Mysteries of Creation (3)

MYSTERIES OF CREATION

(Part 3)

An orderly universe

Astrophysicist Paul Davies marvels that “the universe conforms to an orderly scheme and is not an arbitrary muddle of events”⁶⁰ But of course. The world was not created in a random manner. Albert Einstein once sagely said: “God does not play dice with the universe.” That truth has been in Scripture for some 3,000 years: “The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD” (Prov 16:33).

A new field of mathematics called “Chaos Theory” is devoted to the study of random effects. “Mathematicians, however, have been unable to prove the physical existence of randomness,” according to author Chuck Missler (Cosmic Codes, 2004). The search for randomness may prove to be a futile pursuit. The apostle Paul tells us: “For God is not a God of disorder…” (1 Cor 14:33-34a, NIV).

Solomon knew that heaven and earth had been intelligently created and arranged in certain ways for certain reasons. “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth's foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place…” (Prov 3:19, NIV).

Size of the universe

On a clear night, a person with good eyesight may be able to count about 1,029 stars in the sky. With a pair of binoculars or a low-power telescope, he or she can raise the number to some 3,300 stars. As late as 1915, astronomers thought the Milky Way made up the entire universe. Then, in 1925, Edwin Hubble, using his new 100-inch mirror telescope, reported there were as many galaxies as there were stars in the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Current observations indicate there are at least 100 billion galaxies in observable space – each having no less than 100 billion stars – totaling some 10,000 billion billion stars in the universe.

Estimates place the diameter of the cosmos at no less than 40 billion light years; the Milky Way, 80-100 thousand light years wide and 6,000 light years thick. Earth is 25,000-30,000 light years from the galactic center and about 100,000 light years from the center of the universe.

However, University of Arizona astronomer Chris Impey says there are parts of the universe that we cannot observe, because light from extremely distant areas has not yet reached Earth. "We know that our own physical universe is substantially, maybe enormously larger, than the visible universe," he says.⁶¹

Cosmic shape.

Most scientists assume that after the Big Bang matter agglomerated into stars and galaxies, forming an "island universe" in a "sea" of space.

In Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the universe is spherical in shape and finite, with boundaries. He had built his concept around a system by German mathematician Georg Riemann, who said that three-dimensional space curved in every direction in a constant curvature. Thus, a ray of light always curved back on itself over the same path, endlessly. Could there be anything “outside” that spherical universe?

Other cosmological models assume that the universe has no edges. D. Russell Humphreys explains: “In the big bang's mathematical model, space itself expanded outward with the ball of hot matter, with the matter completely filling space at all times. There would never be a large empty part. In the most favored version of the big bang, if you traveled very fast in any given direction, you would arrive back at your starting point without ever encountering a large region of empty space. That makes it impossible to define a boundary around the matter.”⁶² Hence, a border cannot outline the shape of the universe because, without any space around it, the universe has no outer edges.

How many dimensions?

The Bible says God can do many things with the heavens (space): “I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens…” (Isa 44:24b); “Which alone spreadeth out the heavens” (Job 9:8a); “He bowed the heavens…” (2 Sam 22:10a); “the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll…” (Isa 34:4b); “Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens…” (Isa 64:1a); “I will shake the heavens…” (Hag 2:6b); “And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up…” (Heb 1:12a); “The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up…” (Rev 6:14, NASU).

If all those things can be done to the “heavens,” there must be some sort of “room” around space wherein it can be manipulated – another dimension or dimensions conjoined to space! There are several known, as well as theorized, numbers of dimensions:

3 dimensions. Greek mathematician Euclid (d. 270 B.C.), the “father of geometry,” measured objects according to length, width, and height or depth. Paul named these three dimensions in an epistle: “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height…” (Eph 3:17-18a).

4 dimensions. In 1854, Georg Riemann proposed that “forces” were the result of a distortion of geometry. Almost sixty years later, Albert Einstein published his famous Theory of Relativity, making use of a four-dimensional Riemannian geometry, with “time” as the fourth physical dimension.

5 dimensions. Scientists seek a “theory of everything” (General Unified Theory) that would integrate all the forces in the cosmos. Albert Einstein tried, but failed to unify gravity and electromagnetism. About 1915 the German-Polish mathematician Theodor Kaluza and Swedish physicist Oskar Klein proposed that the two could be mathematically unified if the universe had five dimensions. As a result, many particle scientists now treat light as a vibration in the fifth dimension.

6 dimensions. Philosophers during the Middle Ages taught their students that there were no less than six visually perceptible physical dimensions: before, behind, left, right, above, and below.

10 dimensions. Thirteenth century Jewish sage Nachmanides concluded from his study of Genesis chapter 1 that the universe had ten dimensions – four are knowable, six indiscernible. Quantum scientists arrived at the same numbers after British physicist Paul Dirac developed the “string theory” in 1950. Quantum particles like quarks, electrons, and neutrinos, usually considered "points" without length, width, or height, are more easily described when viewed as “strings,” which have only one dimension -- length. Their particular vibrations give different particles their appearances. But strings are said to occur outside the four dimensions of space-time, curled up within themselves, so at least six additional dimensions are needed to detect them.

