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Cosmology and the Age of the Universe

By Ronald W. Leigh, Ph.D.

February 2, 2017
Copyright © 2012, Ronald W. Leigh
Bible quotations are from the New International Version unless otherwise noted

This paper focuses on cosmology and the age of the universe, as distinguished from the paper Geology and the Age of the Earth.  Both of these papers should be read after reading the paper Integrating Science and Theology.

A.  Introduction

1.  The disciplines: cosmology, astronomy, and cosmogony

• Cosmology and astronomy are two complementary disciplines.  Cosmology attempts to summarize big ideas about the origin, formation, and structure of the universe.  Cosmology is part science and part philosophy.  It deals both with the macro scale (outer space) and the micro scale (subatomic particles).
• Astronomy is the science which makes detailed observations of one aspect of the universe (that which is outside earth's atmosphere) and thus forms part of the basis for accepting, revising, or rejecting a given cosmology.  Even though there are many specialized fields of study within astronomy, such as astrophysics and radio astronomy, we will include them all under the general term astronomy.
• Cosmogony focuses specifically on the origin of the universe, or the origin of our solar system.  The terms cosmology and cosmogony are not always distinguished with precision in the literature.  In this paper we will consider cosmogony part of cosmology.

It would be naive to think that astronomy and cosmology are as straightforward, open, and honest as suggested by the above descriptions.  In reality, both cosmology and astronomy, like all sciences (indeed, all fields of study), are affected by such things as assumptions (religious and nonreligious), the mainstream paradigm, psychological factors such as pride and reputation, and funding.

2.  Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the quality and the history of the science behind the current "standard cosmological model," the big bang.  This model is often presented as the sound conclusion of objective scientists based on lines of evidence all of which point in the same direction.  In reality, it is at best a very incomplete theory, and at worst a retreat from sound, careful science.  It is more philosophy than science.  Yet it has become the ruling assumption, the gate-keeper of "scientific" opinion, and the only view given any credit in much of the popular press and school textbooks.  As such, it has also become the easy way to avoid dealing with the teachings of the Bible regarding God and the beginning.

The above paragraph is not intended as a blanket criticism of all science or all scientists.  There are many scientists doing careful research and analysis which adds genuine knowledge and benefits everyone.  Nor is it intended to give the impression that all the claptrap has come from the scientists, as the section below on the Copernican Revolution will illustrate.

B.  Changing concepts of the universe

At first, observations of the universe were made with the naked eye.  Without the help of instruments, such observations yielded rather simplistic concepts of the universe.  Then the invention of the telescope changed those concepts quickly.  Improvements in light telescopes, as well as other types of telescopes, have continually altered our understanding of the universe.

Although there is a general flow implied in the following list of concepts, it should not be taken as indicating that everyone agreed at any particular stage, nor that every group or region went through the same stages.  The list is intended merely to highlight some of the past variations in thought about our solar system and the universe.

1.  Ancients – flat earth with pillars and dome

One of the earliest concepts of the universe was based on observations of a limited region of the earth's surface plus heavenly bodies visible to the naked eye.  The earth was assumed to be flat, and by analogy was assumed to be held up by massive pillars.  The heavenly bodies were assumed to be located in a dome or vault stretched out above the earth.

This is the view of the universe found in ancient civilizations, both eastern and western, including Sumeria, Egypt, and Greece (Homer).  This view is also revealed by quotations from Hannah and Eliphaz found in the Old Testament.

The pillars of the earth are the LORD'S, And He set the world on them.  (Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:8b)

Clouds are a hiding place for Him, so that He cannot see; And He walks on the vault of heaven.  (Eliphaz in Job 22:14)

This same view is also found in some of the inspired biblical writers.  In fact, some have claimed that the Bible teaches a flat earth with pillars and dome.  However, these skeptics fail to make the important distinction between the language a writer uses, and what he asserts.  For a discussion of this problem see the section "Biblical Writers and Incorrect Models – The Vaulted Heavens" in the paper Integrating Science and Theology.

2.  Aristotle – a geo-centered system with celestial spheres

Aristotle, perhaps the most enduring of all philosophers, lived from 384 to 322 BC.  According to his De caelo (On the Heavens), Aristotle believed that the earth was at rest in the center of the universe.  The planets and stars, which were eternal and indestructible, each moved in a continual circular motion within its own heavenly sphere.  Distances from the earth to the stars were thought to be similar to the distance from the earth to the sun.

3.  Aristarchus – a sun-centered system

Aristarchus lived from 310 to 230 BC.  He postulated that the sun and the stars were fixed and that the sun, not the earth, was the center of our solar system.  He also argued that the stars were located at extremely large distances from the sun – many many times the distance from the earth to the sun.  His ideas were not widely accepted.

4.  Ptolemy – a geo-centered system with epicycles

Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek astronomer who lived from approx. A.D. 100 to 165.  According to his Almagest, he believed in a geocentric model of the solar system; the sun revolves around the earth.  Each of the planets also revolves around the earth in an epicycle (a circle whose center moves along the circumference of a larger circle).  This geocentric model prevailed for the next 1400 years, being preserved and enhanced by Arab astronomers in northern Africa and the Middle East.

