Science studies the material world: what things are made of, how they work, what we can make them do. Those are important questions, but by definition science can’t tell us where matter itself came from, or why the material world exists in the first place. Across history, different cultures have offered their own answers to that “why”: pantheism, which identifies God with the world itself; forms of mysticism that treat the material world as something to escape; deism, which pictures a distant God who set the world going and walked away; materialism, which says matter just happened to arrange itself this way. Each of these gets something right, but none of them can explain why we exist, and several end up treating creation as either an accident or a problem to be escaped.

The Christian account is different. God exists outside the material world and created it deliberately, not by accident and not because He had to. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Genesis shows God intentionally calling things into being (“Let there be light,” for example) and repeatedly declaring what He has made to be good. A God who creates on purpose has a purpose in mind, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us what it is: Creation “is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance. We believe that it proceeds from God’s free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness” (no. 295). As soon as God made human beings, He entered into relationship with them. He didn’t create us and walk away; He created us to know Him, to share in His glory, and to know the transcendent joy we were made for, which we call heaven.

God’s creation includes far more than the visible world. Before the material universe, God made beings of pure spirit (angels) who exist outside time and therefore, unlike us, made one complete and irreversible choice for or against God at the moment of their creation. The material world God made “good,” and He made it interdependent: nothing in creation is self-sufficient, and everything relies on everything else. Within that world, human beings hold a unique place. We’re not just complex animals, and we’re not angels trapped in bodies: we are body and soul, inseparably united, made in the image of God with an intellect and a will that set us apart from the rest of creation. The world was made for us, but we in turn were made to love and serve God and to offer creation back to Him. 

Discussion questions

When it comes to talking about the world, what does religion have to offer that science doesn’t?

Can a Catholic believe in both God and evolution?

What makes human beings different from the rest of creation?

God calls all creation “good.” How does this combat the idea of dualism? How does this affect how you see yourself and your flaws?

The Catechism (no. 340) mentions that “no creature is self-sufficient. Creatures exist only in dependence on each other to complete each other in the service of each other.” How does this concept of “interdependence” affect how important it is to be “independent”?