Who
Created the Universe From Nothing?
With this triumph
of the Big Bang, the thesis of an "infinite universe",
which forms the basis of materialist dogma, was
tossed onto the scrap-heap of history. But for
materialists it also raised a couple of inconvenient
questions: What existed before the Big Bang?
And what force could have caused the great explosion
that resulted in a universe that did not exist
before?
Materialists
like Arthur Eddington recognized that the answers
to these questions could point to the existence
of a supreme creator and that they did not like.
The atheist philosopher Anthony Flew commented
on this point:
Notoriously, confession
is good for the soul. I will therefore begin
by confessing that the Stratonician
atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary
cosmological consensus. For it seems
that the cosmologists are providing a scientific
proof of what St. Thomas contended could
not be proved philosophically; namely, that
the universe had a beginning. So long as the
universe can be comfortably thought of as being
not only without end but also beginning, it
remains easy to urge that its brute existence,
and whatever are found to be its most fundamental
features, should be accepted as the explanatory
ultimates. Although I believe that it remains
still correct, it certainly is neither easy
nor comfortable to maintain this position in
the face of the Big Bang story. 1
Many scientists who do
not force themselves to be atheists accept and
favor the existence of a creator having an infinite
power. For instance, the American astrophysicist
Hugh Ross proposes a Creator of universe, Who
is above all physical dimensions as:
By definition,
time is that dimension in which cause-and-effect
phenomena take place. No time, no cause and
effect. If time's beginning is concurrent with
the beginning of the universe, as the space-time
theorem says, then the cause of the universe
must be some entity operating in a time dimension
completely independent of and pre-existent to
the time dimension of the cosmos. …It tells
us that the Creator is transcendent, operating
beyond the dimensional limits of the universe.
It tells us that God is not the universe itself,
nor is God contained within the universe.2
Objections
to Creation and Why They are Flawed
It is patently
obvious that the Big Bang means the creation of
the universe out of nothing and this is surely
evidence of willful creation. Regarding this fact,
some materialist astronomers and physicists have
tried to advance alternative explanations to oppose
this reality. Mention has already been made of
the steady state theory and it was pointed out
it was clung to, by those who were uncomfortable
with the notion of "creation from nothingness",
despite all the evidence to the contrary in an
attempt to shore up their philosophy.
There are also
a number of models that have been advanced by
materialists who accept the Big Bang theory but
try to exorcise it of the notion of creation.
One of these is the "oscillating" universe model;
another is the "quantum model of universe". Let
us examine these theories and see why they are
invalid.
The oscillating
universe model was advanced by the astronomers
who disliked the idea the Big Bang was the beginning
of the universe. In this model, it is claimed
that the present expansion of the universe will
eventually be reversed at some point and begin
to contract. This contraction will cause everything
to collapse into a single point that will then
explode again, initiating a new round of expansion.
This process, they say, is repeated infinitely
in time. This model also holds that the universe
has experienced this transformation an infinite
number of times already and that it will continue
to do so forever. In other words, the universe
exists for eternity but it expands and collapses
at different intervals with a huge explosion punctuating
each cycle. The universe we live in is just one
of those infinite universes going through the
same cycle.
This is nothing but a feeble
attempt to accommodate the fact of the Big Bang
to notions about an infinite universe. The proposed
scenario is unsupported by the results of scientific
research over the last 15-20 years, which show
that it is impossible for such an "oscillating"
universe idea to come into being. Furthermore
the laws of physics offer no reason why a contracting
universe should explode again after collapsing
into a single point: it ought to stay just as
it is. Nor do they offer a reason why an expanding
universe should ever begin to contract in the
first place.3
Even if we allow that there is
some mechanism by which this cycle of contraction-explosion-expansion
does take place, the crucial point is that this
cycle cannot go on for ever, as is claimed. Calculations
for this model show that each universe will transfer
an amount of entropy to its successor. In other
words, the amount of useful energy available becomes
less each time and every "opening" universe will
open more slowly and have a larger diameter. This
will cause a much smaller universe to form the
next time around and so on, eventually petering
out into nothing. Even if "open and close" universes
can exist, they cannot endure for eternity. At
some point it becomes necessary for "something"
to be created from "nothing".4
Put briefly,
the "oscillating" universe model is a hopeless
fantasy whose physical reality is impossible.
The "quantum
model of universe" is another attempt
to purge the Big Bang of its creationist implications.
Supporters of this model base it on the observations
of quantum (subatomic) physics. In quantum physics,
it is to be observed that subatomic particles
appear and disappear spontaneously in a vacuum.
Interpreting this observation as "matter can originate
at quantum level, this is a property pertaining
to matter", some physicists try to explain the
origination of matter from non-existence during
the creation of the universe as a "property pertaining
to matter" and present it as a part of laws of
nature. In this model, our universe is interpreted
as a subatomic particle in a bigger one.
However this
syllogism is definitely out of question and in
any case cannot explain how the universe came
into being. William Lane Craig, the author of
The Big Bang: Theism and Atheism explains
why:
A quantum mechanical
vacuum spawning material particles is far from
the ordinary idea of a "vacuum" (meaning nothing).
Rather, a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually
forming and dissolving particles, which borrow
energy from the vacuum for their brief existence.
