Claim CE440:
Cosmologists cannot explain where space, time, energy, and the laws of
physics came from.
Source:
Brown, Walt, 1995. In the Beginning: Compelling evidence for creation
and the Flood. Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, p. 20.
Response:
- Some questions are harder to answer than others. But although we do
not have a full understanding of the origin of the universe, we are not
completely in the dark. We know, for example, that space comes from
the expansion of the universe. The total energy of the
universe may be zero. Cosmologists have hypotheses for the other
questions that are consistent with observations (Hawking 2001). For
example, it is possible that there is more than one dimension of time,
the other dimension being unbounded, so there is no overall origin of
time. Another possibility is that the universe is in an eternal cycle
without beginning or end. Each big bang might end in a big crunch to
start a new cycle (Steinhardt and Turok 2002) or at long intervals,
our universe collides with a mirror universe, creating the universe
anew (Seife 2002).
One should keep in mind that our experiences in everyday life are poor
preparation for the extreme and bizarre conditions one encounters in
cosmology. The stuff cosmologists deal with is very hard to
understand. To reject it because of that, though, would be to retreat
into the argument from incredulity.
- Creationists cannot explain origins at all. Saying "God did it" is not
an explanation, because it is not tied to any objective evidence. It
does not rule out any possibility or even any impossibility. It does
not address questions of "how" and "why," and it raises questions
such as "which God?" and "how did God originate?" In the explaining
game, cosmologists are far out in front.
References:
- Hawking, Stephen, 2001. The Universe in a Nutshell. New York:
Bantam.
- Seife, Charles, 2002. Eternal-universe idea comes full circle.
Science 296: 639.
- Steinhardt, P. J. and N. Turok, 2002. A cyclic model of the universe.
Science 296: 1436-1439.
Further Reading:
Hawking, Stephen, 1988. A Brief History of Time. Toronto: Bantam.
Hawking, Stephen, 2001. The Universe in a Nutshell. New York:
Bantam.
Musser, George, 2002. Been there, done that. Scientific American
286(3) (Mar.):
25-26,
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D59C8-5512-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EEDF
Veneziano, Gabriele, 2004. The myth of the beginning of time.
Scientific American 290(5) (May): 54-65.
created 2003-8-14, modified 2004-9-25
