The Big Bang Theory (not the TV Show), Cosmogony and Faith

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1 The Big Bang Theory (not the TV Show), Cosmogony and Faith JOHN 1: 1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. INTRODUCTION The Big Bang Theory is the predominate scientific view on how our universe came into being. There are competing views, both scientifically based and faith based, but none hold a candle to the level of acceptance that the Big Bang Theory has, overall. We will not be looking into issues with the Big Bang Theory as a whole. Rather, we will be focusing on the theory and how it interacts with the two primary worldviews that shape the majority of the scientists that study cosmogony (the beginning of the universe): a) Materialism b) Deism / Theism Deism and Theism (which I ll abbreviate to just Theism for brevity) when taken in the context of Cosmogony, is the belief that there was an intelligence (or intelligences) behind the formation of the universe. This suggests that the universe has a purpose (though it may not be possible for us to understand that purpose) and can lead to such things as ethics, morality and religious belief. Christianity (as well as most of the major religions) falls into this category. Theistic Cosmogony does lead to some questions: 1. If the universe needed a Creator, who created the Creator? 2. If we can theorize a universe without the need for a Creator, assuming one adds another variable into the equation and violates Occam s razor. Materialism, in the context of Cosmogony, is the idea that material stuff (whether in the form of matter, energy, or more exotic substances like subatomic particles, dark energy or dark matter) is all that there is. If one cannot observe it directly (or theorize its existence using math based on existing matter) it doesn t exist, or at least does not matter. Cosmological Materialism can also lead to some potential problems:

2 1. We can follow causal chains backwards (each effect coming from a cause, and that cause being an effect of a previous cause, etc.). If there is no first cause, it suggests an infinite chain. Science strongly suggests the universe is not infinite. 2. There are many, many physical laws at work in the universe (gravity, electro-magnetism, etc.) that help make life on Earth possible. If any of these laws were minutely different, life as we know it could not exist. The odds of these laws coming into being randomly are astronomically small (but not zero). Discuss: What do you think the underlying reasons are for both materialists and theists to argue that The Big Bang Theory is incompatible with a belief in a Creator God? HISTORY Plato and Aristotle there must be an immortal, unchanging being, ultimately responsible for all wholeness and orderliness in the sensible world" Aristotle, Book 12, Metaphysics Basically, Aristotle (and other philosophers of his time) postulated that there was a final cause. If you looked at all motion in the universe, every object that moves gets its motion from something. Or, every effect has a cause. If you follow this causal chain backwards, you must get to a point where there is a First Cause, or an Unmoved Mover: a cause without an effect, a mover that is not itself moved. Thomas Aquinas whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another. If that by which it is put in motion be itself put in motion, then this also must needs be put in motion by another, and that by another again. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and, consequently, no other mover; seeing that subsequent movers move only inasmuch as they are put in motion by the first mover; as the staff moves only because it is put in motion by the hand. Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at a first mover, put in motion by no other; and this everyone understands to be God. The Unmoved Mover, Quinque viæ Aquinas took Aristotle s view of the unmoved mover and simply postulated that this referred to the Christian God. It fit within the medieval cosmological mindset of God s creation of the universe as told in Genesis.

3 Robert Grosseteste In 1225, he wrote a piece called On Light, in which he described the universe s birth using explosion imagery and attempted to describe the heavens and Earth using one set of physical laws. Nature 507, Edgar Allen Poe Though at the time it was construed as simply a literary work, Poe s Eureka: A Prose Poem suggested that the universe expanded and contracted from a single primordial particle. Divine Volition is what fractures the particle, causing it to fill all known space with atoms. These clump together to make the cosmos. At some future point, the Divine Volition will cease to push matter apart, at which point gravity will cause it to smoosh back into the primordial particle. Albert Einstein Einstein s contributions to the physics are far too numerous to represent here, but a significant one in terms of cosmogony is the idea that the universe is always in flux. Einstein s theory of General Relativity states that it s never in stasis or constant. It s either expanding or contracting. Georges Lemaître and Edwin Hubble Lemaître posited an expanding model of the universe to explain redshift (the Doppler effect of the faster an object moves away from the earth, the more the light it gives off moves towards the infrared side of the spectrum). Hubble provided the observational foundation supporting Lemaître s model. The two men differed in explanations though: Lemaître was in favor of the Big Bang to start everything, Hubble liked the Steady State theory of the universe (which is mostly discounted now). THE BIG BANG THEORY (or, a VERY brief history of everything)

