Physicists: The universe had a beginning
Published: 5 June 2012 (GMT+10)
As an idea, the ‘big bang’ just doesn’t cut it—that is, it is no longer sufficient for its intended task. In fact, it never was.
What was its intended task? To provide a godless means of explaining the origin of the cosmos. However, as we have earlier reported, even diehard atheist physicists are abandoning the big bang, given its increasingly evident failures to fit the known facts of the universe.1
But there’s another reason why “many physicists have been fighting a rearguard action against it for decades”, as a recent editorial in New Scientist explained.2
That is, its alleged “theological overtones”. The New Scientist editorial put it this way:
“If you have an instant of creation, don’t you need a creator?”
The editorial then outlines how cosmologists had, over a number of years, come up with “several different models of the universe that dodge the need for a beginning while still requiring a big bang. But recent research has shot them full of holes (see page 6). It now seems certain that the universe did have a beginning.”2
The ‘see page 6’ article referred to is by Lisa Grossman and soberly titled/subtitled: “Death of the eternal cosmos—From the cosmic egg to the infinite multiverse, every model of the universe has a beginning.”3
The article relates how physicists such as Stephen Hawking “tend to shy away from cosmic genesis” in order to avoid “the thorny question”, i.e. the need for, a supernatural creator. They had relied upon models designed to dodge the origins problem, such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, which give the appearance of time continuing indefinitely in the past as well as the future.
Counter-intuitively these models had been constructed to be compatible with the big bang. I.e. the big bang was not the beginning. However, as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained earlier this year, hope in these ideas “may now be dead”.3 Vilenkin showed that all these models still demand a beginning. They do not stretch back in true infinity; rather, there is still a “start of everything.”3
Of the eternal inflation model, Vilenkin says that, “You can’t construct a space-time with this property”—the equations simply don’t work. “It can’t possibly be eternal in the past. There must be some kind of boundary.”3
And Vilenkin said that while cyclic universes have an “irresistible poetic charm and bring to mind the Phoenix” (quoting the late Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Lemaître), the model was hopelessly wrong in its predictions of the universe’s level of order today. If there had indeed already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe today should be in a state of maximum disorder. As the New Scientist article pointed out:
“Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists—nothing like the one we see around us.”3
The attempted rescue suggestion, viz. that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle, therefore isn’t yet at maximum disorder, also fails on the same point as the eternal inflation model. I.e., “if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.”3
And as for a third idea that the cosmos previously “existed eternally in a static state called the cosmic egg”, which later ‘cracked’ to create the big bang, Vilenkin and research associates have ‘cracked’ that notion, too. Their work showed that quantum instabilities would force such an ‘egg’ to collapse after a finite amount of time. And even if it cracked beforehand, leading to the supposed big bang, then this must have happened before it collapsed, and therefore also within a finite amount of time. “This is also not a good candidate for a beginningless universe”, says Vilenkin. “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”3
And so in that light, as the editorial of that issue of New Scientist muses, physicists must answer the problem: “How do you get a universe, complete with the laws of physics, out of nothing?”2
The One who really is eternal, who exists “from everlasting to everlasting”,4 and whose creation of the space-time construct presents such a conundrum to cosmologists who would deny Him,5 has already spoken much about the beginning—for those willing to listen. Sadly, even some Christian apologists (such as Hugh Ross and William Lane Craig) have naively been duped into advocating ‘God used the big bang and other godless origins ideas’—untenable on all counts.6 The only way to avoid such error is by believing God’s Word—from the very first verse.
Related Articles
Further Reading
References
- Lerner, E., Bucking the big bang, New Scientist 182(2448)20, 22 May 2004. See also the book by Alex Williams and Dr John Hartnett, Dismantling the big bang. Return to text.
- Editorial: In the beginning … , New Scientist 213(2847):3, 14 January 2012. Return to text.
- Grossman, L., Death of the eternal cosmos, New Scientist 213(2847):6–7, 14 January 2012. Return to text.
- E.g. Psalm 106:48. Return to text.
- For which they have “no excuse”—Romans 1:20. Return to text.
- See Sarfati, J., Refuting Compromise [updated and expanded] a biblical and scientific refutation of progressive creationism (billions of years) as popularized by astronomer Hugh Ross, Creation Book Publishers, 2011. Return to text.
Reader’s comments
Yes, the sun, moon, and stars were created in the six-day creation week. But Genesis 1 clearly states they were created on Day 4. The finer details are explained in the same book:
See also How could the days of Genesis 1 be literal if the Sun wasn’t created until the fourth day?
