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On December 25th, 2021 – Christmas Day – NASA launched the 10-billion-dollar James Webb Telescope into space. The successor to the famed Hubble Telescope, Webb is said to be 100 times more powerful. It will orbit the earth more than one million miles away, where the gravitational pull is very stable, allowing for precise observations of outer space.
And while Hubble helped humankind learn so much about the cosmos – black holes, dark matter, and the ever-increasing expansion and acceleration of the universe – many scientists believe Webb will teach us much, much more. Webb's engineers say that the telescope will not only allow astronomers to look deeper into space but essentially back in time. Eons old light, traveling 186,000 miles per second is just now reaching its shutters. NASA's website claims that Webb's infrared sensors will enable it to observe some of the "first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe."
And though modern astronomers now have an instrument that can look back in time, they will never have an instrument that can look back to a time before time began. That is impossible. But with every novel technological advancement that presses the boundary of what is possible to know in space and time, astronomers are unwittingly traveling out of the scientific realm and toward the philosophical one that necessitates a Creator. Even if they can observe the first stars and galaxies in the universe, they will still want to know how those first ones got there. But the better question might be, who put them there?
It was famed astronomer Robert Jastrow who, in his book, God and the Astronomers (1980), anticipated the scientific community's fate as the boundary of knowledge grew closer. He wrote,
"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."
The James Webb Telescope will undoubtedly "scale the mountain of ignorance." And in its capability, it has the potential to bring thousands of astronomers and scientists to the realization that someone, i.e., a Creator, put those stars in place. The first ones did not create themselves, they are not eternal, and they certainly did not come from nothing. Like everything that exists, they must have been caused to exist. As Jastrow said, theologians have known this for centuries.
"Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing" (Isaiah 40:26, NIV).
May God continue to bless Berean Christian High School, a place where young people can study science, philosophy, and theology and comprehend why the biblical worldview is the only one that makes sense of the world around them.
God Bless You
Nicholas Harris