One of the many questions that scientists try to answer is: “Where did matter come from?” According to the most popular theory today, all of the matter of the universe originated from light energy produced during the “Big Bang” some 13.7 billion years ago. But how could light become matter?

In 1905 famed theoretical physicist Albert Einstein proposed that light existed in tiny packets or particles which he termed as photons. Photons are unique in the sense that they are light energy particles which have no mass at rest. Although his elegant formula E=mc2 seemed to demonstrate an interchangeable relationship between matter and energy, it wasn’t until 1934 that two US physicists, Gregory Breit and John Wheeler, worked it out. Their computations proposed that on extremely rare occasions two photons could combine to form one electron and one positron, its anti-matter equivalent. This phenomenon is now known as the Breit-Wheeler Process and is a prediction of a theory called quantum electrodynamics (QED). Recently, in May of 2014, physicists at Imperial College London claimed that they would be able to create matter from light within 1 year with a photon-photon collider.

Enter the Higgs boson (often referred to as “the God particle”). Although scientists dislike the nickname, just what is the so called God particle? In the early 1990s a Fermilab physicist and Nobel laureate, Leon Lederman, wrote a book about particle physics and the search for a particular particle known as the Higgs boson. It was his publisher who coined the name God particle as a marketing scheme for the book. The book was based on a theory proposed in 1964 by physicist Peter Higgs that explained how mass was added to particle energy. You can think of the Higgs boson particle as forming something like an invisible field of molasses in the very fabric of space. Particles must pass through the Higgs boson field as they travel through space. Since photons are massless, they skip right across without slowing down or clumping. However, other particles, such as protons and electrons, have a harder time getting through. Depending on how long it takes them to traverse the field, they will accumulate more or less mass. Once the particles obtain mass, the four fundamental forces described in the Standard Model of Particle Physics (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force) will then begin to affect the relationships between the particles. This is why the Higgs boson is so important to the Big Bang theory.

Although the Higgs boson is a fascinating discovery, it does not prove the Big Bang. Creationist astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) explains, “That seems to really confuse two different issues. The big bang theory is really a conjecture about the past, about how the universe could really come into existence from nothing. And the Higgs boson has nothing to do with that. The Higgs boson is about how the universe works today. It appears to be the mechanism by which God has chosen to give different particles different masses.” It might be said that Higgs boson is an expected outgrowth of the principle described in the Bible that God holds all things together by His power. The Higgs boson field would merely be a physical manifestation of a property of that force. Dr. Lisle adds, “It is rather apparently the way that God has chosen to uphold the universe. That’s true of any law of physics. Gravity is an example. Gravity is not a replacement of God’s power; gravity is an example of God’s power. And that’s the way it is with the Higgs boson.” The tremendous mathematical precision by which all these particles are forced to operate under is a reflection of a great intelligence which designed not only the particles themselves, but also the laws of physics by which they must operate.

Strangely, when you ask an evolutionist “Where did man come from?” they would most likely say from an apelike ancestor. Then if you ask them where the apelike ancestor came from, they would say from an amphibian-like ancestor that crawled out of the sea. When asked where the amphibian-like ancestor came from they would say from multi-celled organisms. When asked where the multi-celled organisms came from, they would say from the primordial soup. When asked where the primordial soup came from, they would say from the rain falling on the cooling rocks on the surface of the earth for millions and millions of years. When asked where the cooling rocks on the surface of the earth came from, they would say from a coalescing cloud of cosmic dust. When asked where the coalescing cloud of cosmic dust came from, they would say from the collision of photons in the beginning moments of the Big Bang. When asked where the photons come from, they would say from nothing!

Not one of these steps has a bit of observational evidence to support it. Yet, those who propose this are called sober scientists. The Biblical Creationist has a more firm foundation. The testimony of one who was there! “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Genesis 1:1