5.  Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton – a sun centered system

During the A.D. 1500s and 1600s Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), Galileo Galelei (1564-1642), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), and Isaac Newton (1642-1727) established the fact that the sun, not the earth, is at the center of our system of planets.  The ideas of Copernicus and Galileo were not quickly accepted, especially in certain church circles as explained below in the section "Historical example – The Copernican Revolution."

6.  Our changing solar system

The six planets known from ancient times are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn – all visible to the naked eye.  In 1781 William Herschel, using a telescope, discovered Uranus as a planet, which had previously been considered a star.  In 1846 Johann Galle discovered Neptune.  Its existence had been predicted earlier based on its effect on the orbit of Uranus.  In 1930 Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto, considered the ninth planet for the next several decades.  In the mid 1900s the Kuiper belt was discovered, containing thousands of large objects and dozens of dwarf planets in orbit just outside Neptune's orbit.  In 2006, based on an updated (more strict) definition of a planet, Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet reducing the number of planets in our solar system to eight.

7.  Our galaxy, distant stars, the Milky Way, and other galaxies

The idea that the Milky Way, that milky band of light across the night sky, was actually light from distant stars had been suggested as early as 400 BC by the Greek philosopher Democritus.  Nevertheless, for centuries the more common notion was that the illumination called the Milky Way came from the same dome or sphere which contained our own sun and moon.

Ptolemy, Greek astronomer during the AD 100s, enlarged the universe by suggesting that the sphere of the stars was around 16 times more distant from earth than the sun.  When studied by Galileo using his new telescope in the early 1600s, the Milky Way was shown to be a multitude of distant individual stars.  Finally, during the 1920s, Edwin Hubble made observations which led to the realization that our galaxy (with its billions of stars rotating around its own center of gravity) is just one among billions of other galaxies throughout a vast universe.

The wide variety of stars in our galaxy was not appreciated until after 1850 with the use of the spectroscope, which broke the light from heavenly bodies into its various wavelengths and produced a unique set of spectral lines for each different atomic element.  This allowed astronomers to determine the chemical makeup of different stars.

8.  Hubble – an expanding universe, the big bang

In 1929, Edwin Hubble observed red shift in the spectral lines of distant galaxies, implying an expanding universe.  He was not alone in this discovery.  Vesto Slipher and others had made similar observations as early as 1912.

Red shift has been compared with the Doppler effect of a moving sound source, such as the whistle on a passing train.  The sound has a higher pitch as the train is approaching and a lower pitch as the train moves away because the sound waves (for the stationary hearer) are compressed as the train approaches and expanded as it recedes.  In this over simplified example, the amount of change in the pitch can be used to determine the speed of the train.  Similarly, the red shift of spectral lines of distant galaxies indicates that they are receding rather than approaching, and the amount of red shift indirectly indicates the speed.  Of course, the actual situation is considerably more complex than the simple train illustration might suggest.  The train runs on a non-lengthening track, while galaxies and galaxy clusters appear to be moving in expanding space giving some flexibility even to the meaning of "distance."

This concept of an expanding universe, along with severe extrapolation, formed the basis for the notion called the big bang – science's replacement for creation.  The big bang theory has been adopted by most cosmologists and astronomers as their "standard model" of the beginning of our universe.  It is discussed in greater detail in one of the sections below.

9.  M-theory – quantum physics, strings, and multiple universes

Modern theories of cosmology arise from the mathematical solutions to Einstein's general relativity equations.  Over a period of several decades throughout the 1900s, physicists (Einstein and many others) struggled to understand the exact nature and interrelation of such things as atomic particles, energy, light, and gravity.  This is the point at which the micro realm enters the discussion of cosmology.

Eventually, from this intense investigation, quantum physics (also called particle physics) arose as the new understanding of nature supplementing (some would say replacing) Newtonian physics.  Quarks (particles which make up protons and neutrons) were theorized.  Although never observed directly, evidence for their existence was shown beginning in 1995 at the particle accelerator at Fermi Lab (4 miles in circumference) near Batavia, Illinois.  Similar research has been carried on at the more powerful LHC (Large Hadron Collider, 17 miles in circumference) built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) near Geneva, Switzerland.  This research is aimed at testing the validity of the standard model of particle physics and other competing models.

Since direct observation of subatomic particles is not possible, the observation must be indirect.  Particles such as protons and neutrons are accelerated and caused to collide, and the effects of the debris from the collision are studied.  In one sense, this is a very highly advanced and precise technique.  In another sense, however, it might be appropriate to call the process "destruction-observation" and recognize how crude it is.  An analogy might be something like this:  Suppose we did not know how to dissect an animal.  So, instead, we smash the animal with a huge mallet and see what squirts out.  Obviously, such a "mallet" process could easily give misleading views about where things are located inside the animal, and especially about how they function.  Similarly, we must recognize that the collider process raises certain concerns, such as:

• How much is the debris being altered by the attack?
• Does this alteration make the debris act differently after the "smash" than it did before?
• How did it interact with other elements before it was altered and pushed out?
• In view of the extremely high energies involved, are any particles being created by the process?

