I am using "Looking Upward" to mean looking into the heavens and thinking abut how they were formed. This takes us to the beginning of time, what is now considered "The Big Bang Theory".
Scientifically, the Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model for the universe from the earliest known periods (within millionths of a millisecond, or less, of the explosion) through its subsequent large-scale expansion and coagulation. The model suggests that the universe expanded from a very high density and high temperature state, a singularity, into the universe we see now. Some estimates place this moment at approximately 13.8 billion years ago.
The breakdown of general relativity occurs with the singularity and thus, so do all the laws of physics such that it is anyone's guess what actually happened at that moment in time - the beginning of time. Time did not exist before the explosion as the laws of physics as we know them did not exist, nor did matter of any type such as we now know. Scientists can only speculate what occurred in the early fractions of a second, when the singularity exploded and the universe started to expand. In the Big Bang theory it is thought that first there was nothing and then it exploded. The Universe created itself. Based on certain physical laws, the Universe came into existence on its own. This is a hard sell to me in that the laws of physics did not exist before time and matter (nothing to react upon) so how could they cause time and matter to spontaneously generate themselves.
That caused the Big-Bang?
The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two co-moving points. Space, time and matter only exist within the universe, not outside it. The universe is many, many trillions of miles across, one light-year equals almost 6 trillion miles and we can see stars over 13 billion light-years away. When we see such stars, we are seeing them how they appeared billions of years ago as their light had to travel all of that distance to get to us. Even the closest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.4 light-years away so when we look at it, the light that we see has been traveling in space for over 4 years to reach us.
When we look at the Bible, there is one verse that if we can believe it, we should have no problem believing the remainder of the book. That verse just happens to be the first verse, Genesis 1:1.
If we can believe that God created the entire physical universe, how can we not believe that He orchestrated the plagues of Egypt or the Miracles of Jesus? Or any other difficult thing found in His Word.
Looking at the Hebrew, the word for "In the beginning" is "re'shiyth" which points to the first - in place, time, order or rank so it could be translated as "In the beginning of Time". The word "bara'", translated "created", means to create, shape, form of new conditions and circumstances as in forming the universe from nothing. And the word for "heavens", "shamayim", means the heavens as in the visible universe. Substituting these extended translations we get "In the beginning of Time, God formed the visible universe from nothing". In at least a half dozen other verses (most notably in Isaiah) it is mentioned that God also stretched out the heavens. The word of God, written over 4000 years ago, closely correlates what we see in the Big Bang Theory.
I wrote about this in a previous blog, "Why I believe Genesis 1:1-2".
Once we move past the "Big Bang" and start to look at the formation of the galaxies, stars and even our Earth, we see that this process is a complex one, and took many billions of years to reach something even remotely like what we know of today. Right after the Big Bang (about 10-6 seconds), there were no elements, only protons, neutrons and electrons. After a few minutes, when temperatures dropped to about 1,000,000,000 degrees Kelvin, hydrogen and helium nuclei formed. It wasn't until after almost 400,000 years that conditions allowed the formation of hydrogen atoms.
All elements heavier than Lithium did not form until they could be generated by the heat of the starry ovens that formed in space. It took several billion years for stars and galaxies to form. The slightly denser areas of the universe (it was originally a soup of nearly uniformly distributed matter) gravitationally attracted nearby matter and thus grew even denser, leading to the formation of gas clouds. These giant clouds of primordial elements later coalesced through gravity to form the stars, galaxies and the other astronomical structures observable today, much like raindrops forming in the clouds.
Naturalistic theories of origins are based on undirected, random activities. Such random activities are governed by the law of probability. After the big bang, the overwhelming probability was that the universe-to-be would collapse, or stay as a primordial soup. Yet it overcame these odds to evolve into the universe we see today. This could just be the one in a trillion (or much higher) odds and if it had not been so, we would not be here to see it. Or it could be God’s supernatural activity, manipulating nature laws to influence the odds and arriving at the universe He planned.
Genesis 1:2 (NIV) says, “Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” The Hebrew words used here point to a formless earth (the primordial soup mentioned above), and God hovering over it. The Hebrew word for hover is "rachaph" which implies a watchful, loving attention to the entire creation process.
As we examine further the process of formation of the universe and life itself, we will see that the odds are small, and even though the universe is massive and the small odds result in still many possible outcomes like our own (as in many possible planets like earth), it does not overshadow the possibility of God.
Science is now reporting a new theory that could replace the Big Bang. New studies of old quantum equations corrected with quantum trajectories describe the expansion and evolution of the universe within the context of general relativity. This approach eliminates the Big-Bang singularity as well as accounts for dark matter and dark energy. In this new model, the universe has no beginning and no ending. This is similar to what was the prevailing theory before the Big Bang.
This is still being studied and does not, yet, eliminate the Big-Bang. If it becomes the new theory of the universe, does it negate the Biblical account? I say no as all of these possibilities are still only theories, it is not possible to prove how the universe came into existence. And saying that the universe always was and always will be creates problems with other theories, such as evolution. If the universe was always here, then why are we not more "evolved?" Why have all of the stars not burned out and the planets all grown cold? Based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which leads to spatial homogeneity of matter and energy, and especially of temperature, all of the universe should be homogeneous. It seems unlikely that the universe would have always existed. How was it formed, it just was, is and will be? This sounds like God to me. He is the great "I AM."
