Update: There is a reason I don't remember writing this, because I didn't. Dr. Hugh Ross did. Sorry about that, but I remember studying it in depth probably saved it and when I saw it on an old USB drive thought I wrote it. Doesn't change its truth. Actually gives it more kick of authority. I'm kind of embarrassed at myself, I'm just glad I caught this myself..
The
Infinitely Oscillation Universe Model
In the oscillating
universe model suggested by physicists like Robert Dicke and John
Gribbin, the universe alternates for infinite time between phases of
expansion and contraction. Gravity halts the expansion and generates
a succeeding phase of contraction. An unknown physical mechanism is
proposed to somehow bounce the universe from a period of contraction
into a period of expansion, and the characteristics of the
contraction and expansion phases
are presumed not to vary significantly with time.
According to Princeton
physicist Robert Dicke, an infinite number of these cycles of
expansion and contraction of the universe would “relieve us of the
necessity of understanding the origin of matter at any finite time in
the past.” The creation event becomes irrelevant, and our existence
could be attributed to one lucky bounce.
But the universe has
far less mechanical efficiency than a foam-rubber ball. In 1983 and
1984, American astrophysicists Marc Sher, Alan Guth, and Sidney
Bludman demonstrated that even if the universe contained enough mass
to halt its current expansion, any ultimate collapse would end in a
thud, not a bounce. In terms of mechanical energy, the universe more
closely resembles a wet lump of clay than a pumped up volleyball (see
table 1). Sher and Guth confidently entitled their paper “The
Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe.”
Table 1: Mechanical
Efficiencies of Some Common Systems
If the universe
oscillated, that means it is behaving like an engine or a system
designed to perform work. The ability of a system or engine to
perform work or to oscillate depends on its mechanical efficiency.
The universe literally ranks as the worst engine in all existence.
Its mechanical efficiency is so low that oscillation is impossible.
System or
Engine Mechanical Efficiency
Diesel engine 40%
Gasoline engine 25%Steam engine 12%
Human body 1%
Universe 0.00000001%
Arnold Sikkema and
Werner Israel grasped it, hypothesizing bizarre effects of merging
black holes in that split second when all the matter and energy of
the universe would still have been contained in a very tiny volume.
These men honestly admitted that no consistent theory of quantum
gravity yet exists. It must be noted, too, that the oscillation
theory they proposed yields at most only a sharply limited number of
bounces. It offers no escape from the notion of a beginning in the
not-so-distant past.
That slender straw
grasped by Sikkema and Israel was crushed recently by Russian
physicist Andre Linde. At a symposium on the large-scale structure of
the universe, Linde demonstrated that the universe, with the
characteristics we observe, cannot have arisen from a bounce in the
quantum gravity era. Why?
There are two
considerations:
During the collapse phase toward a hypothetical bounce at least one region or volume (technically called a “domain”) in the universe would utterly resist being crushed to the tiny volume necessary for the exotic effects of quantum gravity to take over.
- The bounce, if it could take place, would not produce sufficient matter.
The
Pope, the Big Bang, and God
It took Pope Pius XII ,
in his 1951 address to the Pontifical Academy of Science, to turn
that question into an international debate. The Pope spoke of how
“true science discovers God in an ever-increasing degree.” The
Big Bang suggested that “the material universe had in finite time a
mighty beginning.” It showed how matter was dependent on a
Necessary Being. In other word, matter had mutability and nature a
teleological order. He acknowledged that there can be no absolute
proof from science regarding God, and cautioned against tying faith
to transient theories. Nevertheless, the evidence was looking pretty
good: a religious concept of creation was “entirely compatible”
with the Big Bang. Science had “confirmed the contingency of the
universe…..Hence, creation took place in time. Therefore, there is
a Creator. Therefore God exists!”
Although it quickly
entered popular culture and became a household term, the Big Bang
theory still had only provisional acceptance in scientific circles
until the 1990s. To evaluate the precise fluctuations, or “wrinkles”
in the background radiation reported in 1965, NASA sent aloft the
Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite in 1989. The findings,
announced three years later, were an astounding endorsement of the
Big Bang, explaining why its apparently smooth beginning ended up in
a universe full of clumpy galaxies. The proof came none too soon,
said a relieved COBE mission leader George Smoot: “Very simply, the
discovery of the wrinkles salvaged Big Bang theory at a time when
detractors were attacking it in increasing numbers.”
When the Cambridge
astrophysicist Stephen Hawking arrived at the Vatican in 1981 to
address a session of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, he did not
question the Big Bang, but he may have felt he was taking on the
legacy of Pope Pius. Hawking unveiled his “no-boundary theory,:
which used quantum physics and “imaginary time” to say there was
no beginning to the universe. So long as the universe had a
beginning, we could suppose it had a creator,” Hawking has said
elsewhere. “But if the universe is really completely
self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither
beginning nor end. What place then for a creator?”
Astronomer
George Coyne, a Jesuit and director of the Vatican Observatory, said
Hawking embarked on his foray into theology with too little
philosophical training in the matter. He was mixing up the “nothings”
as used by physics and by theology. “He speaks of a quantum
nothing, but that is not nothing,” Coyne said, playing on words.
“It has nothing to do with the nothing of Scripture-that God
created the universe from nothing.” In sum, “the God he excludes
is not the God we believe in.”
Time
and the Beginning
Even before the death
of the oscillating universe model, a fundamental reason was uncovered
for the failure of cosmological models that rejected the finite age
of the universe. In a series of papers appearing from 1966 to 1970,
three British astrophysicists, Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and
Roger Penrose, extended the solution of the equations of general
relativity to include space and time. The result was called the
space-time theorem of general relativity. This theorem demonstrated
that if general relativity is valid for the universe then, under very
general conditions, space and time must have originated in the same
cosmic bang that brought matter and energy into existence.
In Hawking’s words,
time itself must have a beginning. Proof of the beginning of time may
rank as the most theologically significant theorem of all time,
assuming validity of the theory of general relativity.
This space-time theorem
tells us that the dimensions of length, width, height, and time have
existed only for as long as the universe has been expanding, less
than about twenty billion years. Time really does have a beginning.
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 preexistent to the time
dimension of the cosmos. This conclusion is powerfully important to
our understanding of who God is and who or what God isn’t. 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. Pantheism and
atheism do not square with the facts.
Pantheism claims there
is no existence beyond the universe, that the universe is all there
is, and that the universe always has existed. Atheism claims that the
universe was not created and no entity exists independent of the
matter, energy, and space-time dimensions of the universe. But all
the data accumulated in the twentieth century tells us that a
transcendent Creator must exist, for all the matter, energy, length,
width, height, and even time suddenly and simultaneously came into
being from some source beyond itself.
It is valid to refer to
such a source, entity, or being as the Creator, for creating is
defined as causing something-in this case everything in the
universe-to come into existence. Matter, energy, space, and time are
the effects He caused. Likewise, it is valid to refer to the Creator
as transcendent, for the act of causing these effects must take place
outside or independent of them.
Not only does science
lead us to these conclusions, but so also does the Bible, and it is
the only holy book to do so.
~ Hugh Ross, PhD
~ Hugh Ross, PhD
