Jan
20
“This is what God, Yahweh, says — who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people on it and life to those who walk on it –” Isaiah 42:5 (HCSB)
One of my favorite books by astronomer/apologist Dr. Hugh Ross is A Matter of Days: Resolving a Creation Controversy, which first came out in 2004, a replacement for the earlier Creation and Time (1994). Ross’s ministry, Reasons to Believe, published a second expanded edition of A Matter of Days
In the book, Ross answers many charges and challenges put forth by Young Earth Creationists. He provides both biblical and scientific counterarguments, marshalling the relevant evidence while calling for civility and peace among Christian believers on the general topic of God’s Creation and especially the “Days of Creation”. As I read, I keep identifying excerpts that I think are great synopses and would make nice blogposts, helping people of various persuasions to get a better handle on certain scientific bits.
One of the trigger-terms for YEC believers seems to be “(the) Big Bang”, because it is associated with “billions of years” and, therefore, naturalistic evolution. It is often portrayed as an atheistic idea and tool to lead people away from God. Not so. There is also the idea commonly held by many (not just YECs) that the Big Bang was an uncontrolled explosion resulting in much chaos. This might also imply that God was absent and unneeded, or at the very least powerless to control it. Again, not so.
To clear up these misunderstandings, I point you to the following explanation by Dr. Ross:
“The big bang is big, but it is not a ‘bang’ in the usual sense of the word. Bang conjures images of bomb blasts or exploding dynamite — phenomena associated with chaos, disorder, and destruction. In truth, the cosmic ‘bang’ is an immensely powerful yet carefully planned and controlled burst of creation — a sudden release of power from which the universe unfurled in an exquisitely controlled expansion. In an instant, time, space, matter, and energy, along with the physical laws governing them all, came into existence from a source beyond the cosmos.
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation
No other characteristic of the universe is so well designed as this cosmic expansion. The two parameters governing the expansion — the mass density and the space-energy density — must be fine-tuned. The fine-tuning for the space-energy density (dark energy) is more precise than 1 part in 10^120 (that’s 120 zeros after the 1) in order to yield a universe of galaxies, stars, and planets — that is, a universe suitable for any kind of physical life.
Why, then, do astronomers retain the term big bang? The simplest answer is that nicknames, for better or for worse, tend to stick. A hostile opponent of the theory, British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle, coined the expression in the 1950s, attempting to ridicule this up-and-coming challenger to his ‘steady state’ hypothesis. He objected to any theory that placed the origin, or Cause, of the universe outside itself; hence, to his thinking, outside the realm of scientific inquiry.
Perhaps because of its simplicity and catchy alliteration, the term big bang stuck. No one found a more memorable shorthand label for this (admittedly lengthy) description: a precisely controlled cosmic expansion from an infinitely, or near infinitely, compressed space-time volume that is infinitely, or near infinitely, hot brought instantly and transcendently into existence by a Creator operating beyond matter, energy, space, and time.”
“Duane Gish and Henry Morris of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) vigorously promoted the notion that the big bang contradicts thermodynamics. They interpreted the big bang as the ridiculous notion that a highly ordered system of galaxies, stars, planets, moons, and life naturally evolved from the chaos of hydrogen gas. This enormous misconception reflects a widespread misunderstanding of thermodynamics and nucleosynthesis, in particular, and of the big bang theory in general….
In 1925, astrophysicist and Jesuit priest Abbe Georges Lemaitre became the first scientist to promote the idea of a big bang origin event. Observations made by Edwin Hubble in 1929 established that a certain phenomenon (called spectral line redshifts) of galaxies results from a general expansion of the universe from some beginning point. Then, in 1946, George Gamow calculated that the existing abundance of elements in the cosmos requires a nearly infinitely hot starting condition followed by relatively rapid cosmic expansion….
Other astronomers and physicists openly expressed their bias against the notion of a beginning. Sir Arthur Eddington, one of the most famous early twentieth-century cosmologists, rejected the big bang since ‘it seems to require a sudden and peculiar beginning of things.’ He added, ‘Philosophically, the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me.’ In 1930, he countered with a cosmic model of his own that allowed evolution ‘an infinite time to get started.’ Whatever illusions biologists may have possessed, astronomers were quick to acknowledge that the several billion years of cosmic history afforded by the big bang were woefully inadequate to explain either the origin of life or the gradual development of various life-forms by natural means.”
