From Rob Sheldon:
The ideas of the Big Bang theory have been resisted by astronomers and cosmologists for decades if not millennia. Plato was against, Augustine was for a creation event. In modern times, the initial idea was put forward by a Belgian priest, Fr Georges Lemaitre in about 1927. Albert Einstein hated the idea, and preferred to insert an “anti-gravity” term into his famous set of gravitational equations to balance the attraction of gravity, and thereby obtain a steady-state, static, unchanging and eternal universe. It was only after Willem deSitter showed that Einstein’s solution was unstable, and Edwin Hubble showed that all the galaxies were moving away from us at increasingly faster speeds the further away they were, that Einstein finally conceded that the Universe did have a beginning. A very readable book on this topic is “God and the Astronomers” by astronomer Robert Jastrow (1979).
Jastrow ends his story with the most quoted line of his book: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance, he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
This hatred for the discovery of the beginning of the universe has caused cosmologists to add all sorts of “metaphysical poison pills” to their models–things that they think will repel creationists and justify materialists. Philosopher and astronomer Stanley Jaki wrote about this in his companion book to Jastrow, “God and the Cosmologists” (2000).
For reasons that others can perhaps explain to you, young earth creationists have also taken a dislike to Big Bang cosmology, though it is clearly not for the same reason that materialists hate it–since materialists want to say the universe is eternal to do away with the creator entirely. I think YECs object to the idea that the Big Bang supposedly happened 13.7 billion years ago, and claim that it should be closer to 6-10,000 years ago. Since Einstein’s spacetime tangles up space and time, if one argues for the creation of large space and small time, then this asymmetry brings in complications that make the models specific and particular, and frankly, I don’t understand very well. But this debate should not erase the conclusion that both the “standard Big Bang” and the creationist account of a beginning are in very close agreement compared to the alternative theories. Where they differ — as in Jaki’s book about cosmology poison pills, or in YEC theories about time-dependent physical constants — is secondary, metaphysical, and without much experimental basis.
That was News’ impression too. See, for example, Big Bang exterminator wanted, will train Thoughts?
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