could anyone please forward this to makers and fans of the TV show “the big bang theory” which although claiming to be full of whitty, knowledgeable nerds, still passes on the immorality and of hollywood.

Awesome! I’m adding this to my book’s chapter countering the charge that the Catholic Church is anti-science.

Actually, I think the History Channel and the Science Channel have Big Bang documentaries that show Fr. Lemaitre as the “father of the Big Bang”!

But it’s kinda sad to see this literal and figurative “Father” of the Big Bang concept get lost in it all with Hubble. Indeed, if I remember correctly, he was never mentioned in the basic history of the Big Bang when I learned it in school!

It was always Hubble vs. the Steady State theory . . . but no one gave the impetus for it all. Oh well, God bless him, and God help scientists keep the Faith!

Hmmm, lets see, the theory was concocted in 1927 and for the most part has not been modified much.  There is in fact, no emperical evidence that the theory is true, just some facts about how the universe seems to be expanding.  No one actually knows if the current movements of planets have remained constant for billions of years, how could they.  So, this theory conveniently gives the evolutionists the years they need to explain their THEORY.  Of course everyone jumped on board.  It validated their current world view at the time.  Plus, it added to the Spinoza (and latter diests) view that God started every thing and then just let it go, having no more interaction with it.  So, while it may be a beautiful theory, mathmatically speaking, Fr. Georges Lemaitre certianly did not do the Cathlic creation doctrine any favors.  Cathlics know through faith that God is continually creating the world and holding it in existence.

I just finished reading “Life after Death—The Evidence”. The evidence is, according to this brilliant young Catholic writer “science”. Google it. Read the flap commentaries. This a new way to view the question. Pull up the You Tube. He debates all the most infamous of popular attack dogs (atheists) and mows them down IMO. I would be interested in the thoughts of others.

Some have a misplaced distrust of the theory because they think it impinges on the notion of God as Creator of all. By faith we know that God certainly created everything that has been created, but to say that he did it without a process, one that might even be understood by his creatures, seems to affront what is suggested in Genesis. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that God wanted his creators to understand some aspects of his work that they might glory in his magnificence. The fact that some use that partial understanding in attempts to disprove the existence of God does not mitigate the truth of the process if it is in fact true.

I’ve always chuckled at those who claim the the “Big Bang” theory precludes a the need for a Creator.

An established law of physics posits that “matter cannot be created or destroyed, it simply changes form”.

The question then becomes “what is the origination of the matter in the Big Bang, AND as your cartoon so well depicts, who lit the fuse?

Others have a distrust of theory because it lacks scientific evidence.  This evidence will never be found because it would have had to have been observed billions of years ago.  Science is about observation, not speculation.  Because one has a distrust of the theory does not mean that they think the world was created in 6 days.  If fact, such a belief would contradict Sacred Scripture.  Many are using philosophical criteria in choosing the models they use to explain the observations. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.

Does anyone who posts here have to graduate from school first? Or pass a literacy test? Some of these comments are very poorly written. It is a common phenomenon on blogs all over and discredits the author no matter how valid his observations.

http://metaresearch.org/cosmology/BB-top-30.asp

Big Bang proves Creation. Using the half-life theory, every half-life ago there was double the amount of that unstable radio-active material. In addition, the byproducts of decay (like Helium) were that much less. So the further you go back in time, the more unstable all the elements become and the less that there are stable elements that even exist. If you go back far enough, all, 100%, of the materials were radio-active and unstable. Prior to that, they would only be even more unstable. Since bringing together a mere 2.2 pounds (the size of a golf ball) of Uranium 238 was enough to blowup Hiroshima, a mass consisting of all the known mass (planets, stars, etc.) would far exceed critical mass (the tiny amount needed to blowup). So there should be no question about creation. The question should be what is the maximum age of the universe?

How do we know that half-life of material is constant?  What evidence is there that it is not speeding up or slowing down or maybe even puased for periods of time?  I think the real question is, ‘Can we know the age of the universe?’

Great article. I produce a podcast on the Catholic faith and science - The Catholic Laboratory which can be found at www.catholiclab.net and iTunes. I discussed this very subject and its theistic implications in an early episode.