This is not "nothing," and hence, material particles
do not come into being out of nothing.5
So in quantum physics,
matter "does not exist when it was not before".
What happens is that ambient energy suddenly becomes
matter and just as suddenly disappears becoming
energy again. In short, there is no condition
of "existence from nothingness" as is claimed.
In physics, no
less than in other branches of the sciences, there
are atheist scientists who do not hesitate to
disguise the truth by overlooking critical points
and details in their attempt to support the materialist
view and achieve their ends. For them, it is much
more important to defend materialism and atheism
than to reveal scientific facts and realities.
In the face of
the reality mentioned above, most scientists dismiss
the quantum universe model. C. J. Isham explains
that "this model is not accepted widely because
of the inherent difficulties that it poses."6
Even some of the originators of this idea, such
as Brout and Spindel, have abandoned it.7
A recent and
much-publicized version of the quantum universe
model was advanced by the physicist Stephen
Hawking. In his book A Brief History
of Time, Hawking states that the Big Bang
doesn't necessarily mean existence from nothingness.
Instead of "no time" before the Big Bang, Hawking
proposed the concept of "imaginary time".
According to Hawking, there was only a 10-43 second
"imaginary" time interval before the Big Bang
took place and "real" time was formed
after that. Hawking's hope was just to ignore
the reality of "timelessness" before the Big Bang
by means of this "imaginary" time.
 Stephen
Hawking also tries to advance different
explanations for the Big Bang other than
Creation just as other Materialist scientists
do by relying upon contradictions and false
concepts. |
As a concept, "imaginary
time" is tantamount to zero or non-existence–like
the imaginary number of people in a room or the
imaginary number of cars on a road.
Stephen
Hawking also tries to advance different explanations
for the Big Bang other than Creation just as other
Materialist scientists do by relying upon contradictions
and false concepts.
Here Hawking
is just playing with words. He claims that equations
are right when they are related to an imaginary
time but in fact this has no meaning. The mathematician
Sir Herbert Dingle refers to the possibility of
faking imaginary things as real in math as:
In
the language of mathematics we can tell lies
as well as truths, and within the scope of mathematics
itself there is no possible way of telling one
from the other. We can distinguish them only
by experience or by reasoning outside the mathematics,
applied to the possible relation between the
mathematical solution and its physical
correlate.8
To put
it briefly, a mathematically imaginary or theoretical
solution need not have a true or a real consequence.
Using a property exclusive to mathematics, Hawking
produces hypotheses that are unrelated to reality.
But what reason could he have for doing this?
It's easy to find the answer to that question
in his own words. Hawking admits that he prefers
alternative universe models to the Big Bang because
the latter "hints at divine creation", which such
models are designed to oppose.9
What all this
shows is that alternative models to the Big Bang
such as steady-state, the open and close universe
model, and quantum universe models in fact spring
from the philosophical prejudices of materialists.
Scientific discoveries have demonstrated the reality
of the Big Bang and can even explain "existence
from nothingness". And this is very strong evidence
that the universe is created by Allah, a point
that materialists utterly reject.
An
example of this opposition to the Big Bang is
to be found in an essay by John Maddox, the editor
of Nature (a materialist magazine), that
appeared in 1989. In "Down with the
Big Bang", Maddox declares the Big
Bang to be philosophically unacceptable because
it helps theologists by providing them with strong
support for their ideas. The author also
predicted that the Big Bang would be disproved
and that support for it would disappear within
a decade.10 Maddox can only have been even more
discomforted by the subsequent discoveries during
the next ten years that have provided further
evidence of the existence of the Big Bang.
Some materialists
do act with more common sense on this subject.
The British Materialist H. P. Lipson accepts the
truth of creation, albeit "unpleasantly", when
he says:
If
living matter is not, then caused by the interplay
of atoms, natural forces, and radiation, how
has it come into being?…I think, however, that
we must…admit that the only acceptable
explanation is creation. I know that
this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it
is to me, but we must not reject that we do
not like if the experimental evidence supports
it.11
In conclusion, the truth
disclosed by science is this: Matter and time
have been brought into being by an independent
possessor of immense power, by a Creator. Allah,
the Possessor of almighty power, knowledge and
intelligence, has created the universe we live
in.
| Notes |
 |
1.
Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse. Cosmos,
Bios, Theos. La Salle IL: Open Court Publishing,
1992, p. 241
2. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos:
How Greatest Scientific Discoveries of The
Century Reveal God, Colorado: NavPress,
revised edition, 1995, p. 76
3. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator,
Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol.
17, p. 19
4. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator,
Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol.
17, p. 19
5. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator,
Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol.
17, p. 20
6 Christopher Isham, "Space, Time and Quantum
Cosmology", paper presented at the conference
"God, Time and Modern Physics", March 1990,
Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol.
17, p. 27
7. R. Brout, Ph. Spindel, "Black Holes Dispute",
Nature, vol 337, 1989, p. 216
8. Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads,
London: Martin Brian & O'Keefe, 1972,
p. 31-32
9. StephenHawking, A Brief History of Time,
New York: Bantam Books, 1988, p. 46
10. John Maddox, "Down with the Big Bang",
Nature, vol. 340, 1989, p. 378
11. H. P. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at
Evolution", Physics Bulletin, vol. 138,
1980, p. 138 |
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