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How the Universe Began
Some of the things most evolutionists believe are true. Others are just made up stories about getting something from nothing. How can you tell the difference?
Did God create? Did chance create? Many teach that the universe exploded into being: the Big Bang! After that, they say life began when simple chemicals built up into more complex chemicals which became a concentrated organic broth where our earliest ancestor, a bacteria like creature began life. We are told that this first cell, and his descendants gave birth to ever more complex creatures with ever more complex organs. You are standing at the top of this upward spiral with a brain that is the most complex organ on earth. Is it science to get something for nothing that then becomes complex, or is this view of life based on faith? We will be examining the evidence, but first:
Why Should We Care?
What we believe has a lot to do with what we do. If the people around you really believe something, can it make a difference in how they live?
1 Some people strongly believe that God created them and that He asks them to love their neighbors and treat others as they would like to be treated.
2 Other people have been convinced that life began by accident and that living things are now getting better and better because the weak are being eliminated, leaving the strong to survive.
The phrase "survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence" suggests a basis for morality which is different than that suggested by "love your neighbor as yourself." May those in the first group sometimes live differently than those in the second group? Do you sit down differently if you think a chair will hold you up than if you think it will dump you on the floor in a painful and embarrassed heap?
Sir Arthur Keith, a famous evolutionist of Hitler's time wrote:
"Hitler is an uncompromising evolutionist, and we must seek for an evolutionary explanation if we are to understand his actions" {Evolution and Ethics, 1947, p. 14} . He was convinced that he was developing a super race.
Stalin was also was strongly convinced that the survival of the fittest had brought us up from the lower animals. He too had millions killed and felt that he was helping natural selection along.
There is another way as well in which morality is effected by the what people are being taught. The authority on which the moral standards of a good deal of the world have been based is the Bible. Teaching that the Bible is wrong in what it says about creation greatly reduces its authority. When a person has been persuaded that the Bible is wrong about creation, he trusts it less when it speaks of morality and salvation as well.
At the same time that most schools have been teaching "evidence" against the Creator, they have also protected us from evidence in His favor. Does the Creator exist? How will you ever know if you only hear one side of the story? This series of books is a modest attempt to let you hear some of that side of the story which was not thrust on you in school, which you will have to go out of your way to hear. A society in which people really do love their neighbors as themselves should be a happier place than one based only on the survival of the fittest.
When Kip Kinkel, the most famous of America's school house murderers took his gun, went to school and shot the other kids, he was wearing a tee shirt with lettering which proclaimed, "Survival of the fittest. In spite of all this, so many have sent me emails objecting that they are evolutionists and don't believe in God, but have very high moral standards that they have convinced me. I still can find no reason why love or kindness could be derived from the naturalistic viewpoint that:
- There is no purpose behind the beginning of life,
- We personally exist because we and our ancestors won in the struggle to survive,
- When we die it's over, just like Rover.
Nevertheless, I have been forced to admit that some who strongly believe in atheism and evolution have very high standards. In their heart of hearts they know right from wrong. God Himself has put this knowledge in peoples hearts. (See Romans 2:14-15 in the Bible.) Others, it is true, have grown such calluses over their consciences that they no longer serve as reliable guides, but many who have written to me are right. They do have high moral standards! I don't see how these standards could have been derived from their beliefs about the origin of the universe, or of life, or from evolutionary theory, so I think God must have made them with a conscience that respects what is good.
There is a very good reason to examine the evidence for God, and not just that against Him. What will happen to you if God really does exist, and so do heaven and hell, and you never stopped to take a serious look at the evidence?
What Do You Know?
I am overwhelmed by the amount I don't know about nuclear physics, space sciences, electronics and microbiology, not to mention the hundreds of new specialization's whose names I don't even know.
Of all that there is to know, what percentage is in your grasp? an eighth grader might answer that question like this, "I probably know half of all there is to know!"
A high school graduate, might suggest, "20%."
If you have a bachelors degree you may reduce your guess to under 5%.
But if you have a doctor's degree in some specialty, you have examined one small corner of the world's knowledge. You know that the amount to learn is overwhelming, and the majority has yet to be discovered. You would be more likely to say, "A tiny fraction of one percent."
You who are reading right now, how much of what there is to know would you guess that you know? If you are honest, you are probably thinking, "Not much!"
Is it possible that God could be somewhere in that big percentage of what there is to know that is outside of your knowledge?
If you think that sounds possible, you may be an agnostic, but you are not really an atheist. Knowing this may make it easier for you to honestly evaluate the evidence which we will be presenting.
What Is Science?
The term "science" once brought observation and objective investigation to mind. When one scientist did an experiment, others could repeat his experiment, and obtain the same results. If no one who repeated the experiment could come up with the same results, those results had been "falsified," that is, shown not to be true. An idea which could not be put to the test so that it could be shown to be false if it was, might be a good idea, but it was not science.
Because the theory of evolution seems able to accommodate whatever data, no matter how conflicting, some are insisting that the requirement that for an idea to be scientific, it must be testable and falsifiable should be dropped. Also to protect the Theory of Evolution, many have begun to insist that science must, by solely natural causes, explain all that we observe. That is, they want to exclude from the realm of science anything in which God is involved.
