Augustine Pamplany CST
NASA launched the James Webb Space Telescope on Christmas Day, 2021. This telescope is described “by far, the most advanced telescope ever launched into space.” This is an infrared telescope and as such a successor to the Spitzer telescope launched in 2003 and retired in 2020. This is named after the NASA administrator James Webb who led the Apollo space programmes. The mission of the James Webb Telescope is to search after the most distant and earliest stars and galaxies in the universe. The infrared sensors of the telescope will examine the early stages of the cosmic history by studying the light emitted from primordial stars dating back to 13.6 billion years. The James Webb is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope. This led the NASA administrator to describe it as “one of the most amazing missions that humanity has ever conceived.”
As the primary objective of the telescope is to study the early stages of the origin of the universe, its findings will certainly raise theological questions concerning the origin of the universe. As for the believer, it will confirm the proclamation of the Psalmist that the Heavens proclaim the Glories of God! There is no scope for atheism in regard to the observations of the telescope, because as for the Biblical tradition, every nook and corner of the universe is filled with the presence of the Divine. As William Kuyper rightly observed, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’” As for the Scripture, the entire creation was made in and through Christ.
Stephen Meyer wrote on The Federalist that science based God hypothesis will get a new boost from the Telescope. “This additional evidence of an expanding universe would further deepen the mystery associated with the Big Bang and add weight to a growing science-based God hypothesis. If the physical universe of matter, energy, space, and time had a beginning — as observational astronomy and theoretical physics increasingly suggest — it becomes extremely difficult to conceive of any physical or materialistic cause for the origin of the universe.”
The very development of the telescope is based on laws of nature which science finds and controls. God is the author of laws of nature. Thus, despite the subjective faith or atheism of the scientists who developed this telescope, the making of the telescope itself is the application of the attributes of God in terms of natural laws and application of reason. The incredible observations that this Telescope is to make will open our eyes in wonder to the mystery of the creation. As Einstein commented: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is a good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
