Part 4 - The Big Bang and Other Theories
March 2019
Some say that matter was just always there. I find that a difficult concept, that the atoms were always there, just swirling around until they formed into planets and suns and bodies. They just were always there going back into infinity… It seems to go against my natural reason to believe something could have always existed.
I am not dismissing that concept but let’s move on to the Big Bang.
The Big Bang theory was proposed in the 1930s by a Belgium physicist and astronomer George Lemaître. His theory was based on work of Einstein. The name “Big Bang” itself was coined by the astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1949 during a radio broadcast.
The Big Bang theory describes how the Universe began in a rapid expansion about 13.7 billion years ago and has evolved since that time. It is thought that all of space was created in this first moment and that’s when time began.
Edwin Hubble (who the telescope is named after) discovered in the 1920s that galaxies existed outside of the Milky Way – up to that time scientists believed that there was only one galaxy the Milky Way. Hubble also determined that these galaxies are speeding away from the Milky Way. So, if they were moving away then if you re-wound the clock you should come to the point of origin of the universe – the Big Bang.
If the Big Bang happened, then what made the Big Bang bang? What happened before the bang? Believers in this theory say that not only space, but time was also brought into existence at the Bang. They therefore say you can’t ask what happened before the bang as “before” is a word that denotes time. Well that’s a neat argument, but whether you believe in time or not, at some stage the Bang had not taken place and at another it had so again what made it bang?
There may be several answers.
Cycles- Some people say that the universe is created and destroyed in cycles.
In the Hindu creation myth, the world is created, destroyed, and recreated in an eternally repetitive series of cycles. It continuously moves from one great age to the next, with each lasting for 4 trillion years.
So, a cyclic universe would be one which follows an infinite self-sustaining cycle. This is not as unscientific as it may sound. In the 1930s, Einstein came up with the idea that the universe could go through an infinite cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. The expansion of our universe could have been caused by the collapse of a previous universe – it sort of bounced back from the contraction of the universe before it. You could say our universe was reborn from the death of the universe before it. If this is true, then our Big Bang was not a unique event; it was one insignificant bang among an infinite number of other bangs. The cyclic universe theory does not necessarily replace the Big Bang theory, it just sheds some light on some more questions, such as what was before the Big Bang and why did the Big Bang lead to a period of rapid expansion.
However, it still does not answer what started the very first Big Bang that set the whole cycle off, so you are just replacing one unanswered question with another.
Multiverse – there is a theory that there is not just one universe, but a series of multi-verses that co-exist with our own, but in a different dimension so we cannot interact with them. However, somehow energy from one multi-verse leaked into this one (usually via a Black Hole) and started this one off. Again this does not answer what started the other multi-verses off in the first place.
A Universe from Nothing – one of the latest theories espoused by Lawrence Krauss (Theoretical physicist) and Stephen Hawking is that the universe spontaneously came into being. This is based on 2 main propositions. 1) the entire amount of energy in the universe equals zero. This is because all of the energy you see is counter-acted by gravity (which is regarded as negative energy) so the overall amount is zero. 2) In Quantum Mechanics, particles pop into existence, disappear and re-appear in other places so it is posited that a particle could have popped into existence, been acted upon by gravity and caused the inflation of the universe.
Religious origin - here it is said that God (as a spiritual being who possess the innate ability to create matter) started the universe and/or initiated the Big Bang with “Let there be light” or something similar.
Well, that certainly solves the problem of what caused the Big Bang and why it banged. However, you then have to ask, “Where did God come from? What brought God into existence?” The religious answer to that is that God always existed. God is not made of matter but is an omnipotent spirit who has no beginning.
However, we had a little difficulty with the idea of matter always existing because that seemed to make no sense. Now we have a theory that says a spirit being always existed.
Conclusion
It seems to me that it is just as sensible to believe in a God who created everything as it is sensible to believe that matter always existed or popped into existence AND it is just as nonsensical to believe in a God as it is nonsensical to believe that matter always existed or popped into existence.
I have been looking at this since I was 17. In all that time I have read books, talked to people, seen tv documentaries and tried to wrack my brains for the answer. Lots of people assign creation to a God and lots do not.
There are several different types of people with beliefs or disbeliefs in God:-
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A Deist will say there is a creator spirit. A spirit who somehow has the ability to create matter and who has always existed, but does not engage or interfere in our human world. These deists include America’s founding fathers Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine.
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A Theist will say that God created the universe and engages with it and the people in it.
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An Atheist denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings. (In a sense we are all atheists as we don’t all believe in Odin, Jupiter, Zeus, Yahweh, Jesus or Mohammad).
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An anti-theist is also an atheist but requires a couple of specific and additional beliefs: first, that theism is harmful to the believer, harmful to society, harmful to politics, harmful, to culture, etc.; second, that theism can and should be countered in order to reduce the harm it causes. Christopher Hitchens and his book “God is not great – How religion poisons everything” typifies this view.
Religious people will say belief in a benevolent deity who created the universe is a matter of faith. And you can’t argue against that. You have to believe even though there is no definitive proof that God exists.
Atheists will argue that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” and there is no ordinary proof let alone extraordinary proof that there is a God. They will cite Occum’s Razor or Bertrand Russell’s teapot.
Occam’s Razor is the problem solving principle (devised by medieval English Franciscan friar William of Ockham). Essentially it states that simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones. When presented with competing hypotheses to solve a problem, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions.
On that basis, the step of introducing God into creation of the universe is one step too many.
Bertrand Russell’s teapot story is displayed below
The only conclusion I have come to about proof of how the universe came into existence is this – I simply don’t know. And no one else I know of knows either. I think it is currently beyond humanity’s mental abilities or knowledge to satisfactorily explain this conundrum. In decades maybe even centuries to come, after more research is conducted and more knowledge is eked out and we get closer and closer to the start of everything (if that is what happened) then maybe someone will give a definite answer, but for now no one knows for definite as far as I am concerned.
So, after listening and considering all these different competing and contrasting ideas, I think you just have to make up your own mind and plump for whichever one you prefer. You do have to accept though that if you are going to believe in anything you are going to come under criticism for that belief.
In the next section Part 5 we will look at the size of the universe.
