ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the doctrine of creation as a doctrine of religion based on a revelation. It explains what this doctrine has meant in the history of metaphysics. The chapter indicates how alien to these matters the field of contemporary cosmology. When the Big Bang theory first appeared on the scene, it was taken by some as pointing in a most convincing way to the religious doctrine of creation with a temporal beginning. The cosmologists, living in a culture heavily formed by the religious doctrine of creation, have yielded to the temptation of describing their models in terms of 'nothing' and 'creation'. Estimates of ages of parts of the universe are now an essential part of the science of cosmology, and form a body of established facts that cosmological theory must take into account.
