Last week NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) released the first photos taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). (To see the images go here: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/17/1111714756/james-webb-telescope-big-bang-galaxy-image-interview-project-manager-bill-ochs). The four pictures demonstrated the incredible clarity and magnitude of the new space eye-in-the-sky’s telescopic mirrors. Astronomers will now be able to peer far deeper into intergalactic space than ever before. Up until now the best they could see came from the Hubble Space Telescope still in orbit around the earth. Those were magnificent images. But the JWST outpaces it by magnitudes of distance and details.
The most significant aspect of the JWST is that astronomers will not only be able to look deep into outer space, even to near the edge of the universe itself, but will be able to see back in time very close to the beginning of the universe. That’s because the infrared light they will capture by the JWST mirrors has actually been traveling through space from the galaxies and nebula that emitted it for billions of years. That means lights from the farthest images had their origins near the beginning of the universe itself. So astronomers will be able to see how the cosmos were way back at the start. So what will this mean? Earlier this year I wrote an article stating that scientists do not know how the universe came into existence from nothing. The JWST will provide greater evidence that the universe must have had some supernatural origin (read it here: http://www.marketfaith.org/2022/02/will-the-james-webb-space-telescope-disprove-god-tal-davis/).
It is also my contention that the JWST images will show, even more than is now known, that the odds against advanced life existing anywhere in the universe are next to being impossible. (Scientist have no idea how life began either.) Someone might say, however, “But doesn’t advanced life exist here on earth?” That is precisely the point. For life, especially human life, to exist and flourish requires an enormous number of extremely narrow fine-tuned factors to coalesce at precisely the right time, place, and degrees. So far, only our own planet has been identified that meets all the criteria. I think that the JWST will only more show how the earth is incredibly unique.
All this will be bad news for atheists and believers in Naturalism. It will become increasingly difficult for them to try and explain how the universe began, how life began, and how advanced life could have developed without the assistance of an all powerful Creator and Designer. Obviously, all the engineers, astronomers, and physicists who designed and launched the JWST are thrilled by its success and what it will reveal. Nonetheless, Theists and Christians should be the most excited (and worshipful) group of all for what we can expect to learn from the JWST. We can say with even more assurance what was written by the Psalmist:
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,
The moon and the stars, which You have set in place;
What is man that You think of him,
And a son of man that You are concerned about him? (Psalm 8:3-4 NASB)