Tag Archive for: creation

God Patient Creation

God, Patience, and Creation

By Luke Nix

Introduction

One of the challenges skeptics raise against God as the Creator is the idea that He took entirely too long to create: God is inefficient and wasteful with time, if He did, indeed, take 13+ billion years to create the universe. Why did God take so long to create the universe when He could have created it in just a few days or even a couple microseconds? This challenge is necessarily dependent upon the idea that God has absolutely no possible reason for spending 13+ billion years to create. Thus, if it can be shown that God did have a reason for taking the time that He did, then the challenge is defeated. My goal in this post is to not only defeat the challenge, but to show that there is an answer that not just possible but more likely than not within the Christian worldview.

The Patience of God

I posit that the purpose is that God wanted to ensure that people would see that His Word, written thousands of years ago, actually does apply to us on a personal and existential (not just a distant) scale today.

“The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”- 2 Peter 3:9

Patience is a virtue; it is also one of the Fruits of the Spirit (Galations 5:22). God is patient. Just as Proverbs (6:6) encourages us to look at the ant for it teaches us something about hard work, so too Paul encourages us to look at the creation for it teaches us something about the attributes of God (Romans 1:20). Patience is, no doubt, one of the divine attributes that are “clearly seen from what has been made” when we see the time it took for our universe to get from the moment of creation to its present state. When scientists investigate the heavens and the earth they discover their history is one of patience, punctuated by numerous moments of deliberate, delicate, and dynamic activity. Why would God take so long to create? Why not just “poof” everything into existence in the necessary form? To display the extent of one of His divine attributes: patience.

The Human Temptation

Further, this is a guard against human pride, thinking that we are as patient as our Creator. Engineers, artists, project managers, scientists, architects, and many others have projects that span the time of weeks, months, years, and even decades. They can be patient for that amount of time as they see the final product take shape. For those who’s projects take months and years, the temptation to compare their patience of years and decades to God’s patience of merely days (on the view that God created the universe in six 24-hour days) and see their patience as superior is overwhelming. However, God took billions of years of active involvement (not laziness, disinterest, or inefficency) in the creation of our universe and planet. This time span is orders of magnitude greater than what any human or even generations of humans could dedicate to any project. The comparison is simply not possible. The patience of God is beyond what we could even imagine, and He has given us proof of His patience in His acts of creation.

“Crowned With Glory And Honor”

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.”- Psalm 8:3-5

God was patient with the universe He created because its combination of attributes uniquely could accomplish numerous purposes He had for His creation, yet He was aggressive in actively working through the universe’s laws and processes (which He put in place) to see the purposes fulfilled as soon as the universe that He created possibly could. One of those purposes is the redemption of as many of his Image Bearers as would freely choose to recognize their sinfulness and need of Jesus Christ. God patiently spent 13+ billion years preparing a world where we could come freely into a salvific relationship with Him; that is the value He places on us; that is what it means to be “crowned with glory and honor.”

Conclusion

Given the cases from Scripture for the value God places on patience and humanity and for looking to God’s acts (creation) to understand His purposes and attributes and the case from God’s creation for a necessarily time-consuming and precisely detailed series of processes to create our world, not only has the challenge been defeated by mere possibility; it has been shown that the answer is more plausible, evidentially, than not within the Christian worldview. The more I investigate the history of the creation of our world, the more I see the patience, the love, and the wisdom of our Creator and Savior, Jesus Christ. I believe the psalmist expressed this awe and wonder best:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech; they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”- Psalm 19:1-4a

For more on this theological and scientific topic, check out these great books:

Improbable Planet: How The Earth Became Humanity’s Home

Why The Universe Is The Way It Is

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2tkwqIb

 

/by
Are Creationists Stupid

Are Creationists Stupid?

,

It is quite common in Internet circles to attack the intelligence and even sometimes the integrity of anyone believing in creation. An unfortunate strategy among some leading atheists is to group all opposition to solely naturalistic origins theories into one category, perhaps the one they think can most easily be refuted – young earth creationism. They like to ignore that God can also use processes and that many scholars (both now and in the early church) don’t think that the Bible teaches the age of the universe. Clearly, some creationist claims are mistaken[1] but is it ridiculous to hold to any belief in creation at all?

