Creation Ex Nihilo Part 3, Scientific Proof

The scientific arguments in favor of creation ex nihilo are recent arguments on a historical basis. The ancient Greek philosophers and scientists, like Plato and Aristotle, believed that the universe and all the matter in the universe were eternal. They also believed that God was co-existent with matter and he created from that co-existent, eternal mass. As Copan explains, Aristotle saw, “Like God himself, matter, of which all physical substances are composed, is eternal and uncreated and underlies the eternal process of generation and corruption undergone by things in the sublunary realm.”

Scientists in the nineteenth century used Newtonian physics to replace Aristolean physics, but came up with the same result. The universe and all of its matter was eternal. This seemed to be undergirded by the scientific understanding of the day.

Hermann von Helmholtz, the brilliant philosopher and physicist in the middle of the century argued that all phenomena can be reduced to a simple principle which can be detected through rigorous research. He believed that due to the nature of thermodynamics, the universe was eternal. As he stated, “endeavors to ascertain the unknown causes of processes from their visible effects; it seeks to comprehend them according to the laws of causality. Theoretical natural science must, therefore, if it is not to rest content with a partial view of the nature of things, take a position in harmony with the present conception of the nature of simple forces and the consequences of this conception. Its task will be completed when the reduction of phenomena to simple forces is completed, and when it can at the same time be proved that the reduction given is the only one possible which the phenomena will permit.”

This philosophical precondition gave him a passion to prove that the laws behind thermodynamics were purely natural and could provide scientifically testable conclusions. He helped to prove that if matter seemed to disappear to the naked eye, it just changed form into heat energy. Since matter could neither be created nor destroyed and there was a place that matter went when it seemed to disappear (heat energy), his observations supported the conclusion that matter and the Universe was eternal.

The underpinnings of an eternal Universe started to come apart in 1917. This is when Einstein first came forward with his theory of general relativity. The implication of his theory was that the Universe had a beginning, much to the chagrin of Einstein himself. More importantly, it was a testable theory that provided predictions.

Though Einstein had started with the precondition of expecting to find that his models of relativity would support a steady state universe, the observational data directly contradicted an eternal Universe. In the 1920’s various cosmological models suggested that if there were no matter in the Universe, then it could remain static, but if matter were introduced, then it would start expanding due to the cosmological constant derived by Einstein. Friedmann and LeMaitre considered the data and argued that the Universe was expanding from a state of very high density. What was lacking was empirical data to support the theory that the Universe was expanding.

In 1926, Vesto Slipher, a planetary physicist who studied the spectral lines of Jupiter and Saturn, noticed that the optical spectral light from distant galaxies was shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. This suggested that the matter in the Universe was expanding. Edwin Hubble confirmed this in 1929 through direct observation. He showed that the further galaxies were away from us, the faster they were receding. He also noted that the Universe is expanding isotropically. Once Hubble’s data was confirmed, Einstein relented on his quest to prove that the universe existed in a steady state.

Though an expanding universe starting from an incredibly dense point in the relatively recent past (Hubble first speculated that it might be 2 billion years) seemed to be confirmed by the data, for philosophical reasons, cosmologists rejected the theory. Sir Arthur Eddington stated, “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of a present order of Nature is repugnant to me.” Furthermore, Sir Frederick Hoyle, teamed up with a number of physicists to build a competing model known as the steady state model. In a famous interview with Nature Magazine, he pejoratively referred to a universe with a beginning as a “big bang” was “repugnant”.

Science continued to march on and provide observational evidence that seemed to support the “big bang” model. In 1965, when Penzias and Arno confirmed the existence of background radiation, confirming a prediction of the Big Bang, even proponents of the steady state model saw the writing on the wall. William Lane Craig points out that, “Thus Hoyle, ‘after ten years or more of attempting to “tough it out”’, admits that the classic steady state model ought to be abandoned because of its inability to account for the microwave background.” Craig points out that the reason Hoyle was trying to “tough it out” was because his pursuit of an alternative to the “big bang” was the “desire to avoid theism…that largely accounts for Hoyle’s adherence to steady state models.”

Further support for the big bang came from Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking in 1970. Through their singularity theorem’s, Penrose and Hawking helped show how space and time have a beginning point and “an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable, even for in non-homogenous and non-isotropic universes,” according to Copan and Craig. This was important because it countered the growing replacement for the steady state model by the oscillating universe models. This also identified that a singularity could be empirically testable for the beginning point of our universe.

The concept of a singularity is so important due to its support of “creation ex nihilo”. We see this in the comments of John Gribbins, “The biggest problem with the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe is philosophical-perhaps even theological-what was there before the bang?” Like Einstein, who initially struggled with the implications of his theory and considered the cosmological constant as a way to confirm an eternal universe; Hawking looked for a way to avoid the singularity.

Hawking and other physicists that have been working on theories that avoid the singularity have appealed to “imaginary time”. As Copan points out, “Introducing imaginary numbers for the time variable in Einstien’s equation has the peculiar effect of making the time dimension indistinguishable from space. Essentially, before Planck time, there is no space time at all, but just a smooth edge existing in a Euclidean four dimensional space where it would exist timelessly. By eliminating the singularity, you eliminate the theological problems associated with the singularity and you eliminate creation ex nihilo.

There are many problems with this postulation though. Hawking admits, “When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities.” As Copan and Craig point out, “Hawking has more recently stated explicitly that he interprets the Hartle-Hawking Model non-realistically.” Hawking himself stated, “I take the positivist viewpoint that a physical theory is just a mathematical model and that it is meaningless to ask whether it corresponds to reality.” Interestingly, all of the quantum gravity models that counter creation ex nihilo depend on the use of imaginary numbers. If you consider the truth of A theory of Time, we see that creation ex nihilo seems to be vigorously supported by the empirical as well as philosophical evidence.
The fact that all quantum gravity models depend on using imaginary time has significant implications with the latest challenge to a beginning of space and time. The multiple universe theory posits that there are an infinite number of universes. This helps explain why the universe we live in seems to support the Anthropic Principle.

The Anthropic Principle, first coined by Brandon Carter in 1973, states that the hyper fine-tuned physics of the universe seems to support the existence of man. The Multiple Universe theory has explanatory power to show the reason why this universe is so incredibly fine-tuned. The theory states that there are an infinite number of universes out there and we just happen to live in the one that is hyper fine-tuned.

As discussed previously, most physicists like Hawking view this way of thinking about quantum mechanics as a mathematical exercise to help them understand the universe. They do not believe that there really are other universes; they just want their theories to be positivistic. Though multiple universes may seem to be an interesting alternative, they seem to harken back to the philosophical reasons scientists pursued both the steady state and oscillating theories-to avoid the singularity.

In the Skeptical Inquirer, Martin Gardner stated, “Surely the conjecture that there is just one universe and its Creator is infinitely simpler and easier to believe than that there are countless billions upon billions of worlds [his term for universes], constantly increasing in number and created by nobody. I can only marvel at the low state to which today’s philosophy of science has fallen.” The multiple universe theory seems to be a non-empirical, metaphysical response to explain the empirical data supporting the singularity.

In this paper, we have considered arguments for and against creation ex nihilo from a biblical, philosophical and scientific perspective. The biblical evidence seems to rest upon whether or not Genesis 1:1 should be read as a construct or an absolute statement. The philosophical and scientific evidence for creation ex nihilo seems to depend upon using a realist’s view of reality and the use of A theory of time. The evidence against this position seems to depend upon an anti-realists view of reality and the use of B theory of time. The paper seems to clearly support creation ex nihilo.