Interestingly, the number “10” is the gematria or numerical value of the Hebrew letter yod (“Y”), the initial of the sacred Name of God.

26 dimensions. The addition of “supersymmetry” to the String Theory has led to even more novel “superstring” theories, which are now the frontrunners in the quest to unify the four fundamental forces of nature. Some variations of “superstring” theories require as many as 26 dimensions to explain particle properties and interactions.

Coincidentally, “26” is also the sum of the four Hebrew letters that spell the Tetragrammaton (Y/10+H/5+W/6+H/5=26).

⁶⁰Paul Davies, The Goldilocks Enigma, 2006, pp. 15-16

⁶¹Quoted by Andrew Chaikin, “Are There Other Universes?”, Science Tuesday, 05 February 2002, Internet

⁶²D. Russell Humphreys, “Seven Years of Starlight and Time,” Internet

(Excerpted from Chapter 3, Conundrums of Creation, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)

Mysteries of Creation (2)

Gases and dust

“And the earth was without form, and void…” (Gen1:2a)

Scripture suggests and science affirms that the primeval particles of matter were in the form of gases and dust before they bonded together to form the celestial bodies and all things else in the universe.

In 1796, French astronomer Pierre Laplace advanced the “nebular hypothesis” in his book Exposition of the System of the Universe. He proposed that the stars, the sun, and the planets formed from nebulae – swirling clouds of interstellar gases, dust, and minerals

According to the theory, refined over the past 200 years, dynamic interactions cause a spinning cloud to flatten into a disk as gravity pulls much of the materials into the center, which begins to contract. The contraction raises the pressure and temperature at the core until it develops into a “protosun.” The outer parts of the disk, on the other hand, cool down. Mutual attraction causes solid pieces and ice crystals to agglomerate and form asteroids, planetesimals, and rocky inner planets like Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, while farther out gases and dust freeze into great ice balls that become outer gaseous planets, such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

“Blackbody” of space

“…and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen1:2b).

Space, at the outset, was simply an empty darkness. Did God create darkness? Or was darkness the mere absence of light? The Scriptures tell us that the Creator also made darkness: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things” (Isa 45:7).

Towards the end of the 1800s, physicists observed that, at very low temperatures, efficient emitters and absorbers of radiation appeared black. They thus called a perfect emitter or absorber of radiation a “blackbody.”³³

The rate of absorption depends on the size of the exposed surface area – the larger the area, the greater the absorption. The immense darkness of space therefore is the ultimate “blackbody.”

The Spirit of God

“And the Spirit of God moved…” (Gen1:2c)

The presence of physical space presented a medium for motion to take place in. The first recorded motion in space is that of God’s Spirit.

What, daresay, is Spirit? The Spirit of God moved, so It must have possessed energy. Or was It itself energy?

And what in turn is energy? Physicists say energy can be scientifically detected, measured, and managed, but nobody really knows what it is. Yet, everything in the universe is energy. In fact, energy fills the entire universe. Scientists generally accept the existence of an “energy field thought to pervade the cosmos.”³⁴

Matter, moreover, is simply congealed or solidified energy.

Energy into matter.

Albert Einstein’s famous formula (E=mc²) for his theory of relativity equates energy “E” to mass “m” (matter). In short, energy and matter are interchangeable. Energy can be transformed into matter, and vice-versa. Perhaps, not too surprisingly, the psalmist knew this in spiritual terms 3,000 years ago: “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created” (Ps 104:30). Did God’s Spirit, which is energy, produce matter?

A New York Times article of Aug. 21, 1990, concurs: "According to quantum theory… potential existence can be transformed into real existence by the addition of energy. (Energy and matter are equivalent, since all matter ultimately consists of packets of energy.)"³⁵

Hawking elaborates: “There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with 85 zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs.”³⁶

Particles of matter are created from energy. Or, perhaps we should say, Divine Energy?

God entered space-time?

Did God enter the space-time domain in the form of His Spirit? How can the Infinite Nothingness be inside the finite space-time framework?

God apparently manifested an essence of Himself as the Spirit in the material universe. The Infinite Nothingness, having no physical form or dimensions, would not have entered the limitations of space-time that He had created. Doing so would have subjected Him to the laws of nature that He Himself had set in operation.

A part, such as space-time, cannot possibly contain the whole, in this case the Infinite Nothingness. It would have been like trying to put a tree into its seed.

Electromagnetic properties.

Eliphaz, Job’s friend, encountered a spirit: “Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up” (Job 4:15). Since the passing spirit caused the hair on the body of Eliphaz to stand, the unseen entity must have had the effect of static electricity.

Is an ordinary spirit similar to the Spirit of God? God is the Father of spirits: “…shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits…” (Heb 12:9b). It follows, then, that the Spirit of God, the spirits of His sons, the angels, and the spirits of men are similar in nature -- energy with electromagnetic properties.

Water in space

“And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (Gen1:2c).

