"In the Beginning"
Let's start by watching how they say it all began and how it has panned out since then – click here.I do not wholly agree with their account of how it happened, so here is the version I would rather have: Long before anything existed there was, waaaiiit for it - NOTHING! Well, not absolutely correct, there was a minuscule mote.
"A spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all" says Bill Bryson in his book 'A Short History of Nearly Everything'.
"It is natural but wrong to visualize 'it' as a kind of pregnant dot hanging in a dark, boundless void. But there is no space, no darkness. 'It' has no around around it. There is no space for it to occupy, no place for it to be, we can't even ask how long it has been there – whether it has just lately popped into being, like a good idea, or whether it has been there forever, quietly awaiting the right moment. Time doesn't exist. There is no past for it to emerge from." Continues Bryson and then concludes,
"And so, from nothing, our universe begins."
And that's an undisputable fact of all existence, inescapable, but that's just about as incontrovertible as it gets. Today I just want to dive straight into the thick of things by asking you to take a personal choice on whether you think this "dot" was conscious or not, was it aware of itself? Was it intelligent?
If you think it was, then you are likely to also think that what ensued was deliberate intentioned consequence. If you think not, then you are likely to see what ensued as nothing but a random and inevitable transition triggered by some unknown factors. The first choice would out rightly make you a theist, and your 'infinitesimal spot' would by inference be God. The latter choice would make you an atheist and you are likely to refer to the infinitesimal spot not as God but instead you would label it the 'Singularity'. For a little while there I had the temptation to label the second lot 'scientists' after all , it was them that coined the name 'the singularity' but that would be erroneous wouldn't it? Many scientists actually do believe in God. As matter of fact, Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre who first proposed what came to be referred to as 'The Big Bang Theory' was an ordained catholic minister.
For now, we will do just fine settling for both; God and Singularity. What was it like? We know that it always existed in all eons in the likely form of dark matter, or packed raw energy, I really don't know, so allow me to borrow an apt description from Bryson once more:
"if you want to build a universe 'you will need to gather up everything there is – every last mote and particle of matter between here and the edge of creation – and squeeze it into a spot so infinitesimally compact that it has no dimensions at all….. Then get ready for a really big bang.….. outside the singularity there is no where, when the universe begins to expand, it won't be spreading out to fill a larger emptiness. The only space that exists is the space it creates as it goes."
Where the singularity came from, well, that's about the only thing that evolutionary old earth proponents leave unanswered. Some argue that the singularity may have been as a result of an earlier collapsed universe, and that the Big Bang was merely one of many transitions.
"These are very close to religious questions" Dr. Andrei Linde. A cosmetologist at Stanford, told the New York Times in 2001.
Very close to religious questions indeed. It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing. But the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can. For science, the Singularity is just about the only instance in which this happened – allow me to rephrase - You see, in a world devoid of God we never see things jumping into existence out of nothingness, but atheists will make one small exception to this rule; mainly the universe and everything in it.
John 1: 1-5
"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. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
But in a world with the remotest possibility of a deity and for the theist, these things are common place: Celestial beings pop up from nowhere and appear to humans all the time, to Abraham, to Jacob….. ordinary things can often reform and deform into extra ordinary things all the time, a stick can turn into a snake, water in the river can turn into blood, waters in the sea can part to create dry land, a stone can turn into a spring, a fire can appear from nowhere and start burning a bush, a jar of oil that never runs dry, men walking in a furnace without burning and so on.
And the ultimate, the shocking deeds of a man that walked around the villages turning water into wine, raising the dead, healing infirmities by mere command, walking on water, commanding the elements. Think for a moment about the more than 20,000 who witnessed two fish in a basket lifted up in the air, and when the basket came down with it came enough fish to feed the whole crowd, and not once but on two separate occasions, how would you go about convincing them that something can never come out of nothing? And think about the more than 500 who saw and heard a man they had just seen die three days before, what would you say to them? That they were all hallucinating? In the exact same moment? "See the most astounding fact" Theists believe in an all knowing, all powerful and all present God with the capacity to create something out of nothing and thus the Bible begins in the first verse of Genesis
Gen 1:1
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
Let's halt for a minute here and really, seriously think about this 'Creatio Ex Nihilio - Created Out of Nothing' business. Out of nothing really? How can this be? Let's bring a young Einstein into the picture, then you are likely to suddenly realize that something out of nothing is no longer that unfathomable, It's really not completely unthinkable, religion has always considered it conceivable but it was not until 1905 that science started to see the possibilities of transmutation, deforming, reforming and so forth between different forms of matter and energy. In this year, young Einstein working at the Swiss Office of Patents wrote a paper titled "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". That paper was the predecessor of The Special Theory of Relativity and the subsequent Theory of General Relativity that was published later in 1916
The Theory of Relativity
carlLet's now briefly study one of sciences most profound theories, The Theory of Relativity. Let's find out how it's been expounded upon since the time of Einstein, and see if the Bible has anything for or against its implications. Formulated by Albert Einstein in 1905, the theory of relativity is the notion that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. The theory explains the behavior of objects in space and time, and it can be used to predict everything from the existence of black holes, to light bending due to gravity, to the behavior of the planet Mercury in its orbit.