String theory attempts to describe what exists below the level of quarks.  Strings consist of vibrating or oscillating lines of energy and produce subatomic particles, either bosons (transmit force) or fermions (make up matter).  Those who postulate strings, and do the math that is supposed to describe the behavior of strings, suggest the existence of multiple universes (or, the "multiverse").  Not all theoretical physicists buy into these ideas, but the hope is that future experiments will favor one theory or another.

10.  What's next?

It would be naive to assume that science has now corrected all past errors.  Some of our present scientific beliefs may merely be our current errors, to be followed by others in the future.  The history of science should serve as a caution.  See The history of science – a history of change in the paper "Integrating Science and Theology."

Roger Penrose, an atheist and humanist, has long been respected in the fields of mathematics, quantum physics, and cosmology.  According to Discover Magazine, Penrose believes other universes preceded the big bang and questions much of current quantum mechanics and string theory.  He says that physicists will never come to grips with the grand theories of the universe until they see past the blinding distractions of today's half-baked theories to the deepest layer of the reality in which we live (see the bibliography at end of this paper).  Of course, one must wonder whether that deepest layer will be reached by the next revision of current theories, or by the fifth revision, or by heading out on an entirely different bearing.  One must also wonder whether that deepest layer can be reached, or if it can, whether anyone will be able to recognize it.

C.  Historical example – the Copernican Revolution

There is a classic case which deserves attention, the Copernican Revolution.  The sun-centered model of the solar system put forward by Copernicus was radically new and proved to be the foundation for many later advances in science.

But in the early 1500s Ptolemy's geocentric model was very widely accepted, and had been for a long time.  And the church of that time not only adopted the scientific views of that time, it sponsored much of the scientific activity of the day.  So when a new scientific idea arose, it became not only a challenge to the existing science, but a challenge to the church as well.  Largely because of the unhealthy union of church dogma with scientific belief, the process of evaluating this new science and integrating it with theology was much more difficult than needed.

The church, both Protestant and Catholic, responded poorly to the challenge of the new science.  In fact, bigotry threatened individuals' lives.  We can learn a significant lesson from this past mistake.

1.  The context of the Copernican Revolution

Following are a few highlights from the history of astronomy, focusing on the mechanics of our solar system.

4000 - 1500 B.C. — The builders of Stonehenge in southern England were able to predict positions of the sun and moon.

1300 B.C. — Chinese astronomers recorded eclipses and positions of the stars.

700 B.C. — Babylonian astronomers were able to predict the positions of planets and other astronomical objects.

700 B.C. — The Egyptians used the position of the star Sirius to determine the beginning of springtime.

500's B.C. — Pythagorus, Greek astronomer and mathematician, asserted that the earth is round.

370 B.C. — Eudoxus of Cnidus (in Asia Minor) claimed that the sun, moon, planets, and stars revolve around a stationary earth.  This geocentric model was adopted by Aristotle.

300's B.C. — Heraclides of Pontus (Asia Minor) theorized that the apparent westward movement of the stars, etc., is due to the eastward rotation of the earth, and claimed that Mercury and Venus revolve around the sun.

200's B.C. — Aristarchus of Samos (Greece) suggests that all the planets (including the earth) revolve around the sun, but most rejected this heliocentric model in favor of the geocentric model.

150 A.D. — Claudius Ptolemy, a Greek astronomer living in Alexandria, Egypt, published a work entitled Almagest which was based on the geocentric model and included tables of planetary motions.  Underlying the planetary motions was a complex arrangement of circles (epicycles) whose centers moved in circles (deferents), necessitated by the fact that certain planets were seen to move backwards at certain times.  This geocentric model prevailed for the next 1400 years.

1400 A.D. — American Indians, builders of the Bighorn Medicine Wheel, Wyoming, marked the location of sunrise and sunset on the longest summer day

1543 A.D. — Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer, finally published his momentous work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres.  (He had circulated among his colleagues a hand-copied Brief Treatise explaining his ideas as early as 1510.)  Copernicus claimed that the earth rotated daily around its own axis and yearly around the sun (or more precisely, around a point near the sun).  This is the heliocentric model – the sun (not the Earth) was the center of the universe and all the planets revolve around the sun.  The apparent temporary backward movement of certain planets is explained, not by epicycles, but by the much simpler notion that the earth itself is also moving around the sun.