In evaluating this question, first consider how creation is defined according to the Oxford dictionary: “The action or process of bringing something into existence.[2]”

By this definition, everyone should agree that the following were created:

  • Our universe
  • Life
  • All species
  • Consciousness

Even atheists agree that none of these are eternally existent. Atheism entails though that there has been no intervention by a supernatural Creator in the origin of these entities and that is the notion of creation to which they object.

Let’s consider the most foundational type of creation that atheists must deny – the creation of the universe. The second definition in the Oxford dictionary actually highlights this particular aspect by defining creation as “the bringing into existence of the universe, especially when regarded as an act of God.” However, it is a well-established scientific fact that our universe has a finite age and most scientists agree that its early history is characterized by an expansion out of an incredibly dense and tiny state in what is now known as the Big Bang. So our universe was created! But does that necessarily mean there was a Creator?

Nobel prize winners who have contributed to the confirmation of the Big Bang have noted how it appears quite similar to a creation event:

“The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five Books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.“ Arno Penzias

“There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.[3]” George Smoot

Edwin Hubble’s successor, long-time atheist Allan Sandage, became a Christian late in life and notes that “it was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science… It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.[4]” Sandage also notes that “Astronomical observations have also suggested that this creation event, signaled by the expansion of the Universe, has happened only once. The expansion will continue forever, the Universe will not collapse upon itself, and therefore this type of creation will not happen again.[5]”

Quantum physicist Christopher Isham notes that “perhaps the best argument … that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists. At times this has led to scientific ideas, such as continuous creation [steady state] or an oscillating Universe, being advanced with a tenacity which so exceeds their intrinsic worth that one can only suspect the operation of psychological forces lying very much deeper than the usual academic desire of a theorist to support his/her theory.[6]“

So maybe it’s not so ignorant to see the Big Bang as a creation event and as evidence (not proof) for a supernatural Creator. But could there have been a natural cause to the Big Bang? I’ve blogged previously about how the overall universe had to have a beginning. I’ve quoted Alexander Vilenkin, a prominent cosmologist: “With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” In this same blog, I also discussed and referenced the New Scientist article entitled: Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event?

There are some loud voices trying to silence these frank admissions – most notably by atheist Lawrence Krauss. Even Krauss speaks about creation but just claims it is out of nothing, which when pressed he admits by nothing he means the quantum vacuum. I posted several short video clips from an interview I conducted with OU physicist Mike Strauss asking for his response to Krauss’s claim that our universe could have originated from nothing. Strauss is also skeptical that the universe can be created from the quantum vacuum. I also asked him whether Vilenkin’s BGV theorem even left open the possibility that the quantum vacuum has eternally existed and again he was skeptical.

Strauss is but one many of Krauss’s critics. Consider this scathing NY Times critique by physicist/philosopher David Albert of Colombia: “And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.[7]”

As Frank Turek likes to ask – “Which is more reasonable that nothing created the universe or that Someone created the universe?”

There is also the matter of “dummies” like Leibniz (who was one of the inventors of calculus) arguing philosophically for the need for God even if the universe was eternal as I’ve blogged about recently. None of this argumentation relies on anything that is even remotely called into question by modern science so one cannot just dismiss this argument by assuming that Leibniz just lacked knowledge of future scientific discoveries. My blog also cites recent developments by Rob Koons and Alex Pruss and others that further these types of arguments by offering compelling support for the key premise of Leibniz’s argument.

Thus, creation shouldn’t be considered a dirty word used only by those who are intellectually inferior. We have logical reasons to believe that the universe needs a Creator; we find scientific evidence that looks remarkably like a creation event and attempts to attribute the creation of this universe to solely naturalistic causes are scientifically implausible. We’ve also discovered that a remarkable orderliness in the original Big Bang state was necessary for the existence of any form of life. Thus, we have many independent lines of evidences that combine to form a strong cumulative case for creation, and even for a Creator!

Notes

[1] Since there are many different, conflicting views of creation they cannot all be correct. The same could be said for various scientific theories as well.

