Chapter 3
The Big Bang: God In Disguise
“In the beginning there was nothing, then,
bang”
What is it about the Big Bang? Can this theory
be true in light of the Bible? It is certainly taught as truth today in our schools
but is that simply science trying to impose its atheistic agenda on us. What
was at the beginning of the universe? What was before the Big Bang? The very
first words of the Bible are, “In the Beginning God…”[1] In the beginning, there
was God. In essence the Bible is making a huge claim here. There never was a
time before God. All things come from Him, as Paul wrote in the New Testament,
“…he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”[2]
While watching a miniseries by Stephen Hawking I
was surprised at the opening line of the show, “In the beginning” it started
“there was nothing. Then, Bang!” It is well known that Stephen Hawking is a prominent
evolutionary philosopher; he has dedicated much of his time to disproving God
through reason. This statement at the beginning of this scientific documentary
was such a profound attack against the foundational line of the Bible, that it
shocked me. As I thought about this statement though, I began to analyze its
meaning. What exactly does he mean by nothing? I know Stephen Hawking is a
brilliant scientist, he doesn’t believe something can come from nothing. In
order for the universe to have been made it had to have an original causer, the
immovable mover, as some like to call it. If before the Big Bang there was
nothing than how did creation happen?
The Big Bang is a huge problem for science.
Albert Einstein first proposed the Big Bang as a way to explain the creation of
the universe in terms of his General Theory of Relativity. Science adopted this
view full heartedly without realizing the implications that it proposed. The
classical understanding of the Big Bang that perhaps you have been introduced
to is not actually the correct view of the Big Bang Theory. I heard one
scientist explaining it to kids at a natural history museum, he stated that in
the beginning the universe was all contained inside a ball the size of an egg,
as he held up an egg sized crystal. Other people hear that this mass was
actually the size of a pen head. All these views are incorrect. These are just
explanations to help people put an understanding on the Big Bang. The problem
is that in the original theory, all the matter that makes up the known universe
had no volume, so to describe it in terms of size is meaningless.
Einstein’s theory was that in the beginning
there was energy. This energy had no volume but contained infinite mass and infinite
energy. Science readily adopted this view because it seemed to eliminate the
need for God. Finally science had a theory that totally eliminated a higher
power and gave a completely natural cause for everything. This infinite mass
and infinite energy exploded in the biggest bang ever recorded, sending
infinite mass with massive amounts of energy flying through space. This mass
with energy began to combine and expand, setting in motion the whirling of the universe
as if out of control, with everything expanding away from everything else.
Science seems to indicate this happened about 14 billion years ago, which
relative to eternity, isn’t all that long ago.
What Science realized to late is that Einstein’s
theory was, in reality, “In the beginning God.” The problem is that infinite
mass with infinite energy and zero volume is impossible to calculate. We are
forced to rely wholly on faith in order to believe that such a thing exists.
For Einstein this was no problem, God supplied the infinite energy, but for
other scientists God did not exist.
Imagine for a moment with me as we picture that
first creative act. All the energy of God released in a massive explosion of
creative power! There was nothing, and then, out of nothing God created. What
caused God to create? What was the original thought behind the original action
that brought our universe into existence? If our universe is, as I believe, the
material revelation of the thought and mind of God, then why did God create at
that point, as far as we can calculate, 14 billion years ago? What came before
that?
To get around the fact that something close to
God created the universe, science has sought new ideas and theories to explain
the existence of our universe. The latest idea is that the universe was not created
at the Big Bang but instead it was recreated as the last universe died. They
call it the Big Bounce. There appears to be some evidence using mathematics and
our understanding of the expansion of stars that a previous universe existed
before this one.
It is theorized that when a star expands to such
a great extent that its internal temperature is no longer enough to keep it
from collapsing by its own weight, the star collapses in on itself. When this
happens it creates an area of matter with extremely high density. The mass can
be so great that its gravitational pull will not even allow light to escape.
Eventually such black holes can grow to have such a high density of matter that
they become so massive that all that energy stored in something so small
finally is released, in a massive explosion.