1613 A.D. — Galileo, Italian astronomer, published "The Starry Messenger" and three letters describing the movements of sunspots.  He favored the Copernican (heliocentric) model.  In 1625 he used the newly invented telescope to observe that several moons revolve around Jupiter, further discrediting the geocentric model.  In 1632 he published another book favoring heliocentrism, which resulted in his arrest and trial before the Inquisition in Rome.  The church planted a document, predated at 1616, which supposedly enjoined Galileo not to teach the new world view.  In the face of these trumped up charges and the threat of torture and possible death, he pretended to recant.  He was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

1620 A.D. — Johannes Kepler, German astronomer, used the data from the meticulous observations of Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer, to show that the planets actually orbit the sun in ellipses.

1665 A.D. — Isaac Newton, English astronomer and scientist, propounded the law of universal gravitation and used it to explain the motions of the planets.  By the time Newton died in 1727, most scientists held that the sun was the center of the universe.

2.  The church’s response

By the time of Copernicus, the geocentric model with its fixed earth was so well entrenched that it enjoyed the status of a self-evident article of faith.  When Copernicus first suggested his heliocentric model to his friends and colleagues, many of them accepted it.  In fact, when it was presented in Rome to Pope Clement VII in 1533, he also accepted it.  However, when the manuscript of Celestial Spheres was taken to Nurnberg, Germany for printing in 1540, Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon objected and the manuscript had to be taken north to Leipzig for publication.

Keep in mind that acceptance of the heliocentric model required a major shift in thinking in several areas.  It not only gave different answers to such questions as whether the earth is fixed and whether the earth is the center of the universe, but it also suggested that the earth was just another planet and that the universe was even larger than previously thought (indeed, perhaps an infinite universe) and thus raised questions about man’s place in the universe.  It even required a new explanation of the fact that objects fall to the ground.  Aristotle had explained falling objects by stating that they tend to move to their natural place, which was at the center of the universe.  Since Aristotle had adopted the geocentric model, that natural place was the center of the earth.  But with the heliocentric model, the center of the universe had moved and a new explanation of falling objects was needed.  So the heliocentric model was truly revolutionary and deeply upsetting to many.

Add to this the fact that a number of verses in the Bible speak of the sun rising and setting (such as Genesis 28:11, Jonah 4:8, and Matthew 5:45), and Ps 19:4-6 speaks of the sun moving in relation to the earth.  These were incorrectly taken as support for a geocentric model.

The Roman Catholic church rejected the idea that the earth was just another planet and continued to ban the use of Copernicus’ work for the next two hundred years.  When Galileo published works using the Copernican (heliocentric) model, he was tried by the church, and under the threat of death, pretended to recant.  In 1992 Pope Paul II publicly recognized the error of the church in this matter.

Bible scholars are now quick to recognize that such biblical references to the sun rising, setting, and moving in relation to the earth merely involve the use of the "language of appearance."  This is a case where the theologians held on to an incorrect view (largely because they had been too quick to give their blessing to a long held scientific model).  The Bible is not wrong in using such language, but theologians were wrong in assuming that the Bible affirms that the sun moves in relation to the earth.  This illustrates the need for a little humility on both sides.

D.  The expanding universe, extrapolation, and the big bang bandwagon

Astronomy has gained a great deal of information in the last several decades thanks to such things as

• The Hubble space telescope — the optical telescope that is the highest (because it is above the earth's atmosphere
• Improved light detection methods
• Ultrafast supercomputers
• The new Keck observatory in Hawaii — the world’s largest optical and infrared telescopes
• The new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) radio telescope in northern Chile — the highest (16,500 feet), most powerful, and most complex telescope on earth

New tools often bring puzzling observations which give rise to many new and "wonderful" ideas floating around among astronomers and cosmologists.  But old theories die hard.  We have seen this throughout the history of science, and we see it today with the standard model of cosmology, the big bang theory and the expanding universe.  Keeping in mind the penchant reporters have for the spectacular, it is still interesting to read the following:

Not long ago [Tod] Lauer and his close friend and collaborator Marc Postman, of the Space Telescope Science Institute, in Baltimore, Maryland, announced the results of a telescopic study they had been working on for more than a year.  The young scientists reached the astonishing conclusion that rather than expanding outward in a stately fashion like the rest of the universe, a collection of many thousands of galaxies, including our own and spanning a billion light-years or so, may be speeding en masse toward a point somewhere in the direction of the constellation Virgo.
      Yet rather than try to assimilate this new finding, most of their colleagues are proclaiming that it must be a mistake. . . .  The analysis is incorrect, they say, simply because it doesn't fit in with any existing theory of how the cosmos works.
. . .
What's happening these days in cosmology . . . verges on the bizarre.  Astronomers have come up with one theory-busting discovery after another, hinting that a scientific revolution may be close at hand.  At stake are answers to some of the most fundamental questions facing humanity: What is the origin of the universe?  What is it made of?  And what is its ultimate destiny?  (Lemonick & Nash, "Unraveling Universe," Time, March 6, 1995, page 77)

Once an idea becomes widely accepted, it takes on a life of its own.  It becomes accepted, like the Ptolemaic view was in its time, as a self-evident dogma which stifles the development and acceptance of new ideas.

