The Big Bang is Christian

Dubbed the "Pillars of Creation", this photo was taken in 2022 by the James Webb telescope, showing massive columns of gas -- 66 trillion kilometers tall! -- in the Eagle Nebula, about 6,500 light years from earth. The nebula is called a stellar nursery, as new stars are actively forming within it. View the full res (70MB) photo.

Today I came across this post by well-known Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey:

I’m reading a book written by an evolutionary psychologist, so I’ve been thinking about the claims of evolutionists a lot recently.

Obviously there’s the absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang. But I also find it strange that many progressives… https://t.co/C0aSukIdTp

— Allie Beth Stuckey (@conservmillen) May 7, 2025

The part that got me was, "absurdly illogical belief that the universe was initiated by a big bang."

This is a common sentiment in the conservative Christian world. I suspect many in the Messianic and Hebrew Roots world feel the same. 

But a dirty little secret about the Big Bang theory is, it's Christian.

The Big Bang theory was developed by a devout Christian and the theory itself supports the Biblical idea that the universe had a beginning. It was initially combatted by atheist scientists because it too closely aligned with the Bible.

A devout Catholic priest and physicist by the name of Georges Lemaitre proposed the theory in 1927. 

Prior to this time, the scientific consensus was that the universe was eternal; it had always existed. But working off the theories of his contemporaries Edwin Hubble and Albert Einstein, Lemaitre theorized that the universe is expanding, with a definite point in time and space where it came into existence. In other words, the universe had a beginning.

Lemaitre's theory, which he called the primeval atom theory, was initially rejected by many atheist cosmologists. British astronomer Fred Doyle mocked the idea and coined the term "big bang" as a pejorative, claiming the theory too closely resembled the Book of Genesis.

But today, nearly 100 years later, scientists almost unanimously agree the Big Bang theory accurately describes the beginning of the universe. 

What changed their minds? 

A number of discoveries with powerful evidence:

• Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. In the 1960s, scientists discovered faint radiation left over from the beginning of the universe. This radiation has been since observed to be stretched out due to the expansion of the universe, shifting visible light to different frequencies, aligning with predictions of an expanding, finite universe.
• Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe. Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies are moving farther apart, suggesting the universe originated at a single point in space. This couldn't be true of an eternal universe.
• Abundance of light elements. The Big Bang predicted formation of precise amounts of hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Observations of old stars confirm these predictions.
• The reality of a dark sky. If the universe were eternal, the night sky should be very bright. Instead, it's mostly dark, suggesting a finite past.
• Distant galaxies' difference from our own. Observations of galaxies far away -- and thus, very old -- are made up of extremely bright stars, suggesting that the universe was much different than it is today, and suggesting that it had a precise beginning, not an eternal past.

The Big Bang is probably true, and it is Christian in its origins and Biblical in its implications. 

It's painful to me, then, that many uninformed Christians today reject the Big Bang categorically, as if it implies atheism. It does no such thing. It theorizes that the universe suddenly exploded into existence. 

In Biblical terms, "Let there be light!"

The universe isn't eternal, it had had a beginning: an instant of creation. And doesn't an instant of creation imply the existence of a Creator?