Water in space before the creation of the earth? Aristotle recorded in his book, Metaphysics, that Thales, the earliest Greek philosopher, believed that the source of all things was water.³⁷

Elementary element.

A molecule of water (H₂O), as we learned in school, is made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Hydrogen, which means “water-maker” (hydro-gen) in Greek, is the most abundant element in the universe. A hydrogen atom is the lightest, simplest, and most basic of all atoms, consisting of just one proton as the nucleus and one electron orbiting around it.

In 1948, Russian-born physicist George Gamow, who produced the first evidences for the Big Bang with his students Alpher and Herman, worked out the nuclear reactions that could have occurred during the first few minutes of the explosion.³⁸ They found that, after about one second, protons would have formed. In the next three minutes, when the temperature of the universe was about 300 million degrees Kelvin,³⁹ protons and neutrons would have formed hydrogen, as well as the other light elements -- primarily helium, and some lithium, beryllium, boron.⁴⁰ The initial nucleosynthesis stopped when there were approximately 78% hydrogen and 22% helium by weight, or 93% hydrogen and 7% helium abundances.⁴¹

Their calculations have since been confirmed through spectroscopic observations. “Atomic hydrogen clouds are the most widely distributed in interstellar space and, together with molecular hydrogen clouds, contain most of the gaseous and particulate matter of interstellar space...”⁴² Hydrogen today comprises some 73% of the visible mass of the universe,⁴³ while helium constitutes approximately 23%.⁴⁴ The Sun alone burns about 40 million tons of hydrogen per second.

Most abundant element.

How did Moses, who wrote the book of Genesis around 3,500 years ago, know that water, or at least its main component hydrogen, was the very first and most abundant element in the universe? Peter reiterated this scientific fact in his general epistle about 1,500 years later: “But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water” (2 Peter 3:5-6, NIV).

Just as the Bible says, science has discovered that there were “waters” (hydrogen) in space before the earth took shape!

Curiously, this information is in the Hebrew word for “heavens” – shamayim. The Hebrew term for “waters” is mayim, while sham means “there” or “in it.” Hence, shamayim can be read as: “there (sham) are waters (mayim) -- in the heavens (shamayim)”! Could this be a mere coincidence?

Light created

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Gen 1:3).

In the deep darkness of the “blackbody” of space, the Creator next brought into existence… light! 

An unimaginably brilliant flash of light must have burst forth, filling all of primordial space. George Gamow was led to say: “One may almost quote the Biblical statement, In the beginning there was light, and plenty of it.”⁴⁵

Early men knew the sun lighted up the world. It was inconceivable to have light in the heavens without the sun, as well as the moon and the stars. So, even as late as at the time of Moses, to be told that light was created before the sun must have stretched their imaginations to the brink of incredulity; or, worse, unbelief.

Light from “water.”

Scientists know all too well that hydrogen atoms are typical sources of photons -- light. When four hydrogen atoms combine into a helium atom through the process of thermonuclear fusion, the energy released is transformed into light and heat.

Thus, the Sun generates radiant energy -- light – through the nuclear conversion of hydrogen into helium. In a hydrogen bomb explosion, hydrogen atoms fuse to produce a blinding blast of light and energy.

Science once again confirms the truth of the Biblical account. But… just what is light?

Electromagnetic radiation.

Technically, “light” is the generic term used for any and all kinds of electromagnetic radiation. In waves of electric and magnetic energy consisting of elementary particles called photons, light results when atoms gain surplus energy by absorbing photons from other sources or by being struck by other particles. As the atoms give up the extra energy, photons are emitted as light.⁴⁶

There are many forms of radiant energy, but seven forms are well known: radio waves, microwaves, infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet rays, x-rays, gamma rays. Radio waves have the longest wavelengths, measured in meters; gamma rays shortest at 0.000000001 cm. In the color spectrum, red has the longest wavelengths at 0.000075 cm, with violet the shortest at 0.000035 cm. Regardless of their wavelengths and frequencies (number of times waves are repeated within a given period), all forms of electromagnetic radiation travel at the speed of light.

Gottfried Leibniz, 17^th century German philosopher-mathematician, observed that a ray of light always chose a path that took it fastest to a destination,⁴⁷ a phenomenon known as the “principle of least action.” Why do they do that when they can just, let us say, drift? Max Planck, the eminent German physicist, could not help saying, “Photons… behave like intelligent human beings.”⁴⁸

The speed of light.

Men had always believed that light was instantaneous. In 1676 Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced that the irregular behavior of the eclipse times of Io, Jupiter’s inner moon, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light. The English astronomer James Bradley independently confirmed in 1729 the finite speed of light. In 1983, the speed of light was officially declared a universal constant of nature at 299,792.458 kilometers (about 186,282 miles) per second.