The theory is deceptively simple. First, there is no "absolute" frame of reference. Every time you measure an object's velocity, or its momentum, or how it experiences time, it's always in relation to something else. Second, the speed of light is the same no matter who measures it or how fast the person measuring it is going. Third, nothing can go faster than light.
The implications of Einstein's most famous theory are profound. If the speed of light is always the same, it means that an astronaut going very fast relative to the Earth will measure the seconds ticking by slower than an earthbound observer will — time essentially slows down for the astronaut, a phenomenon called time dilation. And if one can possibly get to the speed of light, like say God would, then time essentially stops. There is no past and no future, everything happens in the present, one can see both creation and apocalypse all at the same time. By implication it would mean that they would be everywhere, know everything since they can see all that has ever happened or will ever happen, and with the ability to be everywhere, know everything even before it happens comes the ability to alter the future and thus be all powerful. What did I just say? That attaining the speed of light is likely to make you God like. Could Einstein have been referring to God in the Theory of Relativity?
2 Peter 3:8
"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."
Getting back to how the theory is explained, any object in a big gravity field is accelerating, so it will also experience time dilation. Meanwhile, the astronaut's spaceship will experience length contraction, which means that if you took a picture of the spacecraft as it flew by, it would look as though it were "squished" in the direction of motion. To the astronaut on board, however, all would seem normal. In addition, the mass of the spaceship would appear to increase from the point of view of people on Earth.
The theory encompasses two interrelated theories: special relativity and general relativity. Special relativity applies to elementary particles and their interactions, describing all their physical phenomena except gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its relation to other forces of nature. It applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy.
The theory transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century, superseding a 200-year-old theory of mechanics created primarily by Isaac Newton. It introduced concepts including spacetime as a unified entity of space and time, relativity of simultaneity, kinematic and gravitational time dilation, and length contraction. In the field of physics, relativity improved the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, along with ushering in the nuclear age. With relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves.
Relativity remains the most famous scientific theory of the 20th century, but how well does it explain the things we see in our daily lives? General relativity has many surprising and counterintuitive consequences. Some of these are:
Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for one observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion.
Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock.
Fly across the world and you will step out of the plane a quinzillionth of a second younger than those you left behind
Relativistic mass
Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer.
Mass–energy equivalence: E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable.
Maximum speed is finite: No physical object, message or field line can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
The effect of Gravity can only travel through space at the speed of light, not faster or instantaneously
Clocks run slower in deeper gravitational wells. This is called gravitational time dilation.
Orbits precess in a way unexpected in Newton's theory of gravity. (This has been observed in the orbit of Mercury and in binary pulsars).
Rays of light bend in the presence of a gravitational field.
Rotating masses "drag along" the spacetime around them; a phenomenon termed "frame-dragging".
spacetime is curved and the universe is expanding, and the far parts of it are moving away from us faster than the speed of light.
But you don't necessarily need a spaceship zooming at near the speed of light to see relativistic effects. In fact, there are several instances of relativity that we can see in our daily lives, and even technologies we use today that demonstrate that Einstein was right. Here are some ways we see relativity in action:
One of today's most relevant applications of relativity is the Global Positioning System: In order for your car's or phone's GPS navigation to function as accurately as it does, satellites have to take relativistic effects into account. This is because even though satellites aren't moving at anything close to the speed of light, they are still going pretty fast. The satellites are also sending signals to ground stations on Earth. These stations (and the GPS unit in your car) are all experiencing higher accelerations due to gravity than the satellites in orbit. To get that pinpoint accuracy, the satellites use clocks that are accurate to a few billionths of a second (nanoseconds). Since each satellite is 12,600 miles (20,300 kilometers) above Earth and moves at about 6,000 miles per hour (10,000 km/h), there's a relativistic time dilation that tacks on about 4 microseconds each day. Add in the effects of gravity and the figure goes up to about 7 microseconds. That's 7,000 nanoseconds. The difference is very real: if no relativistic effects were accounted for, a GPS unit that tells you it's a half mile (0.8 km) to the next gas station would be 5 miles (8 km) off after only one day.
But forget all this jargon about how fancy and revolutionary the Theory was, I just want us to focus on one thing: the Mass – Energy equivalence
E = mc2
That energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable; they are two forms of the same thing; Energy is liberated matter, and mater is energy waiting to happen.. It was not until people really understood the implications of Einstein theory of relativity and E = mc2 that they realized the vast amounts of energy packed in every molecule of matter. This is the stuff that nuclear bombs are made of.
It is said that an average adult will contain about 7x1018 joules of potential energy – enough to explode with the force of thirty very large hydrogen bombs – That's assuming he knew how to liberate it.
