Video Transcript: The Big Bang

Now, it was clear to astronomers when this discovery was made. It was fairly clear what this implies. If the universe is currently expanding, getting larger and larger, then if you play that in reverse, the universe has come from something that was smaller and smaller, right. So two years ago, it was smaller than it is today. 10,000 years ago, it was smaller than it is today.

If you keep playing this back, you come to a pretty crazy idea. So the second picture in the gallery kind of shows what this idea looks like in rough terms, right? If our universe looks like the top of this picture, where these galaxies are spread out, but moving apart, we play it backwards. They were closer together, play it backwards, they were closer together. Eventually, you kind of get to this idea that well how small did this get? How close were these galaxies together when they started?

And the idea becomes, well, maybe they started from the same point. Maybe you had a whole universe all gathered together in a very small region of space. This idea was first put forward by a guy by the name oh, he's a priest by the name of I'm not good with French names, but we'll just say George Lemaitre. I'm sure that's how you say it. It's probably like Joe Lamatare or something. But George Lemaitre will say, and he was a priest and a mathematician and a scientist, and he was the first to put forward this idea that this expansion that we're seeing implies, that the universe may have started with the whole universe, in perhaps the space of even just an atomic nucleus.

And we've talked about black holes and this was just, you know, black holes were barely an idea at this point, right? The idea that enormous amount of matter could be in infinitesimally small space. And this idea was not well received. I mean, it was kind of a crazy idea to many scientists at the time. It was not well received for a number of reasons. One of the main reasons well, one of the reasons besides being just hard to imagine, is that it it implied that the universe had a beginning.

Right now, around the time that these discoveries were made, it was assumed that the you by astronomers that the universe had always existed, right. Things are out there, they appear eternal. They never began, they'll presumably never end, it's just always been there. 

With this discovery by Hubble illustrated is that our universe, in fact, had a beginning. That's why a Christian could make a crazy claim like this, to say maybe this is the moment that our universe began. Because to a secular scientist, there was no moment where the universe began. It's just always been here. But to a Christian we know that there's a moment when God made the universe because in the beginning, God made the universe we know that is the truth.

And what George later was suggesting was that this was the evidence. This was the observation that could be made to see yes, this is the outcome when God made the universe. And it started in this moment, where everything was in this infinitesimally small spot, and it came out and it continues to expand. We're seeing direct evidence for the creation of our universe.

As some secular even atheist, astronomers so objected to this idea that they really kind of mocked it, and said, Well you know, there's this big bang idea that the whole universe came out of some big bang, right? And that's how the name came about and how it stuck. So it's actually an opposition from secular scientists to this notion of a beginning, that this idea of the Big Bang actually came about.

It's so amazing to me, though, that, that the idea of the Big Bang for so many Christians today, it kind of gets lumped together with evolution and thrown into this pile of Well, that's what scientists suggest about our universe, but it's not what God really did. Because it was Christians. And it was the idea that there's the beginning to our universe, that this idea really came from right. This idea is so consistent with our Biblical understanding, that it really kind of makes me sad, that many Christians just throw out this idea as being a secular or atheistic idea. Because really, the Big Bang is an inherently Christian idea. That's amazing. It's amazing. 

It's also a testament to the fact the role that Christians have played in many different stages of astronomy, right? I mean, when the suggestion observing of observing the phases of Venus, that was a letter written to Galileo saying you should make this observation. The notion of black holes we saw was suggested by John Michell who had training and was worked as a as a priest, right.

The one other thing that I think it's worth noting about the Big Bang, when we think about why does this idea trouble us in so many ways, right in it, it plays into the age of the universe, right? And the fact that the universe looks old, and why does this matter? I mean, and I started this whole course by saying it doesn't really matter, right? God could have created the universe just 6000 years ago, and given it the appearance of age. Absolutely, he could have done that. And it's absolutely the case that God could have created the universe a long long time ago, and that's why it looks old. So why does it matter? I don't think it really does matter. It isn't like a difference between, you know, whether you're going to be saved or not by any stretch of the imagination. 

But the one argument I would say to say where it does matter a little bit is to say it's about knowing God, and He is telling us a story in the universe that he created. And he's also telling us a story in Scripture. And both of those stories are important. And the story in Scripture is so critically important. I mean, Genesis one through three, I mean, that is like, the gospel is right there. Right. I mean, in a sense, the whole story is there when God says, you know to Satan after Adam and Eve sinned, you know, you know, her you will strike his heel and he will crush your head right the gospel message is right there that there is so much important. So much of God's story is right there in Genesis one through three.

But also, God has written his story in the stars. And it makes me sad to say that we would just ignore part of that story. Right? And just because it's, it's difficult, or impossible for us to put these two stories together and make sense of them both at the same time. I say of course, you know, God's wisdom. You know, even God's foolishness, right? The Bible says even God's foolishness is superior to man's wisdom. So the notion that we should be able to understand these two things is insane. Of course, we can't understand it. But we shouldn't ignore what God's story is telling us. And it's a beautiful story. It's an amazing story.

And here's a part of that story that is especially worth highlighting and to me helps me understand God in a profound way. Our understanding of how the universe began, is I mean, the best understanding of scientists is that the universe began in this infinitesimally small event that the Big Bang. And here’s what’s amazing. It’s not just that all of the material in the universe was in that spot, but all of space itself was in that spot. Think about this. We take space for granted if you're in if you're an empty space, it seems like it's empty. There's no air there's no particles. All you have is space, but space is something space is height and width, and depth. That is something empty space is a thing.

