"Some foolish men declare that a Creator made the world. The
doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be
rejected. If God created the world, where was he before creation?
Know that the world is uncreated, as time itself is, without beginning
and end."
-- Jinasena, India, c. 900 A.D.
"The Dalai Lama was also very interested in the Big Bang theory,
according to which the world had a start and probably will have an
end. This appears to be somewhat contrary to Buddhist scripture,
which emphasizes eternal recurrence: things happen again and again. I
pressed him on that. Of course, I insisted that the Big Bang was a
fashion in science that could change. But if science did become
committed to a one-time universe, how could that be reconciled with
Buddhist scriptures? He listened through his interpreter and replied,
'Well, it is perhaps not part of the Buddhism to which we are
completely committed. We would have to study our scriptures very
carefully, and usually, there is some room for maneuver.' 'Some room
for maneuver' was the phrase the translator used. I like that very
much."
-- John Bell, quantum theorist
"Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order
of Nature is repugnant ... I should like to find a genuine loophole."
"We must allow evolution an infinite time to get started."
-- Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944)
"The biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of
the Universe is philosophical -- perhaps even theological -- what was
there before the bang? This problem alone was sufficient to give a
great initial impetus to the Steady State theory; but with that theory
now sadly in conflict with the observations, the best way round this
initial difficulty is provided by a model in which the universe
expands from a singularity, collapses back again, and repeats the
cycle indefinitely."
--John Gribbin, physicist, 1996
Astronomical evidence has convincingly disproved the steady state
and oscillating universe theories. The convincing evidence that the
universe has a definite beginning strongly supports the Christian
worldview. However, our faith should not rest only on this piece of
scientific evidence:
- Other worldviews are finding ways to adapt to the scientific
evidence for a beginning.
- The scientific picture isn't finished yet.
Claim: Science can explain the beginning ---> no need for God
"The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without
boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the
affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in
describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows
the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not
intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do
not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started
-- it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how
to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could
suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely
self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither
beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a
creator?"
-- Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
Hawking assumes in his argument that God's interaction with the universe is limited to starting it off. In past weeks we've argued for a very different understanding of God's role in the universe: God sustains and upholds the universe continually. Scientific explanations do not rule out God's role, but rather reveal to us His handiwork and design.
"If Hawking is right, and [the cosmos is] without a singular
point at which it all began, that is scientifically very interesting,
but theologically insignificant. ... God is not a God of the edges,
with a vested interest in boundaries. Creation is not something he
did fifteen billion years ago, but it is something that he is doing
now."
--John Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist
Claim: Science says nothing was around before the big bang --> God didn't exist before the big bang
"All of the God theories collapse when three serious questions
are asked: Where did God come from, where did God exist before the
universe existed, and how did this God learn how to create?"
-- Milton Rothman, plasma physicist
If God lives in space and time as we do, then God couldn't have existed before the Big Bang. But the God of the Bible is eternally existing, outside of time and space (yet chooses to interact with time and space occasionally). The problem comes when you think that the only real things are those that can be measured by science.
Claim: Science can explain the beginning only one way ---> God didn't have a choice in making the universe.
"Christians claim that this particular universe can be explained
as God's choice, taken from an infinite range of alternatives, for
reasons that are unknown to us. But even an omnipotent God cannot
break the rules of logic. God cannot make 2=3 or make a square a
circle. The hasty assumption that God can create any universe must be
qualified by the restriction that it be logically consistent. Now if
there exists only one logically consistent universe then God would
effectively have had no choice at all."
-- Paul Davies, God and the New Physics
"What I'm really interested in is whether God could have made
the world in a different way; that is, whether the necessity of
logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all."
-- Albert Einstein
Physics is far from having only one possible theory to
describe the early universe. We haven't come up with any yet,
and it will be much harder to prove that what we come up with is
unique.
Even if there is only one way to build a mathematically
self-consistent theory which can produce matter and forces similar to
what we observe, that doesn't mean we can explain it all without God:
Claim: Human life couldn't exist without certain fine-tuning ---> God designed the universe for us.
Of the many possible universes, not all could have produced life.
For life, we need:
Time: The universe has to last long enough for stars to
form; life needs stable star-planet systems.
