearly everything. I imagine my mom holding me for the first time in the hospital, and as she glowed with new motherhood I was probably already stressing about the plan for the day.

Despite expectations, allowing Jesus Christ into my life hasn’t fundamentally changed those characteristics—I’m still intense, moody, and wrestling with who exactly is in control. But when I reflect on what really matters, there is a victory—albeit not mine.

Allowing Jesus into my life saved me from eternal destruction. Hands-down, the most important “success” in my life. It gives me hope in my darkest moments. It’s also given me a new perspective on the world, and especially other people. That guy who left a brain-dead drive-by comment on my post? An image-bearer of the eternal God. That careless woman who nearly T-boned me and my family at an intersection last night? Bearer of the imago Dei. I’m allowed to be annoyed with these jerks, but Jesus commands that I extend them the same grace God extends me every second of my existence. Because, let’s face it, I’m a jerk, too. We all are.

It’s not all struggle. I’ve found peace letting go of anger toward people who “deserve” it. I’m less anguished over messy situations and loose ends. Most happily, I’ve been released from ego-driven conversations. Conversations in the past were often marked by an unwholesome desire to dominate the discourse. To prove… what exactly? That I was the smartest person in the room? I look back on those days and wonder what I was thinking. Is anyone won over by being “owned” in a debate? Hearts and minds aren’t changed by snarky comebacks, no matter how clever. The truth is, my responses in those debates were driven by pride and insecurity. My relationship with Jesus has since changed how I see myself, other people, and the purpose of communication.

Someone once told me, “You may be the only ‘Bible’ someone ever gets.” A haunting thought as I contemplate years-old battlefields strewn with the corpses of opportunities to witness. When I put my ego aside, something miraculous happens: I feel peace. It creates space for the Holy Spirit to maneuver the conversation. I can better understand the perspective of the other person. I can more often hear the heart message behind the criticism. I can accept legitimate criticism. It releases me from the burdensome need to prove something other than Jesus’ redeeming love. Sometimes that involves pushing back on nonsense, but I no longer deliver that as a warhead fueled by pride. I still sometimes find myself beginning a response in the wrong spirit, but the “delete” key has since become the most Holy Spirit-influenced part of my keyboard.

I relish these successes (His successes, not mine), but I’m still left with a sense of defeat over my fundamental personality, which Jesus has not flipped like a light switch. I feel melancholy much of the time. A lot of that is over the sheer amount of pain and suffering in the world—in which my own pain and suffering occupies an outsized space. I attend Celebrate Recovery meetings every week. My main hangup? Control. As much as I would like to believe my despairing over the state of the world is virtuous, it’s not—it’s a desire for control, born of a combination of fear and pride. I know better than God. I wouldn’t allow these terrible things to happen.

At every CR meeting we recite the full Serenity Prayer twice: “Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.” After three years, why hasn’t this become my motto? Is it osmotically sinking into my cranium, micron by micron, or am I just resisting turning over the reins? I don’t know. But I do know Jesus is working on me, every moment, every day. He is turning my life around. Slowly, painfully. I accept this, not with my hands in the air but mostly with my hands over my face.

And that’s okay.

His victory in me is real, and so is the unfinished business. I live in both at once. The hurt often feels humiliating, but in a sense that seems right. The cross was the greatest humiliation of all time, and Jesus bore it for us. Death is the ultimate humility. If the old me is to be crucified and buried with Him, it can’t be without humility.

Foundations for Faith

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” — Galatians 2:20

“…being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” — Philippians 1:6

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.” — 2 Corinthians 4:16-17

“And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” — Philippians 2:8

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” — Genesis 1:27

Featured Science News

My favorite science news story of the month

Supermassive black hole on the loose?
[New Scientist Magazine]

Maybe you played catch with dad growing up and his fastball really scorched. But can you imagine playing catch with God? He may be flinging supermassive black holes across the universe at thousands of mph.

A few years ago Hubble spotted this thin, oddly ruler-straight streak of light 7.5 billion light-years away. Astrophysicists have argued that it’s the wake of a supermassive black hole flung out of its galaxy, leaving a trail of newborn stars behind it. If real, this would be the first serious “runaway” black hole candidate.

Not everyone agrees, though. Some astrophysicists think it’s an extreme edge-on galaxy, like the famous Needle Galaxy.

Now another research group has reverse-engineered the kick. To get the kind of speed they measured you need to start with two supermassive black holes: one spinning very fast and about six times more massive than the other. When they merged, so the story goes, the resulting gravitational waves carried momentum one way, and the new merged black hole gets launched the other way at roughly a thousand kilometers a second. According to calculations, this only happens in a minority of mergers, which makes the whole scenario even more improbable, but also more interesting.

I worked on this problem when I was a researcher at UT-Austin. My group produced several papers about how black hole spin, mass ratios, and orbits can (or can’t) produce recoils strong enough to eject a supermassive black hole from its galaxy. In principle, we should’ve found a few. We pored over tens of thousands of quasar spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey searching for clear examples of kicked black holes. We never settled on any strong candidates, but this recent discovery may be promising.

Whether this starry streak is the real deal or just an impostor, the physics of ejected black holes is real and intriguing. Black holes can, in principle, get flung across the universe. The question is, what’s going to catch them?

The Last Laugh

Funny because it’s true. How many scientific and technological breakthroughs were predicted by science fiction? More than scientists probably care to admit. This is another favorite from Tom Gauld’s Department of Mind-Blowing Theories. I also recommend Gauld’s Moon Cop. My daughter and I love its sweetly melancholic take on what it would be like to be the last policeman living on the Moon.

What’s a superposition?

It’s the quantum phenomenon in which a system exists as a combination of multiple possible states at the same time. Confusingly, it’s neither a simple “AND” (both happening together) or a classical “OR” (one or the other). Quantum superposition is a deeper, inherently ambiguous kind of possibility that produces effects no ordinary uncertainty can explain—that is, until a measurement “collapses” the system into a single outcome.

In the human world, we also exist as a combination of multiple possible states at the same time—faith and doubt, joy and struggle, wholeness and brokenness, the sacred and the ridiculous—all in perpetual superposition, until it gets collapsed into one reality in eternity.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d appreciate it if you click the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my articles. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

Subscribe now

Share

Many of you know my atheist background. I was the perfect atheist experiment. Raised in secular Canada by lapsed Catholic parents, I had zero exposure to churches, Scripture, or even basic knowledge of who Jesus was. Science was my religion, my entire reason for being. I devoured Carl Sagan, lived for Star Trek and Star Wars, and pursued astrophysics with evangelical zeal. According to pop atheism, I should’ve stayed an atheist forever.

Instead, in 1999, my work on Big Bang-related research (coupled with an unexpected moral and philosophical nudge from The Count of Monte Cristo) convinced me God is real. There was a genuine sense of joy attending that realization. Belief in a Creator lifted a weight I hadn’t fully realized I carried, but I also accepted no real burden with it—I was just someone who believed in God. Seven years later, after reading Gerald Schroeder’s The Science of God, Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ, and studying Scripture, I became a Christian—much like C.S. Lewis described himself, “the most reluctant convert in all England.” Unlike so many conversion stories I’ve read, I didn’t find myself jumping for joy. I knew this meant committing to an eternal change, and I felt the weight of it settle on me immediately. Here’s what no one told me about what happens after.

1. Life got infinitely more complicated

They say the devil leaves his own alone. As an atheist, life wasn’t necessarily happier, it was just simpler. I could let things slide and ignore that deep, nagging sense that I shouldn’t. Sure, I might’ve felt bad after being rude to someone, but without immediate consequences or eternal accountability, it didn’t seem worth the humility or effort to change.

Becoming Christian ended that illusion. Now every aspect of my life falls under the light of Scripture. I examine my words, attitudes, and choices with new scrutiny. I bite my tongue when snark or unnecessarily harsh “truth” would have been my default. I consider how my actions ripple into the lives around me—and into eternity. Picturing the moment I stand face-to-face with my Savior, accounting for it all… few things make me feel the weight more.

In the moment I was baptized, I felt a great unease settle on me. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not, but shortly after, my life turned upside down, and it hasn’t righted itself since. Multiple rounds of cancer. The stillbirth of our daughter Ellinor. My husband’s near-fatal bout with meningitis and encephalitis. Recurring health battles, job stresses, anxiety, and depression. Being Christian has given me the long view through all this, but it hasn't made it easier. To anyone who claims people convert to Christianity to go through life on the easy setting, I raise a Spock-like eyebrow. Christianity didn’t simplify my existence at all.

2. Conversion never really ends

I converted in 2006, but that was merely the beginning of a decades-long—probably lifelong—process. When I first read C.S. Lewis’s comment that faith is a commitment that starts all over again each day, I heaved a weary sigh and thought, “Really??” But it’s true. Every single day I recommit to submitting my will to God’s. Every day I learn something new about Him, about Jesus, about the Holy Spirit, and about who I am in light of them. Every day I confront another piece of the old, fleshly me that needs to die. It’s frustrating, humbling work.

Looking back at how far I’ve come since those early days, I sometimes wonder: Had I known the full cost upfront, would I have hesitated? I hope not. But I know now that signing my name, as it were, in the baptismal water was not the finish line.

3. I have to keep killing my old gods

Idols die hard, even (especially) for a former atheist who thought she had none. Politics was one. I was deeply invested in the American political scene until I realized it had become a source of perpetual aggravation and false hope. Releasing it to God’s sovereignty brought peace, even as the world seems to spin toward chaos.

Other idols fell more slowly: trust in institutions—forms of government, academia, media, entertainment. Every time one cracks or corrupts, the old me wants to wallow in sorrow and despair. But they were always temporary, human-made things destined to fade.

Comfort was another quiet god. I hate conflict, noise, mess, boredom, and disrupted routines. But having a family and being part of any community guarantee all of them. Letting go of my craving for control and predictability has been a daily crucifixion of self.

4. I have to hold myself to an annoyingly high standard

Oh, the freedom of atheist snark. I could dismiss people I disagreed with without a second thought. No longer. Now I represent not just myself, but Christ and His church. That’s a heavy responsibility.

I’m called to show genuine, Christ-like love—even to those who test every ounce of patience. Online discourse makes this brutally clear, as ill-intentioned trolls and well-intentioned arguers alike can drive a person to the edge. But snarking and sniping moves no hearts or minds towards Christ, least of all mine.

My role model here is apologist Frank Turek. Watch his campus Q&As on YouTube (I’m addicted to them). The man fields hostile questions with the patience of a saint, admirably keeping the focus on biblical truth rather than his ego. When I manage to set my pride aside, it creates space for Jesus to enter the conversation. The good news? The more I practice this, the more natural it feels.

5. I have to trust God when I really, really don’t want to

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve operated with a fierce “make it happen” mentality. I learned from an early age that if I wanted something, all I had to do was plan and execute. Leaving home for university shattered that. I realized how much my parents had buffered life, and on my own, a lot of that control was revealed to be an illusion.

Has that realization stopped me? Let me put it this way. If it were up to me, I’d sit down with God and demand the five-year plan complete with dates, milestones, and contingencies. Better yet, I’d draft it myself. But that’s not how He works. In fact, He seems to delight in the opposite. Scripture is full of His last-moment provision: the Jordan River parting only after the priests enter the water; Abraham raising the knife right before the ram appears; the disciples’ terror on the sea before “Peace, be still.”

I share the planet with eight billion others and navigate a spiritual reality I’m only dimly aware of—it’s absurd to think I have control over much of anything. Trusting the unseen orchestration—twists and turns in life I could never foresee—goes against every fiber of my controlling nature. Yet it’s better this way. My limited vision would have steered me wrong countless times. God’s hasn’t.

The weight was worth it

Looking back, the “perfect atheist experiment” failed spectacularly. Science, which was once my religion, led me to the Creator. The relief of theism gave way to the heavier, richer reality of following Christ. It has been exhilarating and mind-expanding, but also terrifying and heartbreaking—sometimes all of it at once.

I still miss the simplicity of my old life sometimes, but I wouldn’t return to it. The weight I felt at baptism was real, but so is the grace that sustains me through it. If any of you are considering becoming Christian, I’m sorry to tell you conversion isn’t always a tidy before-and-after story. For me, it’s been an ongoing surrender, a daily dying and rising. And by God’s mercy, I’m still in it—still learning, still recommitting, still trusting the One who upended my world for the better.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

We’re on vacation, so my husband and I are watching a lot of movies this week. One that stood out was the extended cut of Watchmen, a movie I hadn’t seen in years. Stylistically, it delivered exactly what I remembered: top-tier production values with stunning cinematography, incredible sets, and fantastic costumes. But in terms of soul, it felt far more depressingly empty than I recalled. This film offers a much more realistic—and far darker—portrayal of what superhumans would actually be like than anything in the Marvel or DC universes.

I know a lot of us are feeling superhero fatigue these days, but I still enjoy the best movies of the genre. I’m a fan of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the early MCU films up through Endgame. Those heroes are honorable, likable, and dependable. They share almost nothing in common with the dark and deeply flawed figures in Watchmen.

The film is set in an alternate 1985. Richard Nixon is still president (in his fifth term, after the 22nd Amendment was repealed), the United States won the Vietnam War thanks to the intervention of a real superhuman, and the Cold War is at a fever pitch with the Doomsday Clock permanently stuck at five minutes to midnight. Costumed vigilantes once operated freely—first as the Minutemen in the 1940s, later as the Watchmen—but public backlash and a police strike led to the Keene Act of 1977, which outlawed non-government-sanctioned masked adventuring. Most retired. A few didn’t. When one of them, the Comedian, is murdered, the investigation unravels a conspiracy that threatens the entire world.

Sally Jupiter was the original Silk Spectre, a glamorous, publicity-savvy crimefighter from the Minutemen era. Her daughter, Laurie, takes up the mantle as Silk Spectre II. Dan Dreiberg is the second Nite Owl—an owl-themed gadgeteer and tech genius who inherited the identity from the retired original, Hollis Mason. He’s soft-spoken, a bit paunchy in retirement, and the most “normal” of the bunch—until he puts the costume back on.