Hebert expresses the same discomfort when he states that

Because the Big Bang is the dominant cosmological model, most astronomers interpret all their observations to fit this paradigm. … Big Bang cosmology is filled with a number of strange concepts, including inflation, dark energy, exotic forms of dark matter, and a multiverse. While valid scientific concepts such as quantum mechanics and relativity can indeed seem strange or counterintuitive, strange notions can also result from attempts to prop up a dying theory. Much of the weirdness of modern cosmology stems from an attempt to force the data to fit the Big Bang.  (Jake Hebert, "Why Is Modern Cosmology So Weird?" Acts & Facts, August 2012, vol 41, num 8, pages 11-13, published by Institute for Creation Research)

Consider the story of the American astronomer Halton Arp who, in 1966, published the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.  Arp also researched quasars.  Beginning in the early 1960s quasars were observed to be sources of strong radio emissions and were thought to be extremely distant because they exhibited unusually large redshifts.  After two decades of research, quasars were understood to be massive black holes, often at the heart of galaxies.  But Arp's research led him to question the assumption that quasars are extremely distant.  He found pairs of galaxies which appeared to be interacting with each other (sharing material).  Thus these two galaxies had to be relatively close to each other, yet they had widely different redshifts.  This observation, if correct, raises a serious question about the use of redshift to measure distances, which, in turn, throws doubt upon the concept of the expanding universe.  Arp was doing his research during the early 1980s using some of the largest telescopes available at the time.  However, in 1986 various astronomers who did not like the implications of Arp's findings used their influence to bar him from using those powerful telescopes.  His ideas were not disproved scientifically, they were merely silenced.  Our point has nothing to do with whether Arp's ideas about the relative distances of quasars was correct or not.  Rather, the point is that there is a very real bandwagon effect operating in the field of astronomy, as in many other fields of research.  The bandwagon, or ruling paradigm, often misguides research and suppresses truth.  (Arp's story is documented in Danny Faulkner's Universe by Design, Master Books, 2004, chapter 4.)

Astronomers' opinions have differed on the age of the universe, based on two different methods of measurement.  On the one hand, astronomers studied the chemical composition of star clusters and estimated the age of the universe at 15 - 20 billion years.  On the other hand, by measuring the speeds at which other galaxies recede, some astronomers had calculated the age of the universe at only 8 - 12 billion years, and more recently at over 20 billion.  The current estimate for the age of the universe is somewhere between these earlier estimates – approximately 14 billion years.  The size of the universe is currently thought to be hundreds of billions of light years across.

In 1929 the astronomer Edwin Hubble reported that distant regions of the universe appeared to be moving outward.  This was based on observations that the amount of red-shift of the light waves from distant galaxies was proportional to the distance to those galaxies (Hubble's law), a situation which would make sense in an expanding universe.  Hubble's work was ground breaking, but not well accepted at first.  However, more accurate observations done during the 1960s supported Hubble's original idea, so it became generally accepted in the field of astronomy that the universe is expanding.  Thus, many astronomers and cosmologists assumed that this expansion implied a beginning, that is, an original very tiny spot of extreme energy called a singularity.  The supposed explosion of this singularity is known as the big bang.  Thus, it is claimed that this big bang "created" all matter (all the way from sub-atomic particles and atoms up to galaxies and the entire universe) as well as all the laws of nature.

At this point it should be noted that such an extreme extrapolation, all the way back to a singularity, was not required simply by the acceptance of an expanding universe.  The mere fact (if, indeed, it is a fact) that the universe is expanding does not require a regression all the way back to a singularity.  The same observation of an expanding universe could also be seen simply as the expansion phase of a repeating expansion-contraction cycle, in other words, an oscillating universe – the rate of oscillation being so slow that our current observations are limited to a small portion of one expansion phase.  I am not speaking here of the so-called oscillating universe model suggested by some during the mid 1900s, which called for many bang-expand-contract cycles.  Rather, I am suggesting a much less drastic expansion and contraction, for lack of a better word, a "wobble" in which there would be no original bang.  While it is not my intent to claim that such a model is a serious competitor for the standard big bang model, I mention it as a possibility only to show that the big bang model is only one "story" that might be told by the evidence of an expanding universe.

Now, back to the extreme extrapolation of the big bang model.  At one time, evidence pointed toward a slowdown in the rate of expansion, giving rise to the speculation that the universe might at some time stop expanding, start falling back together toward its initial dense and hot state, only to explode again.  But why would the expansion slow down when the amount of observable matter in the universe did not have enough mass to create the gravitational pull needed to cause such an effect?  In order to make the calculations come out right, it was suggested that there must be some unknown kind of mass in the universe – mass which could not be detected by any of the usual means, but would still supply the gravitational attraction needed.  Since it could not be directly detected, it was called "dark matter."  In other words, dark matter was invented to save the big bang theory, and needed to be tested.  And there are a number of indirect lines of evidence which support the notion of dark matter, including the rotational speeds of outer parts of galaxies and the lens effect on light passing by galaxies.

