| | | Dr. Bilal Masud ABSTRACT:The Big Bang theory best explains the scientific observation of an expanding universe. In this article we examine if the theory gives us some scientific knowledge about the start of the universe, or describes a failure of science to outline the mechanism of this start? The failure of the classical and Einsteinian science to know the creation mechanism is analyzed together with some other failures of science to judge if science is a proper place for a search-for-ultimate. It is described how the modern science replaces certain failures in the search-for-ultimate by a rather well managed quantum uncertainty. It is argued that Hawking and others are wrong in interpreting this failure or uncertainty as a denial of any start of the universe at all. The philosophical and theological implications of the limits of science, manifested through the failures and uncertainties etc., are examined. In the end, it is argued that a scientific explanation of the universe would have always been impossible without thinking of a footing; the big bang has only rendered a version of the evergreen philosophical and scientific argument for this footing that non-philosophers can understand. Otherwise, thinking that this theory has provided for the first time a serious rational argument for the creation of the universe distorts the nature of the faith. INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY:In spite of all the discussions about its philosophical and religious implications, the theory of Big Bang remains a scientific, and not a religious theory, and its introduction should be accordingly. Even those interested in this theory because of its philosophical or religious implications should realize that only after analysing it as a scientific theory, we can see if its implications favour this doctrine or that. If a religious ‘theory’ supports a religion, it becomes what is termed a ‘circular argument’, advocating a statement through that statement. An example of such a circular reasoning could be “the Big Bang theory is good because it supports our faith, and the justification of our faith is the Big Bang theory.” To avoid such a pleasant but intellectually shallow reasoning, we have to first of all study the purely scientific content of the theory of Big Bang. This theory is the most plausible explanation for many scientific observations; the most notable amongst these is the expansion of the universe. Actually even the expansion of the universe is not a direct observation; what is observed is that the light coming from different stars has a colour pattern (called the ‘spectrum’) that is the same as the colour pattern of the light emitted from certain heated gases in earthly labs, except for a uniform shift of all the colours towards the red colour. This is called the ‘red shift’. Sound waves have a similar property: If you are standing on the platform of a railway station and a whistling train passes by you without stopping, you would notice a change in the pitch of the whistle as soon as the train, after moving towards, starts moving away from you. This means, for example, that a blind but trained person can tell from the change of the pitch of the sound if the train is moving away from him or her. The phenomenon is called the ‘Doppler effect.’ Now the colours of light play a role similar to that of the pitch of sound, and hence from the above mentioned ‘red shift’ of the light colours emitted from distant stars we infer that the starts are moving away from us. This is the result of a calculations based on an observation; without reasoning and calculations we can not see if the stars are moving away from us. The inference is that all the stars and galaxies in the universe are moving away from us, without we being at the centre; we cannot infer from this red shift alone any special importance of the earth in the universe. What the red shift of light coming from stars and galaxies actually tells us is that every body in the universe is moving away from the every other body with a speed proportional to their mutual separation. The analogy is that if a balloon is blown, every point on its surface moves away from the every other point, without there being a central point on the surface of the balloon. For a balloon, there is a centre or central region. But that is in a space not included in the surface (2 dimensional space) of the balloon. Similarly, the expansion of the universe may be around a centre but that ‘centre’ cannot be part of the 3-dimensional space in which there are stars and galaxies; this mathematical ‘centre’ of the universe can, if at all, be in the 4-dimensioanl space-time of the Einstein’s theory of Relativity. (This Einsteinian space-time contains quantities that are combinations of three space and one time dimension.) The expansion of the universe with time (that is, with advancing time) also means a shrinking of the universe with receding time. Scientists have actually noted this expansion for a few years only, but a plausible backward extrapolation implies that the universe has always been expanding in advancing time and shrinking in the receding time till the moment further shrinking is impossible. Different calculations tell us that this shrinking is possible for not more than 13-20 billion years. That is taken to be the age of the universe, and the start of the most shrunk and violently expanding universe termed the Big Bang. It is the Einstein’s theory of gravitation that incorporates this infinitely dense and hot moment at the start of the history of the universe. SCIENCE AND THE SEARCH FOR ULTIMATE:One may think that the theory has provided us some scientific information: an infinitely small universe at the starting moment. Even though this view is not too misleading, some technical clarifications are necessary. Those having some experience with the infinity in mathematical sciences (including theoretical physics) would realize that yielding an infinite result, a divergence, means a failure of the theory and not a prediction of the theory. The theory of Big Bang indicates one such failure-through-science in search of an ultimate, namely the very start of the