The risk you run is to disengage Christians from science which is a God-given gift to humankind. The intended task of science, and big bang cosmology in particular, is to determine what is true about the universe (and, yes, God’s created universe). It is truly astounding that we have been able to push back to the earliest moments of the Universe through a combination of theory and measurement. But of course there are wobbles in this journey.
And as a physicist I reckon that inflation is worse than a wobble, and dark matter is not necessary. But that doesnt destroy the general picture that has emerged from particle physics and cosmology that the universe had a singular beginning along the lines of BB physics. The standard model of particle physics which underpins a good deal of this has been validated in the large hadron collider to incredible accuracy and over a range of a million-billion-fold in energy density.
And you have to remember that many components of these theories were theoretically predicted in considerable detail long before they were “discovered” experimentally. Many are natural (inevitable) outcomes of the astonishing symmetries that exist in this wonderful universe that God has created. I am afraid that you are presenting a very jaundiced view of science and scientists. God created the Universe. Science is the study of God’s created universe and is the means by which we discover in detail how He did it. We should not be afraid of what we discover because ultimately it is the truth as to how God has acted.
We are very much in favour of real science. After all, many of our writers, including me and the author of the main article, have earned Ph.D.s in science from accredited secular universities. Every issue of Creation magazine has an interview with a creationist Ph.D. scientist.
But this science which might be called operational or experimental science. This indeed should use ‘natural’ explanations rather than supernatural. What we object to is theories of origin that conflict with biblical data. After all, this includes not only that He created the universe, but how long ago, over what time frame, and in which order of events. And indeed, the big bang really does that (see response to Brian S. above), and really does presuppose that the cosmos and its components arose by natural means (see response to Jeff M. above). We explain these two types of science, and what we believe is the soundest Christian view of them, in Naturalism, Origins and Operational Science.
About big bang evidence, it’s not that simple. The modern big bang theory can’t survive without the fudge factors of dark matter, dark energy, and the inflaton field.
Also, it’s moot whether the evidence was really “predicted”. First, invoking verified prediction commits the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent. Second, the cosmic microwave background radiation with a blackbody spectrum of 2.7 K was widely touted as a Gamow ‘prediction’, but he had predicted values as high as 50 K. Third, this cosmic background temperature was already known before this ‘prediction’ from McKellar's microwave spectra. See for example Nobel Prize for alleged big bang proof.
As a final note, what you have asked us to remember has been addressed on our site, as well as by the books on the top right. Some are authored by physics professor Dr John Hartnett, who has published on big-bang related topics in astrophysical journals.
I do believe I know enough about physics to know that the amount of useable energy is decreasing. If there was no beginning and the universe is a closed system, would that not mean that all the useable energy would already have run out? Unless of course it was not closed and there was something beyond supplying more, but then we’re back to the question of first cause again.
I don't think that they'll ever be able to make a coherent model without admitting a first cause, because in reality there was a first cause for the entire physical realm. Not admitting it is just more of the same rebellion against God.
"But the Day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise [BIG BANG], and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up" (NKJV).
About natural laws and miracles, it would also be worth checking the articles Miracles and science and Is evolution allowed by scientific laws?
I’m not arguing over the fact that the Big Bang is an anti-God idea, but Lemaître was a Catholic, and even if Catholics are very prone to compromise, they still believe in God. Or am I missing something?
From reading Ross, one would think that the big bang cosmologists are all Christians, or at least theists. [William Lane] Craig, too, wrote:
This may well be true, and indeed the steady state theory was motivated by antitheistic bias. But Craig’s implication that the big bang is somehow theistic fails miserably―by the same reasoning, one could argue that Darwinism must be theistic because the only opposition at an evolution conference came from the Stalinist biologists led by Lysenko, the neo-Lamarckian! Indeed, most big bang theorists are likewise atheists, although some are agnostic or possibly pantheistic.
This is surely wrong. The Big Bang theory never had a task. It certainly didn’t aim to substitute a Divine creation with a Godless one. It was simply an attempt to explain the apparent expansion of the universe.
Yours sincerely
Jeff
The Encyclopædia Britannica states:
…
Another assumption the Britannica failed to mention, one which should ring alarm bells for Christians, is naturalism. I.e. the universe today is the result of entirely natural processes—though some people (like Ross) assert ‘God started it’, unlike most big bang theorists. The big bang model posits that all the cosmic structure, stars, galaxies, and planets evolved by natural processes, and were not (at least directly) created by God. So the big bang is definitely an evolutionary cosmogony. This also means that attempts to use the big bang as evidence for a Creator are misplaced, especially because mainstream big bang cosmologists reject a creator.