Genesis and the Big Bang (Part 6)

(Gen 1:4), “God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.  God called the light day, and the darkness He called night…”  After the expansion of the universe had proceeded, light separated from the darkness.  Only recently have scientists come to understand that darkness is not just the absence of light, but that a physical “darkness” exists in the universe, commonly referred to as black holes.  Long before scientists discovered the existence of black holes, Isaiah wrote that God is, “The One forming light and creating darkness,” (Isa 45:7).  If darkness had simply been the absence of light, then no creation would have been required.

In scripture, the original light of the Creator is seen to diminish during the progression of the creation story.  By the fourth day, the sun, moon, and stars become the predominant lights.  The Hebrew sages saw this sequence and suggested that the light from the Creator diminished by one-seventh for each day of creation.  By the time man is created, near the end of day six, the illumination of God in the creation has diminished to one-seventh of the strength at the beginning.  This understanding is derived from the words of Isaiah who prophesied of a future time when...

“The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted,” (Isa 30:26). 

The diminishment of the original creation light was seen by the Sages as a metaphor for the Creator in the present age.  The LORD God willingly “veiled” His original presence, as the Psalmist wrote, “He made darkness His hiding place, His canopy around Him, Darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.” (Psa 18:9-11).  At some future date, the glory of the LORD will provide sufficient illumination to negate the need for the sun and the moon, (Rev 21:22, 22:4-5).  This “veiling” of God in the present world permits mankind to act with freewill so we can both earn rewards and be held accountable for our actions on this earth.

The study of light is also a fascinating topic.  Sometimes light acts as a particle beam, while at other times acting as a wave.  In the late 1880’s, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley recorded no effect on the speed of light whether it was measured in the direction of the earth’s rotation, counter to the earth’s rotation, or perpendicular to the earth’s rotation.  This was considered an amazing find, one that was beyond explanation at the time.  Two decades later, Albert Einstein “had the courage to state that regardless of the velocity of the observer, toward or away from a source of light, the speed of that light remains constant…It defies all logic.” [1]   

Scientists now accept the speed of light as an unchangeable constant, independent of the speed of the object emitting the light or the speed of the observer.  The speed of the moving object or the observer causes a shift in the frequency of the light waves so that the speed of light remains constant.  This frequency shift produces a change in the color that is observed to determine if the object is moving toward or away from the observer.  In this way, scientists are able to determine that the universe is expanding as they observe the “redshift” of distant galaxies moving away from the earth.

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[1] Genesis and the Big Bang, Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., 1990 Edition, page 42

Genesis and the Big Bang (Part 5)

(Gen 1:3), “Then God said…”  God spoke the creation into existence, as is written ten times in the first chapter of Genesis, “God said.”   The creation remains in existence by the word spoken at the beginning.

“By the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water…By His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men,” (2 Pet 3:5-7).   

(Gen 1:3), “…Let there be light’; and there was light…”  The statement that light came prior to the formation of matter was thought to be inaccurate 150 years ago.  Conventional wisdom held that matter must exist to produce light.  However, the development of Einstein’s famous equation (E=MC²) demonstrated that matter and energy could be interchanged.

Believers have sometimes questioned the source of light before the creation of the sun and stars.  According to the Big Bang model, the original light came from the extremely high energy at the moment of creation that vaporized everything into light.  In the beginning, the universe was extremely hot, perhaps 1 x 10³² degrees Kelvin, too hot for any solid material to exist.  At the core of the universe, the high temperature and pressure reduced all matter to pure energy.  All was light, but this light was too bright (above gamma ray frequency) to be observed by the naked eye if witnesses had been present.  After approximately 300 minutes, the expansion of the universe cooled the average temperature down to approximately 100,000,000 degrees Kelvin.

As details of the Big Bang model were formulated, scientists theorized that some of the original light of creation was never converted into matter, but remained as light in the form of radiation.  All light has a corresponding temperature and the predicted temperature was 5° K, close to absolute zero.  In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, working at Bell Labs in Crawford Hill, New Jersey on an unrelated project, observed this Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) using a shoehorn antenna originally designed to communicate with the first satellites in space.  Penzias and Wilson measured the temperature of the radiation to be 3.5° K, confirming a critical prediction of the Big Bang theory.  Their discovery won the duo a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978.

Genesis and the Big Bang (Part 4)

(Gen 1:2), “…and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving on the waters.”  Only after the expansion of the universe had proceeded, did the initial light of creation separate from darkness.  “At 10^-43 seconds, scientists believe the universe had a diameter of 10^-24 centimeters.  At that instant, a unique, one-time force-a sort of antigravity- developed.  This force…caused an expansion of the universe at a rate far in excess of any rate prior to, or after…that inflated the universe to the size of a grapefruit” [1]  This “inflation” of the universe was first formulated by Alan Guth at M.I.T in 1979.  Although still widely debated, there currently appears to be more support for the theory than against it.  Some have equated this event to the act of a top billiard player breaking a rack of billiard balls.   

 

Astrophysicist have no explanation for what force, referred to as an “inflationary epoch”, could have acted on this super black hole to cause its expansion.  The acting force seems to defy our current understanding of black holes.  Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D., author of the book Genesis and the Big Bang, finds an explanation in scripture for the force behind the inflation of the universe, “the Spirit of God was moving on the waters.” 

This darkness is identified by scientists as “a super black hole” from which neither light nor matter can escape.  It is not merely light that God created, but also darkness, “The One forming light and creating darkness,” (Isa 45:7).  The relatively recent discovery of “black holes” demonstrates that darkness in not just the absence of light, but a physical part of the universe that was part of the “creation process”. 

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[1] Genesis and the Big Bang, Gerald L. Schroeder, Ph.D, 1990 Edition, page 93