[2]http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/creation

[3] George Smoot, Wrinkles in Time (1993)

[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/newsweek/science_of_god/scienceofgod.htm

[5] http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth15.html

[6] Isham, C. 1988. “Creation of the Universe as a Quantum Process,” in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, A Common Quest for Understanding, eds. R. J. Russell, W. R. Stoeger, and G. V. Coyne, Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, p. 378.

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html?mabReward=relbias:w&adxnnl=1&module=Search&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1418576495-uhuZjnkGzY+luBnAcl0rPQ

/by

Objection to Premise 1 of the Kalam: Doesn’t Quantum Mechanics Violate the Causal Principle?

It depends on what you mean by causality. A philosophically-informed physicist would say Quantum Mechanics (QM) doesn’t do away with causality:

“In fact, QFT[Quantum Field Theory] is constructed in such a way to explicitly preserve causality. Any QFT textbook devotes 10 pages of chapter 1 to explain why the square root of the Klein gordon equation does not make a good wave equation for a QFT – it cannot preserve causality.”

In physics, we speak of things happening based on mathematical laws. For example, two electrons are repulsed by the electromagnetic force and we can compute their path of motion. There seems to be a clear causal connection because the math is fully deterministic. In QM, the only difference is that the math is probabilistic rather than exact. No one is even sure that QM is indeterministic – Bohm’s interpretation might be right. Even if QM is non-deterministic, is it appropriate to say that things are happening without causes? We can use the Schrödinger/Dirac equation to make quite accurate probabilistic computations concerning the evolution of a system. We may not know when a particular radioactive atom will decay but we can use statistically large sets of atoms to accurately perform radiometric dating.

To be sure, there is a lot of controversy over how to interpret causation in QM (e.g., does the observer play a role?) but I don’t think QM really does away with the causal principle in the sense relied upon by the Kalam. The Kalam relies only on there being underlying reasons for things coming into being. If something happens in a manner that can be probabilistically predicted (as is always the case in QM), then it’s not a case of something being created without a cause from absolutely nothing. Things originating without causes could not be predicted even probabilistically!

Here is philosopher/Physicist David Albert on how Quantum Mechanics doesn’t explain the origin of the Universe from absolutely nothing: “The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.”

The Borde-Vilenkin-Guth theorem that I referenced in the previous blog indicates that spacetime cannot be extended into the infinite past. QM operates within spacetime so if spacetime is not eternal it is unreasonable to claim that quantum processes have been eternally in operation. Some physicists do speak of highly speculative theories of creating a universe out of the quantum vacuum but the quantum vacuum is not nothing – it’s just the lowest energy state of spacetime. It’s weird to think about spacetime not existing but such is the implication of BVG and the earlier Hawking-Penrose singularity theorems. This Scientific American article might be helpful in explaining how the Big Bang is not just describing expansion into “some imagined preexisting void.” The Big Bang is not dealing with expansion into preexisting space but the expansion of space.

For more details on the problems when some scientists speak about the Universe being created from absolutely nothing I highly recommend this blog by cosmologist Luke Barnes.

/by

Does The Origin of the Universe Point to God?

A logical starting place for consideration of scientific data that may serve as evidence for God is the origin of the universe. William Lane Craig has made famous the following ancient argument known as the “Kalam cosmological argument[1]:”

  1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
  2. The Universe began to exist.
  3. Therefore, the Universe was caused.

See also this video for a nice summary of the argument. Universe here is defined here as the totality of space, time, matter and energy. So even if there are other universes as various multiverse theories entail, they would still be part of the overall Universe. I’ll use the capitalized version of ‘Universe’ to clarify that I’m referring to this broad definition.

If the Universe began to exist, then it’s reasonable that it must have been caused by some cause acting outside of the Universe. William Lane Craig has pointed out that one can deduce the properties for such a cause – it would have to be timeless, spaceless, immaterial and enormously powerful. For otherwise, how could the cause of space, time and matter have any of these properties? Thus, some key attributes of God can be derived by deduction.