universe. Before that, scientists have had experiences of such failures in other searches of ultimate. Take for example the question of the ultimate constituents, the elementary particles, of the world. As electric charges exist in the world, at least one of the elementary particles must have an electric charge of the same sign distributed throughout its volume. But then the parts of this ‘elementary particle’ must repel each other and thus the elementary particle cannot remain stable. The problem can be avoided by postulating an infinitesimal (very small) size of the elementary particle, but this means an infinite electromagnetic mass of the elementary particle, as showed the calculations done by Abraham and Lorentz in 1903 and 1904. So, this search for ultimate-through-science failed. This was amongst the many failures of the 19th century physics resulting in the more modest quantum physics of the 20th century for the elementary particles that does not make claims of telling us completely about the ultimate reality through science, and hence is more consistent with the realization that science is a discipline aimed to summarize nothing but our understanding of regularities in the running universe. Hence science is not a terribly suitable place to search for ultimate. (The human intellect is, though, not limited to experimental or calculational science, and a person can reasonably judge for himself or herself the claims about the ultimate by means not very different from the ones employed in science and naïve logic; after all, science, logic and faith-judgment are all human intellectual activities and must be related to the similar human capabilities. We keep the present article to the question of what science can tell us about the ultimate history of the universe, and leave the question of what to do if science fails to some other discussion.) As said above, strictly speaking the present Big Bang theory fails in telling us in detail about the ultimate start of the world. It is expected to be replaced by a slightly modified theory (termed as ‘quantum gravity’) that, rather than failing by resulting in an infinitely dense Big Bang, is thought to put somehow a limit to the possible scientific knowledge about the zero moment of the Big Bang. Generally, quantum mechanics replaces the sharp values of physical quantities by a probability distribution, with the value obtained through the Newtonian or Einsteinian physics being the most probable but other slightly different values also having some probabilities. Applying this ‘smearing’ to the Big Bang, quantum mechanics is expected to make all the values in a tiny fraction of a second as possible values of the starting time of the universe. Practically, it does not stop us knowing the moment of the start of the universe. (Perhaps the status of the information about the creation of universe provided by the Big Bang theory is not too different from that of the information provided about the atomic and subatomic world by the quantum theory: Naively, Quantum theory says that one cannot exactly know the position and motion of an electron. But, still, through this theory we know so much about the electron that we are able to make electronic apparatus, laser and superconductors etc. Naïve logic tells us that quantum mechanics is uncertain, but we still know it is extremely informative and guiding in the practical world.) It can be argued that the quantum uncertainty in the exact time of the start of the universe indicates a lack of the human knowledge about the zero moment of the Big Bang or about the start of the universe, and it would be wrong to expect any knowledge of the mechanism of the ‘zero moment’-----of the creation of the universe----from this theory. It is this expectation that is criticized and humiliated by Stephen Hawking in his bestseller ‘A Brief History of Time.’ HAWKING’S DENIAL OF ANY START OF THE UNIVERSE!Hawking’s objection to the argument for Creation through the Big Bang is the following: If we symbolically represent the stage of the evolution of the universe by a circle, expanding universe means that the size of this circle increases with time Or backwards in time, this circle shrinks. The set of all these (expanding forward and shrinking backwards) circles arranged in a chronological order results in a cone. The bottom of this cone, at the earliest time, is thought to be an extremely sharp corner, a single point of the start of the universe, by those proving the Divine Creation through the Big Bang. But Hawking tells us about some calculations implying that this is not such an infinitely sharp corner but a corner that is smeared or rounded in an imaginary space-time. Now, a round corner is part of a circle and hence can be argued to have no start like a circle has no start. This is how Hawking strangely dismisses the simple conclusion of a start of the universe pointed out by the theory of Big Bang. Naively, there is some logic in this argument, as has been indicated above again and again, by pointing out that Big Bang theory puts a limit on the scientific knowledge of the start and creation of the universe. But beyond that, it would be wrong to think that Hawking’s objection has any serious implications for astrophysics and theology. The first point is that the rounded corner that Hawking replaces the start of the Big Bang (sharp corner) with is in imaginary time that has in principle no practical meaning. The second is that roundedness at the start of the universe is so tiny that does not do more than produce a quantum uncertainty of an order of billionth billionth billionth billionth part of a second in the scientific knowledge of the exact timing of the start of the universe. But is it reasonable to argue that universe did not have a start at the Big Bang moment just because the scientific knowledge of its timing has such a small uncertainty? The argument can be illustrated by referring to any cone-shaped solid or hollow thing in our daily life. It can be argued that it has no corner point, as at the pointed end of the corner there must be few or one atom not having a cone shape, having no corner and ‘no start!’ But does that stop any one from telling where the corner of a cone is? (This is a problem of a reductionist approach, not appearing in a holistic approach.) In geometrical terms, the argument against Hawking is that we cannot know the start of a circle, but we can know much more about it, such as, how large it is? Where its centre is? And is it real or imaginary? This objection to creation is also put in other related (though apparently different) forms: the sum-over-histories (or, equivalently, over many universes), the Hawking-Stirling no boundary condition theorem or the spontaneous eruption of the universe through a quantum fluctuation etc. These are all different ways of describing the quantum characteristic of many physical quantities not having exact values, as mentioned above. Thus along with the known history (including the actual starting time) of the universe, there are also probabilities for many ‘other’ universes with other histories, physical laws and starting times etc., as quantum mechanics always gives a probability distribution. But it is normally neglected that 1) the probabilities of other universes with other values of physical constants and other physical laws are utterly negligible, and 2) philosophically, this only introduces some minor changes in the form of the question under debate, that is, the question ‘why this particular universe’ is replaced by the practically equivalent question ‘why this particular probability distribution of universes in which only our life-supporting universe has appreciable probability?’ And the Hawking-Stirling no boundary condition theorem is only another way to describe this objection and the resulting modification: Like any other moment, the (boundary) condition of the universe at the start is not something sharp and well-defined, and we have instead a probability distribution of many (boundary) conditions near the start of universe. Again this is an insignificant technicality, as the probability of only one boundary condition is significant. And even if it were not so, this only replaces the question ‘why this particular boundary condition?’ with ‘why this particular probability distribution of boundary conditions?’ with no scientific answer of either being possible, leaving the supernatural explanation as the most plausible explanation. What quantum fluctuation means in the context of the origin of universe is the idea that the ‘nothing’ of creation ex-nihilo (creation from nothing) may be a quantum energy distribution in which nothing (zero energy) is the most probable value but there are chances for other (non-zero) energies as well. So, from such ‘quantum nothing’ a large mass and energy (our universe) may erupt through the physical (quantum) laws and not because of some Creator’s decision. But the quantum mechanics also implies that if our universe is such a quantum energy fluctuation, its energy spread (around zero) has to be exceedingly small, leaving no probability for the huge deviation (or, technically, uncertainty) equal to the total energy of the universe from zero energy. The reason is that according to the quantum uncertainty principle the spread (that is, uncertainty) of energy is of the order of the Plank’s constant divided by the uncertainty in time. The uncertainty in time is the time for which the quantum energy distribution contains significant probabilities, that is the lifetime of this packet. Now the lifetime of the universe is at least around 15 billion years. Hence the quantum energy spread of the universe must be of the order of the (tiny) Plank’s constant divided by 15 billion years, meaning 1/1035 electron volt. In such an energy spread, the probability for the total energy of the universe, estimated to be around 1083 electron volt, must be utterly negligible. Even if there is some error in the calculations presented here, and quantum mechanics has appreciable probability for the spontaneous emergence of the universe from such a quantum spread of energy around zero energy, the question remains ‘who created such an energy distribution containing a probability for such a huge and wonderful universe?’ It does not matter if the average (technically, the expectation value) of this energy distribution is zero; such an energy distribution is far from being the nothing of creation ex-nihilo. Even if such an energy distribution might result in the universe, the origin of such a distribution itself remains supernatural (At least, not natural). If few questions about the start and creation of the universe remain unanswered, it is not reasonable to deny the very start and creation of the universe. In science there are many examples of the concepts (force, energy, electrons and the light particles called photons etc.) that we believe are existing just because we know enough about these, without being able to observe them and without being able to answer all the questions about them. (For example one cannot tell if a photon was inside an electron before the electron emitted the photon, and how it is that an electron can be detected in any one of the two boxes even if it is not possible for it to be at the boundary between the boxes etc.) No one believing in the Creator of the universe says the human reason can know all about Him; but enough knowledge about Him is enough for a rational belief. Perhaps a similar approach could throw some light on why many verses of the Quran suggest agreement with many scientific findings; we cannot answer all the questions about this wonderful agreement, but still the overall agreement, at least between the scientific facts like the development of the human foetus and the Quranic ayah, is indicative of something special about Quran. THE RELIGION-SCIENCE RELATIONSHIP:Even the scientifically negative result of the Big Bang theory gives a useful indication. To understand this, one should have a clear picture of the relationship between science and religion, going beyond the simplistic approach of remaining confined to comparing the Quranic ayat and some scientific results without analysing the nature of the science yielding these results. Science (in the sense of Popper’s book ‘Logic of Scientific Discovery’ or any possible alternative) is such