The Hidden Force Behind Motion: How Science Points to God’s Continuous Creation

After I throw a ball and it leaves my hand, how does the ball “know” to keep moving in the same direction and at the same speed?

Scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, and Antoine Lavoisier discovered that nature has a strange, unexplained tendency to continue existing and moving.

The scientific names for this phenomenon are the Law of Conservation of Matter and Inertia — the material world’s tendency to preserve its existence, its form, and its motion. There is no physical explanation for why matter should “want” to keep existing or moving. These laws are not properties of matter itself, but rather manifestations of the divine will that sustains the universe.

All these great scientists ultimately reached the same conclusion that Avraham understood 3,500 years ago: ​God is the cause of motion in the universe.

Without God, there would be no force or reason compelling matter to continue existing — or even to move, from one moment to the next.

The Universe Depends on Continuous Divine Energy

If tomorrow half of the universe suddenly stopped moving, or even disappeared entirely, no scientist could explain why it happened, nor why it shouldn’t have happened, according to science.

Since there is no power other than God that ensures the continued existence of all things, it is inconceivable that the universe could persist if God were to “withdraw” or “forget” it even for a moment.

The universe is like a computer program that immediately shuts down if the electric current from the power source stops flowing. Likewise, the universe requires constant divine supervision and energy, without which it would vanish completely.

Even this analogy is limited. A computer program remains stored on a physical hard drive and does not cease to exist when the power goes out. The universe however would utterly disappear without the ongoing will of the Creator — it would not merely “pause,” but it would cease to be.

God Did Not “Abandon” the Universe

People who ask, “Maybe God has abandoned us?” imagine Him as a carpenter who builds a chair or table and then walks away, but that analogy is deeply flawed. A carpenter and his table exist within the same universe, made of the same atoms and bound by the same physical and spiritual laws.

God, by contrast, created the universe out of absolute nothingness, and therefore He must continually sustain it. If His will were to cease, even for an instant, the universe would vanish immediately.

As Maimonides (Rambam) writes in Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 1:1–2: “The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of wisdom is to know that there exists a Primary Being who brought all existence into being. All that exists — heaven, earth, and everything between them — exists only through the truth of His existence. If it were conceivable that He did not exist, then nothing else could exist. As the Torah states, ‘There is none besides Him’ — meaning that no true existence exists apart from Him.”

Science Itself Points to Divine Presence

Modern physics and the laws of nature reveal not independence from God, but dependence upon Him. The very continuity of matter, motion, and energy is evidence that a higher, sustaining will keeps the universe in existence at every instant.

Science, at its deepest level, confirms what faith has always known: God sustains all things, every moment, without ever leaving or abandoning His creation.