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In science class, you should have learned about the conservation of energy. Or the conservation of matter. Or both – they’re connected anyway.

Matter can be neither created nor destroyed. Same for energy – it can change forms but that’s it.

For some reason, I got to thinking “why?” Science can answer the “how” question quite well, describe it with equations, but the “why” is iffy at best. Most of the answers are along the lines of “that’s a fundamental/basic law of physics”. Science describes how things are, and can answer “why” questions that are really more a form of “how” questions.

I did come up with a reason why energy and matter have to be conserved – because only God can create. That might be more of a theological answer than you were expecting, but when scientists say “that’s just how things are” then theology is all that’s left. Of course, theology applies before that point too – it’s not mutually exclusive with the rest of science.

But if it were possible to create matter or create energy, then people could consider themselves creators and that would reduce the honor and glory due God as The Creator.

And of course, a number of theological discussion of why some things are they way they are also end up the same way as the scientists’ questions of why – because that’s how God set it up. The non-Christians might use a term such as “fundamental law of the universe”, but doesn’t that really mean the same thing as “because God said so”?

An interesting rabbit trail related to this is one’s soul. If a person does not have a soul until he physically exists, then at some point (i.e. conception) his soul must be created. But since the soul is neither matter nor energy, no laws of conservation were broken.

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