The Big Bang

In the years after Copernicus Galileo and Kepler, other astronomers developed our understanding of how the sun and planets fttted in to the vast array of stars. At first scientists realised that we were part of a large galaxy of stars, the Milky Way. Then, as the power of telescopes increased it became evident that blurry patches of light were not clouds of gas in the Milky Way but whole galaxies far beyond. The scale of the universe was mind-boggling.

In the early 20th Century the prevailing view of the universe was that it was static, always there, eternal. Belief in God had diminished in the Western world. For many scientists an understanding that the ultimate reality was a vast eternal cosmos strengthened their sense that ideas of a deity were redundant in the modern world. The most famous scientist of the time, Einstein, held to the idea of a huge, static universe. Even though the mathematics of his radical theory of General Relativity suggested an expanding universe, Einstein inserted a term that had no purpose other than produce a static universe. It kept things the way they should be.

It was a young Catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, also a brilliant mathematician and physicist, who first challenged the prevailing cosmology. He applied the mathematics of Einstein's general relativity to the universe as a whole and drew the conclusion that the universe was not static but expanding. In fact all of space-time was expanding like a balloon being blown up. Shortly after Lemaitre published his paper, Edwin Hubble's observations at Mt Wilson observatory in California showed that not only were there distant galaxies outside our own, but they were all moving away from us. And the further they were the faster they moved.

In 1931 Lemaitre proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom". He also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a term coined by Fred Hoyle.

The scientific establishment of the 1930s was resistant to this idea, even if Christians saw it as vindication of their belief in a Creator. British astronomer, Fred Hoyle, was a leading opponent of Big Bang. He advocated instead a "steady state" in which new matter appeared as older receded away in the distant moving galaxies. But in 1960s two American astronomers, Penzias and Wilson stumbled across conclusive evidence for Big Bang in the background microwave radiation that came from every direction around earth. Other research on the distribution of this cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation has confirmed the predictions of Big Bang theory.

Big Bang is an important clue. If the universe had no beginning, it is a fact of existence and perhaps the ultimate reality. If the universe has a beginning, then it is not eternal and not ultimate. Various scientists resisted the idea of a Big Bang because they did not like the philosophical implications of it! Hermann Bondi did not like questions of 'who is responsible for the universe' that a 'beginning' raised. Note the irony here: scientists were resisting a scientific theory because it increased the plausibility of belief in God!

A more recent attempt to shut out the notion of a creator has come from Stephen Hawking and others. They suggest that the universe might create itself out of 'nothing', speculating on what might happen in that first incredibly small time interval (10^-43 second) where they claim that the uncertainties and unpredictability of what takes place remove the need for a creator. Their claim for 'spontaneous creation' is highly speculative and impossible to test. And some would argue that this is philosophy more than science.

Actually the 'nothing' from which the universe is said to arise is not 'nothing' as most people understand the word, but a 'quantum vacuum' governed by physical laws. This explanation just pushes questions of creation back a step to what is the origin of the laws that govern a quantum vacuum? Also there are huge philosophical difficulties with the idea of the universe, so to speak, 'pulling itself up by its cosmic bootstraps'.

One of the most helpful writers on questions of science and faith is John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest and formerly Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge. He contrasts the Biblical understanding of Creator with the 'god' that atheists like Stephen Hawking refer to. God in Christianity is not Just a supreme being who lit .. the blue touch paper and set the universe going" (as Hawking describes god). God in the Bible is actively involved in his creation
throughout time Without God, the universe would not continue to exist.

Whatever our theory of the origins of the universe, we stili cannot avoid the question of why there is something rather than nothing. Atheists and those who believe in God can agree on one thing if anything exists at all, there must be something preceding it that always existed. God or the universe, something always existed From a philosophical perspective an eternal universe is no more satisfactory as an explanation than a Creator God. The laws of nature point to the rationality and intelligibility of the cosmos, a rationality rooted in the Mind of God.

Indeed the era of modern physics has brought to light remarkable features of the universe and the laws of nature that make life possible. It's as if we were meant to be here. More of that in the final instalment.

Richard