I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (14 page)

But these temperature ripples are not just dots on a scientist’s graph somewhere. COBE actually took infrared pictures of the ripples. Now keep in mind that space observations are actually observations of the past because of the long time it takes light from distant objects to reach us. So COBE’s pictures are actually pictures of the past. That is, the infrared pictures taken by COBE point to the existence of matter from the very early universe that would ultimately form into galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Smoot called this matter “seeds” of the galaxies as they exist today (these pictures can be seen at COBE’s website, http://Lambda.gsfc.nasa.gov). These “seeds” are the largest structures ever detected, with the biggest extending across one-third of the known universe. That’s 10 billion light years or 60 billion trillion (60 followed by 21 zeros) miles.
¹⁶

Now you can see why some scientists were so grandiose in their description of the discovery. Something predicted by the Big Bang was again found, and that something was so big and so precise that it made a big bang with scientists!

E—Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

The E in SURGE is for Einstein. His theory of General Relativity is the fifth line of scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning, and its discovery was the beginning of the end for the idea that the universe is eternal. The theory itself, which has been verified to five decimal places, demands an absolute beginning for time, space, and matter. It shows that time, space, and matter are co-relative. That is, they are interdependent—you can’t have one without the others.

From General Relativity, scientists predicted and then found the expanding universe, the radiation afterglow, and the great galaxy seeds that were precisely tweaked to allow the universe to form into its present state. Add these discoveries to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and we have five lines of powerful scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning—a beginning, we might say, that came in a great SURGE.

G
OD AND THE
A
STRONOMERS

So the universe had a beginning. What does that mean for the question of God’s existence? The man who now sits in Edwin Hubble’s chair at the Mount Wilson observatory has a few things to say about that. His name is Robert Jastrow, an astronomer we’ve already quoted in this chapter. In addition to serving as the director of Mount Wilson, Jastrow is the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies. Obviously his credentials as a scientist are impeccable. That’s why his book
God
and the Astronomers
made such an impression on those investigating the implications of the Big Bang, namely those asking the question, “Does the Big Bang point to God?”

Jastrow reveals in the opening line of chapter 1 that he has no religious axe to grind. He writes, “When an astronomer writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters.”
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In light of Jastrow’s personal agnosticism, his theistic quotations are all the more provocative. After explaining some of the Big Bang evidence we’ve just reviewed, Jastrow writes, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”
¹⁸

The overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang and its consistency with the biblical account in Genesis led Jastrow to observe in an interview, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. . . .
That there are what I or anyone would call
supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”
¹⁹
By evoking the supernatural, Jastrow echoes the conclusion of Einstein contemporary Arthur Eddington. As we mentioned earlier, although he found it “repugnant,” Eddington admitted, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”
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Now why would Jastrow and Eddington admit that there are “supernatural” forces at work? Why couldn’t natural forces have produced the universe? Because these scientists know as well as anyone that natural forces—indeed all of nature—were created at the Big Bang. In other words, the Big Bang was the beginning point for the entire physical universe. Time, space, and matter came into existence at that point. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Since a cause cannot come after its effect, natural forces cannot account for the Big Bang. Therefore, there must be something
outside of nature
to do the job. That’s exactly what the word
supernatural
means.

The discoverers of the afterglow, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, were not Bible-thumpers either. Both initially believed in the Steady State Theory. But due to the mounting evidence, they’ve since changed their views and acknowledged facts that are consistent with the Bible. Penzias admits, “The Steady State theory turned out to be so ugly that people dismissed it. The easiest way to fit the observations with the least number of parameters was one in which the universe was created out of nothing, in an instant, and continues to expand.”
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Wilson, who once took a class from Fred Hoyle (the man who popularized the Steady State Theory in 1948), said, “I philosophically liked the Steady State. And clearly I’ve had to give that up.”
²²
When science writer Fred Heeren asked him if the Big Bang evidence is indicative of a Creator, Wilson responded, “Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.”
²³
George Smoot echoed Wilson’s assessment. He said, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”
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T
HE
E
MPIRE
S
TRIKES
B
ACK
(
BUT
F
IZZLES
O
UT
)

What do atheists have to say about this? We’ve already seen the shortcomings in the explanations of Atkins and Isaac Asimov—they start with
something
rather than literally nothing. Are there any other atheistic explanations out there that may be plausible? Not that we’ve seen. Atheists have come up with other theories, but all of them have their fatal flaws.
²⁵
Let’s take a brief look at a few of them.

The Cosmic Rebound Theory—
This is the theory that suggests the universe has been expanding and contracting forever. This helps its proponents avoid a definite beginning. But the problems with this theory are numerous, and for those reasons it has fallen out of favor.

