Explaining the meaning of life - with a big bang

"Who put the sun and all the stars up in the sky?" asked my five-year-old the other day. Now that is one heck of a question to put to someone who isn't particularly religious.

Scientists would have us believe they know how the universe was created because they have observed and plotted the cosmos using the most sophisticated theories and space age telescopes.

But any critical examination of the big bang theory reveals it has in it as many holes as a pair of fishnet stockings, and the existence of the substance making up most of the almost infinite universe remains more of a mathematical postulate than something you can examine under a microscope.

Even if the existence of so-called 'dark matter' and the rest of the imaginative witches brew was proved beyond doubt, we would still discover some smart-Alec five-year-old tugging on a quantum physicist's white coat tails and asking, "but who started the big bang?"

And the dangers implicit in the purely scientific view of creation were more than amply illustrated by desert nomads when shown a telescope for the first time by Lawrence of Arabia.

He explained that by looking through the eyepiece, millions more stars could be seen in the night sky with a

telescope than were visible with the naked eye.

But a sceptical Bedu chief replied: "Behind our few stars we see Allah; whom do you not see behind all your millions."

Christian fundamentalists, otherwise known as Creationists, would tell my son that the Book of Genesis explains everything and contains a literal and historic account of the creation of the universe.

Using the same logic they would also have to go on to convince him that

unicorns and talking snakes existed at one time as well. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about that one.

Simply because we happen to have been born in a particular place and brought up within an established religious tradition, we should not lose sight of the fact that creation stories are as old as mankind and as diverse as the peoples of the earth. Many are worth more than a passing interest.

All of which leaves us bit spoiled for choice really but I would imagine most people would go along with the Reverend Peter Sutcliffe, Vicar of St Mary's Church in Burley-in-Wharfedale.

Mr Sutcliffe said: "The Bible has within the Old Testament the Book of Genesis which has at the very beginning two accounts of the creation of the world."

"There are Christians who want to regard the Book of Genesis as an

historical account of how God made the world. They would be called Creationists.

"There are other Christians, and I would be one of them, who find some problem with identifying the stories as a literal account of how the world was made."

There are the problems posed by the existence of two Genesis creation

stories and the fact the events described in Genesis before Adam and Eve were created could not have been passed down to subsequent generations because there were no witnesses apart from God himself to see them happening.

Mr Sutcliffe said: "I would be one of those Christians who prefers to read the Book of Genesis as a collection of stories which may or may not be literally true but which nonetheless point to some important underlying theological realities.

"God made the world - whether he made it in that order or not. The point is that God made the world."

This interpretation of how everything came about does not put religion at odds with modern science and is entirely

consistent with the scientific big bang theory.

For Christians, even nominal ones like me, this seems the most sensible way of answering my son's question while at the same time reminding him that to assume a monopoly on truth for any particular religious world view, or any other idea for that matter, was a misguided attitude.

Meanwhile my three-year-old daughter seems to have less of a problem with profound theological discourse.

"The stars are made of white 'Play-Doh," she reliably informed me when I broached the subject.