In my experience, much of the reaction some Christians have against an old earth is based on the misunderstanding that the “Big Bang” is an idea which contradicts the concept of God creating the universe, and thus implies (or at least allows) atheism. For example, some have thought that the Big Bang theory maintains that there was a primeval “atom” or “egg” which had always existed, but then, for no readily apparent reason, chaotically exploded.
Now I don’t think there’s a single cosmologist in the world who would agree with this description. The Big Bang did not involve a “primeval atom” which always existed and then exploded; rather, the claim is that the universe is expanding outward (similar to a balloon being inflated) from a point of zero volume called a “singularity.” This singularity did not always exist; it represents the moment that matter, energy, and the dimensions of space and time began to exist. And while this expansion is usually referred to as an “explosion,” this is only meant to describe the incredible force with which it took place. Insofar as this term implies chaos or disorder, it is entirely inappropriate—no scientist maintains that the Big Bang was random or chaotic. There are dozens of aspects of this event that had to be amazingly fine-tuned.
For example, the velocity with which the matter and energy created in the Big Bang burst outward had to be incredibly precise. This velocity was, in turn, governed by two factors: the universe’s mass density (essentially the amount of matter created) and space-energy density (the “stretchiness” of the space-time fabric). If the first characteristic was different by one part in 1060, or the second characteristic by one part in 10120, physical life would have been impossible anywhere at any time in the universe’s history.{i} Human intelligence isn’t able to produce anything even remotely this precise. There are dozens of similar examples of fine-tuning which are simply given in the Big Bang itself.{ii} Of course, this doesn’t mean that God performed all of his miracles at the beginning and then let the universe develop on its own: there are even more examples which have to take place throughout the history of the cosmos in order for life to be possible.{iii} God is actively involved with his creation.
In actuality, what the Big Bang theory maintains is that matter, energy, space, and time all sprang into existence together. When we apply the principle of causality (which science presupposes), we are led to an affirmation that something which exists independently of matter, energy, space, and time brought them into existence. This conforms with the biblical doctrine that the universe was created ex nihilo (“out of nothing”) by a transcendent Creator. The Big Bang theory maintains that the universe expanded outward from a point of origin, and continues to expand outward today. This conforms with the numerous biblical statements that God “stretched” and “stretches out the heavens” (Job 9:8; Ps. 104:2; Isa. 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:13; 51:13; Jer. 10:12; 51:15; Zech. 12:1). The fact that the Big Bang was essentially the most controlled and guided phenomenon that has ever occurred conforms with the biblical concept that the Creator of the universe is incredibly intelligent and powerful.
Thus, the Big Bang theory is not contrary to the biblical doctrine of creation but accords perfectly with it. What would we expect the creation of the universe to look like if not this? I think it’s tragic that a large portion of the Christian community has rejected the creation event which scientists have discovered merely because they think the timing’s off. “A young-earth interpretation of Scripture demands the rejection of what secular scholars acknowledge as the strongest evidence for the biblical God, evidence indicating a transcendent Cause of the universe and of exquisite design for physical life.”{iv}
The Cosmological Argument
Throughout Christian history, philosophers and theologians have offered the cosmological argument (really a family of arguments) to defend the thesis that the universe is contingent or dependent, and thus must rely on the existence of something other than itself for its own existence.{v} Some forms of the cosmological argument argue for the universe’s contingency by attempting to prove that the universe—matter, energy, space, and time—is finite. If time is finite, then it had a beginning, and must therefore have a timeless Cause in accordance with the biblical doctrine of creation. The Big Bang is commonly recognized as an empirical validation of this argument. The Big Bang theory claims that matter, energy, space, and time began to exist. Since a cause exists independently of its effects, the implications of this are that the causal agent responsible for the universe’s existence can’t be contained by any of these elements; that is, something which transcends matter, energy, space, and time created them. Since this Creator transcends matter and energy, it is immaterial; since it transcends space it is omnipresent; and since it transcends time, it is timeless (not to mention extremely powerful).
We can even go a step further: a mechanistic cause is one which produces its effect automatically. That is, if the cause is present, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect to take place are met; and since the necessary and sufficient conditions for the effect to take place are met, the effect takes place. A timeless mechanistic cause would produce its effect timelessly, since the necessary and sufficient conditions for its effect’s occurrence are timelessly present. But in the case under discussion, the effect (the universe) is not timelessly present, and yet must have a timeless cause, since time is part of the effect. Therefore, the cause of the universe cannot be mechanistic or automatic; it must be non-mechanistic. It must be an entity with the capacity of choosing to create the universe as a finite, temporal effect. And the ability to choose is an inherently mental act. The entity responsible for creating the universe must be a mind, a personal agent with free will. “For while a mechanically operating set of necessary and sufficient conditions would either produce the effect from eternity or not at all, a personal being may freely choose to create at any time wholly apart from any distinguishing conditions of one moment from another. For it is the very function of will to distinguish like from like.”{vi} This precisely matches the biblical concept of God.
