You are a person of faith. Everyone is. Whether you realize it, or wish to admit it, your worldview is founded on having faith in things that cannot be seen, proven, or even fully imagined. You may have wondered from time to time where to place your trust: in science or the Bible? It's a life-and-death decision. The purpose of this discussion is to help you make that choice.

why is this important to me?

just six numbers

Is the universe designed for life? Meet cosmologist and astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal. He’s an Atheist who once declared, “I’ve got no religious beliefs at all.” Sir Martin wrote a positively wonderful book titled Just Six Numbers. In it, he itemizes what I call the six vital signs of the universe.

lambda

Take a close look at one of Sir Martin’s vital signs: lambda (Λ), the cosmological constant. Lambda tells us something about how fast the universe is accelerating outward, like a gigantic inflating balloon of spacetime—an expansion we believe might be driven by a repulsive, omnipresent, invisible fog called dark energy.

the obscurity of large numbers

Your chances of winning the Powerball or Mega Millions lottery are about one in 175 million. The chance of lambda having precisely the value necessary for life—which it does—is one in a trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.

are there truths that cannot be proven?

Does absolute truth exist? According to the New Testament, Pontius Pilate, the first-century Roman governor of Judea, asked Jesus of Nazareth: “What is truth?” Jesus is the human equivalent of God. “The Father and I are one,” Jesus declares in John 10:30. In math, equivalence is much stronger than mere equality. One plus one equals two. But the number three is equivalent to the number three. The two are identical. We designate equivalence with a special symbol: ≡ Thus, according to the Christian worldview, Jesus ≡ God.