WHY DID GOD CREATE THE UNIVERSE?

Why did God create the universe?  

When I was growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist church we were told the answer to this question without ever having to ask:  God created the universe FOR US.  God set the whole thing up so that we humans could enjoy eternal lives filled with peace and joy and worship of him.  Things didn’t work out that way, of course.  As the story goes, we proved to be feckless sinners.  In short, we humans were, well, human.
Of course, given what we know about the nature of the world, the Genesis account of creation that I was taught doesn’t make rational sense.  But then neither does the more contemporary, somewhat science-literate Christian narrative—for a number of reasons.  

First, size.  The universe is huge.  Estimates of the number of galaxies in the observable universe range from “only” 100 billion to as many as a trillion or more, each with an average of 100-200 billion stars.  Think about that for a moment.  Moreover, on virtually a daily basis we are discovering exoplanets orbiting various of these stars, just in our sun’s local neighborhood of the Milky Way.  Many of these exoplanets are in what is termed a “habitable zone,” so that the planet could potentially harbor water in liquid form, making conditions conducive to the establishment of carbon-based life.  The thing is, though, that, given the laws of physics and interstellar distances (not to mention much, much greater intergalactic distances), the chances of contact with intelligent civilizations on any of these exoplanets is extremely remote.  So what is the point of having such an enormous universe?

I would also point out that, because the universe is so vast and because of how the laws of physics are structured, the greater universe is filled with chaotic objects and events—enormous cannibalistic black holes, novas and supernovas, pulsars, neutron stars.  To what end?  Such objects provide endless fascination for astrophysicists, but they do not have any direct bearing on the mundane lives that we lead—at least not so far, fortunately.  

Here’s another reason: Time.  The age of the universe makes nonsense of the notion that the world was created for our benefit.  Cosmologists are in agreement that the Big Bang occurred approximately 13.8 billion years ago.  Assuming that figure, why would it take 13.7998 billion years for humans to come on the scene?  What was the point of all those billions of years before our arrival?  

And then there are all the extinct species.  Life started on earth some 4 billion years ago.  And it is estimated that over that period 99.9 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct.  If the whole point was to set the world up for humans, it is difficult to understand why biological processes ran through more than 99 percent of all species that ever lived just to get to us.   What does that say about the lives and purpose of the individuals of those extinct species, including earlier hominid species who had art and ritual and emotion and goals and who strived, as we do, to find meaning in their lives?  Were they just some sort of prelude?

Why am I pointing all of this out?  First, the traditional account of the creation of the world, the fundamentalist literal scriptural account, clearly doesn’t work in light of what we have learned about the nature of the world in the last 500 years.  But then neither does the contemporary Christian narrative of a theistic god using the laws of nature and intervening on an as-needed basis to guide matters along.  

What does work is a natural, science-based explanation that views humans as simply part of an unguided universe governed by physical laws that have resulted in the human lives that we are fortunate to experience.

We do not know why the universe began 13.8 billion years ago or why it is governed by the laws that we have been able to discover and explore or why it even exists.  It may be that we will be able at some point to answer those questions.  Meanwhile, it does not help to cling to explanations that are clearly inconsistent with what we do know.  

© 2018 John M. Phillips