a discipline that the Divine action does not directly appear in its calculations, observations and experiments. Hence science is presented in the dominant present intellectual atmosphere as showing that we can describe the universe causally, meaning without mentioning any supernatural influence (including the Divine action). As far as scientific calculations and experiments are concerned, it is very difficult to avoid this conclusion. Hence, to evaluate this Godless picture of the universe there is no point in comparing dominant ‘atheistic science’ with any supposedly theistic or ‘religious science’. The real points to ponder are: 1. The obsession with the working of science, its calculations, observations and experimentations may under a misguided influence suppress the natural human wonder about the grandeur of the science-governed universe as a whole and (suppress) the essential human curiosity about why this marvellous world exists at all. At least the experience of the past few centuries shows this. A person under this diverting influence neglects the Divine action in the very existence of such a wonderful universe, and tries to find it in the working (calculations etc.) of science. 2. In the working of universe there is only a scientific causality (or randomness, according to the modern physics) and apparently no Divine action. For Muslim educationists this means that we need first of all, after showing to the students that science is marvellous, point out the Divine action in the very existence and creation of this amazing universe (The Quranic ayat ‘in the alteration of day and night there are signs for men of understanding’ indicates perhaps this).This means that we can avoid rather strange-looking efforts to show the Divine action in the working of science and keep our education of the working of science simply an education of the causality, randomness or whatever is found to be the technically sound approach. 3. The Divine action is normally not to be found in the working of universe, but there is also no argument for confining the Divine action to the creation of universe only. To see where the Divine action is, in addition to the creation of universe, one has to realize the limits of science. The Quranic ayat ‘We sent wahi (revelation) to the bee’ indicates that there is something especially Divine-guided in the working of bee that is not routinely natural, something whose delineation is beyond science. To understand the Divine action, one has to believe that the scientific rules of nature a) do not have a power in themselves unless sustained by the One responsible for the very existence of universe, and these rules b) do not keep the Creator of science within any limits set by scientific rules even while all the events of the world caught by the scientific predictions and observations remain normally within the limits described by the rules of science through an arrangement unknown to us. (Exceptions to this norm are the miracles.) The importance of the limits of science goes even beyond; a person thinking that scientific knowledge has no limits (and nothing else than scientific calculations and experiments is needed to understand the very start and existence of this amazing science) would not believe in the Divine action even in the existence of science. The reason is that the Divine action does not fall in the category of the scientific calculations and experimentation etc. Hence the basic job in facing the present dominant ‘atheistic science’ is, in addition to emphasizing the creation of the wonderful universe, to point out the limits of science; to show that science, be as it is, is not a complete description of the world; to clarify that science (as defined by Popper or others) is a human activity directed only towards noting the regularities (termed ‘uniformities of nature’) in human experience and understand them in terms of the summaries expressed in form of law-like statements. So, if there are violations to the ‘law of uniformity of nature’, science is by definition unable to deal with them. Similarly, science is by definition unable to answer the question that how this very law of uniformity of nature and hence science originated at all; to answer this question you have to compare the situation without science and with science, and science can obviously describe only the situation with science. Religion is basically concerned with the aspects of the world beyond science. This statement is not restricted to the cosmological teachings of religion; religion is a guide to the human beings having a free will, and there cannot be a room for a human free will in a purely scientific description of the world. So, a realization of the (inherent) limits of science is must for any religiosity; a person or culture having unlimited confidence in a supposed absolute ability of scientific explanation and hence potentially control the world would not feel a need for any guidance coming through a route other than science and would not have the sense of incompleteness of scientific explanation and the modesty required for appreciating the role of religion in life. So, what religious advocates need to point out, while confronting the attacks-through-science must include the limits of science, at least that science cannot create itself. For example, rather than spending so much energy on proving that Darwinism is wrong even in its technicalities, it is better to show that Darwinism (or, for that matter, its any possible mechanical alternative) is limited to a domain not the subject matter of religion. And actually, the arguments against Darwinism only indicate that the variety and uniqueness of life is so rich that the arrival of the fittest cannot be totally explained by the purely mechanical Darwinism. But once the fittest (potentially fittest mutations/variations or new useful kinds of genes) arrives by a decision that science can neither delineate nor deny, this (fittest) behaves and survives by a mechanism that can be Darwinian or its some mechanical alternative; this scientific dialogue between different biological theories of how the fittest or suitable genes etc. behave and survive better not be