What Good is Stardust?

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  • 4 pages
  • Level: all audiences

This 2001 article from Christianity Today by Howard J. Van Till discusses what galaxies and stars are, and what they do.  What they do is, among others things, produce over time the materials needed for us to exist today.  Van Till, professor (emeritus) of physics and astronomy at Calvin College, notes that “the universe is a cosmos that is fully equipped with all of the resources and capabilities to provide for the needs of the day” and that it also “is richly gifted with remarkable capabilities for organizing itself, in the course of time, into new structures and forms”.  He asks whether it is expecting too much for the universe to be a creation of God that is so generously gifted that it can even in time produce living creatures themselves?  Van Till writes:

[I]f the universe is a creation… then its natural capabilities are part of its God-given nature.  That being the case, I am more inclined to look for the Creator’s signature in the generosity with which the creation’s formational gifts have been conferred.  In other words, I think the Creator is better known by what the creation can do rather than by what it cannot.

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