These are my personal reflections as a Christian. They are not part of the MIT course material.
I believe Jesus is God, and that through him all things were made, as the Gospel of John says (John 1:3).
When Jesus fed the 5,000 (John 6:1–14), a boy offered him five loaves and two fish. Jesus gave thanks and shared them out, and there was food for thousands, with twelve baskets left over. All that bread first did not exist. There was nothing, and then suddenly it was there.
The beginning of the universe is the same wonder. First there was no universe, there was nothing. Then, all at once, there was a universe. To me, Jesus made both: the bread out of nothing, and the universe out of nothing.
Scientists who shared this faith
Isaac Newton believed the order of the heavens pointed to a Creator.
Michael Faraday, who discovered the laws of electromagnetic induction, was a devout Christian all his life.
James Clerk Maxwell had Psalm 111:2, “Great are the works of the Lord”, carved on the door of the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge.
Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest, was the first to propose what we now call the Big Bang. He believed God created the universe, but he kept science and faith distinct and said the theory does not prove God.
About the icons
Sparkles: the wonder of creation, something out of nothing.
Open book: the Gospel of John, which says that through Jesus all things were made.
Wheat: the bread for the 5,000, a boy's five loaves became food for thousands.
Apple: the story of Newton watching an apple fall, which got him thinking about gravity.
Magnet: Faraday discovered that a moving magnet can create electricity.
Lightning bolt: Maxwell's equations explain electricity, magnetism and light as one thing.
Atom: Lemaître called his idea of the beginning the “primeval atom”, the whole universe starting from one tiny point.