User:Zachary Swanson/sandbox

Background

Why does anything exist at all? What caused our cosmos to come into being? These are two of the fundamental questions of metaphysics. Ever since the beginning of human evolution, we have tried to come up with ways to explain our existence. Before modern science, creation myths were used as ways to understand the bizarreness that is existence. Christians believe in the word of the Bible, which asserts that there is one all-powerful being that created the cosmos in which we live. Muslims believe in the Quran, which, as a Abrahamic religion, also proclaims monotheism as the ultimate truth. Hindu texts profess that there is no creator at all, and the universe was born out of nothing. Of course, there are differences in the sects of each of these religions. Take young earth creationism, a “literal” (disputed) interpretation of the Bible that claims the Earth was created approximately six thousand years ago. There are also modern Muslim scholars who are re-interpretting the Quran as possibly referencing the Big Bang. Additionally, there is Jainism. Though not a direct sect of Hinduism, Jainism and Hinduism both share very similar beliefs such as karma and rebirth. Jainism is transtheistic, or “beyond theism and atheism”. [1]

Revelations made in the 20th and 21st century have given light to what is likely the beginning of the universe. The Big Band Theory was developed in the early 20th century and is still being modified in accordance with new observations. The basis of the Big Bang Theory is that there was a definite beginning of the cosmos. This was a hotly debated topic in the physics community for years, as many (including Albert Einstein at one point [2]) believed in the steady state model, which states that the universe is static and infinite. However, observational evidence strongly favors the Big Bang Theory, and the steady state model is now rejected by the vast majority of physicists. [3] Something that is important to note is that the Big Bang Theory cannot currently explain what happened before the Planck Epoch, i.e. it does not explain what caused the Big Bang, if anything. So, how do religious texts and their interpretations compare to the current standard model of cosmology?

Creation across religions

Creation in the Bible

“יְהִי אוֹר”, “Fiat lux!”, “Let there be light!” This is the third line in the Book of Genesis, describing God’s command that created the cosmos. This line is the reason why, in Judeo-Christian dogma, the cosmos has an absolute beginning. Genesis is the book of Judeo-Christian cosmogony, detailing the beginning of the cosmos and what happened soon afterwards. Genesis describes the creation of the cosmos, the seven-day creation of the Earth, and the beginning of humanity and life itself. The Bible is sometimes interpreted literally, such as the Christians who believe that Adam and Eve were real people who did exactly what was described in the Bible. Other Christians believe the Bible is a metaphor. For instance, many believe that the creation myth of Adam and Eve is a metaphor for evolution. [4]

Creation in the Quran

Sura 41.11: “Then He directed Himself to the heaven and it is a vapor, so He said to it and to the earth: Come both, willingly or unwillingly. They both said: We come willingly.” This is how Islam explains the earth and heavens coming together as one. The rest of this chapter of the Quran notes the seven heavens, disparages polytheism, and places an emphasis on an all-powerful god. Interestingly, Islam shares all of these features with Judaism and Christianity. One distinction is that the amount of time it took God to create the cosmos. Though the Quran seemingly states that God created the Earth in six days, similar to Christianity, when read along with the entirety of the Quran, it is not so clear. The Arabic word for day, youm, is used to mean multiple different measurements of time throughout the Quran, such as 1,000 and 50,000 years. [5]

Creation in Hinduism

Rig-Veda (10-129): “Then even nothingness was not, nor existence.” Immediately, there is a striking difference between the Abrahamic religions and Hinduism: nothingness. There was never nothingness in the Abrahamic faiths, for God is holy and eternal. However, in Hinduism, nothing is the beginning from whence all things arose. There was no creator at all. In fact, Hinduism seems to state that the question of creation is futile: “But, after all, who knows, and who can say whence it all came, and how creation happened?” The Rig-Veda then goes on to refute theism: “The gods themselves are later than creation, so who knows truly whence it has arisen?”

History of the Big Bang

As for the Big Bang, the original idea was introduced by Georges Lemaître in 1927. He published a paper in which he described the “primeval atom”, or the idea that the cosmos began at a finite point as predicted by general relativity. Though widely overlooked at first, Edwin Hubble’s observational evidence confirming this idea prompted it into the limelight, particularly after Albert Einstein endorsed it. [6] Due to recent estimates, the universe is believed to be 13.787±0.020 billion (109) years old. [7] The Big Bang Theory does not predict what caused the Big Bang (if it had any cause at all). In 1998, the universe’s expansion was revealed to be accelerating [8], which was a shock to cosmologists.

