We live in a vast and expanding universe with an observable limit of about 46 billion light years. This edge continues to expand away from us such that, rather than exposing more of the universe to us, we are actually seeing less of it. You can think of the edge of the observable universe as a kind of funnel. The bottom is in the past, about 13.77 billion years ago, only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang itself. This light rode the wave of expansion of the universe outward, wavelengths stretching redder and redder. Because of the…

Ever since Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding, there has been a tug of war between those who provide evidence that the entire universe began as a single point at a finite time in the past and those who desperately wish to tell the opposite story, that the Big Bang never happened.

Prior to that time, the predominant belief among scientists was that the universe was essentially static and infinite, having existed for all time. Indeed, this was a primary “scientific” argument against Creation stories that posited that the universe came into being through divine action. If the…

In the late 19th century, Newton’s theory of gravity had hit a crisis mode. It had been incredibly successful in predicting the orbits of all the planets, save one, the planet Mercury. Mercury, named for the Roman messenger god, closest to the Sun, had an anomaly, first noticed in 1845, in its orbit of precisely 42 arcseconds per Julian century, a tiny amount that nevertheless hinted at a much bigger problem.

Ad hoc solutions were proposed. Some posited an additional inner planet that was tugging on the orbit, invisible mass unaccounted for. Others suggested that we should slightly modify Newton’s…

Einstein’s theory of general relativity is, so far, our only validated theory of the universe as a whole. Without it we would have difficulty explaining where the universe came from and where it is going.

One of the earliest predictions of the theory was the universe’s expansion. The universe expands everywhere all at once like the surface of a balloon being blown up. We can see it expanding by looking at distant galaxies. Based on what we know about the composition of those galaxies, we have a good idea of what wavelengths of light they should be producing. But what…

A recent study on finding meaning in life showed that having meaning follows an “inverted U-shape”. People tend to have little meaning early in life, gain it in mid-life, and then lose it again in later life around 60. Meanwhile, searching for meaning follows a “U-shape” with the young and old both in search of meaning.

This problem of meaning is summed up well by famous astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson:

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree…

In 2010 a Pew study on Religion showed that 80% of Americans believe in miracles (a Harris poll said 72% in 2005). That is not far from the percentage that believe in God.

Is such a belief justified?

In his short book, Miracles, C. S. Lewis points out that the existence of miracles is not a scientific question but a philosophical one:

[W]hether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our…

That evolution occurs is a fact. We can see it in the fossil record. We can observe it in the study of finches in the Galapagos islands. We can infer it in species like koalas that adapted to eat only one kind of food.

That human beings are also a product of evolution is clear. We are related to a number of species both by morphology (shape and function) and by DNA. …

There have been many cases where people, animals, and certainly microbes have been thought to be dead only to return to life. Microbes and some insects can be frozen and then brought back. Cryogenics aside, human beings can survive for a short time while being effectively “dead”.

All of these are examples of revival. That is, something alive has had its vital functions slowed or stopped to near nothing, and then it is reanimated to life.

Resurrection, however, is very different. A being that is resurrected is not reanimated or revived. …