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One evening when I was seven, I was walking along the sidewalk with my parents and looked up into the starlit sky. "Are the stars hot?" I asked.
"Yes," my mother assured me, "they are very hot."
"Why?" I wanted to know.
"Go to the library," she said.
That year, I read every book on astronomy and physics in my school library. The next year, I began to do the same in the children's section of the Vancouver Public Library. I was so fascinated by what I learned that at age eight I decided to become an astrophysicist.
By age ten, I had read all the science books in the children's and youth sections of the public library and gotten a pass to the adult section. A few years later, I was given access to the library of the University of British Columbia. By the time I was 16, I was giving public lectures on astronomy. At 17, I won the B.C. Science Fair for my project on variable stars, and I became the director of observations for the Vancouver branch of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.
Even as a child, the beauty, harmony and complexity of nature had left me wondering who or what could have made it all. By age 15, my study of the scientific evidence had convinced me that some form of the big bang theory provided the only reasonable explanation for the universe. If the universe started with a big bang, it must have had a beginning. And if it had a beginning, it must have had a Beginner.
Though I had been raised in a non-religious family and didn't know anyone who took religion of any kind seriously, from that moment on I never doubted God's existence. But, like the astronomers whose books I read, I assumed the Creator was distant and impersonal. Surely, a God who built a universe of more than 10-billion-million stars could not be concerned with the insignificant speck of dust we call Earth.
I was puzzled, therefore, to learn in my high school history studies that the peoples of the world had usually taken their religions very seriously, often risking their possessions or even giving up their lives for their beliefs. I decided to check out for myself the holy books of the major religions. I didn't really believe God communicated directly with humans as these "holy books" claimed—I assumed these books were all frauds—but to be fair, I decided to investigate for myself.
I reasoned that if humans had invented a religion, its "holy books" would contain errors and inconsistencies. After all, even the best science textbooks include errors. But if the Creator of the universe had communicated with us, His message would totally agree with the facts of science and nature. It would be just as consistent and free of contradictions, and just as simple and elegant, as creation itself.
I started with the Hindu Vedas. The first problem I ran into was that it was hard to find testable statements about nature and history. These books were mostly written in mysterious, hard-to-understand, poetic language with several levels of hidden meaning. Eventually, though, I did find some claims I could check. For example, I came across descriptions of the universe reincarnating with a cycle of exactly 4.32 billion years. After finding a couple of dozen such scientific and historical absurdities in the Hindu Vedas, I was sure God hadn't inspired them.
Next I went through the Buddhist writings, and then the Koran (the holy book of Islam), and then the writings of Baha'i. In each case, after several hours of study, sometimes less, I had collected enough misstatements to convince me that the source of the writings was human.
After looking at all the world's major religions and many minor ones, I finally turned to the Bible. For some reason, I had a gut feeling that this book would be the greatest challenge, so I had saved it for last.
I was 17 when I first opened the Bible to page one, and immediately I was struck by how different this book was from all the others. It was simple, direct and specific.
It took me a whole evening just to investigate the first chapter. Unlike the bizarre creation myths I'd been reading, here was a journal-like record of the earth's initial conditions, correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics, followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans.
The account was simple, elegant and scientifically accurate. I identified three initial conditions and a series of 11 creation events, all correctly described and all in the correct order from the stated viewpoint of an observer on the Earth's surface.
Before I read the Bible, I had been exposed to more than a hundred creation myths. Of all of those, the most accurate was the Babylonian creation story. It describes 13 creation events. Of those 13, two are correctly described and in the correct order. The other 11 are wrong. Now, two out of 13 isn't bad. It's far ahead of all the other accounts I had read. But the Bible scored 11 for 11 in the sequence of events, and three for three in the initial conditions.
I had been trained in probability theory in high school, so I calculated the probability that a human author, given the correct 11 events in random order, could have put those 11 events in the right order. I found that there was less than one chance in six billion that someone could place those 11 creation events and three initial conditions in the correct order by chance.
That's interesting, I thought. In light of the knowledge of that time, there is less than one chance in six billion that this could have been written by humans. Even more amazing than the correct order was that the author had correctly described all the events of creation.
That caught my attention. That night, I committed to spend at least an hour a day going throughout the Bible to test the accuracy of all its statements on science, geography and history. I set up two notebooks—one to record all the claims that proved to be true, and the other for all the claims that proved false. I didn't tell anyone what I was doing, not even my family.