The Big Bang and Atheism
Isn’t the Big Bang consistent with atheism as well as Christianity, though? It’s difficult, if not impossible, to see how. Atheists tend to be somewhat flustered by Big Bang cosmology.{vii} In fact, the history of cosmology in the 20th century is largely the history of attempts to find a loophole to the Big Bang theory.{viii} The steady state theory held that matter is constantly popping into existence, and then being spread out. Once this was refuted, it was succeeded by oscillation models, which suggested that the universe is constantly experiencing periods of expansion followed by retraction, followed by expansion again. Once this was refuted, it was succeeded by vacuum fluctuation models, which argued that since energy in a quantum vacuum can be converted into virtual particles for a brief moment, perhaps the entire universe came into existence the same way. None of these positions ever had any scientific evidence in their favor; they posited unknown physical laws, and sometimes directly violated known physical laws. The only motivation for proposing them was to avoid having to acknowledge that the universe had a beginning, and that there is therefore a Creator—a motive which was often stated explicitly. At present, however, the scientific evidence has accumulated to the point where virtually all scientists in the relevant disciplines agree that the universe was created in a hot Big Bang event.
While these theories are sometimes still bandied about, today there are two primary responses to the claim that the Big Bang proves the existence of a Creator. The first of these is known as the “many worlds (or multiverse) hypothesis.” This is the claim that there is a trans-universe universe, which is constantly bringing sub-universes into existence, of which we are one. Given an infinite number of universes, one was bound to emerge with all of the necessary preconditions for life (note that any conception of creation could be explained away like this).
There are a few problems with this scenario: first, it doesn’t really refute the existence of God. The multiverse is perfectly compatible with the claim that God exists, and the God of the Bible in particular. Indeed, so far no one has been able to come up with a multiverse that wouldn’t have to have a beginning itself, and must be extremely fine-tuned. Second, this concept is just as metaphysical as that of creation ex nihilo, and so is not a “better” option for those who insist that “the universe is all there ever was or will be.”{ix} Third, Ockham’s razor (or the criterion of simplicity) militates against it. This is the idea that the simplest cause—simplest in a numerical sense—is the better option. This means that we should not multiply entities beyond necessity. But the multiverse hypothesis has to posit an infinite number of universes in order to account for the existence of our universe. By contrast, the traditional concept of creation ex nihilo posits a single causal agent who brought the universe into existence.{x}
Another attempt atheists have made to deal with the scientific evidence for the Big Bang has been to deny that the principle of causality applies to the universe’s springing into existence.{xi} Again, note that this objection is equally applicable to any conception of creation, not just Big Bang models. Those who make this objection seem to be thinking that causality only applies to physical or temporal events, and so only applies to events within the universe. But this is incorrect: the principle of causality is derived from our basic intuition that something does not come from nothing, that being does not arise from non-being. These are not physical claims, they are metaphysical claims, and so apply to the creation of the universe and the beginning of time.
Now it’s one thing to argue that applying causality to the beginning of the universe creates some philosophical issues. But the alternative to this is that the universe just popped into existence without any cause. If we’re going to be skeptical of something, we should be skeptical of that. No one really believes that anything could begin to exist without a cause, much less something as colossal as the entire universe. Such a claim has absolutely no precedent in scientific or philosophical history.
Some have claimed that David Hume denied the principle of causality, but this is a misunderstanding. Hume argued that we can’t infer that because a cause produced a particular effect in the past, that it would produce the same effect in the future. This is not even remotely the same thing as denying that if something begins to exist, something else caused it. In other words, Hume argued that we can’t infer an effect from a cause. What’s being claimed here is that we can’t infer a cause from an effect. Hume himself wrote, “I never asserted so absurd a Proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.”{xii}
Others have claimed that in quantum physics, vacuum fluctuations allow virtual particles to come into existence uncaused, but this is another misunderstanding:
For virtual particles do not literally come into existence spontaneously out of nothing. Rather the energy locked up in a vacuum fluctuates spontaneously in such a way as to convert into evanescent particles that return almost immediately to the vacuum. … The microstructure of the quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. A quantum vacuum is thus far from nothing, and vacuum fluctuations do not constitute an exception to the principle that whatever begins to exist has a cause.{xiii}
Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been claiming for literally millennia that the universe began to exist. The response of non-theists has been to deny that it began to exist, not to question the principle of causality. The only reason it’s being questioned now is because the Big Bang confronts us with a Creator. It is empirically established that the universe began to exist. How is it more plausible to think it just popped into existence without any cause than to think it was caused? Let me put this another way: the doctrine of creation out of nothing claims that the universe had an efficient cause, but no material cause—that is, it was not made out of some pre-existing “stuff.” These atheists are claiming that it had neither an efficient cause nor a material cause. Again, how is this more plausible? If this is the only option left open to those who don’t want to believe in God, the Christian clearly holds the intellectual high ground.
In fact, Hugh Ross has argued that the Big Bang not only leads us to a Creator, but specifically to the God of the Bible:
…all the data accumulated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries tell us that a transcendent Creator must exist. For all the matter, energy, nine space dimensions, and even time, each suddenly and simultaneously came into being from some source beyond itself.