Rorschach’s real name is Walter Joseph Kovacs. A small, narrow-faced man who at first glance seems weak and vulnerable, he wears a white mask with constantly shifting black inkblots. His zeal for justice was born from a harsh childhood: a violent, unloving prostitute mother, and relentless bullying from bigger kids. He becomes a hyper-violent vigilante who sees the world in absolute black and white—no mercy, no compromise, ever.

The Comedian, whose real name is Edward “Eddie” Blake, is a cigar-chomping, grinning psychopath who treats life as one long, cruel joke.

Then there’s Dr. Manhattan—originally Jonathan “Jon” Osterman, a mild-mannered nuclear physicist. In 1959 he is locked in an Intrinsic Field Subtractor during an experiment, disintegrated, and somehow reconstructs himself as a glowing blue god. He can manipulate matter at the atomic level, teleport himself and others across vast distances (including to Mars), perceive all of time—past, present, and future—simultaneously, create duplicates of himself, grow to giant size, disintegrate people with a thought, and is essentially invulnerable and immortal. The other characters are super-strong and super-fast, but he’s the only true superhuman in the story—someone who is above and beyond humans. Because of this, he becomes increasingly detached from humanity, finally retreating to Mars after his only remaining link—his romantic partner Laurie (Silk Spectre II)—finally leaves him because of this cold detachment. With his abilities, he could save millions of people from the imminent threat of nuclear disaster, but he chooses not to. Earlier, he casually dumps his first romantic partner, Janey Slater, once she starts to age while he remains eternally young and perfect; he becomes attracted to the younger, super-hot Silk Spectre II instead.

The characters are shown doing good deeds. Dr. Manhattan ends the Vietnam War almost single-handedly, turning it into a quick American victory and later serving as the ultimate nuclear deterrent. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl demolish street thugs. Rorschach sends dozens of bad guys to prison (or worse). But there’s an undercurrent of nastiness to it all. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl save children from a burning building, but also engage in stylized, sexy violence against street thugs just for the thrill, like it’s a workout or blowing off steam. They clearly enjoy hurting people—albeit those who “deserve” it. Rorschach is the judge, jury, and executioner—a walking grenade of hatred for unrighteousness, ready to detonate at any moment. Like Judge Dredd, he offers zero mercy.

The Comedian is the most recognizably vile character. He violently attempts to rape Sally Jupiter (and is revealed to be the father of Laurie, the product of a later willing tryst). He murders a pregnant Vietnamese woman who was carrying his child, after she demands accountability. Later, with a big grin, he jumps enthusiastically into a crowd of protestors, inflicting maximum violence with tear gas and bullets. He thoroughly enjoys hurting people whether they deserve it or not.

Ozymandias is the most complex character, and ostensibly the villain. Adrian Veidt, “the smartest man alive,” is the only superhero to reveal his true identity following his retirement after the Keene Act is passed. It turns out he’s the one offing superheroes (or arranging it) and has engineered a plan that will kill millions of people in order to save billions, framing Dr. Manhattan for all of it. He has built enormous energy reactors based on Manhattan’s technology, planning to detonate them simultaneously in major cities around the world. The explosions will carry Manhattan’s unique energy signature, so the world will believe he’s gone rogue and attacked humanity. Fifteen million will die, but he believes the United States and the USSR will broker a peace deal against their new common enemy, ultimately saving billions of lives. Dr. Manhattan realizes the genius of this plan and assents to it, planning to leave for another galaxy anyway. Rorschach, in his devotion to righteousness, refuses to keep the secret and is reluctantly vaporized by Manhattan for it.

The characters occasionally exhibit some self-awareness. Rorschach, after one of his particularly intense monologues, tells Nite Owl, “I know it can be difficult with me sometimes.” The Comedian knows he’s a garbage person—he repeatedly calls life itself “a joke” and says, “Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.” He laughs at the absurdity of it all, even while committing atrocities. Dr. Manhattan, for all his detachment, is pained by the lie that he caused Janey and others cancer, and eventually admits he was wrong about the miracle of human life. Ozymandias claims to feel every death he causes, though whether that’s genuine humility or just another calculation is left ambiguous.

I remembered nothing of the plot the first time I watched this movie. I kept expecting a clever solution to the problem set up by Ozymandias so that millions of people wouldn’t die. But it doesn’t happen. Millions die in the energy-weapon strikes that vaporize major cities around the world. In New York City, we see countless people—including some everyday characters we’ve come to know, a newsstand guy and a nerdy teenager who reads comics—killed in slow motion as layer after layer of their anatomy is vaporized. In the aftermath, the United States and the USSR do indeed broker a peace deal in this alternate-reality history that prevents mutually-assured destruction. At the end, we’re shown New York City rebuilding in the massive crater where the “Manhattan” attack hit. Hooray, I guess? But the rug is pulled out from under us when we see the journal Rorschach mailed to a newspaper—detailing what really happened—delivered after his death.

The extended cut, which I’d not seen before, inserts the animated Tales of the Black Freighter—a grim pirate comic-within-a-comic. We get to “read along” with the soon-to-be-vaporized teenager, who’s getting it bit by bit at the newsstand every day because he can’t afford to buy the comic. It’s the story of a marooned sailor who does increasingly monstrous things (including killing innocents and using corpses as a raft) in a desperate attempt to save his family from the ghostly Black Freighter. When he finally reaches home, he has become the monster, and the Freighter is waiting for him. Alan Moore explained that it primarily parallels Ozymandias: a man who commits genocide out of a twisted desire to “save” the world, only to become the very horror he feared. The nerdy kid keeps reading because he wants to see the resolution (as did I). When he gets to the end, he’s annoyed by how darkly pointless it was. (So was my husband, by the way, who had no patience for these weird, gross inserts.)1 Kind of the perfect metaphor for this movie—and for a world without hope.

Rorschach is all justice, no mercy. The Comedian is a life-support system for psychopathic violence. Ozymandias is all intelligence and cold calculation, the kind of pure intellect that thinks it knows what’s best without humility. Silk Spectre and Nite Owl come across as the most relatable, genial people of the bunch, but there’s something off about them too. They get a creepy thrill from the violence and the costumes. Even their “good deeds” feel performative.

The Watchmen are a little like Batman in terms of rough, dark, anti-hero quality, but Batman doesn’t have superpowers. These characters do, and honestly they’re kind of terrifying. They don’t have the do-gooder, highly moralistic nature of Superman, Wonder Woman, or Spider-Man—superheroes you feel like you can trust. Traditional superheroes have mercy, but these guys don’t. They enjoy hurting people, even bad guys. Superman would rescue a kitten stuck up in a tree—the Comedian would probably shoot it.

Iron Man is my favorite superhero. Tony Stark is highly intelligent and wealthy, and those are the sources of his power, but he’s still just human. He starts off as a glib and charming, but superficial, guy. We get to watch him experience a compelling moral arc after the trauma of being kidnapped and witnessing the effects of his weapons in the real world. This causes him to become a believably deeper character who’s on a mission, but is still realistically flawed.

Superman is another favorite of mine. He’s clearly a secular Messiah figure, and that’s why he’s loved and trusted by generations of fans. His creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, were Jewish teenagers in 1930s Cleveland, sons of immigrants who had fled persecution. Siegel later said he created Superman after hearing about the oppression of Jews under the Nazis: “I had the great urge to help the downtrodden masses… Superman was the answer.” Superman’s Kryptonian name, Kal-El, echoes Hebrew for “voice of God” or “vessel of God.” Like Moses, he’s sent away as a baby to escape destruction, raised by foreigners, and becomes a deliverer. He is the ultimate assimilationist fantasy and protector of the weak—power married to goodness. That’s the reason we root for him. But the only way to make him believable was to have him as an extra-terrestrial, because no human could be that way.

Our love of superheroes, I think, reflects a deep human longing: to be cared for and protected by a super-being who can deliver real justice. We crave someone strong enough to set the world right. But imagine what would happen if we could simply superpower ordinary humans as they are—with fallen nature intact. They would be something like the Watchmen, or probably worse: humans detached from humanity, overconfident in their intelligence, psychopathic, overzealous. We would not want to inhabit a world with such beings.

Alan Moore, the creator of the original Watchmen comic, has been very clear about his intent. He set out to deconstruct the superhero genre and show how horrifying real superhumans would actually be. Moore is an atheist (with some complicated pagan leanings later in life), and the story reflects a thoroughly godless universe. There is no room for God in Watchmen. Dr. Manhattan wonders whether the world is “a clock without a craftsman.” Rorschach’s journal records looking at the sky after a massacre and concluding “God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever, and we are alone.” The whole narrative is relentlessly secular and therefore relentlessly bleak. The comic-book-within-the-comic is a perfect metaphor for the pointlessness of existence if there is no God: a story that ends in darkness and leaves the reader frustrated by how empty it all was.

We’re influenced as a culture by Marvel and DC Comics movies to think superheroes might be sort of nifty. Thor is huge and powerful, but he’s also kind and funny. Captain America is the epitome of the sort of superhero we would love—super-strong but all do-gooder. But in reality this kind of power without super-goodness would be terrifying and horrible. Such characters would be as removed from ordinary humans as they could be, either in a Dr. Manhattan cold detachment sort of way, a cruelly vicious way like the Comedian, or a coldly visionary sort of way like Ozymandias.

The truth is, the only superhuman we have and the only one we need is Jesus Christ. The true God walking among us on Earth. He had all the power in the universe, but instead of violently doling out justice, he healed people and gently drew them to Him. He mingled with the lowly and hated. He lovingly pointed out their unrighteousness and called them to repentance and union with the Father. He subjected himself to the sort of violence meted out by the Watchmen, and all for us. He is a superman but also an anti-superman. This is the only one we have and the only one we need.

I appreciate Watchmen for this honest glimpse at an alternate world where there are gods but no God, even if it was depressing. The only way for a human to have superpowers without the horribleness is to have supergoodness, and only God has that. The movie, for all its style and craft, left me feeling empty and annoyed precisely because it has no room for that goodness. The Black Freighter kid was right to feel cheated by the ending. Without God, every story—every existence—ends the same way: darkly, pointlessly, with the Freighter waiting to take us to oblivion.

We don’t need Watchmen. We already have the one true Watchman who never sleeps, never compromises mercy for justice or justice for mercy, and who entered the darkness Himself so that we wouldn’t have to stay there. That is the only story that doesn’t leave us empty. And P.S.—it’s true.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

I get a lot of questions and responses from non-believers that show a stubborn strain of positivism is still alive and kicking—waving its “trust-the-science” flag like it’s the final word on everything.

Positivism, as a philosophical approach, insists that genuine knowledge comes only from observable, empirical facts gained through our senses and the scientific method. In short: if science can’t verify it, it isn’t knowable. Its founder was the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Shaken by the bloody chaos of the French Revolution, Comte dreamed of rebuilding society on a purely “rational” and “empirical” foundation—one that banished theology, metaphysics, intuition, and speculation. I can’t blame the guy for wanting stability after that nightmare. But it’s almost comically naive to think humans could (or would) sustain a society whose core principles rested solely on science.

Here’s a perfect example of positivism’s blind spots. In Comte’s era, the best scientific knowledge and human senses available led him to declare that we would never know what stars are made of. It seemed eminently rational at the time—how on earth could we travel to distant stars to sample them? His boxed-in view of science, the universe, and human ingenuity left no room for creative breakthroughs.

Shortly after his death, Comte was spectacularly proven wrong. In 1859–1860, German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff and chemist Robert Bunsen (of Bunsen burner fame) unlocked the secrets of stellar composition through spectral analysis. They showed that by spreading light from a distant star into a spectrum, you could identify its elements from unique sets of spectral lines. Comparing lab spectra of known elements to the Sun’s absorption lines, they identified sodium, iron, calcium, and more in the Sun’s atmosphere. Astronomers like William Huggins soon extended this to other stars, proving they contain the same elements found on Earth. And in 1868, Pierre Janssen and Norman Lockyer discovered helium in the Sun’s spectrum during a solar eclipse—before it was ever found on our planet.

If none of this had happened, I wouldn’t be an astrophysicist today. Like most people in my field, my entire research career rests on spectral analysis of light from distant objects. I’m endlessly amazed by it—not just for the meaningful work it gives me, but for the practical wonders and knowledge it’s unlocked for humanity. I love science. But I’m not blinded by that love into believing we could build a stable society on science alone.

Science-loving skeptics often point out that science’s greatest strength is its self-correcting nature—always updating, refining, even revolutionizing what we “know” with fresh evidence. I agree completely. But that very strength makes it a shaky foundation for society. How do you ground laws, ethics, and daily governance in something that’s perpetually evolving through paradigm shifts? Science hasn’t stood still since its modern inception, and that dynamism—while powerful for discovery—renders it unreliable as the basis for policy or civilizational order.

If you think the big scientific revolutions are behind us, consider what’s unfolding in cosmology right now, largely thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). JWST has delivered stunning images and data from the early universe, but it’s also deepened major tensions in the standard model of cosmology. The “Hubble tension”—discrepancies in measurements of the universe’s expansion rate—has only grown sharper, with JWST data pushing some conflicts past high statistical significance thresholds. Early galaxies appear far more massive and mature than models predicted, challenging timelines for cosmic evolution, star formation, and even assumptions about dark energy or matter. These aren’t minor tweaks; they’re forcing cosmologists to question foundational assumptions, highlighting how limited our perspective remains even with cutting-edge technology.

These are examples of legitimate scientific inquiry overturning prior legitimate beliefs—limited as we always are by technology, perspective, intellectual inertia, and human emotion. Better tools reveal that even cherished constants (like dark energy’s behavior) may need rethinking. This could revolutionize our model of the cosmos.1 It’s truly exciting stuff.