When I started, I expected this study to take about four weeks. But the Bible proved to have so many testable scientific and historical claims that, studying an hour each night, it took me 18 months. At the end of those 18 months, one notebook was full; the other was completely empty. Though I had fully expected to prove the Bible a fraud, I had to admit that I had not been able to find a single provable error or contradiction in the Bible. I had checked for both scientific and historical accuracy.
Furthermore, while all the holy books claimed to predict the future, I found that the Bible predicted the future far more often and in much greater detail. While the Mormon texts, for example, made about a dozen or so predictions, the Bible made about 3,500.
I began checking these predictions to see if they had come true in history. I picked out 13 biblical prophecies that had been fulfilled and, with the help of skeptical friends, calculated how likely it was that they could have all been fulfilled by chance. By my conservative calculations, there was just one chance in 10.138 (ten followed by 138 zeros) that all 13 could have been fulfilled without supernatural intervention. And that was for just 13 prophecies!
Now that doesn't mean I didn't find any problems. I came across many things I couldn't understand, but that didn't bother me, because that is exactly what we find in science. There is much we don't understand, but what we do understand is consistent. As a result of my study, I was convinced that the Bible was supernaturally accurate and therefore supernaturally inspired.
I also knew it was not enough to believe the Bible was true. After 18 months of reading the Bible, I knew that the God of the Bible wanted to have control of my life. And that terrified me.
By this time, I clearly understood from the Bible that Jesus Christ was the Creator of the universe, that He had paid the price for my sins (the things that I had done wrong) and that I could have eternal life if I received His forgiveness and gave Him control of my life. But I also knew this commitment could not be secret. I would have to tell people I was a Christian. As a 19-year-old student at the University of British Columbia, I had a good idea of the contempt and ridicule that would bring from my fellow students, my professors and even my family. So I refused to turn my life over to Jesus Christ.
For the next three months, I experienced something I had never experienced before—my grades went downhill. No problem, I thought, I'll just work harder. But working harder didn't help. My grades kept slipping. Then, reading Romans 1 in the Bible, I discovered that when people reject what they know about God, their minds become darkened and confused (Romans 1:21). I realized I was suffering from the darkening of my mind because I was rejecting what I knew about God.
So, one Friday night at seven o'clock, I began reading my Bible and asking God to take away my resistance and make me a Christian. Nothing happened. I didn't have peace. I kept reading in the New Testament and finally realized that Jesus Christ would not force Himself on anyone, even if asked. He would not break down my resistance. It was up to me to humble myself and invite Him in. Finally, at 1:06 in the morning, my shirt soaked with sweat, I turned control of my life over to Jesus Christ. I told God, "Even if this means I have to share my faith with my lab partner tomorrow, I'll do it." The battle was over.
The funny thing was, after I made this commitment, my attitude completely changed. I was eager to talk with my lab partner the next day. The next day, I got to the campus early and was surprised to discover my lab partner had come early too. I had what I was going to say to him all figured out. But before I could say it, he said, "Hugh, I have been going through some problems in my life. I need to talk to someone about God. Do you know anybody on this campus who knows anything about God?"
At age 17, I set out to prove that the Bible was a fraud, that it couldn't pass the tests of scientific and historical accuracy. I found instead that the Bible is more accurate than even the most authoritative science textbook. And since the day I gave control of my life to Him, I have also discovered that knowing Jesus and sharing His truth with others is great fun--more fun even than discovering quasars at the edge of the universe.
This article is reprinted, with permission, from With magazine, Box 347, 722 Main St., Newton, KS 67114. It was earlier adapted from the paper "My Search for Faith" by Hugh Ross, from The Creator and the Cosmos by Hugh Ross (NavPress, 1995) and from the cassette recording "Beyond the Stars: An Astronomer's Quest" (Life Story Foundation, 1995), with permission from Dr. Ross and the copyright holders. Dr. Ross is president of Reasons to Believe, Box 5978, Pasadena, CA 91117, Internet home page www.reason.org, a non-profit organization that provides research and teaching on the harmony of the Bible and nature. A catalogue of materials and a one-year free subscription to Dr. Ross's newsletter are available by calling 626-335-1480.
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