However, observations of Class Ia supernovae in distant parts of the universe, reported in 1998, have now convinced most astronomers that the rate of expansion of the universe is actually increasing.  This has led to another invention, "dark energy," which is supposedly pushing outward with greater force than the gravity of dark matter and thus increasing the rate of expansion of the universe.  Again, this dark energy has no direct observational supporting evidence.  There is also the "inflation," a rapid expansion, starting immediately after the big bang, and again having more mathematical support than empirical support.  There is also the recent invention of "dark flow," perhaps caused by other universes, to account for anomalies in different portions of our universe.

Keep in mind that this tendency to invent dark things (things that cannot be directly observed) is not limited to big bang cosmology.  Remember phlogiston which was thought to be needed for combustion, and luminiferous ether which was thought to be needed for the transmission of light.  Indeed, such a tendency may be the modern mathematical version of the ancient tendency of primitive people to invent "gods" to explain natural events which they did not understand.

There is also the more basic question of how light behaves in the presence of dark matter, dark energy, and dark flow.  Is the speed of light constant?  Is it possible that the presence of all these "dark" elements could change the behavior of light so much that all of the initial red-shift observations could be misleading?

Such a convoluted big bang theory, with its many variations and many problems, forces us to raise a question.  Has the big bang theory become so complex that it begs for a replacement?  If you have to make up so many undetectable entities to save your theory, perhaps the theory should be discarded.  What about the principle of parsimony?  Is it time to apply Occam's razor?  Are we at the same point now that we were at earlier, near the end of the reign of the Ptolemaic view of an earth centered solar system?  Do we need to set a tangled mathematical mess aside and seek something more simple?

It seems as though all the intricacies of the big bang model and M-theory have a direct parallel in the epicycles of Ptolemy.  Those epicycles "reigned" for a long time, being accepted because a simpler alternate theory had not been sufficiently developed or established by observation.  But once the simpler approach is understood, and shown by observation, the old complexity is easily seen for what it is – just plain wrong.  Some day the same may happen with all the strings and dark elements of the big bang model and M-theory.

The above are just a few examples of a continual barrage of questions generated by recent observations which require continual inventions to adapt the standard cosmogenic model, the big bang.  As the American philosopher and scientist, Thomas Kuhn, has emphasized, the current scientific system of belief (Kuhn's "paradigm") takes on a life of its own which tends to smother true scientific progress by dismissing any new data which doesn't fit.  In the words of Geoffrey Burbidge of the University of California, San Diego,

There's a tremendous bandwagon rolling, which makes anybody who says anything contrary to the Big Bang highly suspect  (quoted by Ivars Peterson in "State of the Universe: If not with a Bib Bang, then What?" Science News, April 13, 1991, page 235)

E.  Stephen Hawking's sophomoric cosmology

Stephen Hawking, the well known British mathematician, theoretical physicist, and cosmologist, has attempted to explain his view of the beginning of the universe in his book, The Grand Design (coauthored with Leonard Mlodinow, Bantam, 2010), and in the video "Grand Design: Did God Create the Universe?"  For Hawking, this is the equivalent of asking, "What, or who, caused the big bang?"  He thinks of "M-theory" (a collection of theories which are extensions of string theory and which include quantum physics) as the best answer, concluding that the laws of nature, as described by M-theory, explain, even cause, the universe.  Unfortunately, his explanation has to be considered sophomoric on several counts.  (The following criticism of Hawking's cosmology is based mostly on the video mentioned above, making comparisons with the Limitations of Science found in the paper "Integrating Science and Theology.")

First, Hawking states that "Asking if God exists is a valid question for science."  But the tools of science are very limiting, being based on observation of the physical realm.  Within that physical realm is where science can speak with some authority (the history of science supports our use of the adjective "some").  In the non-physical realm (the realm of spirit, mind, and God) science can speak with absolutely no authority.  Doing so would be like looking through a tube and seeing only a small circle of objects, then authoritatively claiming that no objects exist outside the circle of observed objects because they are not seen.  To his discredit, Hawking has ignored one of the most basic limitations of science.

Second, Hawking states that, because there are fixed laws that govern the universe, we don't need supernatural explanations.  But such a statement depends on the notion that every effect can have only one cause, and therefore only one explanation.  This is an indefensible notion that can be easily disproved by numerous every day examples.  In fact, Hawking himself refers to

different ways in which one could model the same physical situation, with each employing different fundamental elements and concepts. If two such physical theories or models accurately predict the same events, one cannot be said to be more real than the other; rather, we are free to use whichever model is most convenient.  (The Grand Design, page 7)

Yet, when it comes to the existence of the universe, the alternate model involving God is not allowed by Hawking.