The search was earnestly on to try and liberate the inexhaustible energy source that was potent in all of matter. And in events likely to forever remain dark reminders of just how wicked man can be, it was not until the morning of August 6th 1945 that Paul Tibbets, an American pilot on the cock pit of Enola Gay dropped 'Little boy' on the Japanese city of Hiroshima that this enormous power was publicly demonstrated. Little boy was loaded with 63kg of highly enriched uranium that yielded 15000 Tons of TNT equivalent. That was an enormous yield of blast energy especially considering that only 1.38% of the uranium actually fissioned. Three days later on August 9th Major Charles W. Sweeney piloting Boeing B-29 Superfortress Bockscar dropped "Fat Man" On Nagasaki. Fat Man had a Plutonium filling weight of 6.2Kg and a blast yield of 21000 Tons. Since then the nuclear race was on: Russia, Japan, China, North Korea, Iran and the list goes on.
Nuclear science has since been put to better uses, its foremost use will however always remain ominous to humanity. Today The USS Carl Vinson for instance is one of ten Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers operated by the United States Navy with the latest in the series becoming the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS George W. Bush. Propulsion for the USS Carl Vinson is provided by her twin Westinghouse-brand A4W nuclear-powered reactors. These feed four large propeller shafts at a reported 260,000 shaft horsepower allowing for speeds of up to 30 knots. This Aircraft carrier can go on 25 years fulltime duty without refueling. With zero carbon footprint, nuclear power could very likely be the silver bullet in saving the planet from imminent devastation from fossil fuel use. We have yet to find ways to convert most of matter into energy, or energy back into matter, but this clearly gives you a hint of what can possibly be done.
Now let's go back to that infinitesimal mote from which we started, and imagine all of the universe's matter packed into an energy cell the size of a dot. Now think of Einstein's E = mc2.
You know it is actually reported that when Randall Thomas Davidson the then Archbishop of Canterbury heard about the theory of relativity, he went to Einstein and asked him what effect it would have on Christianity. "None whatsoever" Einstein said. Could Einstein probably have implied that this was really the cradle of religion, the very essence and nature of God, the beginning of creation and its very sustenance? That this was nothing new, it was the stuff of the ancient of days.
"Could Einstein have been referring to God in the Theory of Relativity?" I can't help but ask again.
"We will do just fine settling for both; God and Singularity. What was it like?" I asked earlier on: You know, I have actually done a lot of thinking on this, and if you asked me what God is like, I would have to say "God is Light". Light must be the essence of God. The phrase "God is light" appears in 1 John 1:5, where the apostle John is explaining that the message we have from Jesus Christ is that God is light and there is no darkness in Him at all. Light is the nature and character of God. He is not a light or a kind of light; He is light itself. All light comes from Him. At the beginning of time, He created the light to dispel the darkness and chaos that was all over (Genesis 1:1–5). Then He created the lights in the sky, the sun, moon, and stars (Genesis 1:14–16). As light itself and the source of light, He had only to speak and light came into being.
The New Testament picks up these themes, describing the holiness of God as Light in different ways. God "dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Timothy 6:16); He is the "Father of lights" (James 1:17). God's Light is revealed in Christ, whose light of love shines into lives darkened by sin (1 John 1:5–7). Jesus declares that He is the "light of the world" (John 8:12; 9:5). John describes Jesus, the incarnate Word, as coming into the world to be the "light of men" and "the true light which gives light to everyone" (John 1:1–9).
And so my thoughts about that infinitesimal mote are that it must have been so radiant that it would be impossible to even look at or get close to. So much energy packed into it that part of it transmuted into a universe, and a good portion of it still remained intact.
"Kabooom" so it happened in Hiroshima on the morning of 6th August 1945, and the world was never the same and "Flaaash" so it happened at some indefinite time in eternity, and the world was born. Georges Lemaitre, him of the Big Bang Theory, did indeed postulate that jumping into existence in a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, out of nothingness in an unimaginably intense flash of light, is how he would expect the universe to respond if God were to actually utter the command in Genesis 1:3, "Let there be light." In other words, the origin of the universe as per outlined in the theory unfolded exactly how one would expect after reading Genesis. But I do not want us to get to "let there be light" at least not yet, for now let's just settle at Gen 1:1 "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
And we now find ourselves at T= 0, Time equals zero - the very beginning – so time started to tick away and this is right where major differences in the schools of thought start to arise. For those that are of the singularity T= 0 was 13.7 billion years ago, but to them that see the hand of God in it, T=0 was approximately six thousand years ago. So which one is it really? 6K or 13.7B, let's find out!
They say the universe is 13.7 billion years old, how did they date it? And does life need be that old too or at what point did life make its entrance? Was it a grand spontaneous entrance or was it a slow progression over millions of years? And did it happen only on earth? Is it true that early man could live for up to 900 years? Let's read more….