As susceptible as even the most mature sciences are to change, the science of human behavior is on far shakier ground. Psychology, psychiatry, and related fields—arguably far more relevant to building a society than cosmology is—have produced no laws of human behavior comparable to those in physics or chemistry. Early efforts like Freudian psychoanalysis, which relied on speculation rather than rigorous scientific methods, have been largely set aside. Though these disciplines continue to advance, they remain nascent and lack the robust, predictive power of mature sciences. They still need their revolution to join the ranks of true science. This makes them a particularly unsteady foundation for any society ordered the way positivists imagine.

But all of this assumes the scientific enterprise is functioning as a pristine gatekeeper of truth, with editors and publishers rigorously filtering for quality. Many non-believers who put immense trust in “the science” seem unaware of the deepening crises in scientific publishing. Scandals involving outright fraud keep surfacing. Last March, The Scientist covered how Paediatrics & Child Health (the journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society) admitted that 138 case reports published over 25 years were fictional—fabricated cases presented as real, now retroactively corrected and impacting over 2,000 citing studies. It’s deeply troubling.

A 2025 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) argues that while fraud remains a minority of publications, it’s growing at an alarming rate that outpaces legitimate science. Titled “The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly,” it describes an emerging “industry” of paper mills, brokers, and predatory outlets involving coordinated networks of editors, publishers, and middlemen. Fraud isn’t just lone bad actors anymore—it’s systematized.

Defenders of science tell me this fraud is “irrational.” But rationality depends on your motives. If your goal is prestige, funding, or pushing a pet theory—and you think you won’t get caught—then fraud is perfectly rational for an unethical person. Not everyone in science is a saint, and rooting out every bad actor is nearly impossible.

Years ago, Neil deGrasse Tyson got roasted for floating the idea of “Rationalia”—a virtual country with a one-line constitution: “All policy shall be based on the weight of evidence.” This is civilizational policy as dreamed up by a smart 14 year-old. It sounds tidy in theory, but most people instinctively understood it ignores how evidence changes, how scientists are fallible humans prone to bias and fraud, and how “weight of evidence” offers no guidance on core human questions like justice, meaning, or managing our messier proclivities. Science excels at describing the material world. It doesn’t tell us how to govern hearts, curb vices, or cultivate virtues.

How do you base societal rules on something that perpetually shifts and is vulnerable to such mundane corruption? Much of what sustains civilization comes from accumulated human experience, trial-and-error over generations, and yes—revealed wisdom.

Look at the French Revolution itself: it tried to ground governance in pure reason, without religion. Ironically, it ended up guillotining one of its greatest scientists, Antoine Lavoisier (the father of modern chemistry), along with many other intellectuals. As the great philosopher Arnold J. Rimmer once quipped, “You always become the thing you hate the most.” Direct assaults on tradition rarely deliver the utopia promised. History keeps showing us this. Why haven’t we learned?

Societies that survive do so because they’ve absorbed hard-won lessons—through painful experience, cultural evolution, and sometimes divine revelation, as in the Bible. These rules and traditions get passed down not just intellectually, but emotionally—the strongest way to make them stick. Think about your own life: how many of your deepest personal rules come from raw emotional lessons rather than cold data? You can lay out all the studies on smoking to a friend whose health is tanking, and as they contemplate the weight of evidence they’ll say, “Yeah, I know,” and keep smoking. Now it’s uncool to smoke, but the rates only dropped meaningfully after emotional campaigns shamed it and regulations made it nearly impossible to do in public.

We’re now relearning the hard way the costs of eroding the traditional family—skyrocketing loneliness, mental health crises, economic instability for women and children, higher rates of poverty and crime, and societal fragmentation. As religious influence fades, we’re forced to rediscover these truths through lived consequences, not lab experiments. It’s the pattern in Israel’s biblical history: repeated cycles of faithfulness, rebellion, judgment, repentance, and restoration. If our civilization endures, that’s how we’ll learn too—as stubborn children finally feeling the sting of consequences and realizing our Parent was right.

One thing I find profoundly practical about Christianity for civilization-building is how it anchors everything in love. Jesus distills the law into two commands: love God, love your neighbor. What could be more emotionally compelling? Sure, it sometimes gets framed through fear of wrath or hell—and some people need that. But at its core, it’s relational—our bond with our Creator, with fellow believers, even with enemies. We’re called to love them. And we live under the gaze of a Heavenly Father who knows us intimately. That perspective has motivated real change in my own life—not primarily from dread of punishment, but from gratitude for a perfect, loving God who’s done so much for me. I don’t want to disappoint Him. Science never gave me that transformative lens; my faith did.

Positivism promised a clean, empirical path to truth and order. Science has delivered wonders in understanding the material world—but it falls short as a blueprint for human flourishing. We need science—it’s one of God’s many gifts to us. But we also need the wisdom that outlasts shifting paradigms: the emotional anchors of tradition, the moral clarity of revelation, and the humble recognition of our limits. In a universe full of surprises, that humility might be the most scientific stance of all.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The last Sunday of each month normally features Sunday Superposition, a collection of candid personal story, a hand-picked roundup of exciting science news, and something to make you laugh. It’s a special thank you for paid subs, whose generosity helps keep me writing and ensures that most of my content remains free—truly one of my favorite things to create. But this one’s particularly special to me, so I’m making it freely available to all my subscribers.

I was eleven the first time I saw E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. By then my parents had separated and were on their way to divorce. Like Elliott, I knew what it meant to be a kid whose world had quietly fallen apart, lost in the chaos while grown-ups sorted out their own wreckage. When that small, frightened alien shuffled out of the shed and into Elliott’s life, the recognition was instant: here was someone even more lost than I was. But the movie insisted that a lonely kid and a stranded extraterrestrial could save each other.

Years later I watched it again with my husband and daughter. The iconic John Williams score swelled, the kids’ bikes rose up against that perfect moon, and without warning I was crying so hard I had to pause the film and leave the room. Some of it was nostalgia, but mostly it was the sudden, visceral memory of exactly how alone I felt at that age, and how tenderly the movie had captured that ache without ever turning it into cheap sentiment. That was Spielberg’s particular gift.

Spielberg’s films were the shared mythology of my generation. We thrilled to Raiders of the Lost Ark in theaters, got genuinely freaked out by Jaws on TV, and felt an eerie sense of wonder during the TV broadcast of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. E.T. was simply the culminating event, the one that felt like it had been made for millions of kids like me who were already carrying a quiet sadness they couldn’t name.

Spielberg has directed more than thirty feature films and produced or executive-produced dozens more. But in cultural terms he remains the “extra-terrestrial director” of my generation, the one who most powerfully shaped how we picture contact with the unknown. He has made five films that directly involve extraterrestrials or “interdimensional” beings: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), War of the Worlds (2005), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and this year’s Disclosure Day.

Why does Spielberg keep returning to this theme? I think it’s because even the most brilliant and creative secular imagination still hungers for the transcendent. When someone has no traditional religious framework, the need for awe, for something unimaginably greater than oneself, has to go somewhere. For Spielberg it has gone into the possibility of intelligent life from elsewhere—beings who might finally make the universe feel less indifferent.

There was some mild controversy around Disclosure Day when Spielberg suggested that genuine disclosure might cause Christians to question their faith. Skeptics like Michael Shermer were quick to point out how surveys show most Christians are not threatened by the idea of extraterrestrial life. In fact, they’ve been quietly discussing it for decades. C.S. Lewis addressed the same question head-on in his 1958 essay “Religion and Rocketry.” He argued that the discovery of alien life would pose no fundamental threat to Christian theology. God could have purposes for other worlds we cannot imagine—some unfallen, some fallen and redeemed in ways we cannot yet grasp. The vast distances between stars might even function, Lewis speculated, as a kind of quarantine, protecting other civilizations from the contagion of human sin. His Space Trilogy (beginning with one of my all-time favorite novels, Out of the Silent Planet) imagines exactly that kind of rich, theologically serious cosmos: other planets with their own rational beings, their own relations to the divine, their own stories unfolding under the same ultimate Lord.

Spielberg’s first and third Indiana Jones films remain the strongest because their mysteries are rooted in that same theological richness—Judaism and Christianity. The artifacts Jones pursued carried real historical and theological weight and a real sense of danger. (The second film, Temple of Doom, was darker and more horror-tinged; George Lucas, who wrote the story and produced, has acknowledged that the bleak tone reflected his own difficult personal life during a bitter divorce.) The fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, felt thin compared with the first three. The crystal skull never generated the same sense of genuine mystery or consequence as the Ark or the Grail, and for all the film’s visual spectacle, the ending’s interdimensional departure felt more like a shrug than a revelation.

E.T. worked because it never relied on spectacle alone. It earned its emotion through the patient, believable friendship between a boy and an alien who both needed to be found. Without that relationship, without the ache of “phone home,” the movie would have been just another effects showcase. Close Encounters built extraordinary tension and delivered one of the great awe sequences in film history, but even Spielberg later admitted he would not make the same movie today. At the time he was not yet a father; after he had children, the scene in which Richard Dreyfuss’ character simply walks away from his family became unthinkable. And there has always been something quietly unsettling beneath the wonder of the encounters: the aliens abduct a child, they study humans, and they use humans as messengers. The film never fully resolves whether they are benevolent or merely curious. That ambiguity has grown more disturbing to me with time, particularly with recent discussions about the possible connection between alien encounters and the demonic.

Spielberg’s later films feel more superficial by comparison. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull leaned into 1950s B-movie energy—Commies, nukes, goofy alien skulls—without the mythic or emotional depth of the earlier entries. Disclosure Day, from everything I’ve seen so far, seems more interested in procedural conspiracy and contemporary humanism than in the kind of transcendent mystery Spielberg once depicted so effectively.

Carl Sagan’s Contact (both the book and the 1997 film) took a different path and, for me, remains more intellectually honest than Disclosure Day. Jodie Foster’s Ellie Arroway detects an intelligent signal from the star Vega that turns out to be a blueprint for some kind of transport. The religious implications are handled thoughtfully, with balance between a sympathetic Christian friend, a roadblocking government official, and a creepy religious fundamentalist. Despite concerns (mostly on the government side), the transport gets built and Ellie travels through a wormhole system. She meets an alien who appears to her as her deceased father and explains that the wormholes were built by some ancient, vastly older race. The aliens themselves are gentle and curious, but they are also searching, also limited, also in awe of whatever built the network. “What happens next?” Ellie asks the alien. “Small moves,” he tells her. The story ends with Ellie returning to Earth unable to prove what happened, carrying only the conviction that we are not alone. It’s beautiful, scientifically literate, and simultaneously deep and restrained in emotion. But it also refuses to answer our deepest questions. We learn that friendly intelligences exist, but almost nothing about them or their makers. Sagan’s work is thoughtful and elegant, but ultimately it just kicks the can down the road.

I understand that impulse to seek connection and answers. As a kid raised without religion, I got my sense of wonder from the universe. I devoured Sagan’s TV series, Cosmos, as a kid. Years later, I discovered the 1976 documentary simply called Universe, narrated by William Shatner. The images of galaxies and nebulae, the calm certainty that everything operated according to discoverable laws, gave me a kind of secular liturgy. In my early twenties, during an especially difficult time in my life, I watched it over and over. I would walk to the community college library down the street from my crummy little apartment, check out the Universe VHS from the AV desk, and sit in one of the carrels with headphones on consoling myself with Shatner’s reassuring voice and those vast images of space. This was the closest thing I had to church. My heart was hungry for connection to something far larger than myself, and the universe was the only candidate I knew.

Contact came out a few years later, the summer my grandfather died. Our whole family, still raw over the sudden loss, went to see it together. It offered a few hours of shared awe and a temporary sense that maybe the universe had patterns that included us. None of us had yet found God, and in the years that followed we each had to reckon, in our own ways, with the fact that the universe—however beautiful—does not care that we exist. Sagan’s famous line that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself” is poetic, but it's also a half-truth. We are part of the universe, but we are not the universe. We are finite creatures who wake up one day as squalling infants and, if we’re lucky, live perhaps eighty or ninety years—a flicker against cosmic timescales—before leaving behind grieving creatures who repeat the cycle. From a purely naturalistic perspective, the eventual heat death of the universe renders every human story, every act of love or courage or creativity, ultimately meaningless. That this fate lies incomprehensibly far in the future does not change the logic; it’s simply another way of kicking the can.

I didn’t think that far when I was an atheist. What troubled me more immediately was the problem of morality. If the universe is all that there is, where does “ought” come from? Why is kindness better than cruelty, or truth better than lies, in any ultimate sense? When I could not derive objective morality from the brute facts of existence, I experienced a quiet crisis and did what many atheists do: I back-burnered the question. I buried myself in physics textbooks and Star Trek reruns and the half-acceptance that there was no good answer.

The following year I began to see, through the study of the universe itself, reasons to believe in God. The fine-tuning of physical constants, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, the existence of objective moral obligations—these pointed, for me, to a mind behind the cosmos and a lawgiver behind the moral law. That belief did not merely answer intellectual questions, but poured balm into the ache that science and science fiction had only ever been able to name.

As someone with Asperger’s, I have always been a little inwardly drawn and stressed by new social situations. For that reason, unlike Spielberg, I have never found the prospect of extraterrestrial intelligence particularly exciting or comforting. But part of that may simply be that I grew up on a steady diet of Star Trek—the original series and The Next Generation. Those shows taught me to expect that what waits “out there” is not a race of serene, hyper-intelligent beings who will fill us with transcendent awe and answer our deepest questions, but more of what we deal with on Earth: irrational, petty, violent, complicated people who only look a bit different from us. The drama is diplomacy and exploration, not mystical revelation.

Gene Roddenberry’s secular solution was elegant in its own way. He imagined a future most of us long for, in which humanity has solved its practical and social problems, Earth is united, and a Federation of planets extends that unity across the stars. It’s a profoundly hopeful, this-worldly vision—almost aggressively non-mystical. (The first Star Trek film, The Motion Picture, which Roddenberry had little to do with, is the outlier: a genuine masterpiece of wonder that borrows heavily from religious imagery.) But without conflict, there was no drama, so the human problems in Star Trek were just transferred to other worlds, where Kirk and Picard battled against irrationality and superstition and found wonder in discovery and friendship.

