CAN ONE BELIEVE SIMULTANEOUSLY IN GOD
AND THE BIG BANG ?
By Bruno Macaes
The nineteenth century painter
Paul Gauguin, in one of his voyages to Tahiti, in the Pacific, wrote in the corner
of a painting, "Where do we come from? Who we are ? Where are we going
?". These three questions are in fact the most fundamental we humans can ask.
Needless to say, such questions are
among the most difficult for us to answer, if they can ever be answered. That’s
why we’ve been mulling over them for so long with only limited success.
Many different cultures, in different
times, figured out ingenious explanations to account for everything we see, and
for who we are. We call those explanations creation myths. Most world religions
have their own creation myths. In some myths, there are multiple gods, each one
in charge of a different aspect of nature or of ourselves. There are even myths
that involve no god at all, and myths in which the world had no beginning. Instead,
it always existed. In our Western tradition the world was created. A single God
created everything there is, including all living creatures and ourselves.
A problem with creation myths is that
they rarely coincide. Each people believes his point of view is the true one,
but there are many different points of view. Different nations often fight to
defend their beliefs. But at the brink of the millennium, we are increasingly
coming to conclude that what is wrong is not what we believe in, but the very
act of believing. We normally believe what somehow pleases us most. We are
frequently angry with someone who doesn’t share our opinions, because we
cherish our beliefs. It is difficult to accept we are not totally rational when
it comes to our believing in something. But if we were rational in these cases,
we would at most counter arguments with other arguments, not become angry and
take matters personally. Normally, though, a debate among partisans is often a
dialogue among deaf, because no one seems to pay attention to what the other
say. There are things we believe with so much strength that this strength
becomes an evidence for us of the truth of our beliefs, when in fact there is
no concrete basis for what we believe in.
In the twentieth century, our
understanding of nature improved thanks to the fast advancement of science. We
learned that the Universe is much bigger than we imagined, and that our planet
is not at its center, as we always liked to believe it was. We were not
specially created above all animals; in the distant past, we and all living
beings had a common ancestor. We can prove that by looking at a telescope and
observing other galaxies, and by analyzing our cells and learning that the same
kind of molecule, DNA, is the basis of all life on Earth.
Science, like myth, provides an
explanation for the phenomena of nature. Neither science nor myth necessarily
mean complete truth about something. In fact, like two different myths, science
sometimes has more than one explanation for the same phenomenon. But we have
reasons to conclude that the explanations of science are much more accurate
than those provided by the myth, because scientific theories can be
demonstrated at any time, anywhere, and to anyone. Scientific theories often
make very accurate predictions about phenomena. Believing in myths or in God is
a very subjective matter. One can be sure his God exists, but it is quite hard
to actually demonstrate or prove the existence of God.
It was due to this development of
science in our century that it became possible for us to try to answer more
accurately the three questions quoted above. The big bang theory, and its
recent extension, the inflationary model, provide very accurate descriptions
for the origin of the Universe, and limits to very few possibilities what will
happen at the end of the Universe. Before the big bang theory arisen, the
predominant answers to these questions came from the Bible. According to the
book of Genesis and some calculations made by theologians, the Universe was at
most six thousand years old. Now we know for sure, after studying Earth’s
geology and the movements of galaxies, that the age of the Universe is at least
ten billion years.
By studying the movements of galaxies,
we learned that they are all becoming farther from each other. This means that
in the past they were closer, and that they actually must have touched one
another very early in time. If this is true, then the whole Universe must have
had a beginning. The big bang theory is an explanation for the expansion of the
Universe and for the appearance of matter and the chemical elements. The most
powerful and convincing evidence that it is the true answer for how the
Universe came into being is a weak radiation that is everywhere and was
predicted by the theory. Its extension, the inflationary theory, is an
explanation of the "bang" itself; what banged and how, as Alan
Guth wrote in his book "The Inflationary Universe". Science in the
past decade started to attack problems until recently thought to belong in the
realm of theology. This realm, since the Renaissance, five centuries ago, is
gradually diminishing. This past decade we could have a hint that the big bang
description is right because a beautiful and improbable merger between
different areas of science is now taking place. Elementary Particle Physics,
the study of the very small, helps scientists predict what is the most likely
structure of the whole Universe. And Cosmology, the study of the very big,
helps us find new particles and connections among the forces of nature. This
happens because in its beginning the Universe was smaller than an atom. Cosmology
and Elementary Particle Physics were one and the same thing.
So much for differences between science
and God. What concerns us here is: are they compatible? Is it possible to
believe both? The answer is that one day, scientists may uncover a most
complete explanation for everything there is. There will be a beautiful and
short formula that will account for what is more fundamental in nature, or why
things are the way they are. This T-shirt formula could be learned by anyone. The
final theory will no doubt provide valuable clues as to the origin of the
Universe. And after that, some of us will still wonder: is there any being, any
God behind all this underlying intelligence the Universe is displaying? For
believers, therefore, God will never be incompatible with the big bang.