While this argument alone doesn’t come close to showing that Christianity is true, it does show that there is a cause that transcends nature. If the Kalam succeeds it gives good reasons for favoring theism over atheism and that is all that scientific arguments for God can hope to accomplish. Skeptics often attempt to refute non-scientific arguments for Christian claims such as the resurrection by appealing to naturalism, the view that nothing exists beyond nature. They might claim, for example, that science has shown that resurrection is impossible. If, however, the Kalam shows that naturalism is falsified, then this is a key first step in a cumulative case for Christianity.

Few philosophers doubt that the Kalam argument is philosophically valid. (i.e., if you grant the premises then the conclusion follows necessarily). So the key factor in determining if the argument is sound is the plausibility of the two premises. Note that we don’t have to prove the premises with absolute certainty to provide epistemic support for theism – we just need to show that the premises are more plausible than not.

Are the Premises True?

Science is largely based on the first premise being true – that things that come into being have causes. Note that no prominent advocate of this or other cosmological arguments has ever claimed that everything that exists has a cause – only that what begins to exist has a cause. Therefore, “Who made God?” is not a serious objection to this argument. If you think it is, I refer you to this blog by philosopher Ed Feser. Even the famous skeptic David Hume admitted “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause.”

Thus, the argument hinges on the second premise. For literally over a thousand years, great religious and non-religious thinkers debated whether or not the universe has always existed. Judaism and Christianity asserted that the Universe was created by God out of nothing – “creation ex-nihilo.” They offered philosophical arguments for why the Universe could not be eternal. Many secular thinkers asserted that the universe was eternal and therefore did not require a cause. In an analogous manner, Christians asserted that God was eternal and therefore could not be caused.

What scientific evidence exists for the truth of the second premise?

For centuries, this question was beyond the scope of science but we know have significant evidence that the Universe began to exist a finite time ago. The first set of evidence centered on the Big Bang origin to our universe now dated to 13.8 billion years ago. This model eventually became the standard origins model after its prediction of the cosmic microwave background radiation was verified in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. (shown below with their antenna)

Wilson_penzias200

These two Bell labs engineers had been trying to determine the source of excess noise in their antenna. Assuming that it was due to a pigeon’s nest, they spent hours looking for and removing dung. As a colleague noted, “they looked for dung but found gold, which is just the opposite of the experience of most of us.” Indeed they won the Nobel Prize for detecting this remnant radiation from the Big Bang. By the way, if you have an old analog TV you can see this background remnant of the Big Bang as a small contribution of the static. Dr. Turek has documented other key evidence for the Big Bang in his I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist book.

The radical thing about the Big Bang was that it appears to be an origin not just of the matter-energy but also of the spacetime of our universe. The Big Bang appears to be a “creation ex nihilo” as affirmed by Nobel Prize-winning physicist George Smoot: “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”Based on Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, Hawking and Penrose proved that space and time itself began at the Big Bang.

However, since General Relativity doesn’t apply at tiny quantum scales in the early universe, there were speculations that perhaps something preceded the Big Bang. In 2003, an important paper was published by three leading cosmologists who had proposed some of the key speculative theories attempting to circumvent the absolute beginning implied by the Big Bang. Vilenkin summarizes the conclusion of their article in his Many Worlds in One book: “It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” The ‘proof’ is based on the very general assumption that the Universe has on average expanded which is consistent with observations and theoretical expectations.

Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event?

This was the provocative title of an article appearing in New Scientist in 2012. At a scientific meeting honoring his 70th birthday, Stephen Hawking released this pre-recorded statement: “A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God.” In what was dubbed the “worst birthday presents ever,” Vilenkin presented his recent work showing that 3 different types of origins models of different classes cannot avoid a beginning to the Universe. Admittedly this is still not an absolutely settled conclusion, but Vilenkin summarizes: “All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.” This fits well with the criteria I laid out in the previous blog. Data can be used in support of an argument if it is supported by currently understood science. Science is always provisional and therefore subject to change but if leading atheists specializing in this arena concede that all the current evidence points to the Universe requiring a beginning then I think it is more rational to accept the second premise of the Kalam.

In upcoming blogs, I’ll consider objections to the Kalam and discuss the philosophical arguments against the possibility of an eternal universe.