For all of Roddenberry’s practicalizing the future and outer space, the vast majority of human beings carry an inborn need for connection to something larger than themselves. Christianity has met that need for billions of people across centuries and cultures. It offers the mystery and grandeur we crave—the sense of a reality unimaginably vast, powerful, and beautiful—while grounding it in something even deeper: Love. Not abstract benevolence, but a personal, pursuing, cosmic-sized love that desires not just to smile condescendingly at us from a distance, but to adopt us as heirs into a divine family. Awe and belonging at the same time. Safety and security that doesn’t negate awesome transcendence.

I don’t need big-headed aliens or interdimensional beings or wormholes built by ancient engineers to feel that I am not alone. I have God—the One who made the stars and then entered the story Himself, the One who understands loneliness because He experienced it. The One whose family will never break up.

When I think about that emotional rewatch of E.T., or the way Close Encounters still leaves me both thrilled and unsettled, I recognize what those films were doing so well. They were giving beautiful, cinematic form to a longing that nearly every human heart recognizes: the desire to be known by something greater, to be rescued from isolation, to be brought home. Spielberg keeps returning to aliens because he senses, correctly, that the universe is not a cold accident. Sagan, in his more scientific register, reached a similar conclusion and offered the honest, partial answer that we have each other and should make small, brave moves toward truth.

For me the fuller answer arrived when I stopped treating the ache as something to be managed by big telescopes or fictional stories and let it point me to its source. The wonder those films awakened in me was real. The home I eventually found is even more real. And the invitation is still open: small moves, yes—but also the largest move of all, the one that closes the distance between us and the Love that has been calling us home all along.

Foundations for Faith

• Psalm 19:1 – “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”

• Psalm 68:6 – “God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing...”

• Romans 8:38-39 – “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

• Ephesians 1:5 – “He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will...”

• Colossians 1:16-17 – “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Featured Science News

My favorite science news story of the month

NASA Accelerates Plans for Massive Permanent Moon Base at the Lunar South Pole
[New Scientist Magazine]

In a major step toward making humanity multi-planetary, NASA has released aggressive new details for a permanent lunar base spanning hundreds of square kilometers near the Moon’s resource-rich South Pole.

Speaking at a May 26 press conference, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman emphasized the shift from brief visits to long-term habitation: “This time, the goal is to stay.”

Three unmanned scouting missions—Moon Base I, II, and III—are targeting launch before the end of 2026. These will deploy landers from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, Astrobotic, and Intuitive Machines, along with autonomous rovers, to map terrain, test hardware, and hunt for prime landing sites rich in water ice. That ice could supply not only drinking water, but oxygen and rocket fuel for future crews.

The plan will unfold in three phases:

• Through 2029: Establish reliable surface access.

• Through 2032: Achieve initial operating capability with early infrastructure.

• Through 2036: Build out the full base for sustained human presence.

Supporting technologies include manned and autonomous rovers and NASA’s 2028 MoonFall mission: four hopping drones built at JPL that will leap across the rugged landscape, capturing high-resolution data and scouting shadowed craters.

While challenges like radiation shielding and power systems (potentially including nuclear reactors) remain under development, the Artemis program is moving fast. Private partners are playing a key role, turning the Moon into an exciting hub for science, commerce, and a proving ground for potential Mars missions.

Personal commentary: While I find these developments incredibly exciting—the idea of a real, thriving human presence on another world feels like something out of my childhood The Jetsons fantasies becoming reality—I find myself agreeing with retired NASA rocket scientist and author Homer Hickam (Rocket Boys / October Sky), who has long argued that we should focus on the Moon and, for now, set Mars aside.

Hickam’s case is pragmatic and compelling. The Moon is only about 250,000 miles away—a three-day trip—compared to the hundreds of millions of miles (and many months) required to reach Mars. That proximity makes it vastly cheaper, safer, and faster to develop the technologies, habitats, and operational experience we’ll eventually need for deeper space. He sees the Moon not merely as a “stepping stone” or practice run, but as our “eighth continent”—a place with intrinsic value and real work to do right now.

The lunar South Pole offers accessible water ice and other resources (including potentially valuable helium-3 for future fusion power and rare earth metals) that could one day be harvested and returned to benefit Earth’s economy. Building a base there lets us master in-situ resource utilization, radiation protection, closed-loop life support, and long-duration living in a relatively nearby, forgiving environment before attempting the far greater leap to Mars.

Hickam also notes that robotic missions are already doing excellent work exploring Mars. There’s no urgent need to rush humans there when we can achieve so much more, with far less risk and expense, by establishing a permanent foothold on the Moon first. A robust lunar base would serve as the ultimate testbed and launchpad for whatever comes next—whether that’s Mars in a few decades or something even more ambitious.

The Last Laugh

Reach out and touch someone—through an Einstein-Rosen bridge.

If you enjoyed this free edition of “Sunday Superposition,” I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

I wrote an article recently about why the New Atheists made a big mistake leaning into the “God of the gaps” fallacy. Atheists often accuse science-oriented Christians like me of engaging in it, which I find both weird and amusing. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the idea is that science keeps filling in the gaps in our knowledge God once occupied, and one day science will explain everything and leave no room for God.

For instance, where thunder and lightning were once the province of Thor (not exactly the Christian God, but we’ll give the critics a pass), science now explains them as natural phenomena. Gap filled. People supposedly once thought angels pushed the planets around the heavens, but we now know the universal law of gravitation does the job. Another gap filled. I’m not sure what other natural phenomena were routinely chalked up to “God did it,” but according to my atheist critics this was a major thing at one time.

Never mind that the pagan Greeks had been proposing naturalistic explanations since Thales of Miletus in the 7th century BC. Or that the Church in the 13th century incorporated Aristotelian philosophy—including most of its scientific ideas—into Christian theology, particularly through thinkers like Thomas Aquinas. So Christians weren’t, as a matter of doctrine, plugging every hole in human knowledge with “God did it” despite what snarkybob347852 on Reddit insists.

The truth is, Christians in the 11th–12th centuries started the university system. The core subjects included the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. As atheist historian Tim O’Neill has tried to explain to his fellow atheists, from the 11th to the 16th centuries there were incredible pre-modern scientific developments in Christendom. These included advances in optics (by figures like Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon), the development of the scientific method’s precursors, mathematical innovations, mechanics and dynamics (e.g. the work of Jean Buridan and Nicole Oresme on impetus theory), astronomy, medicine, and more. This just makes sense. You don’t get modern science suddenly appearing fully formed with Copernicus out of nowhere. It was the culmination of centuries of progression in scientific thinking within a Christian intellectual culture.1

So, the main problems with the “God of the gaps” accusation are:

1. Christians weren’t really using it as a matter of course.

2. There are some gaps that science will never fill, no matter how advanced it gets.

3. Scientific explanations often raise more questions than they answer.

For #2, as I wrote in my earlier article:

Science excels at describing how things behave once they exist—through observation, experimentation, and repeatable laws—but it can’t address what caused the universe to exist in the first place. Things don’t pop into being from nothing, uncaused. There must be a cause outside the universe itself. And since empirical observation is a cornerstone of the scientific method, we have no way to observe or test what transcends the cosmos. That question sits forever beyond science’s reach.

This makes a lot of people uncomfortable. The idea that the universe was eternal, uncreated, and unchanging persisted for nearly two thousand years. The Church both rejected and grappled with this idea, and when it scientifically collapsed in the 1960s with the rise of Big Bang cosmology, many scientists were deeply unhappy. As John Maddox, the editor of the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, put it in a 1989 editorial, the Big Bang was “philosophically unacceptable” and an “over-simple view” unlikely to survive the decade. (As the kids on the internet say, that didn’t age well.)

Why the resistance? Two reasons. First, it’s philosophically untidy—scientists dislike loose ends, and a cosmic-sized one like the universe’s origin is hard to ignore. Second, it sounds uncomfortably like Genesis 1:1. As Nobel laureate physicist George Paget Thomson (a Christian) observed, probably every scientist would accept a beginning to the universe if the Bible hadn’t mentioned it first. Genesis added a lot of baggage for secular scientists.

For #3, there are plenty of examples. Take gravity. Newton developed his universal theory in the 17th century, elegantly explaining planetary motions. But it was weirder than “God moves them.” How do distant objects influence each other without touching? How does the Sun, 93 million miles away, exert an invisible pull on Earth? Scientists at the time were profoundly disturbed by this. Score: One question answered; but a stranger one took its place.

Einstein’s general relativity later explained gravity as spacetime curvature. But it raised new puzzles: Why is the universe expanding despite gravity’s pull? Why is the expansion accelerating? What happens at the singularity of a black hole? Is information lost inside them? Score: One question answered; several more raised.

Special relativity? Don’t get me started—the bane of every sophomore physics student. It nicely resolved inconsistencies in Maxwell’s electromagnetism (e.g. the constant speed of light regardless of the observer’s motion) but introduced mind-bending concepts like relativity of simultaneity, time dilation, length contraction, and the twin paradox. Score: One (or a few) questions answered; many more raised.

Statistical mechanics, the roided-up cousin of thermodynamics, capably bridges the microscopic and macroscopic worlds. But in doing so, it also suggests incredibly weird things, like it’s more probable that you’re a brain that spontaneously fluctuated into existence—complete with false memories—than that the entire ordered universe came into being. This is the infamous Boltzmann Brain (or “brain in a vat”) problem. For all its explanatory power, statistical mechanics raises a multitude of absurd possibilities, like “Is any of this real?” Score: A few questions answered; many more (and far more absurd) questions raised.

But quantum mechanics takes the cake for raising more questions than it answers. It provides incredibly accurate mathematical predictions for particle-level phenomena, but offers no intuitive “this is how it really works” explanation. Instead, we get wave-particle duality, the double-slit experiment (where particles behave like waves until observed), quantization of energy, quantum entanglement (“spooky action at a distance”), quantum tunneling, superposition, and many more. Physicists often compare all this to the absurdity of Alice in Wonderland just to make it relatable.

Attempts to make sense of quantum weirdness via “interpretations” have only multiplied the philosophical headaches. There are dozens of interpretations (polls and lists commonly highlight 8–15 major ones, with many variants). Key examples include the Copenhagen Interpretation (the pragmatic “shut up and calculate” favorite for many physicists), the Many-Worlds Interpretation (the multiverse), Pilot-Wave (Bohmian) theory, and others. Score: A few questions answered; many more—and far weirder—raised.

I’ve noticed a lot of atheists take the reverse approach—what some Christian apologists call an “atheism of the gaps” or a “science of the gaps.” These are often science-loving people with only a superficial grasp of science. They have faith (not entirely unwarranted on their limited knowledge) that natural theories will eventually fill every gap, not realizing that the gaps tend to widen and multiply the deeper we go. The ratio of what we know to what we don’t know keeps shrinking, and I suspect that’s by design.

What’s an atheist to do once they fully grasp this? I don’t know—maybe just accept that the universe is funny that way. But they should stop accusing Christians of a “God of the gaps” fallacy when we invoke God for what is truly unexplainable by natural means.

In the end, the “God of the gaps” charge feels like it’s rooted in ignorance or stands more as a rhetorical dodge than as a serious critique. Science is an incredible tool for understanding the how of the created order, but it has inherent limits, especially when it comes to the why.

So, what do you all think? Are there examples where science has neatly answered a question without raising at least one more? What are your favorite cases of science inadvertently raising more questions than it answers? Let me know in the comments.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The juxtaposition of the title and subtitle may seem paradoxical, but let me show you what I mean. We’ll begin with one of my favorite figures in the history of modern science: Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest and cosmologist widely regarded as the father of the Big Bang. His story is full of intellectual drama, steady faith, and the intriguing interplay between science and Scripture.

In 1915, Einstein published his groundbreaking general theory of relativity—a towering achievement of pure reasoning about how space and time curve and bend under the influence of matter and energy. The equations at its heart form a set of ten complex, interconnected equations (known as nonlinear partial differential equations). These describe how gravity works on the grandest scales, but they are notoriously difficult to solve exactly. Even Einstein himself expressed pessimism, believing the mathematics was so intricate that meaningful solutions might remain beyond reach.

But a German physicist named Karl Schwarzschild quickly proved him wrong. While serving on the front lines of World War I, he found the first exact solution: one that described what we now call a black hole. These strange objects were already startling to early 20th-century minds (Kip Thorne’s book Black Holes and Time Warps tells the story vividly). But Lemaître soon found something even more revolutionary.

Working with Einstein’s equations, he showed that the universe could not be eternal and unchanging, as philosophers and scientists had assumed for over two thousand years. Instead, it had to be dynamic—either expanding or contracting over time.

Einstein famously resisted at first, telling Lemaître, “Vos calculs sont corrects, mais votre physique est abominable.” (“Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.”) When American astronomers, Edwin Hubble and Milton Humason, provided clear observational evidence that galaxies are racing away from us, the universe’s expansion became undeniable. Einstein eventually accepted the truth: the cosmos is dynamic and had a beginning.

This was unsettling for many who preferred an eternal, static universe. But for Christians, it was profoundly encouraging. It aligned strikingly with the opening words of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Pope Pius XII embraced Lemaître’s “hypothesis of the primeval atom”—the early version of what became Big Bang cosmology—as consistent with the idea of creation.

Lemaître, however, remained cautious. He gently advised the Pope not to tie Christian faith too tightly to any specific scientific theory. Science moves forward, theories get refined or even replaced. Christian faith and science are deeply complementary and mutually supportive, but ultimately they serve different roles.

So what should a science-loving Christian do when new data challenges the details of our best models?

Take a broader view.

The evidence that the Sun, not the Earth, sits at the center of our Solar System is rock solid and isn’t going anywhere. In the same way, the core truth that our universe had a beginning, has been expanding ever since, and continues to change over time seems extraordinarily secure. You might object that the Pope was therefore right to place his trust in Lemaître’s theory, but this is hindsight. After a hundred years, the theory has earned that trust. Yet the finer details of how and when things happened are still being worked out as bigger and better instruments and experiments bring us fresh surprises.

