In the Easter Sunday sermon, Phil mentioned Robert Jastrow, an agnostic physicist, and his book God and the Astronomers. Jastrow wrote this book in the late 1970s to summarize the reaction of astronomers and astrophysicists in the 20th century to the theological ramifications of Einstein's relativity equations and the subsequent Big Bang cosmologies...

 These reactions were mostly negative. Many scientists believed that the universe (or nature) is a closed system, in which every part can be explained or accounted for by reference to another part. This is called "naturalism", and it was perceived to be the hallmark of reason by many scientists. Such reasoning scorned any explanation that appealed to anything outside the natural order. But relativity and Big Bang cosmology seem to refer to an absolute beginning of matter, energy, and the dimensions of space and even time. This sounds very similar to the traditional theistic doctrine of creation ex nihilo or out of nothing (and by "similar" I mean "identical"). Phil also referred to Jastrow's famous quote from the end of his book. It's been repeated many times, so one more time won't hurt:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.