In Kansas the state guidelines approached this, defining science as,
"The human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us." {Peter Keeting, "God and Man in OZ" George, Oct. 2000, p. 87
This could mean that when studying the origin of the universe and of life the conclusion was already determined before the research had even begun. By this definition it would not be scientific to even consider any of the evidence that God created. A real scientist, however, should not turn his back on evidence he doesn't like.
When it is necessary to change the definition of science to assure a godless beginning for the universe and for life, it is time to take a critical look at that idea. Instead, good scientists and teachers are now being fired for simply pointing out some of the problems with an atheistic evolutionary approach. {The Oregonian, Feb. 18, 2000, p. D 1, March 28, 2000, p. A 1}
Such pressure to conform does not encourage honest science. Announcements of discoveries which obviously show intelligent design as opposed to mindless evolution are often accompanied by wording such as, "Isn't it amazing what evolution has done." Without that kind of a comment attached, it can be difficult to get a paper published that describes an aspect of nature that shows design!
While many people believe in both God and evolution, the atheistic interpretation is the one generally presented by schools and the media. It is usually called "naturalism." In this way, it is not obvious that atheism is being established as the state religion. The word naturalism has several meanings, but the one which applies in this context is:
"the belief that the natural world, known and experienced scientifically, is all that exists and that there is no supernatural or spiritual creation, control, or significance." {Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1976, p.947}
Many schools avoid any suggestion that the Creator might exist. They keep text books and school libraries purged, not only of evidence which is presented in a way that might indicate a Creator, but also of information that reveals the scientific weaknesses of the theory of evolution. I find it hard to distinguish this situation from censorship.
The evidence itself is the same for both creationists and evolutionists, but too often only atheistic interpretations are allowed. My aim is to bring about a a better balance by revealing that which has been hidden: the ways in which the evidence supports creation by God and disproves the theory of evolution.
How to Look at the Evidence
Some scientists today are using the "multiple hypothesis" method of solving scientific problems. Two or more possible ways of explaining the evidence are exposed, and each piece of evidence is evaluated. Some evidence will seem to fit better with one explanation, and some with the other. Rather than insist that everything must be interpreted so as to make it fit into a naturalistic world view, why not investigate each piece of evidence to see if it fits better in the creation or the evolution model? In this way we won't need to come into the study fighting to force every piece of evidence fit into our old way of thinking.
This does not mean that we come with an empty mind. We each bring our old ideas which favor one interpretation of the evidence over another. Everyone does, but that does not need to keep us from trying to fairly evaluate each piece of evidence to see whether it lends more support to the idea of intelligent design or to an origin without any design.
Having done this, there is still a point at which faith enters in: faith in the Creator, or faith that no Creator exists. Most people who believe in God realize that faith enters in, but I have found that many who do not believe in God are in denial on this point. They are convinced that their viewpoint is based only on the evidence. Because of this, I will indicate from time to time some of the points in which atheists and evolutionists accept their models simply by faith.
In this book I have usually chosen to quote scientists who are evolutionists so that other evolutionists will be more apt to listen.
Read on! You may be surprised, even amazed, by the abundance of scientific evidence that indicates that God indeed created. Having this information will not force you to do anything, but it will make it easier for you to come to your Creator if you want to.
Chapter 1
Creation or Explosion
Most people hold one of two diametrically opposed points of view regarding the origin of the world around us. Science deals with experimentation and observation, neither of which can be directly applied to how things began in the first place, so either viewpoint must be held by faith. Here are the two points of view:
God Made It
The first viewpoint is, "God made it." Here is an explanation of this viewpoint from the Bible:
"By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made of what was visible" (Hebrews. 11:3).
In addition to being taught in the Bible, the faith that underlies this world view is a logical faith that complex things that give every evidence of having been designed were designed. We use this kind of reasoning every day. If you see a car, or even a simple mortar and pestle you immediately know they are products of intelligent design. In their zeal to keep God out of science many have trained themselves to stifle their natural ability to distinguish intelligent design in nature.
Regarding the design of the universe, Paul Davies, Australia's best known scientist writes:
"Today most scientists would not deem their work to have any theological component whatsoever. But even the stoutest atheist among them unwittingly retains the view that nature is rationally ordered and intelligible. It wouldn't be possible to be a scientist without accepting the rational intelligibility of the universe as an act of faith. And Faith is the right word. Science cannot prove that nature has to be this way. Yet many scientists assume that nature conforms to a design or scheme of some sort, even if they are coy about admitting it. .... The essence of scientific belief is that nature is neither arbitrary nor absurd, that there are valid reasons for the way things are." {Davies, Paul, "At the Crossroads," Forbes ASAP, Oct. 4, 1999, pp. 231-232}
The second viewpoint about where the world came from is that:
It Evolved
Many who hold this viewpoint feel that everything that exists now has been formed by accidental random changes to its previous state. This position is also based on faith, but it does not seem to go as well with the evidence. One of the places that it breaks down is at the beginning. The theory of evolution, in one sense, only goes back to a supposed first living cell. Most evolutionists, though, believe that cell came from a gradual evolution from simple chemicals to complex chemicals. They believe that the chemicals in turn had their origin during the evolution of stars and planets. But where did stars and planets come from?
