Summations Only

The standard cosmology is the universe started with a big bang about 13.7 billion years ago. But many people are under the mistaken idea the big bang is an argument against the existence of God or against the concept of a designer who formed the universe. Not true. While the big bang is not absolute proof of the existence of God or a designer of some type, it is absolutely compatible with the concept of a creator God or Designer.Simply stated — If there was a big bang, there has to be a Big Banger.The better we understand the science behind the big bang, the better we understand how the big bang supports the concept of a pre-existing designer or creator God.The Law of Conservation of Energy says energy and matter are neither created nor destroyed. This is the most important reason why so many scientists in the 19th and early 20th centuries believed the universe always existed.Albert Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, published in 1916, led to a revolution in physics, astronomy and cosmology. Using General Relativity, physicists theorized the universe must be expanding. Logically, if the universe is expanding, then it was smaller in the past. If you run the movie backward far enough, then the universe must have had a beginning.A Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics named Georges LeMaitre introduced Big Bang theory in a 1927 paper titled The primeval atom. This paper was published two years before the Edwin Hubble paper describing his observations of the expanding universe. Initially Einstein did not like LeMaitre’s theory, but after Hubble’s paper was published Einstein, Arthur Eddington and others were persuaded by Big Bang Theory. Some holdouts, including Sir Fred Hoyle, were still not convinced.With the discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation in 1965, Big Bang Theory has convinced nearly everyone the universe had a beginning. The discovery of CMB radiation is described in the excellent book by Robert Jastrow titled God and the Astronomers.So where did all that energy and matter come from? Who or what caused the Big Bang?Before trying to answer that question, it is interesting to note that about 1,000 years ago an Islamic philosopher named al-Ghazali formulated this argument:Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.His argument (or a variation) was picked up by Bonaventure, then Locke and Kant among others. The problem was until science could prove the universe had a beginning, the argument lacked power. But now that the big bang is well-supported by the evidence and has become the standard cosmology, the argument gains tremendous strength. Therefore, based on current science it is quite reasonable to believe in the existence of creator God or universe Designer.

Regarding your argument about the God of the gaps, I’m sorry but the argument doesn’t work in this case. I’m not saying the big bang proves the existence of God or the work of a Designer. I’m saying only that the big bang is consistent with the existence of creator God or a Designer. In order to disprove my claim, you would have to show that the big bang is inconsistent with the idea of God or a Designer of the universe.

Regarding your argument about virtual particles, it appears you are trying to argue against the Conservation of Energy. Physicists do not agree with you that quantum fluctuations or virtual particles violate this important law of physics. To quote from Wikipedia In the modern view, energy is always conserved, but the eigenstates of the Hamiltonian (energy observable) are not the same as (i.e. the Hamiltonian doesn't commute with) the particle number operators.

Jar, you are attempting to defeat the deductive argument by the Islamic philosopher al-Ghazali. I’m afraid you are jumping ahead of the argument. At this point, all I’m saying is if the universe had a beginning, then the universe had a cause. Even in your statement you do not deny the universe had a cause. All I am saying is the fact the universe had a cause is consistent with the idea of a creator God or Designer. In order to disagree with me, you would have to show that the fact universe had a cause is inconsistent with the idea of a creator God or Designer.

You write: (If you can't swallow that, please tell me what the smallest positive non-zero real number is.) This is a false analogy. There are certain errors in your understanding and/or logic which I think will become plain to you as we discuss the science of the big bang in more detail.

You ask some valid questions We allow the possibility that some god character started the big bang. What's next? How does this assertion help us learn anything about the universe? What can we learn about anything by saying "some god character caused the big bang? These are good questions and deserve answers, but it is too early to answer them at this point. I still need to lay more of a foundation. But as we do, you will come to see how the observations help us learn something about the Designer/Creator and will help us make predictions about the natural world. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

You write If we run the piano roll backward, we hear the singularity: the singularity (pardon my double negative) is not nothing. This is a common misconception I intend to discuss soon.