For instance, the James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprisingly mature galaxies appearing far earlier than many expected—perhaps as soon as a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. These findings have shaken up some assumptions about how quickly structure formed in the early universe. But they haven’t overturned the bigger picture: a universe with a definite start that has been changing and expanding ever since. The broad story matters more than the latest technical refinements.

James Clerk Maxwell, one of the greatest physicists of all time, put it this way:

“I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time...”

As a new Christian, I was enthusiastic about Gerald Schroeder’s work reconciling Genesis 1 with modern science. I had great trust in his unique perspective as a physicist and Jewish theologian, and I wanted to show it to Maxwell and say, “This has significance for everyone!” While I still think Schroeder’s approach is insightful, compelling, and probably correct, I’ve learned not to put all my eggs in any particular scientific or exegetic basket. It may turn out he’s not exactly right about every aspect of his interpretation. That’s okay, because whatever happens, the broader harmony remains.

I do find these detailed points of resonance between modern science and Genesis deeply intriguing and exciting. They enrich my sense of wonder and invite me to see the Creator’s handiwork with fresh eyes. At the same time, I resist tying my faith to any specific scientific detail. Comparing Scripture with the latest discoveries can teach us meaningful things about the order, beauty, and purposeful unfolding of creation, but we must be careful not to place too much weight on particular details proving true or false. Scientific understanding will continue to develop. And while God’s Word doesn’t change, our understanding of it can also develop.

Genesis gives us a clear arc: a definite beginning, followed by a purposeful progression from formless chaos toward order, complexity, life, and ultimately to humankind. It’s hard to imagine future discoveries in either science or biblical exegesis overturning this outline.

But the details? They’re kind of fluid.

For instance, I’m especially fond of the idea of cosmic inflation—the proposal that, a tiny fraction of a second after the beginning, the universe underwent a brief, explosive period of expansion. Space itself stretched dramatically and rapidly, helping explain the remarkable smoothness we observe across the cosmos and setting the stage for the large-scale structures that later formed. It carries a poetic echo of Genesis 1:2, where “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” What does this mean? The Hebrew word for waters (mayim) can mean other kinds of fluid, and the word used here for spirit (ruach) can also mean a gust of wind or a powerful exhalation. To me, this is strongly suggestive of God triggering a rapid early expansion in a universe that, according to particle physics, was in a perfectly fluid-like state at that stage.

Scientists are actively hunting for direct evidence of inflation, primarily by searching for a distinctive subtle twisting signature imprinted on the cosmic microwave background radiation—the faint afterglow of the Big Bang. Experiments like BICEP (at the South Pole) and upcoming missions such as LiteBIRD are designed with exquisite sensitivity to detect these incredibly faint signals.

Yet we may never find conclusive evidence for inflation, and my interpretation of Genesis 1:2 might be way out in left field. But that’s okay.

My confidence in God and His Word does not depend on any scientific theory holding up in every detail. The broad sweep of Genesis 1 fits remarkably well with what we observe: a created universe that began and then unfolded with purpose. The details are delightful—they invite wonder, discovery, and deeper worship of the Creator. But they are not the main thing.

As Ecclesiastes 3:11 reminds us, God has made everything beautiful in its time. We can enjoy scientific mysteries. We can let them stir awe, drive our curiosity, and draw us closer to the One who spoke the cosmos into being. But in the end, whether galaxies formed a few hundred million years after the beginning or whether inflation happened exactly as we hypothesize—these questions, fascinating as they are, remain secondary. The exact date of galaxy formation is not going to win or lose souls. What matters eternally is knowing the God who set it all in motion and who offers us redemption through Jesus Christ. There is abundant of evidence for both, because God wants us to come to Him. Enjoy the details, but rest in the broader view.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

Please also feel free to comment or ask questions below. If you’re new here, I encourage you to check out my FAQ first.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The most pressing question I hear from Christian parents is how to raise Christian children who become Christian adults. Most advice on how to do this sounds reasonable, if a bit pat: Model authentic faith. Cultivate a loving relationship. Disciple them. Connect them with role models and youth groups.

All of this is necessary, but is it sufficient? Given the statistics, I don’t think so.

You can do all of those things and still lose your children to the world once they become adults (and often before). I know many devoted, church-going parents who have no idea how they managed, despite their best efforts, to produce non-believing adult children. I’ve interacted with countless atheists on social media who were raised Christian and walked away from faith at a young age, many before their parents even realized. The statistics bear this out: Young people in America are leaving Christianity in record numbers.

I may lose some subscribers with this one, but it’s too important not to address. Let’s talk about why this happens and how to prevent it.

Here are the best ways to ensure your Christian kids become secular adults:

1. Don’t teach them why they believe what they believe.

2. Try to accommodate worldly values.

3. Fail to stick to your principles in tough times.

So, how do you avoid this? Simple: Do the opposite.

Teach your kids why they believe what they believe

Going to church every Sunday is not enough. Weekly Bible readings and devotionals are not enough. Youth group is not enough. The world is eager to turn your kids away from their faith, and they need more than vibes and testimonies to protect them.

Twenty years ago, as a newly-minted Christian flush with the enthusiasm of conversion, I approached several churches in my city hoping to establish a working relationship as a “consulting scientist.” I was still a graduate student, and eager to share how modern science complements and supports Christian beliefs (and vice-versa). I sent dozens of letters to churches all over the city. Not a single response. I pivoted to in-person visits, approaching youth pastors after services. I got one of two reactions: deer in the headlights or abject fear.

This is one aspect of a larger problem: Christian kids know how to respond to questions like “Who is Jesus?” or “What did He do for us?” but most of them can’t tell you why they believe any of it. They can tell you Jesus is in their hearts, but they can’t defend serious questions like: How do you know God created the universe when science explains its origin? Why do you believe Jesus rose from the dead when that’s impossible? Where is God when bad things happen to good people?

If young Christians only encountered other believers, this might not be much of an issue. But they live in a world full of other religions and an increasing number of non-believers. If you send them to university, they will encounter serious challenges to their beliefs. Once they get on social media, they’ll face a tidal wave of objections—everything from the utterly moronic to the highly sophisticated. This deluge can wear down even the most committed Christian unless they are prepared. As Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, we need the full armor of God—and that includes knowing why we believe what we believe.

Very young Christians only need the basics—this is the Grammar phase of the classical education model, focused on memorization of facts: Bible stories, key doctrines, catechism answers, and Scripture. But once Christian kids are old enough—right around the Logic phase (middle school)—you can begin teaching them the “why.” This is where they start analyzing evidence, reasoning through objections, spotting logical fallacies, comparing worldviews, and building basic arguments. Anyone who’s parented a middle-schooler knows they’re natural lawyers. Why not channel that energy into discipling them in reason and evidence?

Then, in the Rhetoric phase (high school), they learn to express and defend their faith persuasively in conversations, writing, and real-world encounters—turning knowledge and logic into confident, winsome advocacy. This prepares them not only against external attacks, but against internal doubts as well.

There are a ton of resources out there to help you with all of this, which I list at the end of this article.

Resist worldly values

Every week I drive past a mainline Protestant church that features some worldly virtue-signaling slogan of the week on its marquee. Despite its location across the street from a vibrant university, it has all the appearance of a tired, barely-surviving church with a dwindling membership of a few dozen middle-aged or older people.

I’ve had staunch atheists tell me churches need to be more accommodating of worldly values to attract young people. But is this true? Even without statistics or seeing the tired woke church, this struck me as absurd—like advising a struggling fitness center to install a fast-food restaurant inside to attract more customers. All it does is signal you’re not serious about what you claim to offer.

Sociologist Ryan Burge has documented the depressing reality of how membership in mainline Protestant denominations has cratered. I know this story firsthand: I was baptized in the ELCA twenty years ago and initially loved it. But it quickly became apparent that the denomination was falling to the world, choosing to align itself more and more with secular values instead of standing firm on biblical truth. In the late 1950s, about half of all Americans belonged to a mainline congregation. Today it’s under 10%, with just 2% of adults under 40 identifying as mainline. Many of these denominations have lost a third or more of their members since the 1970s. Meanwhile, more serious, non-denominational Bible churches and conservative groups are maintaining or even growing their share, with non-denominational Christians now making up about 15% of American adults.

The truth is, strict religions succeed, mushy ones don’t. As a Star Wars nerd, I appreciated this deep dive on Mandalorian culture—specifically the strict “Children of the Watch” faction Mando belongs to—and how it relates to real-world religions. After the devastation of their home world, this group survived by doubling down on the old ways: never removing their helmets, adopting foundlings as true children, and constantly reinforcing “This is the way.” Scholars of religion show that high-demand groups like this survive by filtering out uncommitted people, creating powerful solidarity through costly practices (what they call “credibility-enhancing displays”), and building fictive kinship that treats adopted members as real family. For centuries, that described most Christian churches in the West. Today, it’s the same dynamic you see with the Amish, whose population in North America continues to double roughly every 20 years thanks to their strict practices and high commitment. These mechanisms help strict communities survive catastrophe and pass their beliefs on across generations, while loose, accommodating groups tend to fade away.

Teach your kids that they’re in the world, not of it. That doesn’t mean they can’t love those who are mired in the world—quite the opposite. They should share the gospel with those who need it most. But just as physicians don’t make themselves ill to be more relatable to patients, Christians shouldn’t conform to the world to be more relatable to unbelievers. They can guide with love, but live within biblical morality. The stricter a church (within reason), the more likely its members are to remain.

Stick to your principles

Someone once told me, kids under pressure don’t rise to the level of what you lectured them about—they sink to the level of what they learned from watching you. If you’re like me, that made you wince a little.

It’s easy to model Christ-like virtues when things are going your way; but when life presents serious challenges, it can seem impossible. This is where real discipleship happens. If you’re tempted to take the easy way out, think about what that’s teaching your children. Do you gossip about the “losers” in your life or lapse into despair when something goes sideways? Do you snap when you’re impatient or curse in traffic while your kids are in the backseat? Your daily reactions are teaching them far more about Christian ethics than any sermon or youth group lesson on what a wonderful model Jesus was. (In case this sounds preachy: I’m talking to myself as much as to you.)

Conclusion

This is the best model I’ve seen for how to raise Christian kids who become Christian adults: disciple them to know why they believe what they believe, stay true to their beliefs, and live it out daily. It’s not foolproof—some will still be lured away by pleasure, politics, or pain no matter what their parents do—but this approach gives them the best defense against a world eager to pull them from Christ.

The battle is real, but so is the hope. Equip them with truth, surround them with a committed community, and live out your beliefs daily. That’s how we raise the next generation of faithful Christians.

Resources for middle schoolers

This is when kids naturally question everything. Channel that energy into learning why Christianity is true through evidence, logic, and basic arguments.

• J. Warner Wallace’s “For Kids” Series (Cold-Case Christianity for Kids, God’s Crime Scene for Kids, Forensic Faith for Kids): Former cold-case detective Wallace (with Susie Wallace) turns apologetics into an exciting investigation. Kids learn to examine evidence for the Gospels, creation, and sharing faith like detectives. Includes activities and online Case Makers Academy resources (videos, certificates). Perfect for engaging middle schoolers who love mysteries.

• William Lane Craig – On Guard for Students (or the adult On Guard with parent guidance): Covers key arguments for God’s existence, the resurrection, and objections like the problem of evil. Short chapters, illustrations, and discussion questions. Pair with the free animated Zangmeister videos for accessibility. Excellent for building logical reasoning skills.

• Natasha Crain’s Books* (Keeping Your Kids on God’s Side, Talking with Your Kids about God, Talking with Your Kids about Jesus): These provide 30–40 ready-made conversation guides on science/faith, Jesus, evil, other religions, and more. Written directly for parents to discuss with kids—highly practical and culturally relevant.

• Lee Strobel’s “For Kids” Series (The Case for Christ for Kids, The Case for Faith for Kids, etc.): Journalistic investigations into the evidence for Christianity. Kid-friendly versions of his bestselling adult books.

• Mama Bear Apologetics (Mama Bear Apologetics book and study guide): Helps parents address cultural lies (identity, relativism, etc.) with biblical responses and practical talking points for middle schoolers.

• Summit Ministries’ Lightbearers Curriculum*: Video-based worldview program comparing Christianity to other worldviews. Designed specifically for 8th grade / middle school.

• The Apologetics Study Bible for Students: Full Bible with notes, articles, and answers to over 130 common student questions.

*I haven’t personally checked these out, but have heard good things. Other highly recommended options I haven’t personally checked out: Foundation Worldview Curriculum, Apologia’s What We Believe series, and The Defense Never Rests workbook (based on Craig).

Resources for high schoolers

Teens now refine their ability to articulate and persuasively defend their faith in writing, speech, debate, and real-world conversations.

• Lee Strobel - The Case for Christ: A former atheist and award-winning journalist investigates the historical evidence for Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection using interviews with leading scholars. Highly readable, evidence-based, and excellent for teens learning how to examine and defend the core claims of Christianity.

• William Lane Craig – Reasonable Faith: More advanced treatment of the core arguments. Great for motivated high schoolers preparing for college challenges.

• J. Warner Wallace – Cold-Case Christianity, God’s Crime Scene, and Forensic Faith (adult versions): Builds directly on the kids’ series with deeper investigation techniques.

• Frank Turek & Norman Geisler – I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist: Comprehensive, logical defense of Christianity. Popular for teens and often used in high school apologetics classes.

• C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity: Classic, winsome explanation of Christian beliefs. Timeless for teaching clear, persuasive articulation. (I also recommend Lewis’ The Great Divorce—teens will resonate with the fanciful, if theologically heavy, presentation.)

• Nancy Pearcey – Total Truth: Helps teens understand and critique worldviews, integrating faith with all of life.

• Sean McDowell Resources: Books, videos, and conferences focused on student-level apologetics and worldview.

• Summit Ministries Student Conferences*: Multi-day worldview and apologetics training camps (ages 16+). Highly recommended transformative experiences.

