Big Bang ?

The Big Bang theory is now taught as a 'fact' of science in schools, universities and the media. Yet it is only a theory, and so by definition it has not been proved. The trouble with the popularising of science is that the uncertain thoughts of a few become the accepted dogma of the masses.

According to the Big Bang theory, everything we see in the Universe today has evolved out of a random explosion of matter. Here is a typical summary of the theory found in theGreenwich Guide to Stars, Galaxies and Nebulae.

'This is how the Universe started... everything was jam-packed together in one place as a super dense blob the Universe suddenly came into existence all at one place with an almighty bang, incomparably more powerful than anything that has ever happened since, which flung the material far out into space and was directly responsible for the expansion of the Universe which is still going on... After the first million years had elapsed, the Universe was a huge cloud of uniform, thin gas rather hotter than the surface of the sun... over millions of years the Universe became divided up into innumerable blobs of gases which would eventually become clusters of galaxies.'

So what are the problems with this theory? Here are a couple: In fact, there can never be a satisfactory scientific explanation to this problem because science is based on the fact that something cannot be created from nothing.

For stuff to come into being from nowhere there must be an external cause. Either matter has always existed, or it was made by something or someone outside of matter - and God could be the explanation.Another problem with the Big Bang theory is related to one of the foundational laws of science - the Second law of Thermodynamics.

Put simply, this states that the Universe is running down; it is losing energy and becoming more and more disordered. This law is used to explain many of the processes we see around us every day. The trouble is where did all this energy come from in the first place? The Universe can't explain itself: it needed to have 'stuff and energy' put into it at the beginning.

For the atheist this is a great problem, but for someone who believes in God there is a solution: the Universe does not need to explain itself, He created it. To get around this, some atheists have suggested that the essential stuff of the Universe has existed forever and is in a continual cycle. At one time it is a tiny blob, which then explodes and expands out into space.

Once the particles have gone far enough to be pretty evenly spread out, then gravity starts to pull them back together again until all the matter is contracted, over millions of years, to a tiny blob. And then the cycle is repeated so that what we have in effect is a continuously expanding and contracting Universe - what some scientists call the Oscillating Universe. But surely this is merely the fruit of a fanciful imagination.

Let me suggest two counter arguments against all this fantasy.

The first one is quite simple really: there is no evidence. The second is that all-important law of scientific explanation: 'If something looks like a banana, smells like a banana and tastes like a banana, then you need really good evidence to say that it is not a banana.'

All we see is a decaying Universe that needed 'something outside of itself' to create it. If I might be allowed to put it a little irreverently: 'God fits the bill.'

The other thing to note in all this is that if we are the result of some massive explosion that hurtles matter and energy around the cosmos in a totally random and horrifically destructive manner, then how does that explain one little thing? And that thing is the amazingly complicated and apparently profoundly designed person reading this article?

Image credit: Joe Jordan/Adam Block/NOAO/AURA/NSF

Read more by Jonathan Skinner