Variety of atoms: The big bang produces hydrogen and
helium; heavier elements are produced in stars. Various forces have
to balance in order to convert some, but not all, of hydrogen into
heavier elements.
The right molecules: The complexity of life would seem to
require atoms that can form long chain molecules with metastable
bonds, i.e. carbon, and liquid substrate of polarized molecules,
i.e. water.
In addition, there are a few curious things that don't
obviously arise from the above constraints:
- Liquid and gaseous water is transparent at the same wavelengths
that long-lived stars are brightest.
- Nuclear reactions in stars make lots of carbon, but do not
easily convert carbon into heavier elements.
"Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was
created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to
provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which
has an underlying (one might say "supernatural") plan."
-- Arno Penzias, cosmologist
"At whatever level we examine the building blocks of life --
electrons, nucleons, atoms, or molecules -- the physics of the
universe must be very meticulously fine-tuned. The universe ... must
be exquisitely crafted to produce he protons and neutrons required.
... Such precise balancing of all these factors is truly beyond our
ability to comprehend."
-- Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos
Possible worldview explanations for fine-tuning:
Blind coincidence -- no reason, it just happens to be that
way (unsatisfying).
Anthropic principle -- if universe wasn't this way, we
wouldn't be here to study it. But this doesn't explain why the
universe is exactly this way (unsatisfying).
Divine design -- God foresaw the whole system, and designed
the universe to produce complex life.
Unknown scientific mechanism --ex. The theory of inflation
may explain some fine-tuning, but not all.
Further reading on fine-tuning: The Creation and the Cosmos, by Hugh Ross, gives a detailed list of physical parameters and laws that seem fine-tuned to produce the building blocks for life. Keep in mind, however, that Ross assumes all the parameters are independent when they are in fact related. We don't agree with the extreme form of his argument, that Earth is the only place in the universe where life could happen, or that the evidence for fine-tuning proves the existence of God.
Science IS saying something here that needs to affect our worldview, we can't just ignore it.
The materialist response:
The First Ten Million Millennia or So
Don L. Anderson
In the "beginning," nothing
No time, no space, no matter.
No energy, no strings
nothing.
not even a point, not even a void
nothing
No laws of physics
no myths, no gods;
nothing, absolutely nothing
Then, a singularity ...
Call it a bang, call it a Big Bang, call it light, call it God.
Perhaps a thought.
In the beginning, the Laws of Logic begat the Laws of Physics.
The rules.
From Nothing, expansion,
false vacuums, phase changes, beginning of time, and space.
Potential for something, Everything.
Energy, potential.
Waves, strings;
vibrating strings
monopoles, sheets, threads
webs.
From the void, chaos
out of vacuum, Genesis.
...
"It is almost irresistible for humans to believe that we have
some special relation to the universe, that human life is not just a
more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents reaching back to
the first three minutes, but that we were somehow built in from the
beginning. ... It is very hard to realize that [the earth] is just a
tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to
realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably
unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless
cold or intolerable hear. The more the universe seems comprehensible,
the more it also seems pointless. ... The effort to understand the
universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little
above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of
tragedy."
--Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes
The Christian response:
Remember that God is not made insignificant by the vastness
of the universe. We're surprised to find that the earth is just one
small piece of God's creation, but that just reminds us how much
bigger God is.
He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love fro those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
--Psalm 103:10-12
For the original audience, heavens-to-earth and east-to-west were the complete extent of the cosmos. So we should read this as from one end of the universe to the other, beyond distant galaxies, further away then you could travel in a thousand lifetimes.
The question of significance was around long before science:
O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.
From the lips of children and infants
you have ordained praise
because of your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the God
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet;
all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,
the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
O LORD our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
--Psalm 8
We are significant because:
God chose to speak to us: He chose to speak to small, stardust humans in one corner of his creation.
God has given us a special place in his universe: he has made us care-takes of Earth.
God himself became human: The all-powerful God chose to become one of us in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation shrinks the immensity of God into an approachable human baby.
God, as a human being, died to restore humanity to himself: We are significant because the God of the huge universe thinks we're worth dying for.
Our actions are significant: Yes, the universe will all end one day, but God will reward and punish us based on how we live our lives here and now. We look forward in hope to the new heaven and new earth.