________________________________________________________________________________

[1] Here is an alternate formulation of the Kalam by Peter S Williams that is also helpful to consider:

  1. Every physical event has a cause
  2. There was a first physical event
  3. Therefore, the first physical event had a cause
  4. The first physical event’s cause was non-physical (else the event that caused that physical event would have itself been a prior physical event)
  5. Therefore, something non-physical must exist
  6. Therefore, materialism is false
/by
Can Science Disprove God_

Can Science Disprove God?

, , ,

Podcast: Play in new window

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | iHeartRadio | Blubrry | Email | TuneIn | RSS

Suppose that there were no scientific evidence whatsoever for the existence of God, would that disprove God? Or would that necessarily make it irrational to believe in God?

 

I argue that it wouldn’t – such an overly-skeptical view reveals a flawed epistemology (theory of knowledge). One who makes such a claim is apparently adhering to a strong form of scientism, the view that science is the only source of knowledge. For, there are many non-scientific reasons for belief in God, such as:

The purpose of this blog is not to explore these non-scientific arguments but merely to point out that one cannot call belief in God irrational without also refuting these types of non-scientific arguments. Explore the hypertext links for sampling if you’re unfamiliar with these arguments. The claim that science is the only source of knowledge is self-refuting – it’s a philosophical claim that cannot be scientifically demonstrated so if science is the only source of knowledge one could not rationally affirm it. Dr. Turek’s Roadrunner Tactic (of applying a claim to itself) reveals this pretty clearly. Most philosophers have long since abandoned this overly narrow epistemology, but unfortunately, some scientists still hold to it.

Too often skeptics point to prominent scientists who are atheists as though that somehow shows that belief in God must be irrational. I confess that I myself, unfortunately,y went through a period of doubts in the late 1990’s in part because of this fear of how so many of these smart scientists could think that there is no evidence of God.

But is science really even the appropriate discipline for determining God’s existence?

I later came to realize the folly of assuming scientists are best-suited for evaluating evidence for God. Sure a disproportionate number of really intelligent people are scientists but are they really trained so as to be able to best evaluate potential evidence for God? Clearly, they are not trained to evaluate any of the non-scientific evidence I listed above. Many of the most vocal atheistic scientists such as Krauss, Dawkins, and Hawking make numerous philosophical mistakes.

Moreover, science is generally defined such that no appeal to the divine is even considered – this is known as methodological naturalism. Thus, both the nature of the knowledge taught to scientists as well as the methodology they learn for evaluating evidence are not well-suited for evaluating the breadth of evidence and arguments about God.

Dr. Ed Feser, who has been on the CrossExamined podcasts here and here, has an excellent rebuttal to scientism. He critiques Alex Rosenberg’s argument that science can show that God doesn’t exist. First, here is Feser’s summary of Rosenberg’s argument:

1. The predictive power and technological applications of physics are unparalleled by those of any other purported source of knowledge.

2. Therefore what physics reveals to us is all that is real.

Feser goes on to explain: “How bad is this argument?  About as bad as this one:

1. Metal detectors have had far greater success in finding coins and other metallic objects in more places than any other method has.

2. Therefore what metal detectors reveal to us (coins and other metallic objects) is all that is real.

Metal detectors are keyed to those aspects of the natural world susceptible of detection via electromagnetic means (or whatever).  But however well they perform this task — indeed, even if they succeeded on every single occasion they were deployed — it simply wouldn’t follow for a moment that there are no aspects of the natural world other than the ones they are sensitive to.  Similarly, what physics does — and there is no doubt that it does it brilliantly — is to capture those aspects of the natural world susceptible of the mathematical modeling that makes a precise prediction and technological application possible.  But here too, it simply doesn’t follow for a moment that there are no other aspects of the natural world.”

But there is also Scientific Evidence for God!