4 The Big Bang Theory states that billion years ago, all matter and energy in the universe was found in a singularity: an infinitesimally small point. This singularity suddenly expanded

5 and within less than a millisecond had filled the known universe with all the energy and matter that is in existence. Various eras occurred (some lasting hundreds of millions of years, some lasting a tiny fraction of a second) and during these eras, the standard physical laws of the universe started to apply (the four fundamental laws are: strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetism, and gravity). As these laws started to apply to matter, and over the intervening billions of years, stars were formed and exploded and from them, the heavier elements were created. Several generations of stars formed and exploded, and from one of the later generations of star dust, the Sun and the Solar System formed. The Sun and outer planets formed first, with the inner planets forming last. Most of the hydrogen in the Solar System coalesced into the Sun, with the remainder in the outer planets. The majority of the heavier elements coalesced into the inner planets, including Earth. The moon was created, either from residual dust that didn t coalesce into earth, or from a large impact on earth that dislodged a great deal of material. The Big Bang Theory provides the most suitable answer currently for a number of questions that have plagued scientists. A few of the more important questions it provides a sufficient answer for are: 1. Why are Hydrogen and Helium so predominant in our universe? 2. Why does it appear all distant objects are moving away from us? 3. What is the origin of the background microwave radiation that permeates the universe (1% of the snow on old timey TVs)? Since then, the universe has continued to expand, and as it expands, it has been cooling down. The two theories that are most predominant about the future of the universe are that it continues to expand and cool forever (Heat Death) or that at some point, it will stop expanding and start contracting, eventually returning to the singularity state (Big Crunch). Some Questions that arise: How did the Big Bang start then? Was there time before the Big Bang? The answers to these questions are not discoverable via science at this point; rather they are currently metaphysical questions, which inevitably are strongly informed by our worldview. Thus a theist will posit theistic answers (God started the Big Bang and is beyond time, therefore not affected by a potential non-existence of time before the Big Bang) and a materialist will posit

6 materialist answers (ex: without time it s impossible to use time constrained statements like cause and effect). An important thing to remember is there are materialists who will attempt to use science to answer metaphysical questions that are fundamentally beyond the grasp of science, just as there are theists who will use metaphysics (philosophy, religion, etc) to attempt to answer scientific questions. You need to use the right tool for the job (science for science questions and religion and / or philosophy for metaphysical questions) Discuss: Is the Big Bang Theory more, less, or equally problematic in its interaction with matters of faith than evolution? Why or why not? THE FINELY TUNED UNIVERSE One argument for the need for a Creator, is how finely tuned the universe is. Here are just a few of the incredibly specific set of circumstances that scientists (both Materialist and Theist) agree had to happen, from the Big Bang Theory down to today, for life as we know it to exist: 1. Stephen Hawking s flatness problem: If there was a reduction of the rate of expansion by one part in 1012 at the time when the temperature of the Universe was 1010 K would have resulted in the Universe's starting to re-collapse when its radius was only 1/3000 of the present value and the temperature was still 10,000 K. M. S. Longair, "The Anisotropy of the Universe at Large Times," 2. The Strong Nuclear Force: Calculations indicate that if the strong nuclear force, the force that binds protons and neutrons together in an atom, had been stronger or weaker by as little as 5%, life would be impossible. (Leslie, 1989, pp. 4, 35; Barrow and Tipler, p. 322.) 3. Video clip of Ard Louis: The discovery of anti-matter being necessary for having very fast objects and very small objects interact, which is necessary for understanding atomic and subatomic particles

7 4. Calculations show that if gravity had been stronger or weaker by 1 part in 10 40, then lifesustaining stars like the sun could not exist. Stronger and stars would all be short lived super giants. Weaker and stars would all be small long lived stars. This would make life as we know it impossible because heavy elements are created in super giants and small stars (like the sun) burn long enough for life to develop. Davies, 1984, p Video Clip of Polkinghorne: The resonance energy of carbon being necessary for explaining how an abundance of helium atoms can come together and form carbon, which is necessary for life as we know it. 6. If Jupiter and to a lesser extent, the other outer planets hadn t existed, it s quite possible the Earth would be struck more often by potentially world ending impacts. Deborah Byrd, The Earth sits in a narrow, habitable region around the sun. A little closer to the sun and no water freezes, a little farther away and too much water freezes. Harris and Silverman, Are we not the only Earth out there? 8. The existence of a sizable, solitary moon stabilized weather patterns and helped disperse heat around the globe. Without it, there would likely be a much smaller band of habitable area on the globe. Bruce Dorminey, Without the Moon, would there be Life on Earth? 2009 The accuracy needed for each one of these physical laws alone is astronomical. When you combine them all together to get the universe we have, you start to see the odds of this happening by chance dwindle to an almost unbelievably small number. Oxford Mathematician Roger Penrose stated Try to imagine phase space of the entire universe. Each point in this phase space represents a different possible way that the universe might have started off. We are to picture the Creator, armed with a pin which is to be placed at some point in phase space Each different positioning of the pin provides a different universe. Now the accuracy that is needed for the Creator s aim depends on the entropy of the universe that is thereby created. It would be relatively easy to produce a high entropy universe, since then there would be a large volume of the phase space available for the pin to hit.

