What danger lurks in associating big bang cosmology with biblical cosmology? Most Christian physicists, astronomers, and other scientists would say, "None." Many Christian philosophers, theologians, pastors, and other nonscientists would say, "A big one." The difference in these answers reveals a core difference in the way the two groups think and talk about scientific theories and Christian apologetics.
The work of an apologist in some ways parallels the work of a scientist. Both seek to "prove" (as in "establish by testing") the truth of their explanation for something and, thus, to defend their idea against challenges. Both look for solutions to problems, specifically inconsistencies and unanswered questions arising from their proposed explanations. A Christian apologist's job is to prove and defend the veracity of the Gospel, chiefly by establishing the reliability of Scripture and by solving apparent problems in biblical interpretation or theology. This brief background sheds light on the rise—and the fall—of an apologetics hypothesis popularly known as "the gap theory."
HISTORICAL ROOTS OF THE GAP THEORY
Christian apologists of the nineteenth century faced many daunting challenges, especially from emerging sciences. Geology seemed particularly problematic as researchers found evidence of Earth's ancient, tumultuous past—the gradual depositing of sedimentary layers interspersed by the violent bending, bulging, and breaking of Earth's crust—and began to comprehend the forces behind the deposition and tumult. Geology unearthed two grave concerns, one about the timing of creation and the other about the character of God. Archbishop Ussher's chronology, which dated Earth's origin at 4004 b.c.,1 seemed an obvious mismatch with the findings of geology, and the "formless and void" (tohû wabohû, in Hebrew) condition of early Earth appeared too horrible and chaotic to align with the goodness of God.
Theologians saw a promising solution in the work of their predecessors and seized upon it. A few Bible scholars of the seventeenth century, wishing to establish the timing of Satan's fall and the angels' rebellion, had proposed a narrative gap (hence, a time gap of unspecified duration) between the creation of the universe ("the heavens and the earth" of Genesis 1:1) and the events of the creation week (Genesis 1:3-27).2 Eighteenth century advocates of this view placed the gap precisely between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, suggesting that Earth began, perhaps eons ago, as the abode of angels who ravaged and ruined it when they fell. The creation week, according to this scenario, could be viewed as a period of "restitution," the word originally attached to the gap hypothesis.3
Dozens of cosmic characteristics must be exquisitely fine-tuned to make physical life possible. The degree of fine-tuning observed exceeds by many orders of magnitude the fine-tuning of which humans are capable. Despite such evidence, rather than because of it, some people, including scientists, speculate about the existence of an infinite number of universes. Given an infinite number of universes, they rationalize, at least one could be expected to develop, randomly, the characteristics physical life requires. Thus, chance, or "random fluctuations" in some kind of primeval field, seems to them as plausible an explanation for apparent design as a divine Designer.
The question remains, however, Where do the infinite number of universes come from? If from some kind of primeval field, then where does the primeval field come from? If "nothingness" represents an instability, and "nothing" must, therefore, give rise to "something," why has no one ever observed something coming from nothing? Can any physical process deliver an infinity of products? Must infinite variety be the outcome? Asking enough questions ultimately leads to an all-powerful, uncaused Causer.
Growing evidence points to a universe that hyperexpanded (at many times light's velocity) during its first 10-33 seconds of existence. The inflationary big bang multi-verse proposed by several astrophysicists to account for this hyperexpansion, however, can be much more easily structured as an inflationary big bang uni-verse.
Anyone who appeals to infinite (or even just a very large number of) universes commits a form of the gambler's fallacy, as described in the following example: Someone flips a single coin in an auditorium in the presence of witnesses ten thousand consecutive times and each time that coin lands with heads facing up. One committing the gambler's fallacy says that outside the auditorium 210,000 (2 x 2 x 2 . . . ten thousand such multiplications) coins might possibly exist and that all these coins may have been flipped 10,000 consecutive times each. He further speculates that every coin outside of the auditorium produced a different set of results in their 10,000 flips than the one observed inside the auditorium. On this basis he concludes that the coin flipped in the auditorium represents that one possible instance out of 210,000 coins that the laws of probability state would produce ten thousand consecutive heads. He, therefore, would conclude that the coin in the auditorium still has a 50/50 chance of landing on tails, and would be willing to bet on tails for the next flip.
The many debates, court cases, letters to the editor, and talk shows on the subject of evolution and creation almost without exception demonstrate the shell game played with the terms creationism, evolution, science, religion, and faith. The game usually begins with a statement that evolution is a proven fact. Next, this claim is established by the presentation of voluminous evidence from the physical sciences and the fossil record for changes in the universe, the earth, and the forms of life on the earth over the course of the last several billion years. Therefore, it is then claimed (or implied) that the theory that lifeforms developed out of some kind of primordial soup and changed through strictly natural processes into more and more advanced species is unquestionably correct.
At some point in the game, creation is defined as adherence to Archbishop Ussher's chronology for the Bible-the claim that God must have created the universe and everything within it in the last 6,000 years or so. Then, more evidences are presented to show the ridiculousness of the 6,000-year time-scale. Finally, the reader is told (condescendingly) that he is free to believe in creation, if he insists, as an act of faith, but that our schools and educators must confine themselves to the facts. Meanwhile, we should exercise the tolerance to grant churches the freedom to teach their religious myths, but only to their own constituency, not to society at large.
What is the result of these shell games? Only one view may be presented to society at large: atheistic materialism (which is, by the way, a religion of sorts).
As an astronomer, educator, and evangelical minister, I concur that the normal physical science definition for evolution is well established—things do change with respect to time and in some cases over a time-scale of billions of years. Incidentally, this fact can be established not just from the scientific record but also from the Bible. The first chapter of Genesis is set up as a chronology documenting how God changed the world over six specific time periods. A literal and consistent reading of the Bible, taking into account all its statements on creation, makes clear that the Genesis creation days cannot possibly be six consecutive 24-hour days. They must be six lengthy epochs. Ussher's chronology represents faulty exegesis, as many Bible scholars affirm.
A team of 41 astronomers from Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States took advantage of a naturally occurring telescope to image a small planet orbiting a star somewhere between us and the Galactic Bulge (the dense concentration of stars that exists at the core of our Milky Way galaxy).1 The natural telescope consisted of a large star functioning as a gravitational lens. According to general relativity, a sufficiently massive body can bend the path of a beam of light that passes close enough to it. Therefore, if such a body lies between us and another object located directly behind it, it can magnify for us the image of the more distant object (see diagram). The more massive the lense object is, the more it will magnify.
Gravitational lenses that astronomers are fortunate enough to find exhibit widely varying magnifying properties. In this particular case the magnification exceeded twenty times.
The team's results demonstrate that relative to the star, MACHO 98-BLG-35, that provided the gravitational lens phenomenon, the planet orbiting it is between 0.004 and 0.02 percent of the mass of the star. For star masses that could possibly give rise to such a spectacular magnification, the planet mass orbiting it would fall between 3 and 35 times the mass of the Earth (or, 0.17 and 2.0 Neptune masses).