According to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity, the velocity of light is the ultimate speed limit. Only objects without mass can travel at that speed. Photons, having no mass, traverse space without any loss of energy. Changes in their wavelengths or frequencies do not affect their velocity. At the speed of light, time stops. Light, including all forms of electromagnetic energy, thus exists in a timeless state. The fact that light is outside the realm of time has been proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities.⁴⁹

Light speed decelerating? From 1929 to 1940, Raymond Birge, physics department chairman at the University of California, Berkeley, and arbiter of atomic constants (such as the speed of light), several times recommended decreasing the value for the speed of light.⁵⁰ In 1979, an Australian college student, Barry Setterfield, charted 163 measurements of the speed of light using 16 different methods since Roemer. He found that in general the older the observation, the faster the speed of light.⁵¹

                                   

Measurements of the Speed of Light

Year	Experimenter	Speed (km/s)	(+/- km/s)
1657	Roemer	307,600
1738	(Not named)	303,320	310
1861	(Not named)	300,050	60
1875	Harvard	299,921	13
1880	Michelson	299,910	50
1883	Newcomb	299,860	30
1883	Michelson	299,853	60
1926	Michelson	299,796	4
1950	Bergstrand	299,792.7	.25
1952	Froome	299,792.6	.7
1967	Grosse	299,792.5	.050
1974	Blaney et al.	299,792.459	.0006
1976	Woods et al.	299,792.4588	.0002
1977	Monchalin et al.	299,792.457.6	.00073

With statistician Dr. Trevor Norman, Setterfield showed that, even with the technical crudeness of early experiments, the speed of light was discernibly higher 100 years ago, and as much as 7% higher in the 1700s. Canadian mathematician Alan Montgomery has published a computer analysis backing the Setterfield-Norman findings, indicating that the decay of the speed of light “closely follows a cosecant-squared curve, and has been asymptotic since 1958. If he is correct, the speed of light was 10-30% faster in the time of Christ; twice as fast in the days of Solomon; four times as fast in the days of Abraham, and perhaps more than ten million times faster prior to 3000 B.C.” In 1987, Russian cosmologist V.S. Troitskii calculated that the speed of light was originally about 10¹⁰ (ten billion) times faster at time zero.⁵²

Other scientists have published works asserting that light speed was as much as 10 to the 10^th power faster in the early stages of the Big Bang than it is today.⁵³ For his part, Setterfield estimates that the speed of light was infinite 6,000 years ago.

Light speed accelerated! The London Sunday Times reported on June 4, 2000: “In research carried out in the United States, particle physicists have shown that light pulses can be accelerated to up to 300 times their normal velocity of 186,000 miles per second… The work was carried out by Dr. Lijun Wang of the NEC research institute in Princeton, who transmitted a pulse of light towards a chamber filled with specially treated cesium gas. Before the pulse had fully entered the chamber it had gone right through it and traveled a further 60 (feet) across the laboratory. In effect it existed in two places at once, a phenomenon that Wang explains by saying it traveled 300 times faster than light.” In effect, light leaped forward in time! 

The Italian National Research Council has reportedly approximated Wang’s results by making microwaves travel 25% faster than light.⁵⁴ In fine, all the studies agree: the speed of light is not constant. Light can travel slower or faster than the presently accepted “speed of light.”

Many are excited over the possibilities. Others are bothered. If the findings hold true, they would shatter Einstein’s theory of relativity, which states that the speed of light is an inviolable universal constant.

The Big Bang

The “Big Bang” is the most widely accepted theory of the origin of the universe. After the Hubble discovery in 1927 that all the other galaxies were speeding away from the Earth, George Gamow proposed in the 1940s that all matter in the universe was once compressed in an extremely hot and compact point that suddenly exploded, with the expanding matter forming the galaxies. (The Bible depicts that event in more unequivocal terms: "I am the LORD, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens…” -- Isa 44:24a, NKJV.)

In early 2006 NASA announced the findings of a team of U.S. and Canadian scientists indicating an exceedingly rapid inflation at the birth of the universe. “Data collected from a new satellite map of the 13.7 billion-year-old universe backed the concept of inflation, which poses that the universe expanded many trillion times its size in less than a trillionth of a second.”⁵⁵

Only photons could have traveled at that incredible speed. The Big Bang was an immense explosion of photons – light. Robert Jastrow wrote: “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: The chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.”⁵⁶

Light into matter.

The rapidly dispersing light (photons) transformed into matter in accordance to Einstein’s equation (E = mc²)! Just how did it happen?

Schroeder points out that “as long as radiant energy (E) is more powerful than a specific threshold needed to make a particle of matter, that energy can change spontaneously and become a particle of nuclear matter (m).” (“Threshold” refers to the minimum temperature of “quark confinement,” “approximately a million million times hotter than the current 3^oK black of space,” when quarks bond together to form protons and neutrons, converting energy into matter.)⁵⁷

Science writer George Sim Johnston is amazed: “Twentieth-century physics… describes the beginning of the universe in virtually the same cosmological terms as Genesis. Space, time and matter came out of nothing in a… burst of light entirely hospitable to carbon-based life.”⁵⁸

Surprisingly, the Jews in olden times knew this: “Mehitabut ha'orot, nithavu hakelim” ("From the condensation of the lights, were the vessels brought into being") – an old Jewish saying.⁵⁹

Lab-created matter. The title of an article in the 1997 Encarta Yearbook is a grabber: “Scientists Create Matter Out of Light.” It tells of experimental physicists bombarding heavy atoms (made up of many protons and neutrons) with high-energy radiation in the form of X-rays. Collisions between the X-ray beam and the atoms created pairs of electron (matter) and positron (antimatter) particles.