When we see something men have made, a knife or a computer for example, we know someone designed and made it, but no matter how complex the object may be, many refuse this kind of an explanation when they see an intelligent design that was not made by men. Perhaps the idea of a Creator is repugnant to many because if God made the universe and living beings, He might be able to say with authority how men should live. In any event, until fairly recently most atheists denied that there had been a beginning because a creation infers a Creator. They claimed that matter had always existed.
Is matter eternal?
The sun is burning up. Miles away on earth we are warmed because the sun is putting out huge amounts of energy in the form of heat and light. When all its available matter has been changed into energy, the sun will become cold and dead.
Have the sun and the stars been burning up for all eternity? If that were so, they would long ago have finished transforming all of whatever is keeping them hot into energy. They would already be cold and dead.
Uranium and the other radioactive elements decompose continually, and form daughter elements. If this had been going on eternally, in the beginning, unless one imagines a continuous creation which seems unlikely, there would have had to have been an infinite amount of each radioactive element, which is impossible.
Either choice would have produced an infinite quantity of the daughter elements of each radioactive element.
There was a beginning
Even most atheists now believe one thing that has been written in the Bible for at least 3,500 years. There was a beginning. If the sun and the stars had been burning up forever, they would long ago have been all burned up. Some of their mass would all have been transformed into energy and irretrievably scattered throughout the universe. The rest would be cold and dead. Instead they are still with us, and like it or not, this fact implies a moment of creation which implies that something was able to create matter. There was a Creator.
The Bible teaches: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is some difference of opinion as to how long ago that beginning might have been, but the scientific evidence seems to clearly exclude the idea of the universe being eternal. There is another reason though that even atheists now admit that the universe had a beginning. A theory has now become popular which admits that a moment of origin existed, but claims to make God unnecessary. It is called:
The Big Bang
The theory is that the universe was thrown out from a central point by an explosion. It faces the reality of a moment in which matter began, while admitting no Creator.
However,
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction; this is science.
Something from nothing for no reason; this is not science"
{Paul Abramson, www.creationism.org}
Others who believe in the Big Bang do not believe it was the beginning, but that previously existing hydrogen which would ordinarily expand, became highly compressed, a very unstable state which led to a catastrophic expansion which was the big bang. Either view of the Big Bang is contrary to some of the most basic laws of science. Here are a few:
- The First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics (See my book How Life Began.)
- The Law of cause and effect,
- Newton's First Law: "Éa body continues at rest or in uniform motion along a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force"
-... Newton's Second Law: "if there is no force acting on a body, it moves at constant speed in a straight line."
- Newton's Third Law: "action and reaction are equal and opposite"
- Law of Conservation of Energy "the energy of interacting bodies or particles in a closed system remains constant."
- Law of Conservation of Mass: "Although substances change in a chemical reaction, within limits that can be measured the total mass does not change." {The descriptions of the laws are from the Encyclopedia Britannica CD 98}
Since the Big Bang violates a number of fundamental laws of science, no one was there to observe it, and it can not be repeated experimentally, belief in the Big Bang is an act of faith.
Other than the desire of some to make God unnecessary, where does the idea of a Big Bang come from?
Red Shift
When you look at things moving toward you, they tend to look more blue. When you look at things moving away from you, they appear more red. This is called Red shift. Many stars seem more red than they should if they were standing still. This gave rise to the theory that the stars are gradually moving farther and farther away from each other. This is the main indication that an explosion might have thrown everything out from a central point. While there are great problems in the details, if the theory in general is right, and matter really is expanding outward from a central point, an almighty God would have been able to create it in this way. I don't believe that is the way He created, but it would provide a sufficient cause.
The speed of the expansion of the universe can be calculated on a basis of the red shift.
This and other calculations have been adjusted from time to time to fit better with the theory, but problems remain.
Simple Atom?
One problem is the nature of the atoms of which matter is made. When the theory of evolution became popular, atoms were thought to be quite simple; so simple that it was less hard than today to believe that they were produced accidentally by an explosion. As more is learned about their complexity, it becomes more difficult to believe that matter could have been produced by an explosion.
A few have answered me (sometimes in a more polite way, sometimes less), "You ignorant fool! The explosion only made the simple raw materials. The atoms evolved later!" This is good Big Bang theory, but it opens a can of worms. The raw materials would have had to swim up stream, not only against the tremendous force that was blowing everything out and away from everything else, but against the tendency of the electrical forces of the atom to repel each other.
New difficulties with Big Bang theory pop up frequently, but rather than to abandon the theory its adherents, attempt to resolve most of the problems by by adding patches to the theory to make it able to include more and more of the data which otherwise proves it wrong. This also makes it more and more unscientific, because for a theory to be scientific, there must be some way to prove it wrong if it is wrong.
