I’m always skeptical when a group of scientists claim that they found the pin-point of the cosmos that they say happened 13.8 billion years ago. Scientists still don’t know how the Pyramids were built and we still have the Pyramids to study. But scientists know what happened 13.8 billion years ago in the far reaches of the galaxy.

Here’s how Fox News reported the new theory:

“Astronomers have discovered what they believe is the first direct evidence of the astonishing expansion of the universe in the instant following the Big Bang — the scientific explanation for the birth of the universe some 13.8 billion years ago.

“Scientists believe that the universe exploded from a tiny speck and hurled itself out in all directions in the fraction of a second that followed, beginning just 10 to the minus 35 seconds (roughly one trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second) after the universe’s birth. Matter ultimately coalesced hundreds of millions of years later into planets, stars, and ultimately us.

“And like ripples from a ball kicked into a pond, that Big Bang-fueled expansion caused ripples in the ancient light from that event, light which remains imprinted in the skies in a leftover glow called the cosmic microwave background.

“Scientists still don’t know who kicked the ball.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t see much credibility in such claims of cosmic epistemology. Not one of these scientists knows any of the above. It’s what they believe based on a set of unproven operating assumptions like “the universe exploded from a tiny speck.”

Mike Bull wrote the following in a Facebook post:

“Sure it’s a discovery, and possibly an important one. The problem is it is being interpreted and reported through a preconceived framework. It would be great if the growing opposition to big bang theory was also reported.”

There are many non-religious scientists who do not advocate for the Big Bang. For example, there is Eric J. Lerner’s The Big Bang Never Happened (1991) that purports to be “a startling refutation of the dominant theory of the origin of the Universe.”

Even people who don’t believe in the biblical creation account should be skeptical at such dogmatism as they should be when scientists tell us that the debate over global warming is over and that are genes are determinative of all that we are. It’s a similar mentality.

John Maddox, editor of Nature magazine for more than 20 years, wrote an editorial with the title “Down with the Big Bang” in which he described the theory as “philosophically unacceptable”1 because he feared that the Big Bang theory, to use Michael Behe’s take on his views, had “extra scientific implications.”2">Testimony in the Dover, Pennsylvania, Intelligent Design Case (October 17, 2005).)) For Maddox, the Big Bang conjures up images of metaphysics that gives credence to creationist theories.

Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time, wrote, “Many people do not like the idea that time has a beginning, probably because it smacks of divine intervention.”3

Then there’s the problem of where this super, ultra dense speck came from. Moreover, there is no accounting for the information in supposed superheated particle that would have been necessary to evolve us into what we are. There’s also no accounting for the origin of the mind, rationality, logic, or morality.

Why should we trust the evolved minds of scientists who claim they know so much of what happened “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….”?

1. John Maddox, “Down with the Big Bang,” Nature (1989), 425. [↩]
2. Michael Behe, ↩]
3. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, chap. 3. [↩]