And God said ....

The Big Bang concept was first postulated by Belgian priest and astronomer, Georges Lemaître. However, the expression was coined by noted astrologer Fred Hoyle.

The latter chose the term pejoratively, because he had so long advocated a dying theory, that of a steady state universe. The irony is that Stephen Hawking had hoped to have Hoyle as his supervisor, but fate conspired to leave him in the more inspirational hands of Dennis Sciama.

What a difference that little decision made. Sciama brought the very best out of Hawking and continued to promote his ideas long after Hoyle walked away in disgust over the threats posed by Hawking’s Black Hole research.

Hawking, whether out of a desire to stick it to the man or because it was the obvious conclusion to draw, hailed the COBE confirmation of the Big Bang theory as the single greatest discovery in human history.

The COBE satellite observed that galactic material was expanding from a common point, although why it was doing so at an increasing rate remains a mystery to science.

Hoyle’s steady state model argued that the universe was a steady phenomenon that had always been there, but which was expanding through the creation of new matter. That simply dispensed with any need for God as it implied that the universe was spontaneous and independent.

COBE cut that down to the most telling conclusion of all, that the universe and time had a beginning. It coincidentally fitted with Hawking’s research into black holes, which are microcosms of the singularity from which our universe birthed.

COBE backed up the basic observation with further breakthroughs, notably that the universe had cooled down at a rate of uniformity that is consistent with the cooling down of a radiator. Initially that posed other concerns, for the curve was so smooth that it did not provide the conditions needed for clustering of matter, but increases in the sensitivity of COBE measuring devices enhanced the resolution to reveal the fluctuations that were needed, amazingly so.

Thus, for the first time in perhaps all history, the creationist view of the universe had real support. The facts seemed irrefutable and evidence mounted in favor of the Big Bang model. Of course, it has had its fair share of intellectual scrutiny, as did the theories of Einstein – that is the stuff of robust theory, but it also helps to refine original arguments – and so we progress in science.

However, many theists find the theory unpalatable. It seems the most compelling reason traces back to the dogmatic view of the middle ages: that the earth is at the center of all creation, which is not so in the Big Bang model. It seems a bit arrogant to assume it should be, the way that the geocentric (sun revolving around the earth) model defied all reason in the times of Galileo.

Well, whatever, the Big Bang happens to fit with the biblical narrative, very tidily so too.  

“In the beginning, the earth was without form and void”. Well guess what, the singularity existed as the sole fragment of matter in an empty void. It had to be so, for the black hole was so massive that it would have digested all matter anyway, but it also bent light and repressed it, resulting in a dark void of nothingness surrounding a super-massive singularity the size of this full stop.

Then God said, “Let there be light”. Guess what happened in the instant that the singularity started to release its pent-up energy and mass … light was no longer captive and, because light travels faster than anything else, it would have illuminated the void. That is not because it was a big, bright explosion … that is a misconception. A bang never happened, the singularity just expanded.

At some stage, it defied specific relativity, but fulfilled general relativity, by expanding faster than light – somewhere between 10^-33 and 10^-36 seconds after the onset of the Big Bang event.  The energy required to achieve that was beyond all human comprehension.

Then, without sifting through the days of creation and all that surrounds that, we observe a guiding principle – the universe evolved. That is exactly what we observe in Genesis 1, with each day being an essential enabler of the days that followed in a sequence that was critical to orderly creation.

What I will also observe is that the scriptures are replete with confirming language of all of this. Job 9:8, Psalm 104:2, Isaiah 40:22, 42:5, 44:24, 48:13 and 51:13, all confirm that God stretched out the heavens. That confirms an expansion and spreading out of matter, consistent with the Big Bang argument.

Edwin Hubble derived the Hubble Volume, which limits the observable universe to an age of about 14billion years. He was a theist. How could he say that? Yet the bible concurs, in Psalm 102:25,26: "Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure”.

However, the Psalmist continued with, “they all shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed." That ties in with Hebrews 1:12, in which the writer confirms that God will roll the garment up.

Wow. Einstein’s General Relativity perceived the space-time continuum as a flat sheet that could bend to alter our perception of time, without changing the speed of light. Indeed, any observation of galaxies will confirm a high propensity for flat, disk shaped structures spread out from a singular core: a black hole.

I won’t go into all of that, but the scriptures seem to have observed, long before science or our best minds ever did, characteristics of the universe that could not have been contrived by the relatively unrefined and ill-equipped minds that wrote about it all so long ago.   

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net