Ultimate fate of the universe

Main article: Ultimate fate of the universe

According to the Big Bang Theory, what is the ultimate fate of the universe? The most widely accepted idea currently is the heat death of the universe. The idea is that if the universe continues expanding forever, eventually everything will be so far apart that it will no longer be possible for heat to be produced. An alternative hypothesis is that the universe’s expansion will eventually reverse, and the universe will collapse in on itself, potentially causing another Big Bang. This idea, however, conflicts with the evidence that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, making it incredibly unlikely. Unless something vastly changes the current understanding of the expansion rate of the universe, the heat death hypothesis will remain the most prominent. [9]

Religious agreements with the Big Bang

Christianity

Christianity and the Big Bang do not necessarily conflict, as long as some concessions are made. For example, there is no problem with “Let there be light!” being a direct reference to the Big Bang. It is indeed a reference to an absolute beginning of the universe, which was disputed by scientists for years. However, most other reconciliations of the Big Bang with the Bible is used by calling it a metaphor. Of course, it certainly could be, but that isn’t exactly the most scientifically rigorous argument.

Islam

Many Islamic scholars have reinterpreted the text of the Quran to be compatible with the Big Bang, perhaps even predicting it. One example that has been used is chapter 21, verse 30: “Have those who disbelieved not considered that the heavens and the earth were a joined entity, and We separated them and made from water every living thing? Then will they not believe?” Some have said that this is a reference to the idea of an initial singularity, an the hypothesized point immediately before the Planck Epoch which would have contained all mass and space-time. [10] Chapter 51, verse 47 is sometimes claimed to be a claim of the universe’s expansion: “And the heaven, We raised it high with power, and most surely We are the makers of things ample.” [11]

Hinduism

Hinduism is often regarded as being more scientifically accurate than other religions. For example, the idea of creation from nothingness is now getting much more attraction with the Big Bang Theory. The Vedic texts also contain a form of what would now be described as “bubble universes”, making the analogy that our universe is “one mustard seed in a bag full of a practically uncountable number of mustard seeds.” The Hindu text Bhagavata Purana also notes that time is relative, hundreds of years before Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity: “... One’s life endures for only one hundred years, in terms of the times in the different planets... Eternal time is certainly the controller of different dimensions, from that of the atom up to the super-divisions of the duration of Brahmā’s life; but, nevertheless, it is controlled by the Supreme. Time can control only those who are body conscious, even up to the Satyaloka or the other higher planets of the universe.” [12]

Religious conflicts with the Big Bang

Christianity

Biblical literalism (specifically creationism) is inherently incompatible with the Big Bang. Answers in Genesis (AIG), a Biblical literalist organization that believes in the absolute perfectness of the Bible, says just that: “This story of origins is entirely fiction. But sadly, many people claim to believe the big-bang model. It is particularly distressing that many professing Christians have been taken in by the big bang, perhaps without realizing its atheistic underpinnings.” (It is important to note that AIG is entirely wrong about the Big Bang having “atheistic underpinnings. Georges Lemaître was a Catholic priest. [13]) Additionally, according to all known evidence, Earth was not the first planet created, and it appears to have no special place within the universe. This is known as the Copernican Principle. This directly conflicts with many sects of Christianity, not just Young Earth Creationists. If Earth is not special, then humans are not special. If humans are not special, then God is not special, as we were “built in his image”.

Islam

Regarding Islam, a literal interpretation of the Earth and “heavens” coming together at the same time would conflict with the modern scientific consensus. By modern estimates, Earth is 4.5 billion years old [14], approximately 9.3 billion years younger than the rest of the universe. One of the arguments previously mentioned is that Islam predicted the initial singularity. The initial singularity, however, is an extremely controversial idea. It is derived entirely from general relativity, completely neglecting quantum theory. It is fairly well accepted among physicists that once you get down to a small enough level, the rules of the universe as we understand them seem to break down. By applying general relativity to an infinitesimally small size, the initial singularity hypothesis is likely in violation of the laws of physics as they are now understood. [15]

Hinduism

World-renowned scientist Carl Sagan once said, “The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.” [16] While this quote is still commonly used to scientifically justify Hinduism, it could actually be used as a scientific condemnation. Sagan died in 1996. The discovery of the universe’s increasing expansion did not come out until 1998. The hypothesis that the universe may collapse in on itself at all was effectively destroyed by those observations, and with it the idea that that process could cause another Big Bang, conveniently solving the origin of the universe.

References

[16] Carl Sagan (2013). Cosmos. Ballantine. p. 273. ISBN 978-0-345-53943-4.