Nothing Created Everything
According to the theory as it is often taught in our schools, before the Big Bang there was space, that is a vacuum: no God, no matter, nothing. Many scientists have worked hard for many years to choose the right words to soften the blow, but in the end, no matter how confusing the mathematics, and how convincingly the tale is told, at its core it is an explanation of how something was made out of nothing, by nothing, for no reason! Narlikar writes:
"...as a theory of physics, it breaks a cardinal rule by violating the law of conservation of matter and energy" {Narlikar, Jayant, "Challenge for the Big Bang," New Scientist, vol. 138, June 19, 1993, p. 28-29}
Since breaking that law of science sounds impossible, some state that the Big Bang did not make matter out of nothing, but simply expanded what had already been there; that before the Big Bang, the mass of the universe had all in one place, compacted into a tiny point by a tremendous amount of gravity. If this is true, why did it suddenly expand? This would have violated inertia,
"The tendency of matter to remain at rest if at rest, or if moving to keep moving in the same direction unless affected by some outside force." {Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, 1978, p. 719}
Others, recognizing the need to explain not only the matter, but what made it and why it exploded, have come up with a more imaginative patch, insisting that everything started with a "quantum singularity": When nothing existed yet, a sort of a hiccup in nothing produced matter and antimatter which to a large extent eliminated each other, giving off the energy of the Bang.
That this is still a violation of the Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy is made clear by the answer of the atheists themselves who suggest: "But this law did not apply until after matter existed." Any suggestion that present laws of science did not apply to the Big Bang is a clear admission that the Big Bang, particularly the quantum singularity speculation, violates the most basic laws of science. Things that violate the laws of science are called miracles. Creation by God is a miracle, but so is creation by nothing or by a "quantum singularity" which developed within nothing.
In addition, like most of the patches on the Big Bang theory, adding a quantum singularity makes it more complicated, less understandable, and requires another lucky coincidence.
Guth explains one of the problems the "singularity" addition tries to address:
"So, to produce a universe by the standard big-bang description, one must start with the energy of 10 billion universes!" {Guth, Alan H. "Cooking Up a Cosmos," Astronomy, vol. 25 Sept. 1997, p 54} . Check reverence.
He has a point. If at first the mass were all in one place, it would seem more likely that it would have formed a black hole than a universe unless there were a tremendous source of energy to throw it out.
The famous atheist Richard Dawkins said:
"I once asked a distinguished astronomer, a fellow of my college, to explain the Big Bang theory to me. He did so to the best of his (and my) ability, and I then asked what it was about the fundamental laws of physics that made the spontaneous origin of space and time possible. 'Ah,' he smiled, 'now we move beyond the realm of science. This is where I have to hand you over to our good friend the chaplain.'" {Dawkins, Richard, "Snake Oil and Holy Water," Forbes ASAP, Oct. 4, 1999, p.236}
Dawkins went on to object to the idea idea of asking the chaplain, and to state that science just didn't know yet, but might or might not know some day.
My point here is that Dawkins' expert, by telling him it was "beyond the realm of science," labels the Big Bang as speculation or miracle. As we have already seen, it is contrary to some of the most fundamental laws of science. Dawkins speculation that some day it may become scientific clearly shows us that his position is based on the faith that future science will show that it there was some scientific way that it could have happened. Right now it is against the laws of science, and those who accept the Big Bang accept it by faith. Other words for a faith-based world view are philosophy and religion. Many of the letters I receive clearly defend the Big Bang with religious zeal. Others have accepted it because the truth was twisted a bit when it was presented to them, and they believed that it was scientific.
True, many of those who accept the Big Bang are men of science:
"The Big Bang is what nearly all physicists and astronomers believe is the actual origin of universe." {Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe,2000, p. 38} .
Never-the-less, the idea violates fundamental laws of science and is held by a faith commitment.
Some of the Most Difficult Questions for Big Bang Theory Are:
- If matter had existed forever (or even for a long time) without blowing up, what changed to make it explode?
"The Big Bang is treated as an unexplainable event without a cause" {Oldershaw, Robert L. "What's Wrong with the New Physics?" New Scientist, vol. 128, Dec. 22/29, 1990, pp. 58-59 See also: Narlikar, Jayant, "Challenge for the Big Bang," New Scientist, vol. 138, June 19, 1993, p. 28-29} . Check references.
Big Bang speculation violates the Law of Inertia.
- If matter had not always existed, but had just come into being, what caused this to happen?
Darling writes:
"First there is nothing, then there is something. And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off. Then they are away and before you know it, they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats... You cannot fudge this by appealing to quantum mechanics. Either there is nothing to begin with, in which case there is no quantum vacuum, no pre geometric dust, no time in which anything can happen, no physical laws that can effect a change from nothingness to somethingness; or there is something...." {Darling, David, "On Creating Something from Nothing," New Scientist, vol. 151, Sept. 14, 1996.} .
Some have tried to overcome these difficulties and show that the Big bang was scientifically possible by giving the illustration of some things which do exist and break down "spontaneously without apparent cause." They then claim that therefore matter could have been created in the same way by that which does not exist. {Crowe, Richard "Is Quantum Cosmology Science?" Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1995, p. 54} This is a bit like observing that an apple actually does fall to the ground and claiming this proves that figs fly. The fact that some things break down gives no grounds whatever for believing that nothing created everything.
The Big Bang violates the Laws of Conservation of Matter and Energy.
- Undirected explosions, put out equal force in all directions. It is true that an intelligent designer can control an explosion so that its force is directed wherever he wishes. Bullets are an example. In fact, a good fireworks designer can make carefully controlled explosions take much more complicated forms, such as the shape and colors of a flag.
However, if an undirected explosion had either created matter, or worked on matter which was already there, it would have thrown it out equally in all directions. There seems to be no way for it to have grouped the matter together to form stars and for the stars to have been grouped together here and there in galaxies. Even the galaxies are found in clusters.