This is similar to what scientists theorize
happened with our universe. Our universe is continually expanding away from the
original starting point. Everything is moving at extremely high speeds away
from everything else. Eventually the universe will get so big that it will not
be able to support its own weight and it will collapse back in on itself,
creating a black hole containing every piece of matter and energy in the entire
universe. This is condensed to such an extent that all matter is converted to
energy and you arrive at the starting point, with something with infinite
energy and mass but no measurable volume. This pent up energy explodes sending
infinite amounts of energy spinning through the universe which eventually
coalesces and forms stars, planets, solar systems, and galaxies.
Yet when you think about it, it comes to the
exact same problem we have with this universe. What created the first universe?
What was the first cause of all this energy? Something must come from something;
nothing comes from nothing, so they are right back at the Big Bang problem. The
amount of energy needed to create the universe we live in would indeed be
infinite because as we understand it today, the universe is infinite. There is
no end to the universe.
This brings up another problem to which science
has many answers but no true understanding of. How is the universe shaped?
There are three general ideas as to the shape of the universe, the saddle
theory, flat theory, and the spherical theory. The flat theory is the oldest of
the theories. It is the idea that the universe is flat, extending out in all
directions infinitely. This has been largely discredited for a number of
reasons that I will not cover in detail here, but one of the obvious problems
with this theory is that if the universe extends in all directions infinitely,
than there would be an infinite amounts of stars and galaxies in the universe,
if there is an infinite amount of stars and galaxies in the universe than there
would be infinite amounts of light as well,
thus the night sky would no longer be dark, it would be day 24/7 because
no spot in the universe would be dark. There are many ways around this though
and many people still hold to this theory.
My personal opinion is that a flat universe is
too simple. It reminds me of when we thought the earth was flat, but I am not a
theoretical physicist so what do I know? The second model is a spherical shape
to the universe, much like the spherical shape of the earth. This theory
explains Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity in that there are no straight
lines. There is always a space time curvature to everything in the theory of
Relativity, thus it seems logical that if space and time curve out enough, they
eventually come back on themselves giving our universe of space time a
spherical shape. The Hyperbolic Universe also gives the same explanation except
that it shows the curvature as never coming back on itself but instead
everything expanding in a kind of parabolic fashion. Thus it explains the
curvature of space time while providing a viable model for the eternally
expanding universe.
I do not know which one of these models is
correct, or if any of them are for that matter, neither do the scientists that
propose them. However, I tend to believe that the universe is probably shaped
in the same way that everything else appears to be shaped in, a sphere. The
simple problem of having too much light circulating through the universe is
solved by the theory of black holes. If every galaxy in the universe has at its
center a giant black hole, as some scientists propose, than any light passing
through such a singularity would be captured by the enormous gravitational pull
of this black hole and would be recycled into energy. Thus we do not have light
pollution in the universe because the light is recycled as it travels through
space.
There are extremely exciting ideas that go along
with this theory. Many people wonder about the existence of God as they look
out over a seemingly chaotic universe with destructive black holes and stars
that expand and blow up. However it because very clear that these black holes
are needed for a viable system to exist. Think of them as god’s trash cans. The
universe is kept clean by giant recyclers that recycle energy and matter back
into the universe. If a god did indeed create the universe than he created it
with great care and precision. Everything is dependent on everything else to
exist. As we will see in the next chapter, we cannot have time, inertia, or
rotation and many more things without the existence of other bodies in the
universe. If a single human being was the only thing in existence in the
universe, there would be no such thing as movement. Our system is irreducibly
complex on every level, not just cellular but universal as well.
A spherical universe brings up another extremely
interesting subject. What is beyond the orbit of our universe? What is outside
the sphere? Could it be that there are more universes outside of this one? Maybe
the reason why we have not found evidence of intelligent life in the universe
is because this universe is “quarantined until further notice.” Maybe all other
life in the universe fled as this one began to decay. Are you beginning to see
how great this God could be? He goes far beyond even the existence of our own
universe. Our universe might not even be that special in comparison with the
infinite universes that could be found out there. We are so small; we don’t
even understand how our own universe and its laws work much less any other
universe that might exist out there with its own set of laws and rules. The
mechanics of our own universe will be the subject of our next chapters.
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