In other trials at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in Palo Alto, California, scientists accelerated a beam of electrons at close to the speed of light, then directed a pulse of high-energy laser light at the electron beam. When a photon collided with an electron, the photon ricocheted onto other photons from the laser with such force that the ensuing energy produced an electron-positron (matter-antimatter) pair. The physicists recorded over 100 pairs in several months.

Big Bang problems.

The Big Bang Theory violates many laws of physics. For instance, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) states that all systems proceed from an orderly state to one of disorder. In short, all things break down and deteriorate. How could the orderly universe be the result of the Big Bang -- an explosion, which is a form of destruction?

It was highly improbable for the rapidly expanding universe to have produced highly concentrated and rotating bodies, as well as solar systems and clusters of galaxies. Moreover, can fast-moving objects accompany slow-moving objects? Many quasars with very high redshifts cluster with galaxies having low redshifts. Apparently moving at different velocities, they should have dispersed a long, long time ago.  

In the disorder of the Big Bang, something (or, perhaps, Someone?) introduced order so that the universe could form.

^33.Danny Faulkner, “Do Creationists Believe in ‘Weird’ Physics?”, The New Answers Book 2, 2008, pp. 328-329

^34. Andrew Chaikin, “Are There Other Universes?”, Science Tuesday, 05 February 2002, Internet ^35.“New Direction in Physics: Back in Time”

^36. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988, p. 171

^37.Thales, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)

^38. Big Bang Theory, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

^39. Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, 1997, p. 190

^40.Big Bang Theory, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

^41.Schroeder, op. cit., pp. 189-190

^42.Cosmos, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition

^43.Hydrogen, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004

^44.Helium, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition

^45.Quoted by Migene Gonzalez-Wippler, A Kabbalah for the Modern World, 1977 edition, p. 37

^46.Light, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)

^47.Cited by Gonzalez-Wippler, op. cit., p. 9

^48.Op. cit., p. 11

^49.Schroeder, op. cit., p. 171

^50.Helen D. Setterfield, “History of the Light-Speed Debate,” Personal Update, July 2002, p. 10

^51.Chris Bennett, Speed of light slowing down?, July 31, 2004, WorldNetDaily.com

^52.Chuck Missler, Cosmic Codes, revised 2004, pp. 343-345

^53.Dr. Joao Magueijo of Imperial College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of the University of California at Davis, and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto

^54.Jonathan Leake, London Sunday Times, June 4, 2000

^55.“Astronomers detect new clues on universe’s expansion,” The Philippine Star, March 19, 2006

^56.Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 1978, p. 14

^57.Schroeder, op. cit., p. 187

^58.George Sim Johnston, Reader’s Digest, May 1991, p. 31

^59.“Spiritual Time, Space, Mass, Light and Energy,” A Study of the Book of Revelation, updated 8/20/00, Internet

(Excerpted from Chapter 3, Conundrums of Creation, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)

The Mysteries of Creation (Part 1)

Have you, like countless others, ever wondered how the world began? Stephen Hawking, the famous British theoretical physicist, wrote: “We find ourselves in a bewildering world. We want to make sense of what we see around us and to ask: What is the nature of the universe? What is our place in it and where did it and we come from?”¹

Practically all cultures on earth have a cosmogony -- a creation myth of how the world came into being. These traditions present a broad variety of scenarios that range from the death of a god or animal, whose body parts became the land, sea, and sky; to a primordial sea, from which gods and the world emerged; to eggs that hatched creator-gods; to struggles among gods, who produced offspring through incest or self-fertilization; to men springing forth from the tears of gods or even fleas from the skin of a dead god. The numerous tableaux had been limited only by the ancients’ imaginations.

Under scrutiny, however, all of these stories of origin are nothing but continuations of previous circumstances, built on things that already existed. On the other hand, the Genesis account of creation in the Bible tells of a universe that emerged from nothing.

Science confirms Scripture

In great steps, advances in modern science are confirming the Biblical account. While science textbooks have to be revised or updated from time to time in the past 200 years to accommodate new discoveries and theories, in 3,500 years nothing ever needed to be changed in the Bible. Rather, many mysteries in the Scriptures have become clear and well established facts in the light of increasing scientific knowledge. 

Astronomer Hugh Ross remarks: “Instead of another bizarre creation myth, here (in the Bible) was a journal-like record of the earth’s initial conditions – correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics – followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which Earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans. The account was simple, elegant, and scientifically accurate.”²

Science writer Fred Heeren notes: “Hebrew revelation is the only religious source coming to us from ancient times that fits the modern cosmological picture. And in many cases, 20^th-century archeology and myth experts have also been forced to turn from older views that treated the Bible as myth to ones that treat it as history.”³

The convergence of Biblical teachings and scientific findings is truly amazing. Let us begin with the first few words and verses of the Bible to see for ourselves this growing harmony between science and Scripture.

