The God Theory by Dr. Bernard Haisch (my husband)

The creation of the Universe in the Big Bang... evolution of life over billions of years... and God. Can you believe in all three? Is science compatible with spirituality? Can you have spirituality without any religion? Can there be a purpose for the Universe? A purpose for your life? The answer to all these questions is yes.

A discovery has emerged in astrophysics over the past two decades: that the Universe has a number of properties that are just right for life to evolve. The strength of the gravitational force. The strength of the nuclear force that powers the Sun. The amount of dark matter and dark energy. These and several other key properties could have been vastly different than they are. Instead they are amazingly just right to be conducive to life.

Most scientists prefer to believe that our Universe only appears to be tailor made for life. For this you have to assume that there must be trillions and trillions of other universes, maybe even an infinite number, that are vastly different from ours. We could never exist in those kinds of universes. So of course we find ourselves in our just right universe. We couldn't be alive anywhere else.

That does not explain everything. You still have to believe in the preexistence of quantum fluctuations or inflation fields capable of creating universes with random properties, universes that arise purely by chance. It's logically possible but the end result is a multiverse of universes without any purpose.

But it is equally logical that an intelligence lies behind the Big Bang and the universe. Astrophysicist Sir James Jeans wrote that the Universe appears more like a great thought than like a great machine. And Sir Fred Hoyle, the cosmologist who coined the term "Big Bang" stated that the universe looked like an obvious fix, in other words not just an accident, but the product of an intelligence.

What if  the laws governing the Universe really are the ideas of a great intelligence, one that exists beyond space and time? This would imply that there is more to reality than the physical world, more than just the things you can see with a microscope or a telescope.

Can you  be a rational person and believe in the possibility that there are other realities that lie beyond our current science? Max Planck, the father of quantum theory wrote that there are realities apart from our sense perceptions. And Sir Arthur Eddington, the astrophysicist who made Einstein famous by testing general relativity, wrote about, in his words, science and the unseen world.

Eddington was a great scientist, but he was also a mystic. And throughout the ages mystics have reported experiencing more than just the physical world. And so have millions of ordinary people who at some point in their lives have experienced something extraordinary, a glimpse of other realities.

So imagine an infinite intelligence beyond space and time, an intelligence with infinite potential. What would such an intelligence do with infinite potential?

The answer may be to turn potential into experience. Create a universe in which life forms can arise. Let evolution create all sorts of new and different life forms. Then let the consciousness of the infinite intelligence enter into those life forms and experience physical reality.

That may be the purpose of the universe. That may be the purpose of our lives, and that of every other creature in the cosmos. To create experience where there was merely potential. If that is true, you are a manifestation of this intelligence. You are a tiny flame of the bonfire that is God… creating God's experience with your life.

Whether this is correct or whether the Universe is one of trillions and trillions that arise purely by chance with no rhyme or reason is beyond resolution, beyond proof. Both views are equally defensible. But you can, if you want, believe in both science and God, and a universe with a purpose.