DOES THE 'BIG BANG' REQUIRE GOD?


October 15th 1998


The next issue, Number 29, will appear on November15th 1998.





It is, of course, always possible to say, of any event whatever, that it happened because there is a God who willed it to happen. That assertion cannot, in principle, be disproved but equally it cannot be proved to be true; in the last resort, EITHER we choose to say such a thing (perhaps we have the decision thrust upon us by people whom we heed) OR we choose not say such a thing. (perhaps because we think that 'the creator' is a dead-end postulate that tells us nothing that we cannot know already).

That much being granted, it remains that the God hypothesis is more credible in the light of some models based upon data than upon others. There is currently much discussion as to whether considerations arising from the 'Big Bang' model of cosmic origins point compellingly to the likelihood of any God's real existence or not.



One such compelling line of reasoning - on Big Bang suppositions - is that the essential physical constants acquired their now known values during the first tiny fraction of second after the Bang and that, moreover, had these values been even very slightly different from what they are, then no structured universe could have ensued.

Particularly, and most easily understood in lay terms, had the force of gravity been even slightly larger, then the products of the Bang would have fallen into one another again and no universe would have been formed; Such a process has been described colloquially as the Big Crunch. Equally, if the force of gravity had been even slightly less than it is then the Bang products would have been dispersed so fast and so far that they would have had no chance to organise themselves into anything even remotely like the structured universe we know and wonder at. Colloquially, such an outcome might be called the Big Whoosh.

It is argued that, since the chance of getting the constants right accidentally must be so very small, there must be (or must have been - but this caveat is rarely mentioned) an intelligent Creator-God who planned them to have just the right values to enable the viable universe to come into being.

This creationist thesis is very compelling and, like creationism in general, it cannot be falsified; but it can be undermined, rather than disproved, by a rather simple analysis. In other words, my claim is that the remarkable suitability of the constants' values .... their ability to sustain a viable universe .... is not so strong a vindication of creationism as is often, somewhat triumphantly, supposed.

Trying to decide between rival hypotheses - that the physical constants of the universe being 'just right' implies, or does not imply, a creator - can be a matter of faith ..... a matter of positively asserting that there is a creator or negatively asserting that there is no such being. People with a taste for pantomime dialogue may wish to shout at one another "Oh yes there is!" or "Oh no there isn't" but such an approach is sterile at best and ...... if one side shouts much more loudly ..... intimidating at worst. The hard graft of seeking and corroborating data is likely to be much less exciting but much more productive. But there are problems with data-based analysis; it is easy, albeit unintentionally, to select and slant the data to suit one's prior faith and this error must be guarded against as far as is humanly possible.

What data do we need? What questions must we ask cosmologists to help us to decide the merits of the 'universal constants just right - therefore a creator' argument?

The main question is perhaps "Is the Big Bang, of necessity, a unique, once-only, event or is it, in principle, an event that can happen, can have happened, any number of times?"

If, and only if, it can be shown conclusively by reference to data, that the BB event was, of necessity unique ...... then the universal constants being 'just right' does indeed point strongly towards the purposeful action of a conscious creator.

If, on the contrary, there is a reasonable possibility that there can be, can have been, any number of BB events then the possibility remains open that no purposeful act of creation need be postulated. The point is that if the universal constants accruing from a large number of BB events have random values then there will be, or will have been, any number of Big Crunches and any number of Big Whooshes. Sooner or later there had to be a BB event generating universal constants having just the values requisite for a viable universe such as 'ours'.

Two further points have to be made:

One is that there may have been BB events that generated universal constants almost identical to the ones we have ..... except that the gravitational pull might have been minutely less than the one we have. In such a case, there could have been a short-lived universe - one with low enough gravity to disperse into a structured universe but with gravity just powerful enough to pull it all back, after a few billion years, to a delayed Big Crunch. perhaps 'our' universe is one that is undergoing a delayed Big Whoosh?

The other point is simply to repeat the one made at the start of this article -"It is, of course, always possible to say, of any event whatever, that it happened because there is a God who willed it to happen. That assertion cannot, in principle, be disproved but equally it cannot be proved to be true"; that being so, why waste time bothering with it? Ask William of Occam!





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