WHO IS THE CREATOR ?

Who Created the Universe From Nothing?

With this triumph of the Big Bang, the thesis of an “infinite universe”, which forms the basis of materialist dogma, was tossed onto the scrap-heap of history. But for materialists it also raised a couple of inconvenient questions: What existed before the Big Bang? And what force could have caused the great explosion that resulted in a universe that did not exist before?

Materialists like Arthur Eddington recognized that the answers to these questions could point to the existence of a supreme creator and that they did not like. The atheist philosopher Anthony Flew commented on this point:

Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of what St. Thomas contended could  not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story. 1

Many scientists who do not force themselves to be atheists accept and favor the existence of a creator having an infinite power. For instance, the American astrophysicist Hugh Ross proposes a Creator of universe, Who is above all physical dimensions as:

By definition, time is that dimension in which cause-and-effect phenomena take place. No time, no cause and effect. If time’s beginning is concurrent with the beginning of the universe, as the space-time theorem says, then the cause of the universe must be some entity operating in a time dimension completely independent of and pre-existent to the time dimension of the cosmos. …It tells us that the Creator is transcendent, operating beyond the dimensional limits of the universe. It tells us that God is not the universe itself, nor is God contained within the universe.2

Objections to Creation and Why They are Flawed

It is patently obvious that the Big Bang means the creation of the universe out of nothing and this is surely evidence of willful creation. Regarding this fact, some materialist astronomers and physicists have tried to advance alternative explanations to oppose this reality. Mention has already been made of the steady state theory and it was pointed out it was clung to, by those who were uncomfortable with the notion of “creation from nothingness”, despite all the evidence to the contrary in an attempt to shore up their philosophy.

There are also a number of models that have been advanced by materialists who accept the Big Bang theory but try to exorcise it of the notion of creation. One of these is the “oscillating” universe model; another is the “quantum model of universe”. Let us examine these theories and see why they are invalid.

The oscillating universe model was advanced by the astronomers who disliked the idea the Big Bang was the beginning of the universe. In this model, it is claimed that the present expansion of the universe will eventually be reversed at some point and begin to contract. This contraction will cause everything to collapse into a single point that will then explode again, initiating a new round of expansion. This process, they say, is repeated infinitely in time. This model also holds that the universe has experienced this transformation an infinite number of times already and that it will continue to do so forever. In other words, the universe exists for eternity but it expands and collapses at different intervals with a huge explosion punctuating each cycle. The universe we live in is just one of those infinite universes going through the same cycle.

This is nothing but a feeble attempt to accommodate the fact of the Big Bang to notions about an infinite universe. The proposed scenario is unsupported by the results of scientific research over the last 15-20 years, which show that it is impossible for such an “oscillating” universe idea to come into being. Furthermore the laws of physics offer no reason why a contracting universe should explode again after collapsing into a single point: it ought to stay just as it is. Nor do they offer a reason why an expanding universe should ever begin to contract in the first place.3
Even if we allow that there is some mechanism by which this cycle of contraction-explosion-expansion does take place, the crucial point is that this cycle cannot go on for ever, as is claimed. Calculations for this model show that each universe will transfer an amount of entropy to its successor. In other words, the amount of useful energy available becomes less each time and every “opening” universe will open more slowly and have a larger diameter. This will cause a much smaller universe to form the next time around and so on, eventually petering out into nothing. Even if “open and close” universes can exist, they cannot endure for eternity. At some point it becomes necessary for “something” to be created from “nothing”.4

Put briefly, the “oscillating” universe model is a hopeless fantasy whose physical reality is impossible.

The “quantum model of universe” is another attempt to purge the Big Bang of its creationist implications. Supporters of this model base it on the observations of quantum (subatomic) physics. In quantum physics, it is to be observed that subatomic particles appear and disappear spontaneously in a vacuum. Interpreting this observation as “matter can originate at quantum level, this is a property pertaining to matter”, some physicists try to explain the origination of matter from non-existence during the creation of the universe as a “property pertaining to matter” and present it as a part of laws of nature. In this model, our universe is interpreted as a subatomic particle in a bigger one.

However this syllogism is definitely out of question and in any case cannot explain how the universe came into being. William Lane Craig, the author of The Big Bang: Theism and Atheism explains why:

A quantum mechanical vacuum spawning material particles is far from the ordinary idea of a “vacuum” (meaning nothing). Rather, a quantum vacuum is a sea of continually forming and dissolving particles, which borrow energy from the vacuum for their brief existence. This is not “nothing,” and hence, material particles do not come into being out of nothing.5

So in quantum physics, matter “does not exist when it was not before”. What happens is that ambient energy suddenly becomes matter and just as suddenly disappears becoming energy again. In short, there is no condition of “existence from nothingness” as is claimed.

