School's out for the summer!

Now that finals are over and I have a whole summertime of relaxation ahead of me I thought it appropriate to start reading a book entitled “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” Well, sub-titled really. The actual title is a picture of Earth from space. In it the author, Bill Bryson, discusses the Big Bang—the supposed creation of the universe—and soon I shall begin to wax theologian, but first, he says:

“You will need to gather up everything there is-every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation-and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all. It is known as a singularity…

It is natural but wrong to visualize the singularity as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. The singularity has no “around” around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be…

And so, from nothing, our universe begins.

In a single blinding pulse, a moment of glory much too swift and expansive for any form of words, the singularity assumes heavenly dimensions, space beyond conception…In less than a minute the universe is a million billion miles across and growing fast. In three minutes, 98 percent of all the matter there is or will ever be has been produced. We have a universe.”

Can someone please explain to me how people can believe such astounding theories and not only flatly deny but mock the existence of a divine and omnipotent being who is from eternity to all eternity? As if believing in God is any more ludicrous than the thought that our universe began from a space one billionth the size of a proton (500 billion of which could fit in the dot of this “i”) and that “at some indeterminate point in the very distant past, for reasons unknown, there came the moment known to science as t=0.” The moment when the universe so circumstantially and amazingly coincidenced. How is the idea that you exist because of “timely extraterrestrial bangs and other random flukes” at all satisfying—more satisfying than the idea that there is a being out there powerful enough to displace a whole mountain range on your head but loving enough to instead create a world for you? I’m not saying that the Big Bang is a big bust; I merely tend to think these things more readily confirm instead of disprove the existence of a divine orchestrator. Preaching to the choir, I know, I just remain completely mystified.

I feel like I’ve just written in to a help column. “Please advise.

--Utterly Befuddled in Utah.”