taken as a religious dialogue or a discussion in favour of or against any religion. Within its limits biology should remain biology not something pro or against any religion, but it should not be used for baseless extrapolations beyond it limit of applicability. It is to be noted that the limits of science is not a new thing suggested here; see, for example, the book “Limits of Science” by a biology Nobel laureate Peter Medawar. A clarification is a must here: These comments against an disproportionate emphasis on science-suggesting science should appreciate a role for other (not alternative) approaches in other contexts-should not lead people following the other approaches to forget the importance of science or be ignorant of the scientific spirit; science and logic provide the basic models and standards of human rational judgements (fairly objective decisions even in absence of mathematical/logical proof or certainty) not only for their own discussions, but also for arguments in social, humanistic and religious discourses. Particularly, the reasonable arguments for a true religion must have enough resemblance with the scientific reasoning. This is because what a true religion provides is a metaphysical explanation of the world complementing the intellectually incomplete scientific explanation, without being incompatible with science and logic. Moreover, a true religion satisfies the same human curiosity and fulfils basically the same human standards of knowledge that are responsible for the development of science. Going back to the limits of science, the Big Bang theory, through its negative message, has actually pointed out an important limit of science. Before the advent of this theory, one could say that science can potentially describe the full history of the universe, inform us how it was ten thousand years ago, a million years ago, a billion years ago, a trillion years ago and so on, without any limit and without mentioning any start, let alone the creation, of the universe. So, it could be argued that we need nothing else than scientific calculations, observations and experimentation to understand the whole past of the universe. But after the Big Bang theory, that claim is no longer tenable: Science can potentially tell us about the broad features of the universe a million years ago, a billion years ago, some 13-20 billion years ago, but beyond this, about the Big Bang moment and before it, we cannot have knowledge through science. Either science fails at the Big Bang moment (in the Einsteinian version) or its ability to tell us about this moment is lost in the quantum uncertainty----the tiny roundedness of the space-time around the Big Bang meaning not one fixed moment etc.----as Hawking informs the general public but then exaggerates the space-time roundedness to the point of apparently misleading them. It remains to discuss if the Big Bang theory is really a “victory of religion over science”? (Are Islam and science to be basically competed or compared for the results, or they have to be only mutually respecting and complementing thinking that science indicates a model of rationality for religion without being able to replace it?) Does it really become, in this way, a ‘religious theory’ after remaining for decades a scientific theory? Can, say, a Muslim astrophysicist discuss its technical merits and demerits as freely as he or she can discuss the merits and demerits of a theory considered having no theological implications like the theory of electricity and magnetism? Has this theory provided for the first time a serious rational argument for the creation of the universe, or we had any before it? Does the faith of persons not aware of the Big Bang theory, because of being ill informed or having born much before its advent, lack any element? Do the answers to these questions not ignoring the fact that there were many arguments for the Creation of the universe even before the advent of the Big Bang theory. Infact, this theory does not provide an essentially new argument at all; it has only rendered a new version of the long-standing philosophical argument for the start and Creation of the universe within the intellectual reach of non-philosophers as well. EVERGREEN ARGUMENTS FOR CREATION:For a large number of people, this theory has provided the first argument they could be convinced of. That can be the first convincing argument for them. But it does not mean that the theory has actually provided for the first time an argument for Creation. People have always thought that the chain-of-creation in this world must stop somewhere, in a way that the First Creator, is essentially different from all the other members of the chain. Someone having supernatural quality not needing a further creator can be the only way for stopping the chain of natural causes; any natural cause or creator or factor cannot have a supernatural quality, must have its own cause or creator and thus can never be a termination of the chain of beings. Even uneducated simple persons, whether agreeing or disagreeing to it, have always felt the weight of this argument. With the development of philosophy the core issue of debate was put in chronological terms: the universe must have a start and is thus created. For many the statement was simple enough and they did not feel any problem with it. But objections have been put forward, and were answered through the clarification like the following: All what is happening in the world is the result of some process. We do not know all the processes that have resulted in the present world, but surely the processes must have completed in time intervals in a way that the time interval of a process and the double of this time interval are not the same, even though both the time interval and its double may be unknown to us. If the time of a process were infinite, its double would be the same because the double of infinity is also infinity. So, every event of the world is a result of a process completed in a finite time. Carefully summing all these processes (avoiding duplications etc.) we can in principle find out the total finite time in which the whole universe has developed into the present form. This