The Big Bang: Cosmological Argument on the Origin of the Universe

The Big Bang: Cosmological Argument on the Origin of the Universe Name Institutional Affiliation The Big Bang: Cosmological Argument on the Origin of the Universe Introduction As often told in both popular and scientific publications, the universe began with a bang, and everything in the universe came into existence after the big bang. This means that space, time, and matter, including energy within the universe started from a singular point the proceeded to expand and cool. These events gave rise to atoms, stars, and clusters of galaxies over billions of years to constitute what is observed today. This compelling and beautiful illustration that paints a picture from the current large scale universe comprising of over two trillion galaxies to the remains of a glow of radiation that permeated all the existence has been criticized by religious thinkers, including other scientists and popular publications. Siegel (2017) concludes that the theory is misleading and that scientists have known these flaws for almost four decades. The general assumptions began in 1920s and 1930s when scientists were able to observe distant galaxies. The observations indicated that the further the galaxies, the faster they moved away, and using Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, any static universe would be unstable. Therefore, a stable universe needed to have things moving away from one another or everything collapsing towards one another by obeying the natural laws. This postulation of the recession made scientists believe that the universe is expanding, and if things continue to distant from one another, then it means in the distant past, they were closer together. A clear understanding of the theory is critical to credit efforts scientists have made in understanding the origin of the universe and disprove claims that are not predicated on evidence The origin of the universe through a big bang is a concept that was not immediately accepted up until such a radical idea was proved about half a century ago (Jim, 2014). Cosmologists have always pondered on the questions whether the big bang caused the beginning of time or the universe existed before the bang. Only a decade ago, it was almost blasphemous to think of such questions and most cosmologists maintained that they made no sense to envisage a time prior to the big bang and that it was synonymous to asking for directions to a location north of the North Pole (Gabriele, 2014). However, with remarkable developments in the area of theoretical physics, especially the proposal of string theory, these perspectives have changed and the pre-bang universe has been accepted as the new frontier of cosmology. In their reasoning, Christian theologians such as Augustine and Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosophers invoked, but differed on the theory of pre-bang universe. Aristotle argued that if the universe did not follow the path of nothingness to somethingness, then it must have always existed. Contrary, Augustine believed that time is the creation of God, and nothing existed before time. However, uniting the concepts of elementary particle physics and general relativity with cosmology, the big bang theory was postulated to explain the origin of the expanding universe. This current and dominant scientific theory was first proposed in 1980 by Alan Guth, an astronomer who claimed that space and time sprang into existence 13 to 14 billion years ago (Gefter, 2012). Also known as the theory of cosmic inflation, big bang theory holds that the universe expanded faster than the speed of light, only a fraction of a second following the big bang. Inf...