Third, Hawking uses the failure of one aspect of one set of religious beliefs to argue against all religious beliefs and in favor of science.  He cites the example of the Vikings who were wrong about what caused a solar eclipse, and what caused the sun to re-appear.  (And there are many other past and present beliefs that he could have used to make a similar point.)  However, to select a certain religious error and use it to discredit all religious belief is rather juvenile.  The tables could be easily turned.  We could easily cite a particular scientific belief that turned out to be wrong, such as the belief in phlogiston, and many other early scientific beliefs, especially in the field of medicine.  (See The history of science – a history of change in the paper "Integrating Science and Theology.")  It would be juvenile for us to then state, on the basis of that cited belief, that all scientific beliefs must be in error.

Fourth, Hawking claims that the total matter and energy in the universe balances the negative energy of space.  Then he claims that, if the universe adds up to nothing, you don't need a God to create it.  But does it really add up to nothing?  Has Hawking or anyone else actually measured all that matter (including dark matter) and energy (including dark energy), or all that negative space?  Obviously not.  His point is merely an untested premise, and as such it makes a very weak basis for his argument.

Fifth, Hawking's conclusion is that nothing caused the Big Bang.  The universe created itself.  He says that the laws of nature, acting on the mass and energy of the universe, started a process that would eventually produce us.  But to speak in this fashion disconnects the laws of nature from matter and energy, personifies the laws of nature turning them into a causal agent, and assumes that this causal agent is above, or before, mass and energy.  But the laws of nature do not really have any such life of their own; they are merely our statements about the regularities we observe in nature.  Hawking's argument at this point is merely a word game which pays little respect for consistency in the definition of terms.  In effect, Hawking has merely pushed the question back one giant step, forcing us to ask him, What or who established the laws of nature?  (And this is to say nothing of the theories popular with many cosmologists involving multiple universes, each with different fixed laws.)

For another critique of the book The Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow, see William Lane Craig's video on the subject "The Origins of the Universe: Has Hawking Eliminated God?" (especially the first 31 minutes).  The video is available here, on Craig's website, reasonablefaith.org.

Also see the discussion of various problems with Hawking's earlier speculations regarding quantum gravity models in Craig's Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (3rd ed., Crossway, 2008, pages 134-136).  These speculations involved placing imaginary numbers in Einstein's gravitational equations and the results have been characterized by Craig and others as "not realist," "metaphysical cosmology," and "a mathematical contrivance," concluding with the statement that "What brought the universe into being remains unexplained on such accounts."

People who listen to Hawking and his colleagues need to recognize where such ideas reside on a continuum.  On one end (let's say, the right end) is true experimental science.  On the opposite end is storytelling.  Much of popular science and theoretical physics resides somewhere between these two extremes.

As Paul warned Timothy,

… the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

F.  Cycles and the appearance of age

Think about some of the cycles in nature:

• Days and Seasons:  Sunrise, sunset.  Spring/summer/fall/winter.
• The water cycle:  Clouds produce rain or snow, which flows through rivers into lakes and oceans, which evaporates back to clouds.
• The oxygen and nitrogen cycles:  In a complex process, oxygen moves from the air through plants and animals and back again to the air.  Similarly, nitrogen in the atmosphere moves to the soil, plants, and animals, then back to the atmosphere.
• The carbon cycle:  Carbon in the atmosphere and in the soil is absorbed into plants where the process of photosynthesis uses the carbon to make carbohydrates (simple sugars).  The plants are then eaten by animals.  The animals use oxygen to oxidize the carbohydrates for energy (the reverse of photosynthesis) and return the carbon to the atmosphere as they breathe and to the soil when they die and decompose.
• Tree reproduction:  For example, conifer trees produce pollen from a male cone which is carried by wind to fertilize the gamete in a female cone, which develops an embryo in a seed.  The seed drops to the ground and germinates producing a seedling. The seedling matures to produce cones for the next cycle.
• Insect reproduction: Many insects go through four stages: egg, then larva (usually worm-like), then pupa (involving cocoons and metamorphosis into the adult shape), then adult, producing more eggs.
• Fish reproduction:  For example, Alaska salmon hatch from eggs deposited in gravel beds at the bottom of streams.  They progress through stages of alevin, then fry (which go downstream), then parr, then smolt (which adjust to saltwater), then adult (which swim thousands of miles in the ocean).  After several years they re-adapt to fresh water, swim upstream to spawn, depositing and fertilizing eggs in their original birth stream.
• Animal and human reproduction:  Parents produce offspring which become parents.
• The rock cycle:  Magma becomes lava which crystallizes into igneous rock, which erodes into sedimentary rock which can lead to deep burial and metamorphic rock, back to magma.
• The star cycle:  A nebula of interstellar gas and dust collapses under its own gravity into a protostar, which begins nuclear fusion and exhibits hydrostatic equilibrium during its "main sequence," like our sun.  Eventually, depending on its mass, this "adult" star becomes a white dwarf, or goes through a red giant phase before becoming a white dwarf, or explodes into a supernova, or collapses directly into a black hole.  The supernova supplies high mass elements which enrich surrounding nebulae, and produces a shock wave that can restart the process of star formation.

