The best-selling book: A Personal Journey
The Holy Bible, the best-selling book of all time worldwide, makes a compelling claim for itself: divine inspiration.1 Given the high respect this book has been accorded over many centuries, this claim would seem dangerous to ignore. Yet the Bible is ignored more and more in popular culture, which has moved on to more “sophisticated” conceptions of spirituality and revelation.
The justification I hear more often than any other for leaving the Bible behind is that “everyone knows” it is antiquated and full of scientific nonsense, if not blatant contradictions. Amazingly, when I ask people to cite examples, many cannot bring to mind even one. Apparently, they base their opinion on hearsay and reflect a widespread misconception.
Among those who do answer my question, one Bible portion draws more vigorous attack than all others combined: the first few chapters of Genesis. That attack opens a tremendous door of opportunity for me—and for every other believer who knows even a little about the scientific discoveries of the past few decades. Instead of offering an excuse for unbelief and rejection, these chapters offer some of the most persuasive proofs ever assembled for the supernatural authorship and authority of the Bible.
The language of these chapters is amazingly clear and specific. The words repeatedly associate spiritual events with physical events, and physical events are, in a word, testable.
I would say they literally beg to be tested. However, as if that implied invitation to test weren’t enough, the apostle Paul exhorted his readers to “test everything,”2 to see what holds water and what does not, and to keep only what does. In the case of Genesis 1–11, the content is largely scientific (as well as historical and spiritual, of course), and so some of the appropriate tests will come from the relevant disciplines of science.
Scientific Testing
Genesis 1–11 speaks of the history of the universe, Earth, life on Earth, and of humanity’s origin and early development. With the help of many remarkable advances in astronomy, physics, geophysics, chemistry, paleontology, biochemistry, and anthropology, the words of the first eleven chapters can be subjected, point by point, to rigorous investigation. They can be verified or refuted with greater precision and to a greater depth than previous generations might have imagined possible.
Of course, not all biblical miracles can be subjected to scientific testing. But those that cannot be tested are not automatically invalidated. Rather, if the Genesis 1–11 miracles can be validated, they indicate the reality and availability of the power and the love attested to by these nontestable miracles: the virgin’s pregnancy, Lazarus’s resurrection, and the water’s transformation into wine, for example.
While Mary, Lazarus, and the wine drunk at the wedding feast are not available for scientific analysis, the universe, Earth, Earth’s fossils, and living creatures certainly are, and they can be subjected to the degree of scientific scrutiny needed to confirm or deny the creation, Flood, and post-Flood events reported in Genesis 1–2 and 6–11.
My Own Discovery
The scientific content of Genesis 1–11 holds special significance for me because it revolutionized my thinking and, thus, changed my life’s direction.3, 4 Until I reached my late teens, my singular passion was science, astronomy in particular. My life’s purpose was to learn more about the universe; nothing beyond that really interested me. By the time I turned sixteen, I had studied enough cosmology to become convinced that of all the origins models ever proposed, the big-bang model best fit the observational data. Soon after my sixteenth birthday, the implications of that model began to dawn on me.
Without consciously doing so, I took a huge philosophical and spiritual step—actually, a series of steps. I understood that the big bang meant an expanding, “exploding” universe. I agreed with Einstein that an exploding universe can be traced back to an explosion, a beginning. If the universe had a beginning, it must have a Beginner.
The big-bang theory implied that a Creator exists. That much seemed clear, but the rest of the picture seemed less clear. Who was this Creator, or God? What was God like? Had God communicated to humanity through some means other than the creation itself?
Millions of people through the ages have lived and died by their “holy books.” But if all the holy books came from the same source and said pretty much the same thing, as my teachers suggested, why did the followers of each book criticize, condemn, and even kill the followers of the others? I began to suspect that all religions were humanly crafted fronts for people’s psychological desire to dominate others.
In the physics of the universe I saw harmony and consistency, perfection, freedom from contradiction, a pervading beauty, and an elegance of design. If God had spoken to humanity through a book or books, I reasoned, God’s communication would manifest the same qualities as did the cosmos He created. Science had convinced me that the God of the universe was neither capricious nor careless.
People, on the other hand, even the most “objective” scientists I had met or read, were prone to at least some weaknesses and inconsistency and to making some errors, particularly the kind of “errors” arising from limited knowledge and understanding. And, when it came to predicting the future, human imperfection and imprecision seemed abundantly (and forgivably) obvious.
On these premises I began—and ended—my investigation of the world’s sacred writings. While I found words of interest and beauty and truth in each one, each reflected the limited (now known to be erroneous) scientific knowledge of its time and place—each one except one: the Bible. This particular book stood apart, and dramatically so.
From the first page, I could see distinctions. The quantity and detail of scientific content far exceeded what I found in the other books. To my surprise, the scientific method was as clearly evident in Genesis 1 as it is in modern research. Most impressive of all, the four initial conditions and the sequence of major creation events—not just one or two, but more than a dozen—all matched the established scientific record.
As I pondered how this accuracy could have been achieved, even if the book were written much more recently than scholars estimated, I calculated the odds that the writer could have guessed the initial conditions and correctly sequenced the events (ignoring for the moment the questions about how the writer could have known what they were), and I discovered that the odds are utterly remote. Only one conclusion made sense to me, the conclusion that the Creator of the universe had something to do with the words of Genesis 1.
When I turned the page, I discovered more of the same documentary-type communication. By the time I came to the Flood chapters, I realized I could not dismiss this book easily, at least not yet. I decided to spend an hour a day (or more), in addition to my homework time, studying the Bible until I reached the end or found a provable error.
Eighteen months later I arrived in Revelation 22. During those months I had read every page and failed to discover anything I could honestly label an error or contradiction. Some parts I had trouble understanding, but that didn’t bother me. I understood enough, just as I understood enough of physics and astronomy to trust what I was learning in my university courses. I was so astonished by the Bible’s consistent and frequent prediction of future scientific discoveries that I decided to attempt a probability calculation.
My scratch paper scribbles showed me the numbers, based on conservative estimates for a small sampling of biblical predictions: the Bible matched the best-established laws of physics in its degree of trustworthiness. I knew how implicitly I trusted the laws of physics for my survival. How could I not trust this book’s message and the One who sent it with such supernatural precision through human messengers?
With some delays and more than a little wrestling with personal pride, I did make a transfer of trust, inviting God, the Creator of the vast cosmos, to be my God, the Master of my destiny, through Jesus Christ, His Son.4
The bible: Reasons for Resistance
1 2 Timothy 3:16.
2 1 Thessalonians 5:21.
3 Hugh Ross, My Search for Truth (Pasadena, CA: Reasons to Believe, 1990).
4 Hugh Ross, An Astronomer’s Quest, sixty-minute audiocassette (Forest, VA: Life Story Foundation, 1995).
Ross, H. (2001). The Genesis question: Scientific advances and the accuracy of Genesis (7). Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress.