The mind of God and the ‘big bang’
by Russell Grigg
Editor’s note, 18 August 2010: This classic article is being
republished after almost 17 years. Yet after all this time, it still is a fine overview
of the big picture; subsequent developments indicated in editorial notes, the related articles (below), and the resources (right), merely
reinforce the points.
NASA
Andromeda Galaxy.
‘The mind of God’ is a term that Christians use to mean ‘the reason(s)
why God does something’. It is also the title of a book by Dr Paul Davies,
Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Adelaide in South Australia.1 It is also the concluding
phrase in physicist Stephen Hawking’s best-selling book A Brief History of
Time, in which he says, ‘If we find the answer to that [i.e. why
it is that we and the universe exist], it would be the ultimate triumph of human
reason—for then we would know the mind of God.’2
The ‘evolution’ of the ‘big bang’
In the twentieth century, the first version of the ‘big bang’ as the
explosion of a ‘primeval atom’ was put forward by Abbé Georges-Henri
Lemaître in 1931.3
Lemaître already knew of Edwin Hubble’s work on the redshift of light
from distant stars (which Hubble interpreted to mean that the universe is expanding)
and, by extrapolating backwards in time, he postulated that the universe originated
as a single particle of vast energy but near-zero radius.4 He argued (erroneously) that cosmic rays must have
come from such an explosion.
In 1946, one of the Manhattan Project (atomic bomb) scientists, George Gamow,5 postulated that a universal
explosion lasting a few seconds could have produced all the elements we see today.
This lost favour after about a decade, when calculations suggested that certain
elements could form in stars.
In 1965, a third version of the ‘big bang’ was put forward by Robert
Dicke, P.J.E. Peebles and others, which appeared to receive some confirmation by
the accidental discovery by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson that the universe seemed
to be uniformly filled with very even heat at a temperature of about 3 K.6 (K is the symbol for kelvin,
the base unit of thermodynamic temperature.) This was interpreted as being the after-glow
in the form of microwave radiation left over from a huge initial explosion.7 When Sir Fred Hoyle calculated
that a ‘big bang’ would produce only light elements (notably helium,
deuterium, and lithium), it seemed established as the origin of the universe. In
the next 20 years, thousands of papers supporting the ‘big bang’ were
produced and virtually no papers challenging it were accepted. It became inconceivable
that the ‘big bang’ theory could be wrong, and entire careers in cosmology
have been built on the presumption that the ‘big bang’ was fact.
One of the predictions of the ‘big bang’ is that it would produce large
amounts of helium, and, in fact, the galaxies contain about 24 per cent of helium.
However, calculations have shown that the detected matter in the universe is only
about 1 per cent of the amount required to produce the gravitational attraction
needed to form all the galaxies and clumps of galaxies, even within the vast time
span of a hypothetical 15 billion years. This problem was solved with a stroke of
the pen. In the early 1980s, cosmological theoreticians decided that the universe
was now made up of nearly 99 per cent of ‘cold dark matter’ (CDM)—necessarily
‘dark’ because no one has ever seen it or detected it, and up to 99
times the amount of the visible matter in the universe. This CDM could not be composed
of detectable elements like hydrogen and helium, so hypothetical particles were
said to exist, with names like ‘WIMPS’ (weakly interacting massive particles)
and ‘axions’.
[Ed. note, 2010: see
Has ‘dark matter’ really been proven? Dr John Hartnett's research
shows that a new physical model explains the observations without recourse to the
fudge factor of dark matter.]
Another problem was the very smoothness of the so-called background radiation. Large-scale
surveys of space have shown that matter is not evenly distributed at all, but exists
in the form of huge clusters of galaxies, and even larger-scale clumping including
some huge structures which have been given names like the Great Wall,8 while there are vast empty reaches, one called the
Great Void. ‘Big bang’ theorists decided that if they could find some
variation or ripples in the pervasive 3 K radiation, this would be an adequate explanation
of the origin of the large-scale galaxy structures. In 1989, NASA launched a space
satellite named Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) to try to detect the needed tiny
variations or ‘bumps’ in the radiation from above earth’s atmosphere.
By 1991, no variation had been detected and the ‘big bang’ theorists
were beginning to panic. Then, in April 1992, a computer program was used to analyse
the data, and at last something was detected—hot and cold spots differing
in temperature by up to about three one-hundred-thousandths of a degree Celsius.9
‘Big Bang Proved!’ trumpeted the headlines. But is it? This background
radiation cannot be invoked as conclusive proof of the ‘big bang’, as
there are a number of other explanations for it.
Russell Ruthen, writing in Scientific American, October 1992, says, ‘But controversy
has arisen as to whether the COBE measurements have any relation at all to the structure
of the universe billions of years ago. Lawrence M. Krauss and Martin White of Yale
University argue that the variations in the cosmic microwave background …
could be distortions caused by gravitational waves.’10,11
And more than two decades ago two Soviet scientists, R.A. Sunyaev and Yakov B. Zeldovich,
pointed out that as the background radiation passes through large clouds of intergalactic
gas, the resultant change in intensity could cause these ‘lumps’.12,13
[Ed. note, 2010: see:
Black holes
NASA
Goldstone 64-metre (210-feet) antenna.
In 1965, mathematician and physicist Roger Penrose, from a consideration of Einstein’s
general theory of relativity, conjectured that a large star collapsing under its
own gravity would continue to do so until all the matter was compressed into a single
point of zero volume and infinite density. Such a point of infinite compression
is known to mathematical physicists as a ‘singularity’ and also as a
‘black hole’.14
When Stephen Hawking read about this, he worked out a set of mathematical equations
reversing the direction in time, so that the collapse into a black hole became instead
an expansion from a black hole. In 1970 he published a joint paper with Penrose,
supposedly ‘proving’ that the universe had begun from a ‘big bang
singularity provided only that general relativity is correct and the universe contains
as much matter as we observe’.15
Since then, Hawking has been trying to deduce a mathematical formula to explain
the electromagnetic, nuclear, and gravitational forces in the universe in one ‘grand
unified theory’ or GUT, ‘concise enough to be inscribed on a T-shirt’!
Recently quantum physicists have tackled some of the many queries that the ‘big
bang’ theory evokes. For example:
What happened before the ‘big bang’?
Paul Davies’ reply is: ‘According to modern physics, the big bang represented
the origin of space and time, as well as of matter and energy. This means that time
itself came into existence with the big bang. Questions like: What happened
before the big bang? or What caused the big bang? are therefore meaningless. There
was no before.’16
[Emphasis in the original.] And Stephen Hawking claims that under certain conditions
the universe ‘would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What
place, then, for a creator?’17
How did nothing become something and then explode?
Paul Davies’ answer is that it happened through quantum physics applied to
cosmology. He says, ‘This “quantum cosmology” provides a loophole
for the universe to, so to speak, spring into existence from nothing, without violating
any laws of physics.’18
This is very significant, as it shows the fallibility of theistic evolution. Theistic
evolutionists often urge what is in effect retreat to a ‘God of the gaps’
idea. God is invoked as necessary to create the initial particle and to ‘light
the fuse’ as it were—thereafter the rest can evolve more or less by
itself. However, Hawking says his new theory has no moment of creation and requires
no Creator. Where does this leave theistic evolutionary compromise?
So this, more or less, is the current ‘big bang’ theory—that some
15 billion years ago, at a specific moment before which there was no before, the
entire cosmos created itself by suddenly evolving out of nothing by means of a quantum
fluctuation, first as a particle of space/time of zero dimensions and infinite heat,19 which proceeded in a few
trillion-trillionths of a second to pass through an inflationary stage, and then
through an incredibly hot ‘big bang’ stage, followed by universal expansion
and cooling into its present form. The main rationale for this particular ‘big
bang’ scenario is a set of mathematical equations deduced by human reason
alone.
What should we believe?
What should Bible-believing Christians think about all this and believe? There are
certain contra facts which are indisputable, and certain principles that Christians
should always use in evaluating naturalistic theories about origins.
Re the ‘big bang’
-
Not all scientists agree with the concept of the ‘big bang’; in fact,
many have never supported it. [Ed. note, 2010: see
Secular scientists blast the big bang, about ‘Big bang theory busted
by 33 top scientists’ (2005), with many more signing this statement] There
have been other non-biblical theories about the origin of the universe put forward
in modern times—the main ones being the ‘steady state’ theory
and the ‘plasma’ theory.
Suggested by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, and Hermann Bondi in 1948, the ‘steady
state’ theory involved the continuous creation of hydrogen atoms to fill the
gaps left by the expansion of the universe—to ensure that it remained in a
‘steady state’. It assumes that the universe never had a beginning.
In 1993, Fred Hoyle, Professor Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California
at San Diego, and one other scientist proposed a new ‘steady state’
theory in which they explained the cosmic background radiation as being caused by
explosions in galaxies that create thin metallic needles which absorb radiation
and create the impression that the universe contains heat from a ‘big bang’.20
Plasma is high-temperature, ionized hydrogen gas, i.e. comprised of free electrons
and protons. The sun and most stars are giant spheres of plasma, and the aurora
borealis is due to plasma. The plasma theory of the universe has been promoted by
Hannes Alfvén and Tony Peratt for many years, but it took a quantum leap
forward in 1991, with the publication of Eric Lerner’s 466-page book The Big
Bang Never Happened. Lerner says that trillions of years ago there was
hydrogen plasma, brought into being by unknown evolutionary processes. This plasma
‘had motion and energy, thus electrical currents and magnetic fields flowed
through it.’ And from this the universe supposedly eventually formed.21
No one has ever seen the universe expanding; expansion is an interpretation
of the redshift.
These two theories postulate virtually an infinite age for the universe, both past
and future. This rather neatly does away with God both as Creator at one end and
as Judge at the other, and thus has some rather obvious advantages for atheists.
- The ‘big bang’ scenario involves tremendous (even infinite) energy at
the beginning, but supplies no explanation for the source of this energy. Nor is
it clear how the gravity of the initial universal black hole can be overcome by
a ‘quantum fluctuation’. Jargon like this seems to be part of an expanding
vocabulary of ‘big-bang-speak’, masking some formidable, if not insuperable,
difficulties. There is also no convincing explanation as to why an outward spray
of gas radiating from the ‘big bang’ should form galaxies, stars, and
planets.
- The evidence propounded for the ‘big bang’ consists of just three concepts—the
alleged expansion of the universe, the microwave background radiation, and the cosmic
abundance of helium. However, all of these phenomena are capable of being otherwise
interpreted. For example:
- No one has ever seen the universe expanding; expansion is an interpretation
of the redshift. And for nearly 20 years astronomer William G. Tifft of the University
of Arizona has been claiming that his accurate measurements of galaxy redshifts
show that redshifts ‘tend to fall on evenly spaced values, like rungs of a
ladder’, not in a smooth manner as would be expected if the universe was expanding without a centre.
So some astronomers are beginning to wonder what the redshifts really mean.22 [Ed. note, 2010:
see Our
galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ redshifts show]
- There are other explanations for the abundance of helium in the universe. Eric Lerner
(op. cit.) happily weaves it into the plasma theory. Bible-believing Christians
understand that God created it that way.
And since 1921, the lithium content of 20 per cent of ‘old’ stars studied
has been found to contradict ‘big bang’ predictions.23
- To believe that the known universe was once condensed into a point of zero dimensions
takes an unimaginable leap of faith; in fact, much more faith than it takes to believe
that God created everything in the way He says He did in Genesis. The ‘big
bang’ is a major part of the ‘creation myth’ of the Western nations’
major religion—secular humanism.
- With the passage of time, the lack of proven evidence for the ‘big bang’
has led some scientists to make such remarks as, ‘Never has such a mighty
edifice been built on such insubstantial foundations.’24 And, ‘You have to understand that first
there is speculation, then there is wild speculation, and then there is cosmology.’25
- In the history of evolutionary theory, from Charles Darwin to the present day, when
there has been a conflict between theory and the facts, it is the facts that have
been discarded rather than the theory. Thus, in 1993, George Efstathiou, head of
astrophysics at The University of Oxford, said, ‘In my view, cosmologists
should not be too disturbed about small discrepancies between theory and observation.
Any attempt to explain cosmic structure involves extrapolating from the Planck era,
10-43seconds after the big bang, when strange effects like quantum gravity
were important, to the present Universe which is about 10 billion [sic] years old.
So it is not surprising that one or two things don‘t seem to fit.’26 [Emphasis added.]
- Did God create by means of the ‘big bang’ or provide the initial energy
to kick off the ‘big bang’? No! It contradicts the biblical cosmogony.
The order of events is different—for example, this theory claims that the
sun existed long before the earth, whereas Genesis says the earth was created before
the sun. Furthermore, the time-frame is quite different (refer Exodus 20:11). Also, we have seen that Hawking, Davies et al.
would repudiate any such threat to the self-creating power of their evolutionary
universe.27 It is sad
indeed that theistic evolutionists (including some who would deny such a title)
are urging Christians to say Yes.
Re scientists and ‘God’
Any theory that dispenses with the true God is itself not true and will not stand
the test of time.
- When non-Christian scientists speak or write of ‘God’, they do not usually
mean the God of the Bible, unless they are ridiculing what the Bible says. Otherwise,
they may mean something like ‘the foundation for existence’, ‘a
deeper level of explanation’,28
or something equally vague or esoteric. For Stephen Hawking, ‘God’ appears
to be ‘a complete theory of the universe’ that ‘breathes fire
into the equations’.29
- Any theory that dispenses with the true God is itself not true and will not stand
the test of time.
- Although Hawking and Davies say that ’What happened before the “big
bang”?’ is a non-question, Christians understand that God always existed
before He created the universe, and He always was and still is now transcendent
to this universe, because He ‘inhabiteth eternity’ (Isaiah 57:15). Christians are able to experience immediate
spiritual contact now through prayer with this transcendent holy God.
Re theories of origins and the Bible
- Any theory of origins that is contrary to the early chapters of Genesis, Exodus 20:11; 31:17, and the many other references in the Bible
that ascribe creation to the work of God, is not true and will not stand the test
of time, no matter how well it is promoted by humanistic educational institutions.
- In taking the above attitude, are Christians in danger of repeating the error of
the seventeenth-century Church when it opposed Galileo for suggesting a heliocentric
(sun-centred) mechanism for our planetary system? Answer: No. Although the Church
leaders in Galileo’s day mistakenly thought that the Bible supported the Greek
idea of a geocentric (earth-centred) system, there was nothing intrinsically anti-Creator
about Galileo’s idea that the earth moved.
By contrast, the ‘big bang’ and all other theories of origins that are
based on human philosophies attempt to say how the universe made itself by its own
processes and properties, and with no supernatural input.
Conclusions
Christians do not need Hawking’s elusive ‘grand unified theory’
of the universe to know the mind of God or to know who they are, why they exist,
and where they are going. We already have access to the mind of God in the Bible.
This tells us that through repentance and faith in the atoning work of Christ on
the cross we become children of God, that we are here to worship and serve the living
God, and that one day we who love God and have received His Son the Lord Jesus Christ
will go to live with Him for ever. In fact, the ‘grand unified theory’
and the ‘theory of everything’ is the Bible!
As matters stand at present, there is no better astronomic theory for the origin
of the universe than the inspired explanation of the Bible. ‘In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). ‘By the word of the LORD were the heavens
made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth … For He spake,
and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast’ (Psalm 33:6,9). ‘All things were made by Him, and without
Him was not anything made that was made’ (John 1:3).
Related articles
Further reading
Footnotes and references
- Paul Davies, The Mind of God, Penguin Books, London,
1992. This is a rather curious title for Davies to use (although no doubt very viable
from a sales point of view), as on p. 191 he says, ‘Nor is it obvious to me
that this postulated being who underpins the rationality of the world bears much
relation to the personal God of religion, still less to the God of the Bible or
the Koran.’ Return to text.
- Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam
Books, London, 1988. Return to text.
- Reported in Supplement to Nature, No. 3234, 24 October
1931, pp. 699–706. Return to text.
- See also Georges Lemaître, The Primeval Atom: An
Essay on Cosmogony, Van Nostrand, New York, 1950. He sometimes referred to
this as his fireworks theory of cosmology. Return to text.
- George Gamow, One, two, three … infinity,
The Viking Press, New York, 1949. Return to text.
- In due course refined to 2.736 Kelvin (i.e. 2.736 degrees
above absolute zero), equivalent to-270.5°Celsius. Return to
text.