Blake Helgoth, you are correct. The half-life of an unstable element is not a constant, if it were the pilot could not drop the bomb on Japan and fly off. Separate pieces of the total golf-ball sized Uranium 238 had to be brought together to achieve critical mass. At that time, the reaction was less than one millionth of a second. The half-life is really a measure of how quickly the unstable radio-active material decays when it is in its most stable form. So, as you go further back in time and more radio-active mass is in closer proximity to other less stable mass, and so having more of the cascade effect, the half-life reduces considerably. This just means that the half-lives are decelerating considerably over time. The evidence indicates to me that creation occurred a lot less than a million years ago.

I suggest we keep in mind that God does not exist in time, so creation could have been created by God to have been always in time, in other words no “beginning in time” but a beginning in God (you can go infinitely in any direction in this universe, so why not with time?).  God did not have a calendar where he marked “Big Bang Day”, so although the big bang theory is an acceptable model for the universe, it has absolutely nothing to do with creation. 
Another thing, half-lives are constant, bombs go off due to neutron interactions, not the random decay of isotopes.  These are two very different things and scientists know much more about it than people who aren’t scientists, so they can tell which one occurred.  There is new evidence that they vary slightly due to things such as changes in muon flux from the sun, but they’re constant for all practical purposes. 
Please, people, make sure you know something about what you’re claiming before you say something that’s untrue.  If there are any scientists reading this article, I wouldn’t be surprised if it only served to confirm their atheism.

Carl,

You’re absolutely correct! Several of the previous comments tossed out “scientific evidence” that was not accurate.

Less than 1 million years indeed!!

Jean-Therese, I saw the History Channel program on it awhile back “Beyond the Big Bang.” I think they handled Lemaitre very well in it. I think a lot of people focus on Hubble a lot with this because it was his findings that gave a whole lot of experimental credibility to Lemaitre’s mathematical theory, were the subject of the debate at that time, and convinced a lot of scientists that Lemaitre’s theory may be correct.

Ian - I love your Catholiclab.net stuff! Thanks for chiming in!

Well Leslie and Carl, I am a scientist. I did study radio-active decay at Wayne State University. They probably have one of the top ten finest Chemistry departments in the United States. In any case, I am confident of what I’m writing about. My problem in explaining the facts is the limitation of one paragraph for this blog. But let’s be more specific, the half life of Uranium 238 is theoretically 4.468 billion years; note that this estimate has increase dramatically since I first studied it. But as the material comes closer together the cascade effect causes the material to decay faster. At critical mass, the reaction takes less than 1 second. If you can keep the mass together (maintain proximity) the half-life obviously changes dramatically. Since I don’t consider a fluctuation from 4.5 billion years to less than one second a constant, I don’t believe half-lives are a constant. Proximity, pressure, energy level and who knows what else, all affect the rate of decay. Think about it, was the radio-isotope more stable or less stable when the pilot left the aircraft carrier vs. when he dropped the bomb on Japan. In its original configuration, it was slowly decaying and becoming more stable over time. It was more stable at the point the bomb was dropped. It was only because they forced the pieces together, as it fell, that the cascade effect accelerated the rate of decay and changed, reduced, the half-life under those circumstances. Now, what was the half-life of all the known mass (planets, stars, etc.) if it was entirely radio-active (the further you go back in time, you reach a point where it is 100% radio-active). It would be extremely short and forced to blowup. I am a scientist, but you don’t need to be. You only need to be logical and you can see there was a maximum age of the universe. You can study the effects of proximity and pressure and start to see how it dramatically reduces this age. You can add other effects like back pressure from the matter first blown out, and you start to see how it dramatically reduced the speed of the planets and stars as they expanded. If you start calculating the effects of decelerating their expansion rate you start to see a better picture of the age of the known universe . . . quite possibly less than 1,000,000 years. Sorry for the long paragraph.

Please stop talking about the half life of radio active elements in the context of proving the universe had a beginning - at least before the general public. We don’t understand a word of what you are saying. The universe had a beginning for the very reasons St. Thomas taught. The fact that some skeptics have gulled the public into thinking his arguments are without merit is no reason to jump ship into esoteric explanations hardly anyone can follow.

