What's Beyond the Universe?

On Saturday, I watched a portion of Bob McDonald, CBC’s science expert answering questions from viewers put to him by Peter Mansbridge. One question concerned the continued expansion of the universe since the “big bang”: Where is it expanding into?

It’s a good question, for if there was something for it to expand into, there would be space or some other form of creation to provide for it to expand! Bob’s answer was non-commital: We are inside the expanding universe—that’s all there is.

I was reminded of Carl Sagan’s words opening his video series on the universe: “The universe is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be.” Reminiscent of the Bible’s affirmation about the Lord: “Who is, and who was, and who is to come.”

And deliberately so. It affirms the view that science can know all there is to know, and Sagan’s declaration is an atheist’s attempt to replace the living God with His creation—to worship created things instead of the Creator.

Of course, the cause of the Big Bang—which presumably started the expansion of the universe—presupposes the existence of something—or Someone—to explode it, and, as usual, unbelieving scientists are trying to find their way around that one!

It reminded me again of a remark by Robert Jastrow, and astronomer. He likened the search for the origins of the universe to climbing a mountain. When the scientists reached the top, he thought the theologians would be probably sitting there waiting for them!

To be fair to Bob McDonald, he is speaking purely from a scientists’ point of view. They can only comment on what they can see. Science cannot comment on what can’t be seen. But that is the Bible’s specialty:

“We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).