Indeed, is there anything in nature that is not cyclic?  We are not talking about mere sequences with several steps.  When we refer to cycles we have in mind steps in a closed loop.  The loop may be complex with various branches, some going to or coming from other cycles.  However, it is a complete loop, which means that it "comes around again."  So when we observe nature in its present state, the obvious previous state comes to mind:

• We observe the sunset and assume an earlier sunrise.  We observe a sunrise and assume an earlier sunset.
• The flowing river implies earlier rain or snow.  Rain implies rain clouds formed by evaporation from lakes and oceans fed by rivers.
• We see a mature tree and assume it was once a seedling.  We see a seedling and assume it came from a seed produced by a mature tree.
• We find sedimentary rock and assume earlier erosion of igneous rock.  We find igneous rock and assume earlier buried sedimentation.
• We see a dying star, such as a red giant, and assume it came from a gas nebula.  We observe a nebula and suspect it was enriched with material from a dying star. 

So the cycle keeps going round and round, and each phase in the cycle implies an earlier phase.

Here's the question

If you were going to create any one of these cycles, how would you do it without also producing the appearance of age?  In other words, how would you avoid the implication of earlier stages?  This is an ancient question ("Which came first, the chicken or the egg?").  It seems that the implications of the question for the subject of creation have often been missed.

The appearance of age, in itself, can be an indication of actual age (assuming the presence of earlier stages in the cycle).  However, the appearance of age could also come about merely from the fact that the cycles have been created mid-cycle – the only way cycles can be created.  Given the possibility of creation, an adult human being does not necessitate an earlier child.  A grown tree does not necessitate a former seedling.  A "main sequence" star does not necessitate a protostar.  Similarly, radiation (light) reaching earth does not necessitate a distant (and therefore ancient) source of that radiation.

G.  Light from distant galaxies

One of the most studied galaxies, other than our own, is the Andromeda galaxy.  It is said to be 2.5 million light-years from earth.  The Virgo cluster of galaxies is said to be 59 million light-years away.  And the distance from earth to the edge of the universe (assuming it has an edge) is thought to be approximately 46 billion light-years.

Light from distant galaxies gives the appearance of age.  Here's the argument, using the Virgo cluster as an example.  Since Virgo is 59 million light-years from earth (perhaps better, was this distance from earth when its light left and the universe was smaller), it took 59 million years for its light to get here.  Therefore, Virgo must be at least 59 million years old.  Since all light sources take time to develop, and since we have no idea how long Virgo has been radiating light, the age of the universe may be much larger than 59 million years.  In fact, the current estimate for the age of the universe is around 14 billion years.

By the way, it should be noted that this current estimate does not come from the comparison of distances and the speed of light, which would yield results in scores of billions of years.  Rather, it comes from observations made after the 1965 discovery of background microwave radiation and the rate of its dissipation, gathered from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) launched in 2001.  Nevertheless, the issue of light from distant galaxies is a popular argument for an old universe, which is the reason we raise this issue here.

Based on our discussion of cycles in the previous section, we must remember that the appearance of age does not require age.

In addition to the issue of cycles, there are important issues pertaining to light that need to be raised.  What about all that dark matter, dark energy, and dark flow throughout the universe.  What is the effect of these dark things on light and its speed?  And then there is the question of the effect that parallel universes, if they exist, might have on light.

With (1) the difficulty of creating cycles, and (2) the questions about the nature and the speed of light, it seems that the argument for an ancient (billions of years old) universe is not quite as sound as some might pretend.

H.  Conclusion

When it comes to the subject of the big bang, what has been popularly presented as pure and obvious scientific certainty is, in fact, tenuous philosophic speculation.  You know something is amiss when an entire community dismisses a scientific observation made by colleagues simply because it doesn't neatly fit "established" views.  It raises the question, "Are you really looking for the truth?"

And why is the one unique source of information about the beginning (the book that claims to be the written testimony of the Creator, himself) tossed aside?  What is needed is an integration of all the evidence, including the physical and the biblical.

Annotated bibliography

Newman, Robert C., Perry G. Phillips, and Herman J. Eckelmann, Genesis One & the Origin of the Earth, 2nd ed., 2007, Available online at newmanlib.ibri.org. (original 1977 edition published by InterVarsity Press) — Excellent discussion of both the scientific and biblical evidence.

Penrose, Roger, an interview entitled "Roger Penrose Says Physics Is Wrong," discovermagazine.com, Oct., 2009 (If link fails, search archives for title) — This is a very insightful interview with a real insider.  A candid discussion of the current state of affairs in particle physics and cosmology.

Strobel, Lee, The Case for a Creator, Zondervan, 2004, 341 pages — Chapters 5-7 are relevant to the topic of cosmology.  Helpful interviews with leading scholars and scientists in the field.

Hebert, Jake, "Why Is Modern Cosmology So Weird?" Acts & Facts, August 2012 (vol 41 num 8) pages 11-13, published by Institute for Creation Research.  Also available online at www.icr.org/article/6919. — Hebert is a researcher at the Institute for Creation Research and has a Ph.D. in physics.  In this article he presents multiple problems with big bang cosmology.