- The basis for this assumption was that if the universe was
expanding, light from any primordial ‘big bang’ explosion would be so
greatly redshifted that it would appear now as microwave radiation.
Return to text.
- Discovered in 1986, by Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii,
and confirmed in 1990 by M. J. Geller and J. P. Huchra of the Harvard Centre for
Astrophysics. Return to text.
- Joseph Silk, ‘Cosmology back to the beginning’,
Nature, Vol. 356, 30 April 1992, pp. 741–742. For COBE team leader
George Smoot’s comments, see Science, Vol. 256, 1 May 1992, p. 612.
Return to text.
- Russell Ruthen, ‘The Cosmic Microwave Mirage?’,
Scientific American, October 1992, p. 15. Ruthen quotes Krauss as saying,
‘One should not jump to the conclusion that what COBE is seeing is just density
fluctuations. At least some or all of it might be gravitational waves.’ Return to text.
- For an up-to-date article on scientific speculation about
gravity waves, see Marcia Bartusiak, ‘Gravity Wave Sky’, Discover,
July 1993, pp. 72–77. Return to text.
- R. A. Sunyaev and Yakov B. Zeldovitch, ‘Small-scale
fluctuations of relic radiation’, Astrophysics and Space Science 7,
1970, pp. 3–19. cf. p. 16, quoted by Russell Humphreys in Impact,
Institute for Creation Research, California, No. 233, November, 1992.
Return to text.
- See also J.V. Narlikar, Introduction to Cosmology
(Boston: Jones & Bartlett, 1983), pp. 190–91, 346–347, 457, quoted
by Russell Humphreys in Impact, Institute for Creation Research, California,
No. 233, November 1992. Return to text.
- Stephen Hawking defines a black hole as, ‘A region
of space-time from which nothing, not even light, can escape, because gravity is
so strong.’ And he defines the ‘big bang’ as, ‘The singularity
at the beginning of the universe.’—Reference 2, p. 194.
Return to text.
- Ibid, p. 54. Return to text.
- Paul Davies, ‘Science, God and the Laws of the Universe’,
ABC Radio 24 Hours, August 1992, p. 36–39. Return
to text.
- Reference 2, p. 149. Return to text.
- Reference 16, p. 37. Return to text.
- Reference 2, p. 123. Return to text.
- Professor Burbidge claims the organizers of a recent international
conference on astronomy refused to give him or his colleagues the chance to explain
their work. He says, ‘Silence, that most potent form of scientific censorship,
is already being employed.’—Robert Matthews in The Sunday Telegraph
(London), reprinted in ‘Trio claims Big Bang is myth’, The West Australian
(Perth), 19 April 1993, p. 3 of Earth 2000 Supplement. Return to
text.
- Eric Lerner, The Big Bang Never Happened, Times
Books, Random House, New York, 1992, pp. 295 ff. Return to text.
- Tim Beardsley, ‘Quantum Dissidents’, Scientific
American, December 1992, pp. 19–20. Two British astronomers, Bruce N.G.
Guthrie and William M. Napier, who investigated this in the belief that they would
debunk it, report that they were ‘quite surprised to find the hypothesis held
up’. Op. cit. See also ‘News Notes’, Sky and Telescope,
August 1992, pp. 128–129. Cf. B.N.G. Guthrie and W.M. Napier, ‘Evidence
for red shift perodicity in nearby field galaxies’, Mon. Not. R. Astr. Soc.
253, 1991, pp. 533–544; and John Gribbin, ‘“Bunched” red
shifts question cosmology’, New Scientist, 21–28 December 1991.
Return to text.
- Ken Croswell, New Scientist, 31 October 1992, p.
16. Return to text.
- Editorial comment in New Scientist, 21–28
December 1992, p. 3. Return to text.
- Martyn Harris, ‘Stephen Hawking: Genius or Pretender’,
in Focus on Science, The Weekend Australian, 4–5 July 1992, p. 19.
Return to text.
- George Efstathiou, ‘Beyond cosmic ripples’,
New Scientist, 1 May 1993, pp. 26–30. Return to text.
- See Reference 1, pp. 58–61, 68, 171.
Return to text.
- Reference 1, pp. 15–16. Return
to text.
- Reference 2, pp. 184–85; cf. Reference 1, p. 171. Return to text.
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