First, and most obviously, there’s no evidence for an infinite number of bangs (after all, it’s not the Big Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang, Bang . . . Theory!). The universe appears to have exploded once from nothing, not repeatedly from existing material.

Second, there’s not enough matter in the universe to pull everything back together. The universe seems poised to continue expanding indefinitely.
²⁶
This was confirmed in 2003 by Charles Bennett of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. After looking at readings from NASA’s latest space probe, he said, “The universe will expand forever. It will not turn back on itself and collapse in a great crunch.”
²⁷
In fact, astronomers are now finding that the universe’s expansion speed is actually accelerating, making a collapse even more improbable.
²⁸

Third, even if there were enough matter to cause the universe to contract and “bang” again, the Cosmic Rebound Theory contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics because the theory falsely assumes that no energy would be lost in each contraction and explosion. A universe “banging” repeatedly would eventually fizzle out just as a dropped ball eventually fizzles out. So if the universe has been expanding and contracting
forever,
it would have fizzled out already.

Finally, there’s no way that today would have gotten here if the universe had been expanding and contracting forever. An infinite number of big bangs is an actual impossibility (we’ll elaborate on this in a couple of pages). And even if there were a
finite
number of bangs, the theory cannot explain what caused the first one. There was nothing to “bang” before the first bang!

Imaginary Time—
Other atheistic attempts at explaining how the universe exploded into being out of nothing are just as flawed. For example, in an effort to avoid an absolute beginning of the universe, Stephen Hawking made up a theory that utilizes “imaginary time.” We could just as well call it an “imaginary theory” because Hawking himself admits that his theory is “just a [metaphysical] proposal” that cannot explain what happened in real time. “In real time,” he concedes, “the universe has a beginning. . . .”
²⁹
In fact, according to Hawking, “Almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the Big Bang.”
³⁰
So by his own admission Hawking’s imaginary theory fizzles when applied to the real world. Imaginary time is just that—purely imaginary.

Uncertainty—
With the evidence for the beginning of the universe so strong, some atheists question the first premise of the Cosmological Argument—the Law of Causality. This is dangerous ground for atheists, who typically pride themselves on being champions of reason and science. As we have pointed out before, the Law of Causality is the foundation of all science. Science is a search for causes. If you destroy the Law of Causality, then you destroy science itself.

Atheists attempt to cast doubt on the Law of Causality by citing quantum physics, specifically Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. This principle describes our inability to simultaneously predict the location and speed of subatomic particles (i.e., electrons). The atheist’s contention here is this: if causality at the subatomic realm isn’t necessary, then maybe causality of the entire universe isn’t necessary either.

Fortunately for science, this atheistic attempt to cast doubt on the Law of Causality fails. Why? Because it confuses
causality
and
predictability.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle does
not
prove that the movement of electrons is uncaused; it only describes our inability to
predict
their location and speed at any given time. The mere fact that we can’t predict something doesn’t mean that something has no cause. In fact, quantum theorists acknowledge that we might not be able to pre dict the simultaneous speed and location of electrons because our very attempts at observing them are the cause of their unpredictable movements! Like a beekeeper putting his head in a beehive, we must stir them up in order to observe them. Hence, the disturbance may be a case of the scientist looking at his own eyelashes in the microscope.

In the end, no atheistic theory adequately refutes either premise of the Cosmological Argument. The universe had a beginning and therefore it needs a cause.

T
HE
R
ELIGION OF
S
CIENCE

So why don’t all scientists just accept this conclusion instead of attempting to avoid the facts and their implications with wild and implausible explanations? Jastrow’s comments are again insightful (remember, Jastrow is an agnostic). Jastrow observes,

Theologians generally are delighted with the
proof
that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly a very objective mind—when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with
the articles of faith in our profession.
It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.
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The phrases we have seen used by Atkins and Asimov to explain the beginning of the universe—“mathematical points” and “positive and negative energy” respectively—certainly seem meaningless to us. Indeed, they explain nothing.

Regarding Einstein’s “irritating” feelings about General Relativity and the expanding universe, Jastrow writes: “This is curiously emotional language for a discussion of some mathematical formulas. I suppose that the idea of a beginning in time annoyed Einstein because of its theological implications.”
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Everyone knows that theists have theological beliefs. But what’s often overlooked is that atheistic and pantheistic scientists also have theological beliefs. As noted above, Jastrow calls some of these beliefs “the articles of faith in our profession,” and he asserts that some of these beliefs comprise the “religion in science.” He writes:

There is a kind of religion in science . . . every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. . . . This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications—in science this is known as “refusing to speculate”—or trivializing the origin of the world by calling it the Big Bang, as if the Universe were a firecracker.
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