A beginning

 “In the beginning …” (Gen1:1).

The Judeo-Christian Scriptures unfold with the story of the birth of the universe. Ancient men generally believed in so such thing. The Greek philosopher Aristotle taught around 2,300 years ago that the world was eternal – it had always existed. Indeed, the starry sky we see on a clear night seems to be unchanging. Albert Einstein, considered one of the most brilliant scientific minds in modern times, tried to prove that we live in a static, unchanging universe. As late as the early 1960s, two-thirds of the leading American scientists surveyed professed their belief in the steady-state theory of the cosmos.⁴

In 1917, though, after Einstein published his theories of special and general relativity (1905 and 1915), Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter saw an oversight in Einstein’s equations. He pointed out that if the density of the universe were low enough, it would not be static, but expanding at nearly the speed of light.⁵ In 1922, Russian astronomer Alexandr Friedmann found a hidden mathematical prediction in Einstein’s equations: The universe was finite, not infinite. Anything that is not infinite must have had a beginning.

In 1927 American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that, based on the observed redshift (wavelengths of light lengthening or turning red when moving away from the observer), all the other galaxies were speeding away from the Earth. The farther away they were, the higher their velocity – as fast as about 25,000 miles per second!⁶

The law of inertia states that a body at rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion unless acted upon by some outside force. Hence, the galaxies have once been close together before a force caused them to move away from each other. Ergo, the universe had a beginning. The editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica express their agreement: “The observed expansion of the universe immediately raises the spectre that the universe is evolving, that it had a beginning…”⁷

In addition, the science of thermodynamics dictates that heat must flow from a warm body to a cold one. If the universe has always existed, its temperature should be uniform throughout. However, observations indicate that the cosmic temperature is still cooling down. Therefore, the universe has not always existed – it had a starting point.

Robert Jastrow, founder and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, concludes that “the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are alike in one essential respect. There was a beginning, and all things in the Universe can be traced back to it.”⁸

A Beginner?

“In the beginning God…” (Gen1:1).

The law of causality, or cause and effect, declares that nothing can happen or exist without a cause. The universe, being an effect, must have had a cause. What caused the universe to come into existence?

Scientists are able to analyze and explain the observable universe; but they remain in the dark as to its cause. Paul Dirac, the Nobel laureate from Cambridge University, said: “It seems certain that there was a definite time of creation.”⁹ Aside from accepting a cosmic beginning, Dirac implies, by the word “creation,” the hand of a creator.

The Encyclopedia Britannica admits the implication: “…the notion that the Cosmos had a beginning, while common in many theologies, raises deep and puzzling questions for science, for it implies a creation event -- a creation not only of all the mass-energy that now exists in the universe but also perhaps of space-time itself.”¹⁰ Stephen Hawking is of the same mind: “So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator.”¹¹

Empty space created

“In the beginning God created the heaven…” (Gen 1:1).

If the universe had a beginning, then “space” has not always been there. There was once a state or condition when the emptiness of space did not exist at all.

As most people today know, “heaven” is the empty space above and surrounding Earth in all directions, where the stars and the planets are. How did space come into being? Jewish mystics have long been familiar with this mystery: The Ein Sof (the “Infinite Nothingness”) contracted Itself to make room for space. The “contraction” is known in Kabbalistic terms as the tzimtzum.

Can you imagine what empty space is like? It contains nothing, not even light or darkness. Yet, surprisingly, scientists have discovered that the vacuum of “empty space” is not absolutely empty. Space possesses electromagnetic qualities, dielectric permittivity, intrinsic impedance, and immense “zero-point” energy that helps keep all the electrons in the cosmos in their orbits around atomic nuclei!¹²

A cosmic “air pocket”?

Perhaps we can use an analogy, although inadequate, to imagine the relationship between the Ein Sof and space: If the Ein Sof were the atmosphere that is everywhere around us, then space would be an “air pocket” (which air travelers are quite familiar with). An air pocket forms when a mass of air cools, becomes heavier, and sags as one distinct body. The air pocket is still very much a part of the atmosphere, but for the time being has acquired a separate identity of its own.

Matter materializes

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen1:1).

After creating “heaven” (space), God went on to create the “earth” in the emptiness He had just brought forth. Here, “earth” may mean something else other than the planet Earth, because the next passage says that the earth was still “without form, and void.” The Hebrew word used was 'erets (from a root meaning “to be firm”). We could thus take “earth” in the passage to mean “solid matter.”

The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Something cannot be created from nothing. If so, how did the first speck of matter materialize? Paul says God created the physical universe from invisible materials: “…what is seen was not made out of things which are visible” (Heb 11:3b, NASU).