At the same time, most of space is so empty it is usually referred to as a vacuum. Without someone controlling the explosion, the stuff of the universe should have been thrown out in a uniform way. Scientists express this by saying that the universe should not be "lumpy," but it is, and the theory can not account for it:
"As one sky scientist, IBM's Philip E. Seiden, put it, "The standard Big Bang model does not give rise to lumpiness. That model assumes the universe started out as a globally smooth, homogeneous expanding gas. If you apply the laws of physics to this model, you get a universe that is uniform, a cosmic vastness of evenly distributed atoms with no organization of any kind.'" {Patrusky, Ben, "Why is the Cosmos 'Lumpy'?" Science, June 1981, p. 96.} {Lerner, Eric J., "Cobe Confounds the Cosmologists," Aerospace America, vol. 28, March 1990, p. 38.}
Here again the theory is being patched to try to accommodate real scientific data which contradicts the theory. The inflation hypothesis:
"was brought in to rescue it. When the original inflation model ran into contradictions, it was replaced by a modification called the 'new inflation.' When further problems arose, theorists postulated yet another version called 'extended inflation' Some have even advocated adding a second inflationary period - 'double inflation.'" {Oldershaw, Robert L. "What's Wrong with the New Physics?" New Scientist, vol. 128, Dec. 22/29, 1990, pp. 58..
I would speculate that there is probably no problem for which an fanciful solution can not be imagined by somebody, but as time has passed, a simple, somewhat brilliant theory has become a more and more incomprehensible maze of patches sewn together with the needle of speculation. It resembles the proverbial wax nose which can be pulled at will into any imaginable shape. According to famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle:
"... the main efforts of investigators have been in papering over holes in the Big Bang theory to build up an idea that has become ever more complex and cumbersome..." {the Big Bang under Attack," Science Digest, vol. 92, May 1984, p 84}
Oldershaw reminds us:
"...for the universe to be held together the way it is, more than 90 per cent of the universe would have to be in the form of some strange, unknown dark form of matter" {Oldershaw, Robert L. "What's Wrong with the New Physics?" New Scientist, vol. 128, Dec. 22/29, 1990, pp. 58-59}
"Dark matter" was a necessary adjustment to the theory because without it there would not be enough mass for gravity to act on to group things together. Attempts to detect the huge amounts of "dark matter" that the theory requires have been conducted for many years but have been unsuccessful. Were it out there somewhere in big chunks, it would have enough gravity to influence the stars around it. If it were made of small particles spread out in a more uniform way, space probes would be encountering large enough numbers of particles to account for it. I look for another imaginative patch to better cover this hole in the fabric of the theory in the next few years.
Miracles
While it is often not clear in popular publicity, many of the scientists who believe in the Big Bang admit that the belief that it created the matter of the universe does not square with science:
"The Big Bang theory is the story of what happened afterward. The story can only be told, with the physics we know, starting about one microsecond after the start of the Big Bang. Before that is speculative." {Popular Science, Jan. 2000, p. 60}
Those who do not believe in God are trying to explain the same miracle as those who do: Creation, the origin of matter. Since science tells us that nothing happens without a cause, it is certainly not less scientific to believe that God created the universe than to believe that nothing waited a long time and then turned into everything. Linde puts that thought this way:
"The first, and main problem is the very existence of the Big Bang.... How could everything appear from nothing?" {Linde, André, "The self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe," Scientific American, Vol. 271, Nov. 1994, p. 48}
The militant atheist Richard Dawkins has this criticism for the miracles of the Bible:
"Every one of these miracles amounts to a violation of the normal running of the natural world." {Dawkins, Richard, Forbes ASAP, Oct. 4, 1999, p. 237}
Thinking it over, we notice that Big Bang is exactly that: "a violation of the normal running of the natural world." Remember Narlikar's observation that the Big Bang: "breaks a cardinal rule by violating the law of conservation of matter and energy." {Narlikar, Jayant, "Challenge for the Big Bang," New Scientist, vol. 138, June 19, 1993, p. 28-29} Remember also that to accomplish this huge change in what was going on at a particular point in time it also had to violate inertia.
Most Big Bang enthusiasts criticize creationists as unscientific because they believe God caused "a violation of the normal running of the natural world" when He created the universe. The faith that a the Big Bang did the same thing is not more scientific, but less, because it requires that the same miracle, the creation of the universe, to be accomplished by the insufficient power of nothing instead of the sufficient power of God.
What Came First?
With evolutionists, it is unusual for anything to be first. The explanation for almost anything is that it developed from a previous step:
Where did people come from?
The monkeys.
And the monkeys?
From the Fish
And the fish?
From the invertebrates.
And the invertebrates?
From the first cell.
And the first cell?
From non living chemicals.
And these chemicals?
From the earth.
And the earth?
From the Big Bang.
And the Big Bang?
Matter has not been here forever, so so there seem to be two choices:
- If everything started with the Big Bang, and there was no already existing creator, then before the Big Bang there was nothing, and nothing made everything. This first solution is not only logically inconsistent, and against the laws of science, but is also inconsistent with the evolutionists normal explanation that everything developed from something else.