• Reality Student Apologetics Conferences*: Weekend events with leading apologists tailored for high school students.

*I haven’t personally checked these out, but they come recommended.

Additional excellent choices: How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski; The Reason for God by Tim Keller; Finding Truth and The Soul of Science (with Charles Thaxton) by Nancy Pearcey.

Recommendation: Start with parent-led conversation books (Crain, Mama Bear) in middle school, then move to deeper reading and conferences in high school. Combine books with discussion, videos, and real-world practice. Many of these have free online companions, videos, and curricula that make them homeschool- or family-friendly.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The last Sunday of each month features Sunday Superposition, a special thank you for paid subs, whose generosity helps keep me writing here each week and ensures that most of my content remains free. Each edition is a collection of candid personal story, a hand-picked roundup of exciting science news, and something to make you laugh. It’s truly one of my favorite things to create.

Free subscribers: You can click below to read this post with a 7-day free trial. If you enjoy it and want to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Read more

It may sound counterintuitive, but the more unexpected Jesus is in Scripture, the more believable He becomes.

Who else in the history of world religions—especially the ancient Near Eastern ones—could have dreamed up a God like the one revealed in the Gospel of John? This book opens with the eternal Logos, the divine Word through whom all things were made, speaking the universe into existence and closes with that same figure standing on a beach at dawn, grilling fish for breakfast for His weary disciples. Then, almost as an afterthought, John drops this line: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25). It just hangs there, understated and staggering—like saying, “Oh, by the way, the Guy who just fried up breakfast for His friends did far more than you could possibly imagine.”

I first started thinking deeply about this after reading through John’s Gospel and being struck by that jarring contrast between its majestic beginning and humble ending. But the thought has also been sharpened by conversations with atheists. Whenever I post about Jesus on social media, skeptics often push back: “He didn’t fulfill the Old Testament prophecies exactly as they were described!” My response is always the same: If the early Christians were simply making this up, why on earth would they include details that look like inconsistencies or loose ends? Were the Gospel writers so incompetent or careless that they couldn’t invent a tidy, perfectly matching fictional Messiah who checked every box of Jewish expectation? Or is it far more likely that the prophecies were being fulfilled in surprising, unexpected ways—and that the authors were simply being honest about what they saw and heard?

Our unexpected Messiah

Consider the religious world of the ancient Near East, the very cultural soil in which the Israelites lived. The great Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, gives us a vivid picture of what gods looked like in that era. It is a story of warring deities, cosmic chaos, and violent conquest. The goddess Tiamat, enraged, spawns a horde of dragons, serpents, and chimeric monsters to wage war against the younger gods. Marduk rises as champion, slays Tiamat in brutal combat, splits her body to form the heavens and earth, and claims supreme power. Creation emerges from battle, blood, and domination. The gods are powerful, capricious, and often terrifying—beings who create through violence and rule through fear.

Now contrast that with the Messiah prophesied centuries later in Isaiah. Not a dragon-slaying warrior-god, but a gentle Servant: “He will not quarrel or cry out... A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out” (Isaiah 42:2–3). The Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 is “despised and rejected,” “a man of sorrows,” silent before His accusers, led like a lamb to the slaughter, bearing the sins of many—not by conquering with monsters and lightning, but by His own wounds healing us.

Jesus fulfills this prophecy in the most astonishing way. He is unimaginably powerful, yet profoundly relatable. The One who spoke the laws of nature into existence, who spun all the stars in the universe into being, who breathed life into non-life—He walked dusty Galilean roads in sandals. He ate fish and bread, breathed the same air we do, grew tired, and slept. Who would invent a God like that?

When He was accused, He stood silently before Pontius Pilate, offering no dramatic defense. He endured savage beating, mocking, torture, and the utter degradation of crucifixion. With a mere thought, He could have vaporized everyone involved. Instead, He bore the shame, absorbed the pain, and took on the punishment for sins not His own. Who would make up such a God?

What a human-made Messiah would look like

Imagine if we had invented the Messiah. He’d probably look nothing like the real Jesus.

At best, He might resemble a super-powered King David: a conquering hero who crushes the Roman occupiers, restores Israel’s glory, and rains down divine justice on the nation’s enemies—more like Marduk than the Servant of Isaiah.

At worst, He’d be the ultimate self-insert fantasy. In an episode of the TV show The Big Bang Theory the guys are facing months of brutal Arctic survival with the insufferable Sheldon Cooper. Raj, channeling his Hindu karma beliefs, declares that after enduring such horrible suffering he might be reincarnated as a well-endowed billionaire with wings.

That’s a Messiah our ridiculous hearts would design: an eight-foot-tall, impossibly handsome, ultra-wealthy alpha male riding around in a flying McLaren, zapping haters with lightning bolts, rewarding “us” (the righteous) while humiliating or destroying “them” (everyone else). He’d promise riches, power, and ravishing partners in the next life. He’d flatter our egos and never challenge us too deeply.

But the real Jesus? A poverty-stricken carpenter from backwater Nazareth, with an ordinary name and an unremarkable appearance, riding around on a donkey. He told us to examine our own faults first. To love our enemies. To turn the other cheek. To guard our thoughts. To walk a straight, narrow, often difficult path that offers no room for boasting and no way to earn our own salvation. His presence—now and for eternity—is the only reward we need. Nothing about Him flatters human pride, vanity, or base desires.

The astrophysical contrast

As an astrophysicist, the contrast in John’s Gospel hits me with special force.

Jesus is the God powerful and wise enough to create a universe so vast it defies imagination. Our observable universe stretches billions of light-years, containing hundreds of billions to trillions of galaxies—each a colossal continent of hundreds of billions of stars spread throughout the vast ocean of spacetime. Space itself teems with unseen energy that seems to come from nowhere as the universe expands.

This cosmos spans scales from subatomic quarks to living cells, to supermassive black holes, to galaxy clusters spanning millions of light-years. Massive stars explode in supernovae. Quasars blast jets hundreds of thousands of light-years long. Pulsars spin with dizzying precision. Neutron star collisions send gravitational waves rippling across the galaxy and forge heavy elements. The whole thing runs on elegant, intricate mathematics. From non-life, life arose—and from that life, conscious beings who bear the image of their Creator.

And the same One who orchestrated all of this—the deeds so numerous the world couldn’t contain the books describing them—became a flesh-and-blood man in ordinary clothes, His feet covered in the dust from which Adam’s body was formed, quietly grilling breakfast for His friends on a Galilean shore.

Who would make up a God like that?

No one. And that’s why I believe. The sheer unexpectedness, the divine humility, the perfect tension between infinite power and intimate love—it rings true in a way no human fantasy ever could. This Jesus isn’t the God we would invent. He’s far better than anything we could dream up. And He invites us to come to Him, just as we are.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

I’m debuting a new feature here: periodic digs into the archives to resurface pieces that still matter deeply to me—especially for all of you who’ve joined recently. (I still can’t believe my subscriber count has doubled in the last year. Welcome, and thank you!)

With May being Star Wars month, I wanted to share three favorites that wrestle with big questions through the lens of sci-fi and storytelling:

• How the vastness of the universe can crush us with insignificance or point us to a loving Creator who made us for eternal significance.

• Why stories of darkness, flawed heroes, and sacrificial resistance feel so true to the Christian life—and why they ultimately fill us with hope rather than despair.

• How true freedom isn’t rugged individualism but something deeper, rooted in faith and shared culture, and why we’re losing that common ground today.

These pieces explore the places where Star Wars, movies, science, and Christianity collide in surprising and hopeful ways. Whether you’re a longtime reader revisiting old favorites or brand new here, I think you’ll find something that stirs your mind and heart.

Here they are:

Star Wars keeps reminding me that creation is good. Rewatching Rogue One on Star Wars Day hit me with its powerful portrait of sacrificial love and heroic deaths in the face of overwhelming evil. As an astrophysicist, I see the universe as deliberately created by a loving Father—not random or indifferent. While its vastness leads many to despair and feelings of insignificance, Christianity offers the far better truth: we’re small in size but enormous in eternal significance, made of stardust by the God who entered His creation to defeat evil and bring us home. If you love sci-fi and thoughtful faith, give it a read.

Finding light in a dark galaxy far, far away. I used to hate how grim Rogue One and Andor felt compared to the hopeful original trilogy. Now I see their darkness serves a purpose: they show the real, painful cost of resisting evil. Through flawed heroes like Cassian Andor, these stories echo how God uses imperfect people for His purposes and remind us that our sacrifices matter—because we know how the story ends in victory, just as Christians know Christ has already defeated evil. If you love Star Wars and wrestling with faith in a broken world, this one’s for you.

Freedom, films, and faith. I moved to the U.S. seeking more freedom, but I’ve come to see that true individual liberty needs Christianity as its foundation—and that hyper-individualism is quietly destroying the shared culture that once united us. From the decline of movie theaters to the fragmentation of streaming, we’re losing common ground. Christianity offers the perfect balance: ultimate value for every person and deep connection in a family that transcends every divide. A reflection on movies, culture, and why we need each other. If you care about freedom and community, give it a read.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

I’ll be honest: when I first saw Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck prominently displayed in the bookstore, I rolled my eyes and walked right past it. The title struck me as pure gimmick—the kind of cheap provocation designed to grab attention rather than offer real wisdom. But then I came across this interview with Manson, and my opinion shifted. Here is a secular thinker, someone with no religious commitment, drawing on real life experience and insights of the ancient Greeks to arrive at truths deeply baked into Christian theology.

We in the modern West are obsessed with happiness. Have you noticed this? It’s right there in the American Declaration of Independence—the unalienable right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And yet, for all our comforts, conveniences, and technological marvels, we seem more anxious, discontented, and fragile than ever before. I can’t help but contrast this with memories of my university days as an impoverished physics student living on cheap hamburgers and sheer determination. Life was harder then, materially leaner, but somehow both lighter and richer in satisfaction. A century or more ago, when daily existence demanded far more physical toil and offered far fewer luxuries, people often carried a quieter contentment than we do today with our heated seats and endless streaming options.

The late conservative writer P.J. O’Rourke captured this paradox vividly in essays about his experiences in some of the world’s poorest countries. Time after time, he encountered people who, by Western standards, had every reason to be miserable—yet they laughed easily, shared generously, and seemed genuinely joyful. They weren’t chasing happiness as a goal. It simply emerged from the way they lived.

So what’s going on?

Manson offers a compelling framework drawn from the ancient Greeks. They spoke of two very different kinds of happiness. Hedonia (from which we get the word “hedonism”) refers to the pursuit of pleasure, comfort, and short-term satisfactions. In today’s terms, that’s dopamine hits from likes, sugary treats, impulse buys, or binge-watching. It feels good in the moment, but it’s fleeting, and usually leaves us feeling hollowed out afterward.

In contrast, eudaimonia describes a deeper, more enduring sense of human flourishing—a life of meaning, purpose, and virtue that feels worth living even when it’s difficult. This is the happiness that’s long-term, the kind that quietly assures you that at the end of your days you’ll say, “It was all worth it.”

Our culture has become brilliantly optimized for hedonia—every app, advertisement, and algorithm is engineered to deliver quick comforts and emotional highs. Yet the research—and our own depleted lives—show that chasing these highs often leaves us emptier. True, lasting satisfaction comes not as something we grasp directly, but as a byproduct of something far richer.

Manson drives this home with what he calls the Backwards Law (an idea he credits in part to Alan Watts): The more desperately you chase a positive experience, the more you create suffering for yourself. Conversely, the more willingly you accept and even embrace a negative experience, the more genuine positivity flows into your life.

Think about it. The harder you try to impress people, the more insecure and unimpressive you feel. The more you obsess over looking beautiful, the more flaws you notice in the mirror. The more you chase money, the poorer you feel no matter your bank account. The more you demand constant happiness, the more easily life upsets you. But when you stop fighting reality—when you accept that life includes hardship, rejection, and struggle—a surprising peace and resilience often follow.

This led Manson to a powerful question: Instead of asking, “What will make me happy?” what if we asked, “What pain am I willing to endure? What struggle do I secretly enjoy?”

For me, it’s the satisfying burn from lifting heavy weights. I love that kind of pain. Or the deep, almost meditative focus of scrubbing a filthy space until it gleams—like the time I helped my brother and sister in-law clean their newly rented house from top to bottom after the previous tenants left it in a shambles. It was disgusting work—but also oddly rewarding. These aren’t easy pleasures, but they connect me to something meaningful. They point toward eudaimonia.

Manson also sketches three broad stages of human development that help explain why so many of us feel stuck:

• The childhood phase is simple and impulsive: “I want the cookie. Do I get it?” Life is all about immediate gratification.

• The adolescent phase becomes transactional. Once we realize other people have their own desires and perspectives, life turns into performance and barter. We wear the right clothes, say the right things, curate the right image, all to win approval, status, or that next “cookie.” It’s exhausting, inauthentic, and incredibly fragile. As many of us can recall from our middle school days, one misstep and the whole house of cards can tumble.

• The adulthood phase is marked by acceptance and unconditional values. You discover what matters so deeply to you that you’re willing to be disliked for it. You stop performing for the world’s applause and start living according to convictions that transcend circumstances. This stage is anti-fragile—setbacks don’t destroy you; they refine and strengthen you.

Many of us remain functionally adolescent well into our adult years, especially in our hyper-transactional, social-media-driven culture that constantly flatters us and tells us we’re special, entitled, and deserving of easy outcomes. Manson calls out the two faces of narcissism that result: the grandiose (“I’m superior”) and the vulnerable (“I’m a unique victim who deserves special treatment”). Both lead to the same exhausting demand: the world must revolve around me.

This is where the Christian faith comes through with particular relevance—and where the data become fascinating. Multiple studies, including from Pew Research, consistently show that actively religious people—especially those who live out their Christian faith—report significantly higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction than the unaffiliated. In the United States, 36% of actively religious adults describe themselves as “very happy,” compared to just 25% of the unaffiliated. Similar patterns hold in many other countries, with faith correlating to greater resilience, lower rates of anxiety and depression, stronger communities, and a profound sense of purpose.