A medieval Jewish sage in Spain, Moses Ben Nachman, also known as Nacḥmanides or Ramban, wrote: “In the beginning, from total and absolute nothing, the Creator brought forth a substance so thin it had no corporeality, but that substanceless substance could take on form.”¹³

All things from “nothing”

Cosmologists generally believe that in the beginning there was nothing. Then, all of a sudden, from out of that nothing, the universe was born. Jewish sages are in complete agreement. They just differ in their concept of “nothing.”

Scientists arrive at a mathematical “zero.” Stephen Hawking says that “the total energy of the universe is exactly zero.”¹⁴ Paul Davies wonders: “Astronomers can measure the masses of galaxies, their average separation, and their speeds of recession. Putting these numbers into a formula yields a quantity which some physicists have interpreted as the total energy of the universe. The answer does indeed come out to be zero within the observational accuracy. The reason for this distinctive result has long been a source of puzzlement to cosmologists. Some have suggested that there is a deep cosmic principle at work which requires the universe to have exactly zero energy.”¹⁵

In contrast, by “nothing” Jewish philosophers mean the Ein Sof – the “Infinite Nothingness” -- God. It appears He was that “deep cosmic principle at work” in the beginning.

A thought in God’s mind?

In Space-Time and Beyond, Fred Alan Wolf wrote: “The quantum physicist calls the ‘pre-matter’ phase, the quantum wave function. The quantum wave function is very well calculated, but it is not matter! It is not anything, really… As fantastic as it sounds, the mathematical models for such things are very well defined and, mathematically at least, well understood… the quantum wave represents where and when something is likely to occur; in other words, it is a measure of the probability of an event taking place… this probability not only exists in our minds, but also moves in space and time. In other words this wave is both in our minds and out there in the world.”¹⁶

Before matter first appeared, was it merely a probability in the mind of God? Paul Davies muses, “it seems that the entire universe may be nothing more than a thought in the mind of God.”¹⁷ James Jeans, the knighted British mathematician, says: “The world looks more like a great thought than a great machine”¹⁸ and adds: “If the universe is a universe of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought.”¹⁹

From wave to particle?

In 1906 English physicist J.J. Thomson won the Nobel Prize for demonstrating that electrons were particles. In 1924 French physicist Louis de Broglie (who won the Nobel Prize in 1929) proposed that all matter, including light, possessed a quality called “wave-particle duality” – that is, they can appear as either waves or particles.²⁰ J.J. Thomson’s only son, George Paget Thomson, likewise became a Nobel laureate in 1937 by proving that electrons were waves! Both father and son, as well as de Broglie, were correct – they established the wave-particle duality common to all subatomic entities.

Quantum physicists now know that when an atom is broken down to its subatomic components, particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons surprisingly lose their characteristics as particles. They may sometimes still behave like particles, but they no longer have dimensions. Thus, a subatomic entity, such as an electron, can appear as a particle or a wave. Amazed physicists found that if we assume that a quantum entity is a particle, it will appear as a particle. Assume it is a wave, and we will observe it as a wave! We see matter the way we believe it exists. In theory, all matter, including humans, has this property of duality.²¹

Was the wave-particle duality principle responsible for a thought of God morphing from a wave into the first particle of matter?

Infinitesimal speck

Advocates of the Big Bang Theory hold that the universe began as an infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, and incredibly compact point called a “singularity.” It contained all the matter of the universe. This hews closely to what Jewish sages have taught for centuries.

In his exegesis of Genesis in the 12^th century, Moses Maimonides said that the entire universe had been created from something smaller than a mustard seed.²² Nachmanides corroborated that: “Now this creation was a very small point and from this all things that ever were or will be formed.”²³ Later, in 1930, Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre described the primal atom as a super dense “cosmic egg.”

Astronomer Edwin Hubble’s discovery of an expanding universe implies that all the particles that make up the universe were indeed once tightly packed together. The supremely hot and compact speck suddenly exploded and dispersed at close to the speed of light, eventually forming the stars and the galaxies.

Fellow astronomer John D. Barrow of the University of Sussex, in England, speculates: “If the universe is expanding, then when we reverse the direction of history and look in the past we should find evidence that it emerged from a smaller, denser state – a state that appears to have once had zero size. It is the apparent beginning that has become known as the big bang.”²⁴ Advocates of the Big Bang Theory are fond of saying: “First, there was nothing. Then it exploded.”

  

“Quantum fluctuation”

The NASA posits that the creation of the universe was the result of a “quantum fluctuation.” Quantum what?

Edward Tryon first proposed the idea in a Nature magazine article in 1973: “Is the Universe a Vacuum Fluctuation?”²⁵ Scientific writer Andrew Chaikin remarks: “Quantum mechanics says that matter and energy can appear spontaneously out of the vacuum of space, thanks to something called a quantum fluctuation, a sort of hiccup in the energy field thought to pervade the cosmos.”²⁶

Physicists have realized that even the supposedly empty vacuum of space has “things” swarming in it. As author Richard Morris (The Edges of Science) points out: “In modern physics, there is no such thing as ‘nothing.’ Even in a perfect vacuum, pairs of virtual particles are constantly being created and destroyed. The existence of these particles is no mathematical fiction. Though they cannot be directly observed, the effects they create are quite real. The assumption that they exist leads to predictions that have been confirmed by experiment to a high degree of accuracy.”²⁷ The spontaneous appearance and disappearance of virtual particles in space is what scientists call a “quantum fluctuation.”