- If on the other hand, one wishes to believe that before the Big Bang something did exist, compressed hydrogen for example, it either existed eternally, in which case it would not at some point have decided to blow up, or it came into being at some undefined previous time and the Big Bang offers no explanation at all of the beginning of the universe.
In an attempt to push things back to before the Big Bang, both hydrogen atoms and quantum fluctuation have been imagined, but a more elegant solution has also been suggested:
Chapter 2
Did the Big Bang Recycle?
Faced with the fact that a moment of creation infers a Creator, some have suggested that there was no moment of creation because the Big Bang recycles. That is, that the expansion of the bang eventually diminished, and the outward movement of the galaxies stopped. Then gravity eventually regathered them to a central place where another Big Bang occurred, and they rebounded out in all directions again. In this view, matter is more or less eternally going through cycles of explosion, expansion, and contraction.
However:
- Today most atheists agree that gravity could not pull the matter back from the far reaches of space. For one thing, galaxies are massive and have inertia which would need to be overcome. For another, gravity decreases by the square of the distance, so if it could not hold things together when they were close together, could it overcome inertia and pull them back when they were so far from one another that its pull had decreased to almost zero?
- Much more important are two other facts, the stars are burning up, and each new Big Bang would put out more heat and other forms of energy.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics rules that the available energy would become less with every cycle. The Second Law does not permit the existence of a perpetual motion machine. Each cycle would reduce the mass of the universe by changing some of it to energy. While the energy would still exist, less would be available which could be used.
Even if one assumes that new energy is being made out of matter as it is in an atomic explosion, the amount of energy which could be made would not be infinite. The matter which could be turned into energy would long ago have been used up if the expansion and contraction cycles had been going on forever.
Recycling the Big Bang might add a lot of years, but the destiny of the universe would still be to become cold and dead. Since this has not yet happened it is clear that matter has not been recycling for ever. It had a beginning. Because of these and other problems, the recycling model has not been widely accepted. Had it worked it might have pushed the beginning back for many cycles, or for a few cycles, but matter would still not have been eternal.
In spite of all its problems, most atheists today believe in just one Big Bang. Linewever, world class expert on the Big Bang at the University of South Wales in Australia, was quoted by the Portland Oregonian (1999) as saying regarding recent measurements, "The most awe-inspiring conclusion is that the universe has not been around forever; it had a beginning."
Why?
Burbidge gives some insights as to why the problem laden theory exists:
"Indeed, Big Bang cosmology has become a bandwagon of thought that reflects faith as much as objective truth... The Big Bang ultimately reflects some cosmologists' search for creation and for a beginning. That search properly lies in the realm of metaphysics, not science." {Burbidge, Geoffrey, "Why Only One Big Bang?" Scientific American, Feb. 1992, p. 120}
The fact that many people call the Big Bang scientific, does not make it scientific. It is a metaphysical faith-based belief system which violates the most basic scientific laws. Belief in a creator also requires faith, but rather than faith in nothing which blew up and became everything, it is faith in a sufficient cause.
"Ok," you may be thinking, "the evidence makes it a bit difficult to believe that everything was created by nothing, but is there any evidence that supports the alternative idea, that an intelligent Creator made it?"
Planned for Life
Order in the Universe
An atheist sat one day on a lovely lawn looking at the blades of grass, the leaves of clover, and the little flowers. The more he gazed on this restful scene the more troubled he became because everywhere he looked, searching for accident and chaos, he found symmetry. Indeed, wherever he might have chosen to look, from the tiny atom to the great solar system, instead of chaos he would have found order and just the right conditions to sustain life.
The earth is 93 million miles from the sun. Given the amount of heat that the sun gives off, if we were more than around 10% closer or farther away, the earth would be too hot or too cold to support life. {Peter D. Ward,Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 25} .
Reasons are given in the following quote from Scientific American:
"Terrestrial-style biochemistry requires liquid water, which a planet can only possess if it orbits a certain distance from its star. If a planet is too close, it suffers a runaway green-house effect. . . . the stratosphere of the planet becomes saturated with water vapor, sunlight breaks the water vapor down into oxygen and hydrogen, and the later drifts off into space. The ultimate result is a bone dry, super hot planet like venus. Similarly, if a planet is too far from its star, a runaway refrigerator effect takes hold. Green-house gasses such as carbon dioxide snow out, and because snow reflects more radiation than rock does, it reinforces the cooling trend. The planet goes into a deep freeze as Mars has." {Laurance Doyle, Hans-Jorg Deeg, Timothy Brown, Searching for Shadows of Other Earths," Scientific American, Sept. 2000, pp. 63, 64}
"The earth itself is revolving at a speed of 1000 miles per hour at the equator. If it were to revolve at only 100 miles per hour, night and day would increase ten times in duration, plants would be scorched in the day and seedlings would be frozen to death at night.... If the oceans were deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would all be absorbed and no plants could exist. If the atmosphere were thinner than at present, millions of meteors which are burned up in the air would fall to earth and cause terrible fires." {Wu, Questions Concerning the Faith, pp. 5-6. See also Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 163} .
Liquid water, if it exists elsewhere, is rare. Most of the universe consists of flaming gasses or frozen desolation:
"If earth had just a little more water, continents would not extend above sea level. Had there been more CO2 earth would probably have remained to hot to host life, much like Venus."
