Many Christians accept the Big Bang story as though science proved it years ago. According to this story, our universe began with all its energy and matter densely packed into a tiny space. Nobody quite knows why—but one day it exploded. Somehow, particles changed direction and self-organized into planets, pulsars, and people. But two key factors demote the Big Bang from science to fairy tale.
First, solid science refutes Big Bang models. That’s why the models keep changing and why hundreds of secular physicists signed a public “cosmology statement” explaining that they reject it because it uses too many “fudge factors” to work around its many problems.1 For example, in order for a Big Bang to conform to the laws of physics, it would have generated equal amounts of matter and antimatter, but the antimatter is almost all missing from the visible universe.2
The incredible sameness (1/100,000) of the inferred temperature of distant space also confounds the Big Bang. Some regions of the early universe were supposedly much hotter than others. The hot spots would emit light that carries heat to the cold spots. How long would it take the hot spots and cold spots to reach the same inferred temperature we see today? Far too long for the Big Bang. Hot and cold spots that lie on opposite sides of the visible universe are simply too far apart to have reached their observed sameness even after 13.8 billion years.3
Nor would a Big Bang make stars or galaxies. Repulsive forces like gas pressure—stars are spheres of compressed gas—and magnetism normally overpower gravity’s small attraction between particles. Hence, materials should have thinned, not clumped, as they expanded along with space. Many other fundamental scientific problems plague the Big Bang.4 Why insist on such a problem-packed tale?
The second key factor that demotes the Big Bang calls attention to clashing differences between it and what God’s Word describes about the beginning. The Big Bang begins in a fiery and chaotic explosion of space, time, energy, and matter that came from nobody-knows-where, but the Bible begins with water that the eternally existing God commanded into being. Genesis 1:16 says God crafted stars on Day 4 of the creation week, and Psalm 33:6-9 says that this miracle happened in instant obedience to God’s command. The Big Bang story occurred over billions of years, but the Bible’s beginnings tell of only six days. The Big Bang teaches that the sun and stars formed before Earth, but the Bible affirms just the reverse.
Secular Big Bang cosmologies have no place for a Creator or His miracles, but Genesis lists specific creation week miracles. If God used the Big Bang, then not only did He completely fail to say so in His Great Book, but He actually described a very non-Big Bang sequence. The God of the Bible knows that our everlasting salvation depends on clearly written truth for sinners to understand. He who is not willing that any should perish5 would act consistently with what He wrote in Genesis. Otherwise, He would undermine His own trustworthy character and thus his vital message. Science and the Bible both refute the Big Bang, a story that never happened.
References
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An Open Letter to the Scientific Community. Fact Sheet. Posted on blog.lege.net/cosmology/cosmologystateme
nt_org.html May 22, 2004, accessed August 31, 2016. - Peebles, P. J. E. 1993. Principles of Physical Cosmology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 403.
- Secular attempts to solve this and other problems often generate new problems. See Carmona, J. M. et al. 2006. Matter-antimatter asymmetry without departure from thermal equilibrium. Modern Physics Letters A. 21: 883-892.
- The universe has too much lithium-6 for the Big Bang to explain. See Measurement at Big Bang Conditions Confirms Lithium Problem. Helmholtz Press Release. Posted on hzdr.de August 27, 2014, accessed September 19, 2016. Astronomers keep finding “mature” galaxies in distant space that should instead show disordered gases. See Thomas, B. Distant Galactic Cluster Should Not Exist. Creation Science Update. Posted on ICR.org May 21, 2010, accessed August 31, 2016. Last, recent measurements showed that about half of outer space has a slightly lower inferred temperature than the other half, exactly unlike Big Bang predictions. See Erickcek, A. L., M. Kamionkowski, and S. M. Carroll. 2008. A hemispherical power asymmetry from inflation. Physical Review D. 78 (12): 123520.
- 2 Peter 3:9.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
