This is the second part of my third major posting in response to Don’s initial post.

I may well make further major postings about cosmology, depending on the responses to this one.

There have been a number of responses complaining that the discussion had concentrated on religion, and that very little about scientific issues had appeared. This post (and the preceding one) will partly redress the balance.

As I mentioned in the first part of this post, this part is devoted to a discussion of Don’s comments about the “big-bang”. Since this, and any follow-ups, are going to use the words “big-bang” frequently, might I suggest that a lot of time would be saved if we all used the abbreviation BB, as I intend to do henceforth.

Since the BB is, at present, the only cosmological theory (that is, theory about the development of the universe) which has survived the rigorous scrutiny of generations of scientists – might I start with a plug for a conference on cosmology.

On July 15-17 2005 ISCAST – the Institute for the Study of Christianity in an Age of Science and Technology – will be holding its fifth COSAC – Conference On Science And Christianity – known as COSAC2005. This will be held in Canberra, and the title of the Conference is “Cosmology and Christianity”.

The main speaker is Professor George Ellis, Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, and a world authority on general relativity and cosmology (see below for an extract from a book written jointly with Stephen Hawking).

Further details of the conference can be found on the ISCAST web site http://www.iscast.org.au

Now back to the discussion.

Two paragraphs from Don’s preamble read:

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I take the Bible as authoritative, so I take seriously the example of the apostle Paul who said, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). For the last 200 years or so, perhaps the greatest source of arguments against the knowledge of God has been naturalism; the dogma that nature is all there is. Its corollary, historical naturalism, claims that origins and history can be explained by purely natural processes.

There are elements of the sciences of astronomy, geology and biology that have been developed based on and in turn used to bolster the claims of naturalism: big bang cosmology, historical geology and biological evolution (the origin of the huge spectrum of living organisms). All three, not just the third, stand in opposition to the traditional understanding of the biblical big-picture view of history, which is founded in Genesis 1-11 (not just Genesis 1).

~~~

Let me start with a quotation which might seem to give some support for Don’s words. On page 70 of Simon Singh’s recent (2004) book “Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know All About it” (Fourth Estate, 2004) one sentence reads:

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Scientists were particularly proud that they had developed a theory of the universe that no longer relied on invoking God.

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Now I am well aware that in quoting this I am providing creationists with ammunition, given their propensity for quoting the writings of scientists out of context. Let me immediately try to ensure that this doesn’t happen in this case, by quoting the whole paragraph in which it appears. Singh has been talking about developments, mainly in geology, in the 19th century, and how all the measurements and calculations, including those by Kelvin, who is frequently cited as a “creationist”, had resulted in ages in the millions and hundreds of millions of years. He then writes:

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The growing uniformitarian movement came to the consensus that the earth is more than a billion years old, and that the universe must therefore be even older, perhaps even infinitely old. An eternal universe seemed to strike a chord with the scientific community, because the theory had a certain elegance, simplicity and completeness. If the universe had existed for eternity, then there was no need to explain how it was created, when it was created, why it was created or Who created it. Scientists were particularly proud that they had developed a theory of the universe that no longer relied on invoking God.

~~~

This assumption (that the universe was eternal) was so pervasive that Einstein, in his first paper on cosmology (see below for details) modified the field equations of general relativity by adding the famous “cosmological constant”. This was perfectly reasonable at the time. In 1917 there was no solid evidence that the universe extended beyond the Milky Way. The various nebulae which astronomers had observed were only shown to consist of vast numbers of individual stars, and to be separate galaxies in their own right, after results had been obtained in the early 1920s from the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson, and the expansion of the universe was only discovered in the late 1920s – in Einstein’s paper he refers to “the small velocities of the stars” several times. These, and much other historical material, can be found in Singh’s book.

After some further comments about uniformitarian ideas Singh writes, in two paragraphs on pages 79 and 80:

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So, by the start of the twentieth century, scientists were content to live in an eternal universe. This theory, however, was based on quite flimsy evidence. Although there was dating evidence that pointed towards a truly ancient universe, at least billions of years old, the idea that the universe was eternal was largely based on a leap of faith. There was simply no scientific justification for extrapolating from an earthly age of at least billions of years to a universe that was eternal. Sure enough, an infinitely old universe constituted a coherent and consistent cosmological view, but this was nothing more than wishful thinking unless somebody could find some scientific evidence to back it up. In fact, the eternal universe model was built upon such fragile foundations that it probably deserved the title of myth rather than scientific theory. The eternal universe model of 1900 was almost as flimsy as the explanation that it was the giant blue god Wulbari who separated the sky from the land.

