A New Look at Creation: The "Big Bang"

Philip S. Norman, M.D.

Every known religion, even those of primitive peoples, has a story of how it all began. Psychologists speculate that such stories arise from an innate human tendency that needs explanations of the unknown and desires to reduce everything to a simple story. We know the creation story in Genesis in the Christian Bible, but perhaps have forgotten that its literal truth has been viewed with some skepticism for a long time. St. Augustine, considered an essential founder of Catholic, Anglican and Protestant theology, said he doubted that it took a week for God to accomplish the creation and favored the idea that it was done in a day. He also said that we should be willing to change our mind about it as new information comes up. He wrote that in 409 AD.

A signal event of the twentieth century is that scientists have, over about a hundred years, come up with a mind-blowing story of creation and have brought forth convincing evidence for that story derived from a range of scientific disciplines. At least nine essential steps brought scientists to a creation story known as "The Big Bang". To tell this story I have depended on particle physicist Simon Singh's book, Big Bang, which describes not only the science, but also human side of the scientists responsible for these astonishing discoveries.

The new creation story starts in the early 1500s with Copernicus, canon of the cathedral of Frauenberg, then in Poland, whose position in the church gave him ample time to pursue his interest in astronomy and particularly the motion of the earth, moon and planets. The then current dogma that the earth was the center around which the sun, moon, and planets moved in orbits was made complicated by the need to explain anomalies in their observed paths. Copernicus realized that a much simpler explanation, namely that the earth and planets revolved around the sun would account for the known movements of these bodies. Copernicus was well connected in the church and was aware that his ideas would not set well with the authorities. He delayed publication of a book setting forth his reasoning until late in life and was on his deathbed in 1543 when the first copy was put in his hands.

Copernicus's ideas were at first little noticed. Gaetano Bruno, however, took up his ideas and added to them, gaining the attention of the inquisition, which tried him in 1600 and had him burned at the stake for heresy. It was not until Galileo came up with a convincing proof for the sun as the center that the world took notice. Galileo had perfected the newly invented telescope into a 32-power instrument and in the late 1500s readily confirmed Copernicus's prediction that the planet Venus should have phases (full Venus, half Venus, crescent Venus) different from in appearance but not unlike those of the moon. These phases could only occur if Venus circled the sun.

Galileo never shrank from controversy and wrote about his findings repeatedly both in scholarly Latin and the vernacular. The reputation coming from his earlier scientific findings about the laws of falling objects and the periodicity of pendulums gave his opinion great weight. He had a talent for public attention: for instance, he had visited Rome and publicly demonstrated his telescope in the Quirinal Gardens belonging to Cardinal Bandin.

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