Once upon a time, a man came up with a new theory.
His theory, if shown to be true, would change the way people understood the universe.
Many people opposed his theory. The theory challenged not only their view of the universe but their view of God. They argued against it and backed alternate theories.
But over time, the evidence would vindicate his theory. His opponents would have to concede that his understanding of the universe was correct.
The time was 1931. The man was Father Georges Lemaitre, a Belgian priest and astronomer.
His theory was The Big Bang Theory, which held that the universe as we know it emerged from a specific point (Lemaitre called it the primeval atom) billions of years ago (the best current estimate is 13.77 billion years). The universe as we know it – even space and time as we know it – emerged when the universe began to expand rapidly from this initial tiny point.
The Big Bang Theory (a name coined by one of its opponents) upset the longstanding view of atheists that the universe was eternal and unchanging – and therefore had no need of a creator. The atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell famously quipped, in 1947 radio debate, “the universe is just there, and that’s all.”
But that’s not all. The scientific evidence began to support Lemaitre’s theory. First, Edwin Hubble discovered in 1929 that galaxies were moving away from the earth at greater speeds the further away they were from the earth. This discovery prompted Lemaitre to develop his theory. If galaxies were getting farther apart now, they must have been closer together before, even to being compressed together in an infinitely dense point. The leading counter theory was the Steady State model, which proposed that new matter was being created as the galaxies moved farther away, so that the universe remained in an eternal state of relative equilibrium and had no need of a beginning. In 1964, cosmic background radiation, predicted by the Big Bang Theory as a remnant of the primeval explosion, was discovered. New discoveries in the 1990’s and beyond continued to validate the Big Bang Theory. Scientists now universally accept the radical premise put forward by Lemaitre nearly one hundred years ago: our universe had a beginning.
Atheists will often make the claim that science has disproved religion. As Peter Kreeft has noted, science has not disproved a single dogma of any religion. Science is a useful means of learning about the material world. It cannot make any claims about the supernatural world. The scientific evidence can, however, point us towards a belief in God. The Big Bang does not prove God’s existence but it strongly points in that direction. The universe had a start, and a start needs a cause.
For further reading: William Lane Craig is one of the leading Christian apologists today. His article here takes a deep dive into the Big Bang Theory, the search for a serious counter to the Big Bang Theory, and the implications of the Big Bang Theory for religious belief.
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