I don’t intend any disrespect for science in this blog – I should mention that I myself have a degree in physics and have worked in scientific/mathematical domains of software engineering for the past 27 years. I have great respect for science and actually, I think that God has also left plenty of scientific evidence for His existence. This blog is an introduction to a series making a case that what we have learned from science actually does support theism over atheism. It’s important, however, to keep things in perspective! Scientific knowledge is just one aspect of knowledge and a skeptic who hasn’t searched out the non-scientific forms of evidence is making a big mistake. Nevertheless, the church too often provides no response or a weak response to challenges to belief in God from atheistic scientists. I think, therefore, that it is important to look at whether or not there are theistic implications from origins science. Over the next few weeks I’ll be making a case in this blog that the following aspects of science provide evidence that God exists:

  • Origin of Universe
  • Origin of the Laws to Support Life
  • Fine-Tuning of the Initial Conditions of the Universe to Support Life
  • Fine-Tuning of the Constants of Nature
  • Origin of Life

Before we get into the evidence, in my next blog I’ll discuss what would constitute suitable evidence for God from science and some of the objections that invariably arise. A careful philosophical evaluation is in order before laying out the facts so that we can properly interpret them.

/by

Big Bang Evidence for God

When I debated atheist Christopher Hitchens, one of the eight arguments I offered for God’s existence was the creation of this supremely fine-tuned universe out of nothing.  I spoke of the five main lines of scientific evidence—denoted by the acronym SURGE—that point to the definite beginning of the space-time continuum. They are: The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Expanding Universe, the Radiation Afterglow from the Big Bang Explosion, the Great galaxy seeds in the Radiation Afterglow, and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

While I don’t have space to unpack this evidence here (see I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist), it all points to the fact that the universe began from literally nothing physical or temporal.  Once there was no time, no space, and no matter and then it all banged into existence out of nothing with great precision.

The evidence led astronomer Dr. Robert Jastrow—who until his recent death was the director of the Mount Wilson observatory once led by Edwin Hubble—to author a book called God and the Astronomers. Despite revealing in the first line of chapter 1 that he was personally agnostic about ‘religious matters,” Jastrow reviewed some of the SURGE evidence and concluded,  “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”

In an interview, Jastrow went even further, admitting that “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover… That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”
Jastrow was not alone in evoking the supernatural to explain the beginning. Although he found it personally “repugnant,” General Relativity expert Arthur Eddington admitted the same when he said, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”

Now, why would scientists such as Jastrow and Eddington admit, despite their personal misgivings, that there are “supernatural” forces at work? Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because there was no nature and there were no natural forces ontologically prior to the Big Bang—nature itself was created at the Big Bang. That means the cause of the universe must be something beyond nature—something we would call supernatural.  It also means that the supernatural cause of the universe must at least be:

  • spaceless because it created space
  • timeless because it created time
  • immaterial because it created matter
  • powerful because it created out of nothing
  • intelligent because the creation event and the universe was precisely designed
  • personal because it made a choice to convert a state of nothing into something (impersonal forces don’t make choices).

Those are the same attributes of the God of the Bible (which is one reason I believe in the God of the Bible and not a god of mythology like Zeus).

I mentioned in the debate that other scientists who made Big-Bang-related discoveries also conclude that the evidence is consistent with the Biblical account. Robert Wilson—co-discoverer of the Radiation Afterglow, which won him a Noble Prize in Physics— observed, “Certainly there was something that set it off. Certainly, if you’re religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.”  George Smoot—co-discoverer of the Great Galaxy Seeds which won him a Nobel Prize as well—echoed Wilson’s assessment by saying, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the Big Bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”

How did Hitchens respond to this evidence?  Predictably, he said that I was “speculating”—that no one can get behind the Big Bang event.  I say “predictably” because that’s exactly the response Dr. Jastrow said is common for atheists who have their own religion—the religion of science.  Jastrow wrote, “There is a kind of religion in science… every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause… This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances, we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual, when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications—in science, this is known as ‘refusing to speculate.’”

Hitchens admits the evidence but ignores its implications in order to blindly maintain his own religious faith (watch the entire debate at CrossExamined.org).  How is it speculation to say that since all space, time, and matter were created that the cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial?  That’s not speculation, but following the evidence where it leads.

Dr. Jastrow, despite his agnosticism, told us where the evidence leads.  He ended his book this way:  “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

/by