Overall, this has been a good experience for me.
Let me start by listing some of the things I learned through this debate and the study the debate caused me to do:
I learned Hoyle’s Steady State theory is not the same as the Static Universe theory. I was using the terms Steady State and Static State interchangeably and that was wrong and misleading. I was under the impression Hoyle did not come to the steady bang view until after 1965, but it seems I was wrong there. I need to study Hoyle more.
I learned there was some controversy around the Geoffrey Burbidge quote regarding his peers going off to join The First Church of Christ of the Big Bang. I learned Burbidge wrote a letter saying he was referring only to the fervor with which is peers were holding to big bang theory.
I also learned Burbidge was a close personal friend of Allen Sandage. In the NY Times obit for Burbidge, Sandage said they spoke on the phone three times a week for 40 years, mostly about the big bang. Of course, Sandage is the biggest name in astronomy to convert to Christianity on the basis of the big bang. This seems more than a coincidence and is enough to make me wonder about the Burbidge quote again.
I learned there are more misconceptions about the big bang than I knew of.
The thread suffered from a number of participants who misunderstand logical fallacies. Supporting a point with a quote is not the same as quote-mining. Describing an expert’s eminence in a specialized field is not the same as an appeal to authority. A thread on logical fallacies may be helpful as they are poorly understood on this forum. And it might do me good to brush up on some of them as well.
The goal of the debate was to persuade people that the big bang is both compatible with and supportive of the concept of a Universe Designer or Creator God. The goal was not to convince atheists that God exists or that God created. There will always be some idea or theory claiming to show a Designer or Creator is not necessary (colliding branes, etc.). It was not my goal to defeat each of these competing theories. Also, the goal was not to convince anyone that the big bang requires people to believe in a Universe Designer or Creator God. The goal was to demonstrate my view the big bang is supportive of the idea of a Creator God or Universe Designer is internally consistent and common among scientists.
Secondary goals for this debate include correcting or clarifying certain common misconceptions about the science of the big bang, a theory which is poorly understood by most people. Misconceptions needing to be corrected include:
The false view the big bang is somehow anti-God or is evidence against creation. Even Hawking admits the big bang compatible with the idea of a creator.
The false view the singularity could exist in that form for any period of time (the singularity is a mathematical concept, not a physical one). An infinitely dense and hot singularity must begin to expand as soon as it exists.
The false view the singularity could somehow get triggered from a dormant state into the big bang expansion through some physical/natural process. This is patently absurd since the singularity cannot exist in a dormant state.
Adequate understanding of the science will correct each of the above false views. Key posts explaining the science are Message 1, Message 49, Message 152, and Message 253.
I also tried to explain that, while some scientists refuse to do so, it is possible to speculate about the nature of the Big Banger based upon the limited information we have. (Speculation can be based on logic and imagination, but not mathematical physics. Einstein said Imagination is more important than knowledge.)
With this as background, and building on al-Ghazali, we now we can summarize the steps of my argument:
If the universe had a beginning in the big bang (the standard view of cosmology), the universe must have a cause.
The cause cannot be physical because it happened before the physical universe was created. (See Paul Davies book Cosmic Jackpot - Davies will not speculate on non-physical causes because he limits himself to mathematical physics)
And the cause happened during the timeless; that is, it occurred before time was created in our universe.
Therefore it is internally consistent to believe the cause of the big bang (the Big Banger) is both immaterial and timeless.
As corroborating evidence, I give you the history of science around the big bang. Robert Jastrow’s book God and the Astronomers is a detailed account of big bang theory and discovery of the CMB radiation (which confirmed the theory) and the impact it had on cosmology and the personal world views of these scientists.
Someone had suggested I quote Stephen Hawking on the issue of this debate. I did not get a chance to do that prior to the summation so I will do it now. Stephen Hawking seems to have rejected the big bang (a view he once supported) because the big bang offers support for a creator.
Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention. (The Catholic Church, on the other hand, seized on the big bang model and in 1951 officially pronounced it to be in accordance with the Bible.) There were therefore a number of attempts to avoid the conclusion that there had been a big bang. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 46f.
a joint paper by Penrose and myself in 1970, which at last proved that there must have been a big bang singularity provided only that general relativity is correct and the universe contains as much matter as we observe. There was a lot of opposition to our work, partly from the Russians because of their Marxist belief in scientific determinism, and partly from people who felt that the whole idea of singularities was repugnant and spoiled the beauty of Einstein’s theory. However, one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem. So in the end our work became generally accepted and nowadays nearly everyone assumes the universe started with a big bang singularity. It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe — as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 50.
The quantum theory of gravity has opened up a new possibility, in which there would be no boundary to space-time and so there would be no need to specify the behavior at the boundary. There would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 136.
The idea that space and time may form a closed surface without boundary also has profound implications for the role of God in the affairs of the universe. With the success of scientific theories in describing events, most people have come to believe that God allows the universe to evolve according to a set of laws and does not intervene in the universe to break these laws. However, the laws do not tell us what the universe should have looked like when it started — it would still be up to God to wind up the clockwork and choose how to start it off. So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end; it would simply be. What place then for a creator? Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 140-141.
You can see from these quotes that Hawking does not believe in a creator and no longer believes in the big bang, but Hawking does agree that a universe that has a beginning is compatible with the concept of a Universe Designer or Creator God. Offering these quotes is not quote-mining as they correctly portray Hawking’s position.
But is the big bang really supportive of the idea of creation? Unequivocally yes! Not only is the big bang supportive of the idea, it is supportive of the religious text for Jews and Christians — In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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 sharply and suddenly at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. - Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, p. 14.
Scientist George Smoot (who led the COBE team of scientists who first measured ripples in the cosmic background radiation) says: There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing. - Quoted in Show me God by Fred Heeren, p. 139.
Until the late 1910’s humans were as ignorant of cosmic origins as they had ever been. Those who didn’t take Genesis literally had no reason to believe there had been a beginning. - George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time, 1993, p.30.
I suppose one weakness in my argument is that I did not consider that some people might think an impersonal god is capable of design, planning, a choice to create and the power to do so. If I am ever involved in a similar debate in the future, I will be certain to point out how an impersonal god lacks the necessary attributes of will, planning and design.
Finally, I wish I had a chance to respond to Rahvin’s Message 296. I agree with much of what he said. Perhaps I will get a chance to interact with Rahvin in the future.
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