I’ve read several of Stephen Hawking’s books “written for lay readers”.
He presents a strong case for an expanding universe, with far away galaxies moving away from us more rapidly, based on the Doppler effect (which in LIGHT, is an observed shift of the spectrum toward the red end.
It really bothered Hawking at a conference in Rome circa 1980 to hear from a cardinal that the Church had no problem with Hawking’s explanation of the Big Bang theory.  Of course, one could understand the Genesis account as referring to seven eras, rather than seven (what we understand as 24-hour) days.
What’s wrong with an explanation of the point of creation (perhaps 16 billion years ago, with all matter concentrated in a single point) as “Let there be LIGHT!”?
TeaPot562

Linus, I’m on the topic. A discussion of St. Thomas is more esoteric. The topic discusses the science of Big Bang that was introduced by a religious person who was also a scientific person, like Einstein and myself. This is the type of article we are attracted to and enjoy discussing. We like presenting it to the public to hear the counter-science to our theories. I didn’t present any new theories. I simply thought them through and shared my understanding (with those who don’t find my one paragraph blog style explanation esoteric) and realized that the basis of current public opinion is based on the scientific assumption that the expansion of the universe has occurred at a constant rate. But the facts show that it is more likely that the expansion is slowing down (decelerating), again indicating the possibility that the universe is not nearly as old as we think. Now that was in very simple terms but substantially lacks the facts.

Teapot562, I think you are right. Einstein proved that E=mc2, that is the total energy of a mass is equal to the mass times the speed of light square. And light is a form of energy. I remember my professor saying that we have figured out how to convert mass into light and energy, but what would really be neat is learning how to controlably convert it back to mass. I told him that has been done. Jesus was able to walk through a wall and then eat a fish. He remembered the story and said he stood corrected.

Henry,
I find it strange that you would use U-238, a stable form of uranium that is not fissionable under any natural circumstances, to make your case. I am not convinced.

On a theological note: “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men, in whom all have sinned.”

The reason for this quote?  Theistic Evolution - as promoted by the big bang theory - cannot sing in harmony with scripture.  If there was no death before Adam, how and what was being evolved?

Another teaser: if there were no rainbows before Noah - and there’s no evidence to suggest this is wrong - in what form did the atmosphere take that sunlight through rain/moisture was yet unknown?

It all started on the backs of crystals.

Where did the crystals come from?

I already told you!  It all started on the backs of the crystals!

Leslie, I’m trying to make a point in one paragraph without attempting to teach the public how to make an atomic bomb. Though U-238 is uranium’s most stable form and isn’t “fissionable” in and of itself, it is spontaneously fissionable. And in an environment rich in neutrons, like (I don’t want to explain this part) a bomb or Big Bang’s mass of all the know mass of the universe in an even more unstable form, it can become Uranium 239 or Plutonium 239 which then becomes fissionable. Obviously there is more to the bombs that were dropped on Japan than the golf ball size of material needed to reach critical mass. The physical sizes of the bombs were larger than several humans. In any case, at, prior to, and after the moment of the Big Bang, I suspect there would be the highest concentration of neutrons and protons decaying in all directions in the history of the universe. The half-lives would be extremely small in this environment which would release enough energy to blow the mass apart. The outermost layers, still way over critical mass, would still be blowing material back toward their origination point. This would cause the outer layer to move away even faster and the inner layers to slow down, which is what is observed today, and which would explain why the masses (planets, stars, etc.) in our layer are slower and would cause the miscalculation of the Big Bang event to seems like it was a much longer time ago.

Henry,

I suspect that you are still off-base. From the perspective of our universe there is no “prior to” the Big Bang; no neutrons prior to, and probably no neutrons “at” the Big Bang. They, and all of the matter that we see, are the result of the Big Bang, not its cause.

Theologically, the Big Bang is the creation moment.

Scientifically, the Big Bang is the start of the arrow of time for our universe. There is no “before.”

Leslie, that was the whole point of my post earlier… regarding the law of physics that “matter can be neither created or destroyed, it simply takes on another form”.
The concept of matter being infinitely present or eternal, and then suddenly changing its form does not make nearly as much sense as a spiritual being (i.e. God)being eternal and creating matter (in defiance of the laws of physics) precluding the “Big Bang"is a more reasonable concept.
Let’s face it, it all comes down to Faith. Science cannot prove the existence of God (yet), but remember that for thousands of years, man could not see or measure or prove neutrons, electrons and atoms, but they still existed.

Hello all - thanks for the great discussion and sharing!

I just posted a follow up to this post that I thought was appropriate. Here is the link if any of you are interested: http://www.ncregister.com/blog/the_big_bang_or_genesis/

This is definetely mind blowing, fantastic and amazing show. All episodes are very hilarious and I enjoy this show a lot. I always Big Bang Theory Episodes online.