It is valid to refer to such a source, entity, or being as the Creator, for creating is defined as causing something—in this case everything in the universe—to come into existence. Matter, energy, space, and time are the effects He caused. Likewise, it is valid to refer to the Creator as transcendent, for the act of causing these effects must take place outside or independent of them.
Not only does science lead us to these conclusions, but so also does the Bible. It is the only holy book to do so.{xiv}
Objections and responses
Objection: The Big Bang theory is just that—a theory. It’s far from certain. In a few years it will probably be called “the Big Bust.”
Response: The Big Bang theory is derived from Einstein’s relativity equations; if the latter are true, so is the former. Relativity is one of the most proven and established principles in all of science.{xv} Therefore, the Big Bang is very certain. The only people who deny it are atheists and young-earth proponents, both of whom do so from ideological, rather than scientific, considerations.
Objection: The Big Bang theory is a naturalistic explanation of how the universe began to exist, and was formulated by secular scientists trying to refute the biblical doctrine of creation. Therefore, it doesn’t conform to the biblical doctrine of creation, and Christians shouldn’t accept it.
Response: This is not true. Scientists have fought against the Big Bang at every step since it’s discovery, specifically because it proves the existence of a transcendent Creator. This is even true of the scientists who did the discovering themselves.
At the end of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant, considered the father of modern cosmology, published his antinomies, the first of which argued against the validity of the cosmological argument.{xvi} Although the whole point of this antinomy was that both possibilities (that the universe began or that it’s eternal) are equally problematic, after this scientists presupposed that the universe was infinite and eternal.
But then in the early decades of the 20th century, Einstein came out with his relativity equations, and realized that they implied that all of the matter and energy in the universe is expanding outward from a point of zero volume, thus implying that the universe was created, and that there is therefore a Creator. He tried to avoid this conclusion, but after more and more evidence supported the creation event, he reluctantly conceded that his relativity equations proved the existence of what he called “a superior reasoning power.”{xvii}
Sir Fred Hoyle, an atheist cosmologist, coined the phrase “the Big Bang” in an attempt to mock the idea of an ultimate beginning. He suggested instead that purely natural processes were producing (i.e. creating) matter and spreading it out. This was known as the “steady state theory,” and was eventually refuted as the evidence for the Big Bang became more and more indisputable. This was succeeded by oscillation models which suggested that the universe experiences cycles of expansion followed by contraction (kind of like a perpetually bouncing basketball) which was also discarded in favor of the Big Bang. After this came “Vacuum Fluctuation Models [which] did not outlive the decade of the 1980s.”{xviii}
When Stephen Hawking and his colleagues came out with the space-time theorem (which extended relativity to include space and time in addition to matter and energy), he realized that it meant that not only were matter and energy brought into existence, but the dimensions of space and time were as well. Since this obviously suggests a transcendent Creator precisely matching the God of the Bible, Hawking went to great lengths to avoid the conclusion that the universe must have a divine origin (although he strongly denies being an atheist). Nevertheless, he concedes that “it would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”{xix} Virtually all of these attempts to avoid the Big Bang were made in the absence of any evidence in their favor. Many of the scientists who proposed these models stated plainly that their only reasons for suggesting them is to avoid the idea of a Creator.{xx}
However, as the evidence for the Big Bang has become overwhelming, more and more scientists are concluding that there must be a transcendent Cause of the universe and are looking at the various religions of the world to see if any of them agree with the testimony of creation.{xxi} Let’s not push them away.
Notes:
{i} Hugh Ross (2001), 51-3, 150-1.
{ii} Ross (2001), 145-67.
{iii} Ross (2001), 175-99.
{iv} Hugh Ross and Gleason Archer (2001c), 202.
{v} William Lane Craig (1980).
{vi} Craig (1979), 151; see also Craig (2002) and Richard Swinburne (1991), 32-48.
{vii} Ross (1991); Robert Jastrow (1978); Craig (1999a).
{viii} See Quentin Smith (1992); C. D. Broad (1955).
{ix} Carl Sagan (1993), 4.
{x} Craig (1990).
{xi} J. L. Mackie (1982), 93-5; Graham Oppy (1991); Adolf Grünbaum (1989); (1991); Smith (1988); (1992); (1994); (2000). Some of Smith’s essays were also published in Smith and Craig (1993). See also Wes Morriston (2000); (2002a); (2002b).
{xii} David Hume to John Stewart, in J. T. Grieg (1932), 187.
{xiii} Craig (1993a).
{xiv} Ross (2001), 108, italics added.
{xv} Ross (2001), 69-75, 99-108.
{xvi} Immannuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. See also Craig (1979), 189-205.
{xvii} Lincoln Barnett (1948), 106. Einstein ultimately embraced Spinozan pantheism, in which God is an impersonal force.
{xviii} Craig (1999a).
{xix} Stephen Hawking (1988).
{xx} For a historical review of these developments, see Ross (1991), parts 1 and 2, and Craig (1999a).
{xxi} Ross (2001), 157-60, 217; Jastrow (1978); Fred Heeren (1997).