"The most common stars in galaxy are - fainter than the sun and nearly 100 times more numerous - these are uninhabitable for other reasons." {Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 51-54, 270}
Earth is situated at the right distance from the center of our galaxy. Closer to the center, there are too many deadly gamma rays and X-rays. However, a planet too far out from the center of its galaxy would not have a metal core which produces magnetism which is also helpful in protecting earth from harmful radiation. {Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 28-29} .
If the moon were closer to the earth the tide would flood all lands even the high mountains. In addition, "Earth's climatic stability is dependent to a large extent on the existence of the Moon." {James Kasting as quoted in Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 266} . Earth's climate would not sustain life if it were not for its unusually large moon.
If the earth were the size of its moon, its gravity would not be strong enough to hold an atmosphere; too large, and gravity would crush us to the ground.
Not only is the proportion of oxygen to the other gasses just right to let us breathe, but also to provide an ozone layer which stops the ultraviolet radiation which would otherwise destroy all life. If the ozone layer were too thick, not enough heat would reach the earth, if too thin, ultraviolet rays would penetrate and kill all life. If the earth's available oxygen, both in the atmosphere and absorbed in water were much less, animal life on land and in the sea could not exist. If there were much more oxygen, fires would rage out of control.
While most materials contract when they freeze, water expands by about one-eleventh of its volume. This makes ice float on top of a lake, preventing the lake from freezing all the way through and killing all the fish.
After explaining some of the requirements for a planet to sustain life, the book Rare Earth sums up:
We have accumulated a laundry list of potentially low-probability events or conditions necessary for animal life: not only Earth's position in the 'habitable zone' of its solar system (and of its galaxy), but many others as well, including a large moon, plate tectonics, Jupiter in the wings, a magnetic field'." {Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth, Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe, 2000, p. 266} .
What makes Earth just right? Is it just an accident? One sits in vain outside the junkyard gate waiting for a watch or a car or a simple shed to form itself from the pile of rusty scrap! It doesn't happen. Getting things just right requires that someone do the planning, but the mind which rebels against believing in God must believe that the complex and wonderfully ordered universe in which he finds himself came about by accident, the result of no mind or plan. That would be more strange than finding a beautiful new city, built by a bombing raid.
If you see a farmer's field with a simple irrigation ditch watering the plants, you know that it did not just happen by accident, but the farmer dug it or had it dug on purpose. We all use this kind of reasoning every day for everything that was made by an intelligent being with only one exception. No matter how complex the design, and how unlikely to come about with no designer, many would rather believe in the absurd than to believe God was the designer. Why be inconsistent and believe the evidence for an intelligent designer for lesser things, but not for big things like the universe, and little things like bacteria and your own brain?
The mathematician Dembski points out that whole industries are built on the idea that certain patterns identify an intelligent cause. Here are a few:
"intellectual rights protection; forensic science; data falsification in science; cryptography, and insurance" {William A. Dembski, The Design Inference Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory, as cited in Creation ex Nihilo Technical Journal, Vol. 13, no. 2, 1999, p. 35.}
By showing you this mass of evidence that the earth was designed for life, I am not trying to force you to believe in God. You choose what you want to believe. I want you to see that the evidence favors an intelligent Creator. Good science does not force you to atheistic conclusions. If you see no more than this, it is enough to allow you to read the Bible, God's love letter to you, with an open mind, letting Him speak to your heart.
If, you still can't bring yourself to admit that the evidence does not exclude a creator, remember:
"The very atheist who argues against an ordered universe sets his watch by instruments which have been set by the orderly orbits of the stars tracked by an observatory in England, or by atomic clocks which utilize yet other evidences of the regularity of God's creation. {J. D. Ratcliff: "Where Time Begins," Reader's Digest, April 1968, pp. 193-196} .
If you admit that perhaps there could be a creator, the next step might be to ask, "Which possibility is better supported by the evidence: Creation by an intelligent powerful creator, or the idea that the universe itself and the world with everything just right to support life were created from nothing by a spontaneous chance explosion?"
Chapter 3
It all Makes Sense
Dr. David Willis, when he was professor of biology and chairman of the Department of Science at Oregon State University, wrote in a paper which he presented to science teachers:
"Let us now consider historical literary evidence. Questions of origin and the past history of life have intrigued men of all times. Most cultures have produced some folklore explaining how life and the earth began. Nearly all such material is fanciful in the extreme and bears no relation to the real world. Multiple deities interacting in bizarre circumstances give rise to the world and its biota in these myths.
"In sharp contrast, the book of Genesis in the Jewish-Christian scriptures presents an abbreviated, but majestic account of the origin of the earth and its organisms. The account outlines in its broader aspects a series of creative actions by a supernatural being (God) that closely parallels present scientific understanding. This cannot be said of any other ancient creation story. Magical and fanciful elements are notably absent. The opening statement sets the tone, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
"The antiquity of the Genesis account is unquestioned. Its existence raises the obvious question, 'How could its author have been so accurate in his statements that thousands of years later it can reasonably be viewed as an acceptable summary of the sequence of events connected with origins?' One cannot pass off Genesis as just a lucky guess, for compared to its contemporary creation stories from surrounding cultures it is unique. This document cannot be dismissed out of hand. It constitutes a valid form of historical evidence. Its very existence and accuracy demand that it also be considered when the problem of origins is examined....