In physics, no less than in other branches of the sciences, there are atheist scientists who do not hesitate to disguise the truth by overlooking critical points and details in their attempt to support the materialist view and achieve their ends. For them, it is much more important to defend materialism and atheism than to reveal scientific facts and realities.

In the face of the reality mentioned above, most scientists dismiss the quantum universe model. C. J. Isham explains that “this model is not accepted widely because of the inherent difficulties that it poses.”6 Even some of the originators of this idea, such as Brout and Spindel, have abandoned it.7

A recent and much-publicized version of the quantum universe model was advanced by the physicist Stephen Hawking. In his book A Brief History of Time, Hawking states that the Big Bang doesn’t necessarily mean existence from nothingness. Instead of “no time” before the Big Bang, Hawking proposed the concept of “imaginary time”. According to Hawking, there was only a 10-43 second “imaginary” time interval before the Big Bang took place   and “real” time was formed after that. Hawking’s hope was just to ignore the reality of “timelessness” before the Big Bang by means of this “imaginary” time.

Stephen Hawking also tries to advance different explanations for the Big Bang other than Creation just as other Materialist scientists do by relying upon contradictions and false concepts.

As a concept, “imaginary time” is tantamount to zero or non-existence–like the imaginary number of people in a room or the imaginary number of cars on a road.

Stephen Hawking also tries to advance different explanations for the Big Bang other than Creation just as other Materialist scientists do by relying upon contradictions and false concepts.

Here Hawking is just playing with words. He claims that equations are right when they are related to an imaginary time but in fact this has no meaning. The mathematician Sir Herbert Dingle refers to the possibility of faking imaginary things as real in math as:

In the language of mathematics we can tell lies as well as truths, and within the scope of mathematics itself there is no possible way of telling one from the other. We can distinguish them only by experience or by reasoning outside the mathematics, applied to the possible relation between the mathematical solution and its  physical correlate.8

To put it briefly, a mathematically imaginary or theoretical solution need not have a true or a real consequence. Using a property exclusive to mathematics, Hawking produces hypotheses that are unrelated to reality. But what reason could he have for doing this? It’s easy to find the answer to that question in his own words. Hawking admits that he prefers alternative universe models to the Big Bang because the latter “hints at divine creation”, which such models are designed to oppose.9

What all this shows is that alternative models to the Big Bang such as steady-state, the open and close universe model, and quantum universe models in fact spring from the philosophical prejudices of materialists. Scientific discoveries have demonstrated the reality of the Big Bang and can even explain “existence from nothingness”. And this is very strong evidence that the universe is created by Allah, a point that materialists utterly reject.

An example of this opposition to the Big Bang is to be found in an essay by John Maddox, the editor of Nature (a materialist magazine), that appeared in 1989. In “Down with the Big Bang“, Maddox declares the Big Bang to be philosophically unacceptable because it helps theologists by providing them with strong support for their ideas. The author also predicted that the Big Bang would be disproved and that support for it would disappear within a decade.10 Maddox can only have been even more discomforted by the subsequent discoveries during the next ten years that have provided further evidence of the existence of the Big Bang.

Some materialists do act with more common sense on this subject. The British Materialist H. P. Lipson accepts the truth of creation, albeit “unpleasantly”, when he says:

If living matter is not, then caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation, how has it come into being?…I think, however, that we must…admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.11

In conclusion, the truth disclosed by science is this: Matter and time have been brought into being by an independent possessor of immense power, by a Creator. Allah, the Possessor of almighty power, knowledge and intelligence, has created the universe we live in.

Notes
1. Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse. Cosmos, Bios, Theos. La Salle IL: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p. 241 2. Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos: How Greatest Scientific Discoveries of The Century Reveal God, Colorado: NavPress,  revised edition, 1995, p. 76  3. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator, Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol. 17, p. 19 4. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator, Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol. 17, p. 19 5. William Lane Craig, Cosmos and Creator, Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol. 17, p. 20 6 Christopher Isham, “Space, Time and Quantum Cosmology”, paper presented at the conference “God, Time and Modern Physics”, March 1990, Origins & Design, Spring 1996, vol. 17, p. 27 7. R. Brout, Ph. Spindel, “Black Holes Dispute”, Nature, vol 337, 1989, p. 216 8. Herbert Dingle, Science at the Crossroads, London: Martin Brian & O’Keefe, 1972, p. 31-32 9. StephenHawking, A Brief History of Time, New York: Bantam Books, 1988, p. 46 10. John Maddox, “Down with the Big Bang”, Nature, vol. 340, 1989, p. 378 11. H. P. Lipson, “A Physicist Looks at Evolution”, Physics Bulletin, vol. 138, 1980, p. 138