We're saying is at the beginning of the universe at this moment, that is when space itself, when dimensions of space when width, when depth, when height, when it began. That is our scientific understanding. That is when those things began. 

Here's the amazing thing. Time is interwoven with space. That's when Special Relativity Einstein's theory of special relativity shows how time and space are really a part of the same fabric. And so our best scientific understanding is that at that moment of the Big Bang, that beginning of our universe, is also when time itself began. A time itself has a beginning. Now, when I think about God, I would say God is beyond measurement, right? He isn't, He doesn't have a certain width or a certain height or a certain depth he He is beyond space because he created it. And God is also beyond time, because he created time. Right? 

So imagine, you're pointing at a map you're beyond space, let's say on that map is a two dimensional piece of paper and you can touch any point you want. on that map. It's kind of like how God interacts with space, right? He could, he could be here he could be there. He can touch someone's life at this location, touch someone's life at this location. But time is a part of that as well. God isn't confined by time. Time is a part of His creation. That’s a profound thought, right? God can interact with us at this moment, just as He is interacting with people at times in the past or times in the future. He's beyond time. And so when we talk about God creating the universe, to say that God created the universe when he was six feet tall, or that God was 10 feet wide, while he was creating the universe, is like saying God was five days when he did XY and Z or when he or he took 20 minutes to make the sun. It is putting God inside his creation, which God did through Jesus Christ where he entered into it in a real physical way. The point is, we mustn't limit ourselves. We have to remember that God is bigger than his creation.

I think that's amazingly profound. And I don't understand. I don't understand any of this. But I do think it's worthwhile, that we not ignore it, because there's some profound truth that God is teaching us through the world that he created. Okay, that was my soapbox. I'm sorry, all that just from George Lemaitre.

Okay. So now, what's the picture here? The picture is that the universe begins. I can go that you can do this a couple different ways you can start with today and work backwards or you can start at the beginning and work forwards. Okay, but let's say we start at the beginning. Now what we have is like a physics understanding, we say what happens when you get all that material in an incredibly small space? Well, it gets extremely hot, like hotter than anything that has ever been created. And it gets extremely dense. So what kind of things happen?

Well, at that rate, inside this part of the universe, when the universe is that hot and that dense, it's kind of like being inside of a star. It's so dense that light can only move, you know a fraction of a centimeter before it gets absorbed again and re emitted and absorbed. In other words, the whole universe is completely opaque. Light, if you were sitting there, you know, light can't escape. It can't fly freely through empty space, because it's continually being absorbed and re-emitted. But then you get to a certain point is about 300,000 years this is when theoretically this should happen. Where the universe has expanded to the point that it's cooled off enough, kind of like the surface of the sun, that light can now escape and travel freely through space.

And this is the first light of the universe that can be observed. Before that time, light can be observed because it was continuously being absorbed and re emitted. And then what happens over time? Well, the stars haven't even formed yet. These big clouds of gas and dust which are are spread all over all this material that hasn't been formed yet. And then it starts to collapse and collapse. We get the first generation of galaxies and stars, and then we get new generations of stars. And then the universe unfolds until a place we see it today. And that's kind of the picture that we have in mind.

Now how can we make sense out of this from a biblical perspective? You know, and what I want to suggest to you is, I have this picture of the last picture in our gallery, which is a little tongue in cheek, I hope it's not offensive to anyone, but this is the way some people would think about this, right? I mean, in the beginning, God said, Let there be light, right? Or the beginning was the word right and the word was Jesus Christ. He was there was creating was a part of the act of creation. And we can think about God's saying, let it be and it was. Right. And that's that's the truth of what happened.

But there's a temptation here and the temptation is to say, well, you know, God's action was just right here at the beginning, he said, Let it be and it was, you know, let gravity be, let light be, let the Doppler effect be, let Wien’s law be, let all these things be true. And they go I just kind of said, All right, that's pretty good. Let's let it go. And he just let it run by its by its rules of operation. That's one way of thinking about it. That's sort of what we call a deterministic way of thinking about it. That is sometimes called a clockmaker God. That God basically designed the clock rounded up, and then he just let it run.

And I really challenge that idea. You know, we've seen time and again, throughout our course how the universe is still in the process of creation. New stars are being born. Right new plants are growing, new children are being formed. Even me, even my body is continuously being reformed as I eat new food. And as I grow and changes skin cells die and other cells die and new cells are born. My body is continuously changing. Creation is an ongoing process. And I think that's the proper way to view this, right? That God is continuously holding up his creation, continuously weaving it together. Continuously maintaining these laws of physics, it's not so much that God created the law of physics and just said, Okay, you're good. You exist. You just keep running the show. It's that the laws of physics are laws. And it's they are always true. Because God is a faithful God. Right? Because God is reliable. That's why those rules are reliable. It's because God is reliable and he is continuously holding those things to be true.

It's a profound way to think about this, and I think it's the proper way to think about this. Regardless of how long this all took. Or whether the universe was actually created here and it just looked old or whatever that does, that doesn't really matter. What matters is that today, this all exists. And we know that when I drop a cup of coffee, it's gonna fall to the ground and that reliability is a statement about who God is.

All right. So the big bang, a touchy subject, but really a profound insight into God's story that he's telling us through the world that he created. All right. We'll see you next time.