You comment the mere observation that this universe is compatible with God is not actually informative about this universe. First, I want to thank you for reading my post closely to determine exactly what I am saying. Clear thinking is only possible after careful reading. Second, while the observation I am making may not be actually informative, it is most definitely counter-cultural and an important foundation to later evidence. That is to say, many people who consider themselves to be educated and scientific have not yet come to the realization that a belief in God is quite compatible with the practice and pursuit of science. In fact, many of these people have such a low opinion of religious and/or spiritual people that they will not read their arguments closely to see if they make sense or not. I am trying to get beyond the knee jerk rejection common today so we can make a real scientific exchange possible. I am happy to invite your scrutiny into the evidence and logic as I lay it out.

You write Bang goes a designer. Energy and matter was never created. I’m sorry, Pressie, but I don’t follow your argument. Are you saying the universe does not exist?

In some circles, the cosmology you are describing is known as Big Bounce Theory. While it had some important supporters at one time, it has largely fallen from favor with the discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, a discovery which was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011. See The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics - Press release - NobelPrize.org

The key point is that quantum fluctuations do not violate the Law of Conservation of Energy. It is best to view quantum fluctuations and virtual particles as constant but they simply become observable at specific points as they move about.

A big Thank you! to everyone who responded.As I mentioned, the better we understand the science behind the big bang, the better we understand how the big bang supports the concept of a pre-existing designer or creator God.I want to explore exactly what science says about the big bang, because the better the science is understood the easier it is to dispense with some of the common misconceptions about the big bang. It is important that we press on.In the first post, I covered the fact the Law of Conservation of Energy shows the big bang is unique in history (we do not have to worry it will repeat itself within our universe) and supports the concept of a creator God or Designer of the Universe. I want to give a special shout out to Dr Adequate who grasped the argument on the first reading.What exactly happened at the big bang?
Steven Weinberg, winner of the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics, wrote the interesting book The First Three Minutes. Here are three short excerpts: In the beginning there was an explosion. Not an explosion like those familiar on earth, starting from a definite center and spreading out to engulf more and more of the circumambient air, but an explosion which occurred simultaneously everywhere, filling all space from the beginning, with every particle of matter rushing apart from every other particle. All space in this context may mean either all of an infinite universe, or all of a finite universe which curves back on itself like the surface of a sphere. Neither possibility is easy to comprehend, but this will not get in our way; it matters hardly at all in the early universe whether space is finite or infinite. (p.5) At about one-hundreth of a second, the earliest time about which we can speak with any confidence, the temperature of the universe was about one hundred thousand million (1011) degrees Centigrade. This is much hotter than the center of the hottest star, so hot, in fact, that none of the components of ordinary matter, molecules or atoms, or even the nuclei of atoms, could have held together. Instead, the matter rushing apart in this explosion consisted of various types of the so-called elementary particles, which are the subject of modern high-energy nuclear physics. (p.5) It is natural to ask how large the universe was at very early times. Unfortunately, we do not know, and we are not even sure that the question has any meaning. As indicated in Chapter II, the universe may well be infinite now, in which case it was infinite at the time of the first frame, and will always be infinite. On the other hand, it is possible that the universe now has a finite circumference, sometimes estimated to be about 125 thousand million light years. (The circumference is the distance one must travel in a straight line before finding oneself back where one started. This estimate is based on the Hubble constant, under the supposition that the density of the universe is about twice its critical value.) Since the temperature of the universe falls in inverse proportion to its size, the circumference of the universe at the time of the first frame was less than at present by the ratio of the temperature then (1011 K) to the present temperature (3 K); this gives a first-frame circumference of the universe of about four light years. None of the details of the story of cosmic evolution in the first few minutes will depend on whether the circumference of the universe was infinite or only a few light years. (p.106)Paul Davies is a physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University. In addition to being a popular author, he has won the Kelvin Medal from the Institute of Physics and the Faraday Prize from The Royal Society. Here are two excerpts from his book Cosmic Jackpot.We know the universe is expanding In the past it was smaller. If we run the expansion in reverse for 13.7 billion years, then the ball shrinks to a single point, a single, sizeless dot. And then ? Nothing. The ball has vanished! Play the sequence forward, and the universe appears from