Eventually, cosmologists would confront this embarrassing state of affairs. Indeed, they would spend the rest of the twentieth century struggling to replace the last great myth with a respectable and rigorous scientific explanation. They strove to develop a detailed theory and sought the concrete evidence to back it up, so that they could confidently address the ultimate question: is the universe eternal or was it created?

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The BB is one of the predictions of general relativity. Stephen Hawking and George Ellis write in the Preface of their book “The Large Scale Structure of Space-time” (Cambridge University Press, 1973):

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This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final state of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a `black hole’ which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe.

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Thus before talking about the BB we need to give some preliminary consideration to general relativity and the remarkable success it has enjoyed.

Simon Singh’s book mentioned above is 534 pages long, but he writes on page 509 “This book has tried to explain a big subject in a relatively small amount of space”, and on page 471 “Each subsection of each chapter of this book would need to be expanded into its own dedicated volume to do justice to everyone who has contributed to the development of the Big Bang model.” He continues at the bottom of this page and on the next page:

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In addition to the limitations of space, this account of the Big Bang model has also been constrained by an effort to minimise the number of mathematical equations. Mathematics is the language of science, and in many cases a full and accurate explanation of a scientific concept is possible only by presenting a detailed mathematical exposition.

~~~

The limitations of posting using only the 95 printable ASCII characters preclude even an outline of general relativity and its cosmological implications. However there are a number of popular books which manage to make a reasonable fist of presenting enough information about relativity and the BB so that the intelligent layperson can gain at least some inkling of what it is all about.

An invaluable resource book, for those prepared to learn the relevant mathematics, is “The Principle of Relativity” by H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski and H. Weyl, with notes by A. Sommerfeld. This is a collection of translations of some of the most important original papers on relativity.

For general relativity and cosmology, the papers “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” on pages 111-164, and “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity” on pages 177-188, both by Einstein, are the significant ones.

It is worth pointing out that in the “Foundations” paper 27 pages of the 54 (that is, half the paper) are devoted to the algebra and calculus of tensor fields, the mathematical tools required, since at the time these were not part of the mathematical education of physicists or astronomers.

If anyone wants a full mathematical treatment of general relativity I suggest that the nearest university library would be a good starting place, both for books and papers in periodicals.

Since a number of Christians may be interested in learning something about the relationship between cosmology and Christianity, here are two books. David Wilkinson is a Methodist minister who obtained a PhD in astrophysics before training for the ministry, and Craig and Smith are professional philosophers.

Wilkinson, David: “God, Time and Stephen Hawking”, Monarch Books, 2001. Contains a number of illustrations to assist with explanations of various points.

Craig, William Lane and Smith, Quentin, “Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993 A somewhat heavy book by two philosophers: Craig argues for theism and Lane for atheism, with separate articles criticising the other’s arguments.

For those without the necessary mathematical background, but who are prepared to read carefully and think over what they have read, some useful and interesting modern books written from a scientific perspective are (in chronological order by date of publication), with brief comments:

Will, Clifford M.: “Was Einstein Right? Putting General Relativity to the Test, Oxford University Press, 1988. Experiments verifying the predictions of general relativity.

Smoot, George and Davidson, Keay, “Wrinkles in Time: The Imprint of Creation”, William Morrow and Company, New York, 1993. The detection of irregularities in the cosmic microwave background.

Aczel, Amir: “God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity and the Expanding Universe”, Piatkus Books, London, 2000. Lots of interesting background information.

Silk, Joseph: “The Big Bang”, 3rd edition, W. H. Freeman, New York, 2001. Comprehensive, with 40 pages of Mathematical Notes and a 25 page Glossary.

Singh, Simon: “Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know All About it”, Fourth Estate, London, 2004. Takes a historical approach, starting with naked eye estimates of the size and distance of the Moon, and finishing with initial data from the Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

Einstein’s prediction of the bending of light when passing massive objects and it’s confirmation from the 1919 eclipse expeditions brought him fame, and made his name, and the word “relativity”, famous world-wide. Two of the above books present diagrams of these first measurements: Aczel on page 145, and Singh on page 141. Aczel’s diagram is particularly illuminating. The deflection predicted by Newton’s theory of universal gravitation is half that predicted by Einstein, and the diagram shows clearly that Einstein’s is much closer to the truth. Later measurements have provided much more accurate verification of the prediction. Of Einstein’s other two predictions, gravitational redshift is now regarded as so closely related to conservation of energy that any reasonable theory of gravity will make the same prediction, and the precession of the perihelion of Mercury was accurately measured, but could not be explained, in the mid-19th century.

Will’s book goes through the experimental tests which have been applied to the predictions of general relativity, and shows that it has passed all these tests with flying colours. Three additional predictions, light delay in passing massive bodies, the strong equivalence principle, and gravitational radiation have now been verified.

There are still some predictions which have not been checked, mainly because of formidable experimental difficulties. One of these relates to what happens in the neighbourhood of a massive body which is rotating, known as “dragging of inertial frames”. This is mentioned in chapter 11 of Will, but was well known to science fiction fans by 1968. In Larry Niven’s short story “Neutron Star” part of the dialogue goes

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“A mass that large can distort space by its rotation,” said the puppeteer. “The Laskin’s projected hyperbola was twisted across itself in such a way that we can deduce the star’s period of rotation to be two minutes twenty-seven seconds.”

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Thus anyone who wishes to challenge the BB needs first to find some way of explaining how the universe behaves, without using general relativity, and then show that their ideas agree more closely with the experimental data than relativity does. Since the predictions of relativity agree with experimental data to the limit of accuracy of measurement it is clear that such people face an uphill battle.

I have only read two attempts by creationists to use general relativity. Both of these were attempts to use it in support of their own peculiar ideas, and both made so many elementary errors that even mentioning them here would be a waste of time.

Don writes in the paragraphs I quoted earlier, and repeat here for convenience