Law of parity. An article in The New York Times (August 21, 1990), entitled "New Direction in Physics: Back in Time," explains that “the vacuum's totally empty space is actually a seething turmoil of creation and annihilation, which to the ordinary world appears calm because the scale of fluctuations in the vacuum is tiny and the fluctuations tend to cancel each other out."²⁸

In other words, as soon as a virtual particle appears, its closely following antiparticle twin collides with it, destroying both of them. The process of mutual destruction is part of the “law of parity.” (The “virtual particles” are pairs of matter and antimatter, such as quarks and antiquarks, which form the atoms that make up all things in the universe. An antiparticle is identical to its particle partner in every way, except that its charge or spin is the exact opposite.)

The Encarta Encyclopedia sheds further light on the matter: “In physics, the seemingly inviolable law of parity holds that the conversion of energy into matter produces equal amounts of matter and antimatter that then annihilate each other.”²⁹

A quark of nature

Until the 1950s physicists believed there was always perfect balance and symmetry in the creation and mutual annihilation of matter and antimatter. Yet, if that was the case, the universe could never have materialized. All matter would have vanished almost as soon as it had appeared. But a quirk of nature happened. Every so many collisions left one extra particle or quark surviving intact.

Matter-antimatter imbalance. In 1964, James W. Cronin of the University of Chicago and Val L. Fitch of Princeton did experiments which showed that every so often an extra particle survived the matter-antimatter annihilation: two in each 1,200 decays of a particle produced a survivor that violated the law of parity. For their achievement, Cronin and Fitch shared the Nobel Prize in physics in 1980.³⁰

Physicist Gerald Schroeder speaks of even greater odds: In the first 1/100,000 of a second of the Big Bang, more quarks than antiquarks were produced – 10,000,000,001 particles for every 10,000,000,000 antiparticles -- establishing a numerical edge of matter over antimatter. Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg wrote: “The one part in ten billion excess of matter over antimatter is one of the key initial conditions that determined the future development of the universe.”³¹

The extra quarks left by the matter-antimatter imbalance in the quantum fluctuations accumulated and bonded together to form the elements that gave birth to the stars and the galaxies, and, later, all living organisms. What caused the imbalance?

Astrophysicist John Gribbin comments that, although scientists can describe in detail what happened after the creation, they cannot explain what started it all. The “instant of creation remains a mystery… maybe God did make it, after all.”³²

1	Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988, p. 171
2	Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15
3	Fred Heeren, Show Me God, 1997, Preface; quoted in “The Beginning of the Universe,” Does God Exist?, 2000, p. 12
4	Gerald Schroeder, The Science of God, 1997, p. 23
5	De Sitter, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
6	Robert Faid, “The Factual Scientific Accuracy of the Bible,” Mysteries of the Bible Now Revealed, 1999, p. 136
7	Cosmos, Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition
8	Robert Jastrow, Journey to the Stars, 1989, p. 47
9	Quoted by Grant Jeffrey, The Signature of God, 1996, p. 117
10	Cosmos, op. cit.
11	Hawking, op. cit., pp. 140-141
12	“Why ‘Six Days’?,” Personal Update, November 2003, p. 11
13	Quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., p. 184
14	Hawking, op. cit., p. 129
15	Paul Davies, God and the New Physics, 1983, pp. 31-32
16	Fred Alan Wolf, Space-Time and Beyond, 1987, pp. 128-129
17	Quoted in “Whence Our ‘Reality’?,” Personal Update, Dec. 2003, p. 4
18	Quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., Introduction
19	James H. Jeans, The Mysterious Universe, revised edition, 1932, p. 181
20	De Broglie, Louis Victor, World Book 2005 (Deluxe)
21	Schroeder, op. cit., p. 160
22	Cited by Schroeder, op. cit., p. 58
23	Quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., 1997, p. 184
24	John D. Barrow, The Origin of the Universe, 1994, pp. 3-5
25	Cited by Schroeder, op. cit., p. 62
26	Andrew Chaikin, “Are There Other Universes?”, Science Tuesday, 05 February 2002, Internet
27	Richard Morris, The Edges of Science, 1990, p. 25
28	“New Direction in Physics: Back in Time,” The New York Times, nytimes.com/1990/08/21/science, Internet
29	1980: Nobel Prizes, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2004
30	Ibid.
31	Steven Weinberg, “Life in the Universe”; quoted by Schroeder, op. cit., pp. 188-189
32	John Gribbin, “Taking the Lid Off Cosmology,” New Scientist, August 16, 1979, p. 506

(Excerpted from Chapter 3, Conundrums of Creation, THE DEEP THINGS OF GOD: A Primer on the Secrets of Heaven and Earth by M.M. Tauson, Amazon.com)