Debates about the origin of the universe often hit a dead end when one person posits an eternal creator God. What seems reasonable to the believer comes off as even more problematic to the unbeliever. Take Richard Dawkins for example, who objects to theism because he thinks suggesting that God created the universe actually complicates matters further. Doesn’t it actually create more problems than it resolves? Surely, the answer to the question of the origin of the universe can’t be something that actually creates more questions than it answers?

Or maybe it can. Marcelo Gleiser, professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, published “Island of Knowledge” in 2014. In it he describes knowledge as an island surrounded by an infinite ocean of unknowns. As we make more discoveries, the island of knowledge grows, and its shoreline or contact with mystery lengthens, thus demonstrating how more knowledge tends to reveal more questions instead of final answers. If this insight is correct, I think it has intriguing application to the debates over the origin of the universe.

If the acquisition of knowledge is continually expanding mystery, then what should we think about the unbeliever’s initial objection? Does the increase of mystery make the idea of a God behind it all unreasonable or improbable? If more knowledge predictably adds more mystery, then invoking God as the creator is not inherently problematic just because it creates more mystery. Science itself will often embrace more complex theories if they fit the data better, even if the theory spawns further questions. The unbeliever’s preference for a non-theistic explanation seems to sometimes exalt Ockham’s razor to a place it was never meant to be. The razor is guideline, not a proof. And in light of Gleiser’s insight, by itself it provides too weak a basis for dismissing theism altogether.