The Big Bang and Christianity

I have recently been learning about Big Bang Cosmology and would like to document it. This means that at a point in the past space and time had a beginning. Some would say that the big bang is the greatest proof, of the 20th century that God is real and that the bible is accurate. Allow me to explain why.

Prior to the 1900s when the big bang was first theorized it was the belief of the majority of the scientific community that the universe was eternal. Here are examples of thinking throughout the ages.

Bertrand Russell: The universe is just there. That’s all.
Aristotle: The idea of a first instant of time is inconceivable.
Epicurus: Truly this universe has always been such as it now is, and so it shall always be; for there is nothing into which it can change, and there is nothing outside the universe that can enter into it and bring about a change.

As a model of a cosmic beginning began to emerge the majority of scientists were opposed to it. Did you know that the term “big bang” was actually coined by Fred Hoyle in 1949 as a derogatory term as it did not align with his steady-state model?

Here are some other examples of the scientific community’s resistance to the big bang changing, which were shared by John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus). 

Hoyle proposed a ‘steady-state theory’ to explain the expansion.
John Gribbin (1976): Hoyle’s steady-state theory was given impetus by philosophers and theologians recognizing the problems and questions raised by the idea that the universe had a beginning.
Sir Bernard Lovell: Neither steady-state nor big bang cosmology offers a satisfactory explanation from science so they ‘must move over into metaphysics’ and postulate divine creation.

Lennox also notes that many scientists immediately saw how a cosmic beginning which the big bang theorized would only feed the argument for a creator God.

Christopher Isham - Perhaps the best argument that the Big Bang supports theism is the obvious unease with which it is greeted by some atheist physicists.
Stephen Hawking - Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.

What evidence do we have for a cosmic beginning? Also known as a space-time beginning or the big bang.

1920s - Alexander Friedman & George Lemaitre: Einstein’s theory of general relativity allows an expanding solution beginning with a singularity.
1929 – Edwin Hubble showed a red shift in spectra invisible light from other galaxies, the Doppler shift effect that indicated the universe was expanding.
1964 - Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discovered cosmic background radiation, an omnidirectional signal in the microwave band. Their discovery provided substantial confirmation of the big-bang predictions by Alpher, Herman and Gamow around 1950. This basically proved that the universe was expanding and thus had a beginning that it was expanding from. In 1978 Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. (Taken from Wikipedia)

Here is a beautiful quote from Penzias, "The best data we have are precisely what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, and the Bible as a whole". Do not be fooled into believing that Christianity and Science are at odds. If you are a believing scientist you are in good company along with the likes of Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Francis Collins (who recently led the team to map the human genome), and these to name but a few. 

And finally for the greatest proof for the big bang:

Genesis 1:1 - In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
John 1:1-3 - In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him, nothing was made that has been made.

References:

(1) John Gribbin, https://www.amazon.com/Our-Changing-Universe-John-Gribbin/dp/0333196910

(2) Reasons to Believe, https://reasons.org/explore/publications/rtb-101/read/rtb-101/2000/06/30/big-bang-the-bible-taught-it-first

(3) John Lennox, https://www.johnlennox.org/resources/?category=15

(4) Veritas, http://www.veritas.org/the-big-bang-and-creation/

(5) David Berlinski, https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Delusion-Atheism-Scientific-Pretensions/dp/1511340657 

(6) The image was taken from, https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm

(7) Discovery of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discovery_of_cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

(8) List of Christian Scientists, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_science_and_technology