age of the universe is thus in principle a knowable finite time interval. Even if we are unable to calculate this age, the simple conclusion that it is not infinite is sufficient to tell that there was a start and creation of the universe. Another way to see this conclusion is that any process or change heading in one direction indefinitely would make the world not sustaining life etc. The only way universe can have an ‘infinite age’ if it has no change, or should have no change for infinite time followed by changes, or should have every change followed by an exact counter change. The first option is against every experience we have; there are always changes in the world. The second choice cannot answer what would be special about the moment when changes started. (The third option of the periodic universe is discussed below.) These objections have been also put in the scientific language, resulting in a scientific argument against the infinite age of the universe: the ever-present consensus in science that the total disorder in the universe goes on increasing. This general observation of the nature of the universe has found a technical version in the form of the second law of thermodynamics (or the law of ‘entropy’). Thus if the universe were infinite old, the disorder in it would have increased without limit leaving no order in the universe and making everything in the universe in the same state of disorder at the same temperature. But we see a lot of order, life and variety in the universe. Thus there must have been a lot of order in the early universe, and this order and variety has been decreasing for only a finite time i.e. for a finite age of the universe. So, it is in the essential nature of the universe that it is not eternal, regardless of what astrophysical theories tend to dominate in science. That is how one could have argued before the advent of the Big Bang theory and that is how one can argue if for some reason the Big Bang theory becomes unpopular amongst scientists in future. (It can be thought that the scientific argument of order/disorder discussed in the above lines may also become unpopular in future, and perhaps we should avoid using it before claiming that our faith is really independent of changing scientific theories that are inaccessible to most of the persons who have to make decisions about the faith. And this claim is a must for a faith that is for everyone regardless of technical knowledge, time and place of birth. To justify this claim, we, strictly speaking, should avoid using the second law of thermodynamics and rely only on the finite process time argument etc. But a slight relaxation would allow the use of second law of thermodynamics as well, because this is also in the essential nature of the world and one cannot even imagine an observation or experiment forcing us to abandon it. Moreover, quite like the finite process time argument, it is a technical version of what an ordinary person without any education or skill thinks about the world around: Everyone realizes without any formal training that things are not built themselves; if left to themselves and not cared for, things can only decay. And no change can continue indefinitely in a sustainable world. It is only a slight sophistication of this common idea to say that the total order in the world only decreases with time. This sophistication only clarifies that the argument is not naïve, although it looks like thoughtless faith of uneducated persons.) For completeness, an option remains to be discussed: Maybe processes and changes in the world are periodic, repeating in finite periods in which changes are exactly cancelled by counter-changes. A scientific argument against this very idea of a periodic universe is that in the later part of a period order must increase if this later part has to exactly compensate for all the loss of order in the first part and make the situation at the end of a period exactly same as at the start, and that is impossible. But perhaps this reply can be subject of some scientific discussion. So, it must be noted that even if future science somehow strangely allows such an exactly repeating and hence self-ordering phase of the history of the universe, these kind of periods cannot be an arguments for an eternal universe either: A period must have a start, and how can a period take start in a universe that itself has no start? There must be something special about the starting moment of a period that makes it different to so many other moments before and after it! The period-starting (or change-starting) moments must have a special relationship to the universe-starting moment; there is no other way that the period-starting or change-starting moment can be special. When we draw pictures of a periodic motion in our books, we decide where to start a period in that drawing. But in a universe with no start and no Active Agent, how can there be such decisions? My humble assertion is that the Big Bang theory has actually illustrated the ever-present finite-process-time argument through a scientific result. That is, rather than the abstract, though true, statement that ‘all what is happening in the world is the result of some process’, we have a concrete description: a process in 15 billion years. For many people it has made easier to understand the original simple argument that had become difficult to understand during the past few centuries because of being shrouded by scepticism about its validity put forward in the name of science itself. Otherwise, the actual argument is not dependent upon this theory. Hence the theory, in spite of all its preaching value for religions, is a scientific theory, not a religious theory, doctrine or basic tenet of faith. A Muslim can freely discuss its technical merits and demerits; if the theory is replaced, only trouble would be that preachers might have to look for some other example to explain the actual argument-for-Creation to peoples relying on the scientific results even for the discussions that are properly the subject matter of philosophy, the subject matter of the human abstract but rational judgement.
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