nothing at a single point, balloons out, and eventually expands to cosmic proportions. Now, let’s consider what is meant by nothing in the foregoing description. Clearly it is empty space. If this account captures the essential manner in which the universe came into existence, then we are left with a puzzle. Why should a ball of matter suddenly appear out of nowhere, at some particular moment in time and at some particular location in preexisting empty space, when this event has not happened for all eternity up to that moment? What would cause it to happen, and happen just then just there? There is no satisfactory answer. (p.66) I described the singularity in the movie-in-reverse account as the vanishing point of the universe. But why did it have to vanish? Could the singularity not have just sat there? In forward-time description, there would be a singularity — think of a point of infinite density if you like, a structureless, sizeless cosmic egg — existing for all eternity, when suddenly it went bang! In that case, what came before the big bang would no longer be nothing; it would be a singularity. Some popular accounts of the origin of the universe promulgate this dubious notion. However, it won’t do. The theory of relativity links space and time together to form a unified spacetime. You can’t have time without space, or space without time, so if space cannot be continued back through the big bang singularity, then neither can time. This conclusion carries a momentous implication. If the universe was bounded by a past singularity, then the big bang was not just the origin of space, but the origin of time too. To repeat: time itself began with the big bang. This neatly disposes of the awkward question of what happened before the big bang. If there was no time before the big bang, then the question is meaningless. In the same way, speculation about what caused the big bang is also out of place because causes normally precede effects. If there was no time (or place) before the big bang for a causative agency to exist, then we can attribute no physical cause to the big bang. (p.68)Davies is correct. When the physical/material universe came into existence, its cause must be outside of the physical/material universe. The cause must be immaterial. In the same way, if the cause is not part of spacetime, then the cause must not be subject to time. The cause must be eternal.How do we know what happened at the Big Bang?
NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE) was launched November 18, 1989. See LAMBDA - Cosmic Background Explorer Based on observations from this satellite George Smoot and John Mather the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006. Cosmic Background Explorer - WikipediaRegarding NASA’s Cosmic Background Explorer Satellite (COBE), Martin Rees writes: This truly remarkable measurement, with an accuracy of one part in 10,000, confirms beyond reasonable doubt that everything in our universe — all the stuff that galaxies are now made of — was once a compressed gas, hotter than the Sun’s core. Just Six Numbers, p. 66The successor to COBE was Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) launched June 30, 2001. One of the goals of WMAP is to produce a detailed map of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - Wikipedia You can see some of the interesting images created by WMAP at WMAP CMB imagesThe more we learn about the universe, the more likely it will point to design. I am very pleased with the progress made at Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. See Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) I especially like this quote from point #9: however, there are several hints of possible deviations from simple randomness that are still being assessed.I predict these deviations from simple randomness will result in multiple theories, at least one which will point to a Designer and at least one which will point in the opposite direction. The prediction of a Designer theory is based on the fact the universe has order and that science is all about discovering the order of the universe. The prediction of non-designer theory is based on the observation that people will generate contrived theories whenever possible in order to avoid confronting the possible existence of a creator God or Designer of the universe.It is important to see how scientists in the past have responded when confronted with evidence of something outside the physical universe we live in.

You write ""compatible with" is not the same as "supports". Which did you mean ?"Both actually. My first general post focused on information showing the big bang is compatible with the concept of a creator God or universe Designer. My second general post focused on information which supports the view a pre-existing (eternal) and immaterial being was the First Cause of the big bang. Essentially, because spacetime was created at the big bang, the cause of the big bang has to be outside of spacetime.

You write "Energy and matter can’t be created. No creator involved. Energy and matter are inconsistent with the idea of a creator."Not true. It seems your mind is trapped within the spacetime universe in which your body dwells. I would encourage you to try to think outside of this box. It may help to do some reading on multiverses.Think of it this way. In the universe we know, the Law of Conservation of Energy holds true. However, before the universe came into existence, the physical laws which govern the universe were not in effect.The standard cosmology is the universe had a beginning at the big bang and at that point energy and matter were created.

I appreciate everyone's participation. Please bear with me as I have a busy schedule today and will not be able to spend as much time responding as I might like. I will try to respond tonight to as many comments as possible.