Why I am still a Catholic II
In the beginning…
God, at the beginning of time, created heaven and earth. Earth was still an empty waste, and darkness hung over the deep; but already, over its waters, stirred the breath of God. Then God said, Let there be light; and the light began...
Genesis 1: 1-3 from The Holy Bible: A Translation From the Latin Vulgate in the Light of the Hebrew and Greek Originals
When you’re talking with people about how alternatives to God, they often invoke the Big Bang as an alternative to the idea of a divine creation. This perception is partly due to the way the theory is often presented in popular media. When these conversations happen, the Big Bang is put forward as a naturalistic explanation of the universe that eliminates the need for a supernatural creator.
This is completely and utterly wrong
Fred Hoyle was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant and influential scientific minds of the 20th century. A distinguished astronomer and mathematician, Hoyle made substantial contributions to the fields of stellar nucleosynthesis and cosmology. His groundbreaking work on the formation of chemical elements in the stars provided a profound understanding of how the complex elements that make up our universe are forged. He also named the Big Bang Theory
It wasn’t meant to be a compliment
While acknowledging that the universe was expanding, he dismissed the idea of the Big Bang as famously as pseudoscience right front the first page of the book of Genesis. The idea was, to Hoyle, rooted in the superstition of a creator-deity and therefore could simply not be correct.
In fact, he told the BBC that people were, erroneously in his view, drawn to the Big Bang because “they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis.”
Hoyle was not alone in this view. Together with Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, also brilliant minds of the 20th century, he formulated a “steady state” theory of the universe that had no beginning.
This, by contrast, was the take of Pope Pius XII:
“With the same clear and critical look with which it examines and passes judgment on facts, it perceives and recognizes the work of creative omnipotence, whose power, set in motion by the mighty “Fiat” pronounced billions of years ago by the Creating Spirit, spread out over the universe, calling into existence with a gesture of generous love matter busting with energy. It would seem that present-day science, with one sweep back across the centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to the august instant of the primordial Fiat Lux [Let there be Light], when along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, and the elements split and churned and formed into millions of galaxies.”
And the proposer of this universe-originating theory all the way back in 1927? None other than Georges Lemaître, who in addition to being a physicist was also a Catholic priest.
The science settles down
The Steady State Theory favoured by many scientists committed to a universe without a beginning was discredited in 1964 with the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. This discovery provided compelling evidence of the universe having a hot, dense origin—affirming the Big Bang Theory. Not for the first time, religion and science were aligned rather than opposed.
Haunted by creation
And yet those with an a priori committed to a materialistic view of existence have sought ways to circumvent the theological implications of a universe with a clear beginning.
Stephen Hawking proposed the "no-boundary model”, suggesting that the universe could have sprung from nothing, without the need for a divine creator, in a self-contained loop of spacetime. time behaves like a sphere's surface, with no distinct starting point, the universe could technically have no beginning and no end - and the need for a first cause would be side-stepped.
Not just a bad movie trope
Then we have the notion of a multiverse, which suggests an existence of potentially infinite universes, which includes our own as just one of many. The appeal here is to dilute the uniqueness of the universe’s origin, proposing instead that ours is one of countless others, each with its own different set of physical laws and constants. While our universe may have had a start, universe formation is itself a never-ending process.
A different kind of faith
These theories have three things in common:
They are intellectually provocative; and
They are completely plausible; and
They are utterly without anything resembling concrete evidence.
Where the Big Bang Theory is supported by astronomical data and even the Loch Ness monster has a few people who swear to have seen it. There is no such evidence for the existence of a multiverse which is perforce beyond the possibilities of human observation
Brilliant and stubborn minds
That’s not to say these more intricate theories are wrong. It’s certainly not to say that those scientists don’t know what they’re talking about Fred Hoyle worked out how stars processed helium into carbon. I took geography as my high school science elective
Stephen Hawking’s work showed that, due to quantum effects near the black hole’s event horizon, pairs of virtual particles could be formed. I, on the other hand, do not even know what that means
Yet an invincible commitment to a cosmos devoid of divine initiative is just as much a faith-based proposition as any other metaphysical belief and existential interpretation.
The universe is a miracle
This obviously does not prove the existence of God. But I hope it illuminates the pervasive presence of faith in places that might surprise those with a more limited view of history. It is my hope that this exploration acts as an invitation to see faith and reason not as adversaries, but as potential partners in marveling at the universe.
From its beginnings and through to its end.
I hope you don't consider this blasphemous but I sometimes say to myself "and God said, Let there be light" on winter mornings when dawn finally breaks.