~~~ There are elements of the sciences of astronomy, geology and biology that have been developed based on and in turn used to bolster the claims of naturalism: big bang cosmology, historical geology and biological evolution …

~~~

Don is probably not aware that my honours thesis in mathematics at the University of Sydney in 1953 was entitled “Relativity and Cosmology”. Answers in Genesis claims that Tas Walker is an expert in geology on the basis of his first class honours degree in geology with a thesis on isotopic dating.

So presumably Don will be willing to accept that I am an expert in general relativity and cosmology on the basis of my first class honours degree in mathematics.

However rather than pursue that line I will just content myself with commenting on Don’s claim that the BB “[has] been been developed based on and in turn used to bolster the claims of naturalism”.

I’m not sure where Don got the information about the alleged basis of the BB. Digging my honours thesis out of the family archives and looking through it, I cited 19 books and 31 papers.

Since then I have read over a hundred books and numerous papers on various aspects of relativity and cosmology, and have listened to many scientific lectures. Mention of God, or even allusions to religion, are quite rare.

I have not come across any mention of religion in any of the technical works I have read. Maybe Don has some source material where some scientists working in the area have denied the existence of God. If so I would be pleased to be enlightened about the books or articles where I can read these statements for myself.

Things are slightly different in books written in a popular style for the average person who has little or no scientific training. Paul Davies has mentioned God in a number of his writings – one book is even entitled “The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning” (Penguin 1992). And there is the comment at the end of Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” that discovering a comprehensive theory would enable us to “know the mind of God”. And there is Einstein’s remark “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

But here again, with one exception, I have not come across anything in books on cosmology which could, even by enormouse stretching of the imagination, be interpreted as denying the existence of God. The exception is Fred Hoyle in his “The Nature of the Universe” (Blackwell, 1950). In the final chapter Hoyle makes some unflattering remarks about religion, and these could be interpreted, by someone strongly opposed to Hoyle’s “continuous creation” ideas, as denying the existence of God. And since Hoyle, in this book, was responsible for the origin of the phrase “big-bang”, which he ridiculed, his words should not be taken to heart by others who wish to treat the BB in a similar fashion. And for the sake of peace on a.r.c I’ll pass over the attempt by Duane Gish, in a debate in Brisbane in 1988, to describe Hoyle as a “creationist”.

Barry Parker is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Idaho State University. He concludes his book “Creation: The Story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe” (Plenum Press, 1988) with the paragraph:

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Before I end the book I feel I should address a question that some of you will no doubt be wondering about: Why does a book on the creation of the universe have no mention of God? Scientists do, indeed, rarely mention God when they talk about creation. Furthermore, they are sometimes accused of trying to do away with the need for God by attempting to explain creation in scientific terms. And it is true: scientists would prefer a purely scientific explanation of the beginning of the universe. That is not to say, though, that all scientists are atheists (few are). Furthermore, there is no fear that scientists will ever eliminate the need for a God. If we look back at the early universe we see that regardless of how far things are pushed — even if we were someday able to explain creation itself in an entirely satisfactory scientific way — there is still something that is unexplained. Creation depends on the basic laws of nature — without them it would not be possible. Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed.

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I think that is a suitable place to end this post.

Salaam

Dr Ken Smith