8 But in order to start off the universe in a state of low entropy so that there will indeed be a second law of thermodynamics the Creator must aim for a much tinier volume of the phase space. How tiny would this region be, in order that a universe closely resembling the one in which we actually live would be the result? Lenox, page 70 Lenox states the Penrose s calculated accuracy needed to be accurate to 1 part in 10 to the power of 10 to the power or 123, that is 1 followed by 10 to the 123rd power zeros. Or, as Penrose puts it himself, a number so large that it would be impossible to write out in the usual decimal way, because even if you were able to put a zero on every particle in the universe, there would not even be enough particles to do the job. Discuss: What does the idea of a Finely Tuned Universe do to your idea of the nature of God? Does it reinforce, shake or do nothing to it? Counter arguments to the Finely Tuned Universe There are a number of arguments that suggest that the Finely Tuned Universe is not in need of a creator. Most, if not all, of these arguments are metaphysical, not scientific, in nature. We will be looking at two of the most commonly seen ones. They cannot be proven via science and the statements of scientists and philosophers stating confidence that science will find a way to explain these arguments (or prove them false and replace them with something better) are as much statements of faith as a Christian s in the belief of a Creator God. 1. If the universe didn t exist, we wouldn t be around to observe it, so obviously this is the way it is, regardless of odds (The Anthropic Principle) William Lane Craig states that this is a fundamentally unsatisfying answer: "Suppose you are dragged before a firing squad consisting of 100 marksmen. You hear the command to fire and the crashing roar of the rifles. You then realize you are still alive, and that not a single bullet found its mark. How are you to react to this rather unlikely event? If we applied a sort of [anthropic principle] to the firing squad scenario, we could state the following: 'Of course you do not observe that you are dead, because if you were dead, you would not be able to observe that fact!' However, this does not stop you from being amazed and surprised by the fact that you did survive against overwhelming odds. Moreover, you would try to deduce the reason for this unlikely event, which was too improbable to happen by chance.

9 ! Week 8 Surely, the best explanation is that there was some plan among the marksmen to miss you on purpose. In other words, you are probably alive for a very definite reason, not because of some random, unlikely, freak accident. So we should conclude the same with the cosmos. It is natural for us to ask why we escaped the firing squad. Because it is so unlikely that this amazing universe with its precariously balanced constants could have come about by sheer accident, it is likely that there was some purpose in mind, before or during its creation. And the mind in question belongs to God." Barrow and Tipler on the Anthropic Principle vs. Divine Design 2. The multiverse theory There are a multitude of competing theories about the possible nature of a multiverse. They range from various spots in our universe that have effectively split off the formed different universes with different physical laws to infinite universes being split off every second as different particle interactions lead to different outcomes. This is a satisfying materialist theory to solve the Finely Tuned Universe problem because now that you have an infinite number of universes to pick from, we can simply say that we won the lottery pick and happen to reside in one of the lucky few universes to be friendly to existence of life. The counter to this argument from a theistic perspective though, is that it doesn t preclude a creator God. The belief in a God who created an infinite number of universes in a multiverse is no more difficult than a belief in a God who created an almost infinite number of galaxies and stars in our universe.

10 THOUGHTS IN CONCLUSION Whether one postulates a Creator (theism) or no Creator (materialism), the differences in arguments have nothing to do with Science. Rather, they are arguments from competing worldviews: worldviews that are fundamentally incompatible. Both worldviews take their first steps into the world based on faith and view the facts accumulated about the world based on those early foundational steps. Thus, a materialist is going to view the truths of science through the lens of materialism. They are going to see it as logical and inevitable that the truths of science lead one to a disbelief in a Creator. And they will hold to these beliefs as fervently as any devout religious person. Fortunately, it is not our place to change hearts. Titus 3:4-7 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. It is our place to show the love, grace and truth of our Lord Jesus Christ to all, that they may see him through us, including in our intellectual endeavors.