Blog

by Steve Risner

Last week I took a short look at a few of the scientific issues surrounding the Big Bang. We briefly looked at the CBR (cosmic background radiation) and touched on expansion. That leads us to redshifts. The redshift is what is put up as support for the expansion of the universe. Is it really expanding? Who knows? Redshift is an apparent shifting of the wavelength of light seen from luminous objects in space. If the universe is expanding as they say, it would be interesting to find out where all the energy lost would be going. Gentry wrote a series of papers on this, one of which outlined the massive loss of energy that would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics (which we’ll get to in a moment). Redshifts are real, for sure. But what they show us is anyone’s guess. Some say it’s similar to a Doppler shift—exemplified by the change in pitch of the sound of a race car going by or a siren on an ambulance. What is strange is that many objects in space that must be close together (because they have a visible bridge between them) can have very different redshifts. Redshifts are used to determine distance. How does this stand to reason in light of the observable data? Essentially, this means they've got 2 completely different measurements of distance and claim they are the same. Redshifts also seem to be quantized or in specific patterns. This is not in agreement with the Big Bang at all. Then we have quasars and their redshifts which do not work out at all in light of their apparent positions in space (no pun intended there). Quasars are extremely bright and have huge redshifts. But they seem to be found within structures or very close to structures that are not near as far away.

The Big Bang depends upon the cosmological principle which states the universe is everywhere the same, more or less. On the local level, galaxies obviously clump into clusters or even superclusters, but cosmologists have assumed that on a larger scale this clumping disappears. Extensive surveys of galaxy distributions have revealed that clumping and long strands of galaxies seem to be the norm on the largest scales that have been studied. The uniformity of the universe is assumed, but all evidence indicates that the universe is not uniform or evenly spread out. In other words, there is no evidence that the universe is homogeneous.

A very large problem many have simply waived their hand at is the First Law of Thermodynamics. The Big Bang does not answer the question of, “Where did everything come from?” It cannot do that. It is only an explanation of what may have happened AFTER everything we know of (matter and energy) existed. Essentially, the story goes that nothing expanded rapidly to give us everything we see today in the universe. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. The Big Bang gets a pass here. The answer most will give is that the laws of nature don't apply to this particular instance. How nice, right? When faced with a problem that goes against everything we've ever observed, they simply say, “Well, that doesn't apply in this one instance even though we know it applies to every other case in the universe that we know of.”

Another issue with demonstrable laws of science is that of entropy. Entropy means, essentially, randomness or running down—decay. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states a system will increase its entropy. An explosion (or expansion if we must) has never been seen to result in a net increase in order. In fact, every single time an explosion has been witnessed, the result is a large amount of disorder. If we took a box full of all the parts needed to build a TV and hung it in out space, we would not expect it to become a TV if we simply cause the box to expand rapidly. That doesn't make any sense. As previously mentioned, the universe is actually highly ordered. From the weight of an electron to the energy potentials of the universe to the distances between bodies in space, it's all delicately balanced.

Another principle in physics, the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum, raises questions about the Big Bang. There are planets and moons that spin the “wrong” direction when compared to other planets and moons. If the solar system was a huge dust cloud that, for whatever reason, began to spin, wouldn't all the bodies in that system spin the same way? The claim is that somehow the planets and moons with retrograde motion were struck by some object in space which caused this spin reversal. Can you imagine the amount of energy required to do that? Me either. As an example, Pluto (a retrograde planet) has a mass of 1.25x1024 kg! It's the smallest planet with such motion. Venus and Uranus also are retrograde. The energy required to move such a structure without knocking it out of orbit is beyond the imagination. Would we expect some sort of mark to remain after such a collision? There are also multiple satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune that have orbits that are counter to the other satellites of those planets. Strange when viewed from a Big Bang perspective. We also are blessed with the completely made up existence of dark matter and energy. Why do such things exist? Because if they didn't, cosmologists couldn't explain much at all. It MUST exist (even though there is literally no trace of it at all) or they've got it all wrong. We could talk about dark matter all day, so let's just stop there.

These are but a few things that conflict with the idea of the Big Bang (none of which are theological). Science has accepted this theory of origins with little question or regard for the scientific process. When we consider the issues involved with the Big Bang and the Bible, the problems are even greater. There is literally no way to make the Big Bang and “Let there be light...” work together unless you toss out the entire story of creation. The time frame is off. The order of creation is off. The mode by which God states He made everything is violated. There is just no way to make sense of the two together.

However, as I stated in last week’s blog post, some Christians have decided to meld God's Word with man's current word on the subject. This is simply a terrible idea for several very obvious reasons. One is that God's Word doesn't change but our understanding of the universe around us changes all the time. Many Christian theologians, scientists, and philosophers have accepted Big Bang cosmology and have made it part of their apologetics. But the history of science tells us that most ideas that were once accepted as true were eventually abandoned when further evidence was found. This is one of science's great marks—that it is constantly evolving. How many theories from centuries past are still held on to today? It is very arrogant to believe that our generation has found ultimate truth, especially when it comes to a subject we practically know nothing about, truly. An honest and humble examination of the history of science would tell us that there is an excellent chance that the Big Bang, as widely accepted as it is, will be replaced someday. If and when it falls out of favor and we have made it a central theme of our apologetics, then what will happen to our apologetics?

The wise man builds his house on the rock, so when trials come the house will stand. God's Word is the rock we can rest on when we are discussing the origins of the universe and of life. The foolish man builds his house on the sand which gets washed away with every new trend. That house is bound to fall.