Why? Because Christianity frames the paradoxical nature of true happiness—it has always invited us into eudaimonia. It calls us to meaningful struggle, radical acceptance of reality under God’s sovereignty, and the steady cultivation of virtue.

The medieval Church discovered the full riches of Greek philosophy in the 12th and 13th centuries, and wholeheartedly embraced it.1 Aristotle’s works flooded back into the Latin West, and Christian thinkers were enthralled. There was such excitement, such a giddy rush to incorporate his ideas, that it bordered on syncretism at times. But it was understandable, as the Greeks had given distinct voice to ideas that are deeply, sometimes subtly, embedded in Christian theology.

The high point came with Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. In his monumental Summa Theologica, Aquinas masterfully wove Aristotle’s insights on virtue and human flourishing into Christian theology. He showed how habits like prudence, justice, fortitude (courage), and temperance weren’t just ancient Greek ideals, but practices we can and should lean into by God’s grace, in every season of life.

This mirrors the apostle Paul, who learned the secret of contentment whether in plenty or in want, because his hope and identity were anchored in Christ (Philippians 4:11-13). Jesus Himself warned that the world would hate His followers just as it hated Him first (John 15:18)—a liberating truth that frees us from the adolescent trap of constant performance.

The practical formula for happiness that emerges is this:

Meaningful struggle + willing acceptance = eudaimonia (deep, lasting satisfaction).

In my own life lately, this has moved from theory to daily reality. My cancer recently returned, bringing with it lifestyle restrictions I didn’t ask for, especially as a professional-level baker who loves creating (and eating) fabulous sweets. Far worse, this diagnosis forces me to confront uncertainty about how many years I have left on this earth.2 But, as Corrie ten Boom observed, fighting that reality only robs today of its strength. Acceptance—yielding what I cannot control to a faithful God while taking responsibility for how I respond—brings a surprising sense of freedom.

So, how do you find happiness? I lied a little in the title of this piece, because you don’t find happiness—you let it find you. And you don’t have to face cancer to invite happiness in. Ask yourself: What am I willing to struggle for? What am I willing to be disliked for? When you find those things and root them in love for God and neighbor, happiness stops being the desperate goal and becomes a quiet companion along the way.

Western culture has made us fragile by chasing hedonia. It’s time to reclaim the ancient wisdom—both Greek and Christian—that has sustained faithful souls for centuries: Pursue virtue. Embrace meaningful struggle. Accept what you cannot change. Trust the God who redeems every hardship and works all things for good.

A life well-lived in Christ isn’t always easy. But it is deeply satisfying. And joy comes as a gift, often when we least expect it.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

In a delightful interview with Alex O’Connor, mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox zeroed in on one of the biggest mistakes the New Atheists made: their fixation on the so-called “God of the gaps” argument.

They portrayed believers as intellectual cowards who stuff God into every unexplained corner of the natural world. We don’t understand lightning? Must be Thor hurling thunderbolts. We figure out the science? Goodbye, Thor—and eventually, goodbye God, as the “gaps” in our knowledge shrink to nothing.

Watch the full interview below (it’s well worth your time). Lennox dismantles this caricature with characteristic clarity and wit.

But the New Atheists’ framing has two fatal problems.

First, it ignores the boundary problems that science, by its very nature, can never solve. These aren’t temporary gaps waiting for better telescopes or faster computers. They’re fundamental limits where the physical world bumps up against the metaphysical.

Take the origin of the universe. Science excels at describing how things behave once they exist—through observation, experimentation, and repeatable laws—but it can’t address what caused the universe to exist in the first place. Things don’t pop into being from nothing, uncaused. There must be a cause for the universe, and it must lie outside the universe. And since one cornerstone of the scientific method is empirical observation, we have no way to observe or test what transcends the cosmos. That question sits forever beyond the reach of science.

Two other stubborn mysteries may fall into this same category: the origin of life and the emergence of human consciousness. We should pursue scientific understanding of these mysteries with vigor; but they have the feel of persistent, perhaps intractable, riddles. Science describes regularities; it doesn’t ultimately cause them or explain why anything exists to follow those regularities at all.

Second—and this is the part that resonates most deeply with believing scientists like Lennox and me—the “God of the gaps” gets our actual experience exactly backward.

My own journey to faith didn’t come from what I didn’t understand. It came from what I did. As a grad student, I studied the chemistry of the early universe through observations of distant quasars. The exquisite fine-tuning, the precise convergence of physical constants and conditions needed to make those measurements possible, the underlying order that allowed the Big Bang model to hold together—it all radiated a profound sense of intentional design. To me, it wasn’t a gap screaming for a filler. It was evidence pointing unmistakably to a Creator.

Lennox puts it beautifully: the more he understands the universe—its mathematical intelligibility, its laws that describe rather than create—the more it draws him toward God. He compares it to standing before a great painting. The untrained eye sees beauty; the expert, who grasps the technique and genius behind the brushstrokes, sees far more. Science doesn’t erode faith for those who see clearly. It deepens awe.

Of course, pre-scientific people did sometimes attribute unexplained phenomena directly to the gods. Nordic pagans invoked Thor for lightning, and that wasn’t primitive stupidity. In a sense, that reflected an early intuition of design and agency in nature—a recognition that the world doesn’t explain itself. Today, we understand the natural laws God “wrote” into the fabric of reality, but we don’t propose that He intervenes at every moment as the stage director of the universe. As French scholar Pierre-Simon Laplace famously told Napoleon, “I have no need of that hypothesis” when it comes to most everyday physical mechanisms.

But difficult questions remain. And here the New Atheists’ argument collapses under its own weight.

The Bible itself highlights three moments of radical novelty where God intervenes to bring something entirely new into existence. It uses the Hebrew word bara (”create”) specifically for:

• The universe itself (Genesis 1:1)

• Animal life (Genesis 1:21)

• Human beings, endowed with the neshama—the soul, the conscious “I” that interfaces the natural and supernatural (Genesis 1:27)

These align precisely with one known and two likely boundary problems in science. These aren’t “gaps” we lazily fill with “God did it.” They are philosophical and metaphysical realities where science reaches its limit. We infer the best explanation through reason, evidence, and the universe’s intelligible order.

Atheist scientists who grasped this discomfort often reached for alternatives. Years ago, as a grad student at UT-Austin, I attended a dinner featuring the late atheist Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg as the speaker. He openly admitted that one motivation for the multiverse idea was to dethrone God as the only explanation for our universe’s beginning and its apparent fine-tuning.

Yet no one calls this a “multiverse of the gaps” even though that’s a perfect way to describe it. Why do we observe such precise constants in nature? Countless other universes! Why is gravity so weak? Ours is leaking gravity particles into other universes! It’s a catch-all that explains everything—and therefore nothing—while rendering our own existence meaningless.

Lennox and others have long pointed out that the New Atheists also misunderstood faith itself, redefining it as “believing where there’s no evidence.” In reality, faith is trust grounded in evidence, much like the trust we place in the rational intelligibility of the universe before we can even do science. As Einstein noted, genuine scientists operate with that kind of faith. Scientific laws describe what happens; they don’t breathe fire into the equations or cause the universe to exist.

The more I reflect on my own work in astrophysics, the more I see the same pattern Lennox describes: understanding doesn’t shrink God. It reveals the Artist more clearly.

It’s time to retire the “God of the gaps” smear once and for all. It’s not how thoughtful Christians think. The real question isn’t whether science will eventually explain everything without God. It’s whether the universe, in all its breathtaking order and intelligibility, makes more sense with or without a Creator who sustains the whole show.

If you enjoyed the article, I’d really appreciate it if you hit the like button below. It helps me see which topics resonate with readers and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you’d like to send this to a friend who might enjoy the science-and-faith conversation.

If you’re a free subscriber and would like to support my work, please consider a paid subscription. Researching and writing these pieces takes time and effort, but I’m committed to keeping my best work—and the vast majority of my content—free for everyone. The generosity of my paid subscribers makes that possible.

Subscribe now

Share

The last Sunday of each month features Sunday Superposition, a special thank you for paid subs, whose generosity helps keep me writing here each week and ensures that most of my content is free. Each edition is a collection of candid personal stories, a hand-picked roundup of exciting science news, and something to make you laugh.

Read more

When I was a research scientist at UT-Austin, I kept my faith quiet. I entered grad school there in 2001 already a theist, two years into a personal awakening. Halfway through my PhD, I became Christian.

I never hid my beliefs, but I didn’t broadcast them either. Over the next 11 years at the university, I don’t think I shared my faith with a single colleague. Looking back, that silence fills me with regret.

There were other Christians on the faculty—I knew of a couple, and one prominent professor only revealed his faith after retiring. As far as I could tell, none of them reached out to grad students or peers. The pattern felt familiar: Christians in academia often keep their heads down.

Why are we so hesitant to talk about our faith?

Fear plays a big role—fear of losing respect, status, or career opportunities. But is that fear justified?

Sometimes, yes. In 2007, astrophysicist Martin Gaskell—a colleague I knew from my time at UT—was a top candidate for the position of director of a new observatory at the University of Kentucky. Internal emails from the search committee revealed concerns about his evangelical Christian faith and perceived skepticism toward aspects of evolutionary theory.1 Despite being the most qualified candidate, he was passed over for the job. He sued the university for religious discrimination, and the case settled in 2011 with the university paying him $125,000 (while denying wrongdoing). Stories like Gaskell’s make the fear feel very real.

That said, such overt discrimination appears to be rare.

It’s true that scientists are less religious than the general public, by a large margin. Yet it’s not true that they’re uniformly hostile to faith. Sociologist Elaine Ecklund’s groundbreaking work, including surveys of nearly 1,700 scientists at elite institutions and in-depth interviews with hundreds, paints a more nuanced picture. In her book Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think, she found that nearly half of these scientists identify with a religious tradition or spirituality in some form. Only a small minority were actively hostile to religion. She found that many non-religious scientists (like me, initially) entered the field already secular, and some turned to science precisely because they were searching for answers about existence. Far from dismissing faith, many of Ecklund’s interviewees expressed genuine curiosity about their believing colleagues and welcomed honest dialogue.

When I first read Ecklund’s findings, a wave of disappointment washed over me. I realized I had missed so many opportunities at UT—not out of hostility from others, but out of my own caution.

I believe the scientific community is more ripe for the Gospel than we might think. We may never recapture the era when most scientists, like Newton and Kepler, saw their work as an act of worship, but we could significantly shift the numbers if believing scientists found the courage to engage.

Why am I optimistic?

Our world is in the grip of a spiritual drought. In the West especially, people feel a profound lack of meaning, purpose, and connection. Pop culture feels like a wasteland. Smartphones and universal wi-fi have atomized people like never before. Even career, family, and good works can’t fill the emptiness. Deep down, many long for something transcendent.

Physicists, in particular (sorry, as a physicist this is going to be physics-centric), often enter the field chasing those same big questions: Why are we here? What is the meaning of it all? Without a religious framework, they look to the cosmos—to fields, quarks, stars, and galaxies—for answers. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has called cosmology “a religion for atheists.” He’s not mocking the impulse, he’s acknowledging a sincere quest for wonder and order for those who were never raised with it through formal religion.

But try as they might to answer the big questions, scientists hit three hard boundaries where the empirical method simply stops: the origin of the universe, the origin of animal life, and the origin of human consciousness. Not coincidentally, these are the exact moments in Genesis 1 where the text deliberately uses the Hebrew word bara—“to create” something entirely new—rather than “make” (asah) or “bring forth” (hayah) from existing material (Genesis 1:1, 1:21, 1:27) At these frontiers, science brushes up against the metaphysical and the supernatural—and scientists are mostly aware of it, even if they don’t want to be.

Modern discoveries only heighten the tension. The elegant, immutable laws of nature. The exquisite language of mathematics that describes them. The overwhelming evidence of fine-tuning for life. When I gaze at a graceful spiral galaxy teeming with hundreds of billions of stars, or contemplate the intricate machinery of a single living cell, I see unmistakable fingerprints of intelligence and purpose. To me, the case for design is so compelling that it would require a kind of willful blindness—the very “blind faith” some atheists attribute to believers—to dismiss it.

Yet not every scientist sees it that way. Nobel laureate Sir George Paget Thomson, who discovered the wave nature of the electron, offered a telling insight in 1951: “Probably every physicist would believe in a creation [of the universe] if the Bible had not unfortunately said something about it many years ago and made it seem old fashioned.” He was commenting on the emerging Big Bang model versus the steady-state theory, but I suspect the same dynamic applies more broadly to the idea of God Himself. In a philosophical vacuum, stripped of all this cultural and religious baggage, most physicists would likely conclude that a transcendent, timeless, immaterial intelligence best explains why anything exists at all, and why the universe is so precisely suited for life.

The Bible and organized religion aren’t the problem—they’re God’s gracious gift, His clearest communication with us. But for many scientists, negative experiences with churches or believers, or a steady cultural diet portraying faith as irrational and regressive, have erected high barriers to belief. Their scientific work thus sometimes becomes an exercise in resisting what their own data quietly suggests.

But that’s where the solution begins. If cultural influences and personal encounters turned people away, they can also draw them back—starting with us.

Believing scientists can be what Ecklund calls “boundary pioneers.” We can courageously and lovingly reach out to colleagues, listening to their spiritual curiosities and longings. We can demonstrate that faith in Christ doesn’t require checking your intellect at the door—it liberates and sharpens it. We can show that a scientist can love the Lord with all their mind while excelling in their work, just as Kepler, Newton, Pasteur, and others did.

As Kepler famously put it, his astronomical discoveries were simply “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.” What a profound privilege—to trace the Creator’s logic in the cosmos.

The ranks of science are not a wasteland of hardened atheism. They are filled with thoughtful people asking the deepest questions, many of them quietly open to answers that point beyond the material. The real question is whether we, as Christians in these spaces, will have the courage to speak up, to listen, and to love well.