"If a supernatural being (God) did oversee the origin of life, and if he desired to communicate some summary information about these events to his rational creatures (men), then the Genesis record would seem to qualify. In no other way does it seem possible for human beings to be informed of such events.... Furthermore, Genesis claims to be just such a record."
What's more, the creation is also mentioned in many other books of the Bible, written by many human authors over a period of 1500 years, and they all agree, just as they would if the whole Bible were inspired by one mind as it says that it is. This is not true of other books. Ideas about history, geography, philosophy, and science change through the years, and vary according to the thought of the particular author.
It would be hard to find a scientific specialization which agrees now with what was taught even 50 years ago.
If you don't believe that the Bible is unique in the way its books agree among themselves and are still reasonable today, next time you are seriously sick, ask to be treated by the medicine of 100 years ago!
Since the evidence previously mentioned overwhelmingly points to the fact that the world had a time of origin rather than being eternal, and no human being was there to describe this origin, it is reasonable to examine what God has revealed about it in the Bible.
How Did God Create the World?
In addition to the book of Genesis, the following three passages are particularly helpful in understanding how God created:
- "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting thou art God" (Psalm 90:2). Here we find it stated that God is everlasting, while the world was created at some point in time.
- "Things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" (Hebrews 11:3). The creation was something new, not a development of preexisting matter.
- "I have made the earth, the man, and the beast that are upon the ground, by my great power É ." (Jeremiah 27:5).
While God does not describe in detail how He created the world, He does say that it was by His power, a statement that fits well with what we know of atomic relationships. Matter can be changed into energy as in atomic bombs, but energy can also be changed into matter. It takes a great amount of energy to produce a little bit of matter, but it is known that the change can be made. Perhaps God was referring to making the universe from a bit of his power even in this sense.
Certainly to believe that "nothing" created matter requires the acceptance of a greater miracle than the idea that an intelligent and powerful God created it. Many explosions have been studied, and none of them created something from nothing. Why should we take it by faith that in the past everything was created out of nothing by an explosion that no one has seen and which can not be reproduced? Does that sound like a logical faith, or a naive faith?
What Is Your Decision?
Some of you may be thinking, "Well I don't want to believe in God!"
Many choose to believe in the Big Bang because they don't like the alternative. They reason that if God created them, He could also judge their sin, whereas if they can just believe that they evolved by accident after a Big Bang, they are free to live as they please. This does not make the Big Bang true, nor their escape from judgment real.
There is a better way to avoid God's judgment. God tells us in the Bible that He loves the people He created; that He is righteous, and He knows we are sinners, but, nevertheless, He has created us to have fellowship with Him forever. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
To make us sinners fit for company with a righteous God in a sinless heaven, God has choses to give His righteousness to men. Christ took our sin upon Himself, and was sacrificed as an offering for our sin. God asks us to accept Christ by faith so that at the judgment, man might not stand before God in his own sin, but in that perfect righteousness which Christ provides. God has given us a fantastic privilege: that of knowing Him. We no longer need man's atheistic theories to word off the fear of death. The Bible affronts and solves this problem. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sinÉ" (1 Corinthians 15:55-56). Our sin problem has been resolved by God through His son Jesus Christ. Believe the evidence which points to God our Creator, then accept Christ, who said, "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me" (John 14:1). Confess your sins to God in prayer, and trust Christ to save you from every one of them.
Perhaps you are asking, why should I believe in Christ and not in one of the philosophers? As a starter, the they are dead, and Christ rose from the dead verifying his words. Those who did not believe the testimony of the many who saw him alive after he died for our sins went to the tomb and looked. They found it empty! The disciples who were discouraged and disappointed at Christ's death, were changed men a few days later. Christ had risen from the dead, and they went everywhere proclaiming that Christ was alive. Those who had crucified Christ eventually killed most of His disciples because they refused to shut up about the resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is one of the best attested facts of history. In addition to the Bible there is a large body of ancient literature that speaks much about it.
I trusted Christ as my Savior based on the fact that He is still living and changing lives today. I was attending Oregon State University, and had the opportunity to observe the transformed life of my room mate, and then of a lot of kids in a church youth group. At first I resisted. I thought one became a Christian by living a good life. I thought I could stop sinning and reform my life to be as good as theirs. When I failed utterly, I trusted Christ to save me. He transformed my life too. He lives!
Many have trusted in the Big Bang. This belief also requires faith, but it is a fact free faith. You will probably base your life either on faith in Christ who saves, or on faith in materialism. Materialism claims that there is no purpose to your life, that you are the result of a long series of accidents (starting with the Big Bang). After your Materialism claims: "No heaven. No hell." Nothing!
God's word says: "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God?" (Romans 2:5). The claims are conflicting. The stakes are high! Investigate the claims of Christ. Make an intelligent decision one way or the other. Don't be swept along with the crowd like a lemming rushing to its destruction.
To help you understand and believe, read the Bible, particularly the New Testament. Here are some passages in the New Testament which will help: John 3:1-18, 36, 14:1-7; Acts 4:10-12; Romans 3:10-25, 5:6-10, 6:23; Galatians 2:16-21, 3:6-14; Hebrews 10:10-14; 1 John 5:11-12). Read this prophesy of Christ from the Old Testament too, Isaiah chapter 53.