I regret my silence at UT. But it’s not too late—for any of us. The opportunities are still there, in labs and offices and conference halls across the academy. Let’s not miss them again.

If you made it this far—thank you—and liked my article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers, and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Share

When I was a young physics student shaking off the atheism I’d been raised with, one argument hit me like a revelation: the fine-tuning of the universe for life. The fundamental parameters of our cosmos—the mass of the electron, the strength of gravity, the cosmological constant—are dialed in with such exquisite precision that the most reasonable explanation is intentional design.

Astrophysicist Luke Barnes, one of the leading experts on this topic, points out that the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology involve 31 fundamental constants and initial conditions. These aren’t derived from deeper equations; they’re free parameters we measure but can’t predict. Imagine a universe-generating machine with 31 dials, each capable of being set across a vast range of values. In our universe, they’re all turned to exactly the right settings to permit complex chemistry, stars, planets, and life.

Here are just a few striking examples:

• The cosmological constant (Λ): This controls the universe’s expansion rate. If it were larger by even a tiny fraction—roughly one part in 10¹²⁰—the universe would have expanded too rapidly for galaxies to form. Too small, and it might have re-collapsed long ago.

• The strength of gravity relative to the other forces: A slight increase, and stars would burn out too quickly or collapse into black holes. A slight decrease, and no stars or heavy elements would form at all.

• The masses of the up and down quarks: Tweaking these by small factors (e.g., increasing the down quark mass by a factor of ~3) would leave us with a universe of nothing but hydrogen—or worse, a sterile neutron-dominated cosmos with no chemistry possible.

• The electromagnetic force and nuclear forces: Their delicate balance allows stable atoms, long-lived stars, and the fusion processes that create the elements essential for life.

Barnes and others have shown that even modest changes in these (and many of the other parameters) don’t produce exotic universes teeming with alternative forms of life. Instead, they yield dead, boring, or violently inhospitable places: no atoms, no stars, no chemistry—nothing that could support any conceivable complexity.

We can picture those 31 dials. Turn even one just a hair off, and our life-permitting universe vanishes.

So how do we explain this astonishing precision? There are three main possibilities:

1. Chance

2. Necessity

3. Design

Chance says the universe could have had any configuration, but it just happened to hit this one. According to calculations within our current physics, the odds of randomly landing in the life-permitting range for these parameters are staggeringly low—on the order of 1 in 10¹³⁶ or worse for the combined “little question” of fine-tuning under our known laws. Physicists despise coincidences this monumental. No serious scientist shrugs and says, “We just got insanely lucky.” It’s not an explanation; it’s an evasion.

Necessity claims the laws of physics require these exact values—there was never any other option. But this doesn’t hold up. Nothing in the equations of the Standard Model or general relativity dictates the specific numerical values of these constants. They’re plugged in by hand; the theories work perfectly well with different numbers. As physicist Richard Feynman famously noted about the fine-structure constant (one of the force couplings), it’s a “magic number” with no deeper explanation from the laws themselves. If necessity were true, we’d expect a theory that derives these values uniquely. We don’t have one. Changing the dials doesn’t break the logical consistency of the laws—it just breaks the possibility of life.

That leaves design. Some Mind or Agent intentionally set the knobs to create a universe capable of supporting life. It’s the most straightforward, non-coincidental explanation.

Atheists often push back hard against this. When I posted about fine-tuning on X recently, the replies poured in—including some classics.

One common objection: “Of course the universe is finely tuned—if it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be here to observe it.”

This is the anthropic principle as a supposed defeater. It sounds clever, but it’s just a truism, not an explanation. Christian philosopher William Lane Craig illustrates why with a vivid analogy: Imagine standing before a firing squad of 50–100 expert marksmen, all aiming straight at your heart. They fire simultaneously. You open your eyes and realize you’re completely unharmed. Would you shrug and say, “Well, if they hadn’t missed, I wouldn’t be here to notice”? Of course not. The extreme improbability cries out for an explanation—perhaps the marksmen missed on purpose. The same applies here: the fact that we can only observe a life-permitting universe doesn’t make its existence any less surprising or in need of accounting.

Another reply I’ve heard twice now (it must be making the rounds): “Posting God as the explanation is epistemologically expensive.” In other words, invoking a complex, unproven God burdens us with too many assumptions compared to “simpler” naturalistic alternatives.

Fair enough—but what are those simpler alternatives? A multiverse where an infinite number of universes bubble up with random parameters, so we inevitably find ourselves in one of the rare life-permitting ones? Or the universe magically popping into existence from nothing, already perfectly tuned?

The multiverse sounds scientific, but Craig has leveled strong objections. An actual infinite multiverse leads to bizarre paradoxes (like the Boltzmann brain problem, where random fluctuations would produce isolated observers more often than ordered universes). It often requires even greater fine-tuning of the multiverse-generating mechanism itself. And it lacks independent evidence—it’s speculative, not predictive in a testable way. Positing unobservable infinities to avoid design more like special pleading and less like parsimony.

As for universes “popping into existence from nothing” with the right parameters… that’s not simpler than design. It’s magic dressed up in quantum jargon. If you reject God for seeming too “magical,” you can’t consistently embrace something far more ad hoc.

In his debate with Craig, theoretical physicist Sean Carroll suggested that a universe with very different parameters might still support some wildly different form of life—something we can’t even imagine. It was an intriguing thought. But Barnes has shown the problem: small tweaks to the dials don’t yield complex, interesting alternative universes. They produce sterile voids, featureless hydrogen soups, or rapid collapses where nothing enduring or complex can arise. Life of any kind—carbon-based, silicon-based, or exotic—requires stable complexity, and that narrow window is what’s astonishingly rare.

We’re left with the fine-tuning problem. Those who reject design keep searching for workarounds. But as a Christian, I’m not stuck. I see the universe as the work of a purposeful Creator—the same God in whom many of history’s greatest scientists believed. He crafted a cosmos with ends in mind, including (at minimum) a place where human beings could exist, where He could enter His creation in the person of Jesus Christ, and where an act of unimaginable love and sacrifice could reconcile us to Himself.

This explanation is not only elegant and parsimonious; it resonates deeply with the wonder I feel when I study physics. It’s why I left behind the atheism of my youth and devoted my life to following Jesus. The fine-tuning isn’t just interesting data to me, it’s a cosmic signpost pointing to the One who set the dials with care.

If you’re exploring these ideas and not yet convinced, I encourage you to dig deeper. Start with Luke Barnes’ papers on ADS and his excellent book with Geraint Lewis, A Fortunate Universe. The evidence is there, waiting to challenge your assumptions the way it once challenged mine.

If you enjoyed this piece on the fine-tuning of the universe, I have some great news to share.

I was honored to be interviewed for The Story of Everything, a stunning new documentary that explores the biggest questions in science: Where did the universe come from? Why is it so precisely calibrated for life? And what does the evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology really point to?

The film takes viewers on a cinematic journey through the cosmos and the intricacies of life, revealing the consistent signature of intentional design woven throughout nature—from the fundamental constants that make stars and galaxies possible to the elegant complexity inside every living cell. It features leading voices in science and philosophy, including Stephen C. Meyer, John Lennox, and others, and makes a compelling case that the universe isn’t an accident.

I appear in the film sharing my perspective as an astrophysicist—how the exquisite fine-tuning of the cosmos convinced me that our universe was crafted with purpose, and ultimately led me from atheism to faith in Christ.

The Story of Everything opens in theaters nationwide on April 30, 2026, with showings through May 6. It’s the kind of film that will hopefully inspire thoughtful conversations about science, origins, and meaning—perfect for believers and skeptics alike.

You can find tickets and more information at thestoryofeverything.film or at Fathom Entertainment.

If you made it this far—thank you—and liked my article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers, and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Share

I’m a huge fan of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. When I first picked up the book, I couldn’t decide whether to devour it in a single binge or stretch the experience out as long as possible. It’s exactly my kind of novel: nuts-and-bolts hard science fiction packed with detailed (and mostly accurate) science, an urgent high-stakes plot, a slightly goofy and deeply relatable protagonist, and an unexpected but profoundly moving friendship.

So when I sat down to watch the movie adaptation, I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I got was… interesting. Not at all what I anticipated.

Where the book is a straightforward first-person narrative, the film leans interpretive, artistic, tonal, and almost poetic. It’s not quite the pure tone poem of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (which I love beyond all reason), but it echoes 2001: A Space Odyssey—that groundbreaking sci-fi arthouse classic that tells a vast, complex story largely through visuals and music. If I hadn’t read the book first, I’m not sure I would have caught everything unfolding on screen. The movie is visually stunning, superbly acted, and features wall-to-wall music that I sometimes found intrusive in the theater. I’m looking forward to a second viewing at home, where I can fine-tune the balance between score and dialogue.

Warning: mild spoilers ahead.

The story centers on Dr. Ryland Grace, a biologist turned middle-school teacher, recruited by the enigmatic and powerful Eva Stratt (played with quiet intensity by Sandra Hüller). The Sun is dying, infected by an Astrophage parasite, and half of Earth’s population will be wiped out in a matter of decades unless a solution is found. The stakes could not be higher.

The film opens much like the book: Grace awakens from induced coma aboard the Hail Mary, an interstellar spacecraft hurtling toward the Tau Ceti star system. He has no memory of who he is or why he’s there. Through a clever, low-tech experiment, he realizes he’s in an environment with 50% more gravity than Earth. The narrative unfolds in two braided threads—Grace piecing together his mission in the present, and flashbacks revealing how he ended up on this one-way suicide trip.

He learns he’s racing to Tau Ceti, the only nearby star not yet fully consumed by Astrophage. His task: discover why, find a cure, and send it back to Earth. There were other crew members, but they didn’t survive the long sleep. Grace is alone—until he isn’t.

The movie’s three central characters—Grace, Stratt, and the alien Rocky—carry the emotional weight of the story. In the book, Stratt is cold, calculating, and almost villainous in her single-minded drive to save humanity, a kind of reverse-Thanos with godlike authority and a sharp tongue. The film softens her edges. Hüller brings a layer of melancholy and quiet regret that makes her more human without diluting her power. She does what must be done, but it clearly costs her.

One of the film’s most captivating scenes comes just before launch, when the team unwinds with karaoke. Stratt unexpectedly takes the mic and delivers a beautiful, haunting song. Later, when the full weight of her decisions is revealed, Hüller masterfully balances steely resolve with deep sorrow. Ethics classes will be debating Eva Stratt for years.

Then there’s Rocky.

The promotional materials make no secret of him, so I won’t either: Grace encounters an enormous alien vessel at Tau Ceti. What follows is one of the most delightful first-contact stories in recent memory. Rocky, the last survivor of a crew from the 40 Eridani system, is genuinely alien—a five-legged, spider-like rock creature with no face, who “sees” via echolocation and “speaks” in trilling musical notes. He’s an engineering genius whose skills perfectly complement Grace’s knowledge of biology and astrophysics.

The film (and Weir’s original story) handles Rocky with real respect. Unlike most sci-fi aliens who are basically humans with latex appliances glued to their faces, Rocky feels truly alien. Yet through ingenuity, patience, and humor, the two forge a deep friendship. They save each other’s lives. Rocky watches over Grace while he sleeps—a necessity for Eridian biology that Grace comes to find comforting. Their eventual parting carries genuine emotional weight, knowing the vast distances between their stars means they’ll never communicate again.

The resolution? You’ll have to experience it yourself—preferably by both reading the book and seeing the movie.

Visually, Project Hail Mary is a triumph. The practical sets and effects are breathtaking, with Rocky realized largely through puppetry rather than pure CGI—a choice that gives him tangible presence. Ryan Gosling delivers one of his strongest performances yet as Grace: funny, vulnerable, brilliant, flawed, and heroic in the most human way.

The movie has the crowd-pleasing energy of something like Top Gun: Maverick, but with a more contemplative, wonder-filled soul. It’s the kind of big-screen spectacle that reminds us why we go to theaters.

Documentary filmmaker Marcus Pittman stirred up discussion on social media by calling Project Hail Mary a Christian movie. He faced pushback—especially from some Christians—accustomed to overt “faith-based” fare that often prioritizes altar calls over artistic integrity. Pittman points to the symbolism: a man named Grace on a ship called Hail Mary, who sacrifices himself to save humanity; death-and-resurrection motifs; the two deceased crewmates echoing the thieves at Golgotha; the four canisters sent back to Earth with the power to save everyone like the four Gospels; even Rocky as “the Rock.”

Whether you read it as explicitly Christian or not, the film carries a powerful undercurrent of grace, sacrifice, and hope. The movie adds a quiet line from Stratt that I don’t remember reading in the book: when asked if she believes in God, she replies softly, “It’s better than the alternative.” In a massive blockbuster, that moment lands with surprising resonance. I still get chills when I think about it.

I relate to Pittman’s frustration with much of modern Christian entertainment. Too often it trades the difficult substance of faith for an easy veneer. As Tolkien scholar Ralph C. Wood observed, the best art can be “all the more deeply Christian for not being overtly Christian.” Tolkien himself refused to turn his epic into mere allegory, preserving the integrity of both story and witness.

That’s how seeds get planted. Growing up atheist in secular Canada, my only real exposure to Christian themes came through Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. They awakened in me a hunger for the spiritual that overt preaching never could have reached at the time. Good stories weave truth into the world subtly, beautifully, and memorably.

Project Hail Mary does exactly that. It’s a gorgeous, well-acted, scientifically grounded adventure with heart, humor, and a quiet but profound spiritual dimension. Whether you’re in it for the hard sci-fi, the unlikely friendship, the stunning visuals, or the deeper themes, it delivers.

Go see it on the big screen while you can. Then read (or reread) the book. Slowly, if you can. You won’t regret prolonging the experience.

If you made it this far—thank you!—and liked my article, do me a favor and hit the like button below. This helps me understand which topics resonate with my readers, and it boosts my writing. There’s also a share button if you want to send it to a friend who’d enjoy the science-and-faith conversation. If you’re a free subscriber who would like to support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

Subscribe now

Share