you. Okay, well I call this talk, Big Problems with the Big Bang. You see, there's a story, a myth, that is very prominent in our culture today. And it's something that you'll find in almost every astronomy textbook. And most schools and universities teach this as fact, despite the fact that it was made up by people who were not around when the universe began. The story is the Big Bang. And it really is a naturalistic explanation for the origin of the universe. That is, it's an attempt to explain how things could come about without God. And let me just show you this story. In the Big Bang story, the entire universe is contained in a point, initially. And I'm not just talking about the mass in the universe, all the matter, but rather space itself. The entire universe, even empty space, if you will, is contained inside a point, as hard as that is to understand. And then this point rapidly expands out like a balloon, carrying mass and energy with it. The energy condenses into matter, hydrogen and helium gas. Stars are born, they condense out of that gas, and those stars form heavier elements, things that you're made of, and that dust condenses to form planets, and then on one such planet, chemicals just happen to come together to form primitive life, and eventually that life evolves into you. And that's the story that we're taught in school, that's the story that appears in most textbooks. And I am surprised at the number of people who believe this story, because the Big Bang has big problems, and I want to show you some of those problems. First of all, I want to talk about biblical problems with the Big Bang. Because I'm surprised that a lot of Christians actually buy into this. They don't realize that the Big Bang really is intact on the authority of scripture. Let's take a look at some of the differences between what the Big Bang teaches and what the Bible teaches. For example, the cause of the universe. What caused the universe? Well, if you believe in the Big Bang, maybe there's a quantum fluctuation in another universe. So another universe produced ours. That hardly solves the problem, does it? Because then what caused that universe, you see? Nothing. Maybe the universe just popped into existence for no reason. Maybe we can't know. That's usually the answer we get. We can't know what caused the universe. That's not much of an answer, is it? Whereas the Bible gives a sufficient answer. God caused the universe. And God's outside of time. He doesn't require a cause himself. He's infinite, you see. What about the time scale? The Big Bang teaches billions of years. The Bible teaches thousands of years. It's clear from the addition of those genealogies that you all love to read, and so-and-so begets so-and-so. You love to read those. I know I do. What's clear from those is that the universe is only thousands of years old, because Adam's created on day six, and there are only six days before him. So, there's a difference there. But it's not just the time scale. The order of events is quite different between the two stories, the story of the Big Bang and the Genesis account of creation. For example, the Big Bang teaches stars before the Earth, fish before trees, dinosaurs before birds. But what does the Bible teach? Well, if we look at it, the Bible teaches that the Earth was made before the stars, and the Bible teaches that trees were made before fish, and the Bible teaches that birds were made before dinosaurs. So you see there's quite a difference in the order of events there. What about the future? You may know that the Big Bang teaches a different past than the Genesis account, but did you know that the Big Bang teaches a different future than the Bible does? The Big Bang says that the universe, well, the most popular version of the Big Bang, teaches that the universe will continue to expand, and all the matter will become very separated, and eventually we'll end up with what they call a heat death, where everything that exists will basically be low-level radiation heat, and maybe some black holes. Well, that's very different than what the Bible says. The Bible says that there's going to be a return of Jesus Christ when there will be a judgment and a restoration. And we'll live in paradise with Jesus forever if we've accepted him as Savior. So that's a very different future than what the Big Bang teaches. They're not reconcilable. What about ETs, extraterrestrial life? Well, if you believe in the Big Bang, life evolved on Earth, probably evolved elsewhere too where conditions are right, you'd expect to find ETs. In fact, they had a NOVA broadcast on just last night. It was this new Origin series they're promoting. And they said that one of the questions they asked were, where are the aliens? You see, evolutionists are surprised that we haven't found alien life. And they should be surprised, because in their worldview, we should find life in outer space. But if you believe the Bible, what does the Bible have to say about that? The Bible says Earth is specially created for life. God formed it to be inhabited, the Bible says. And so, from a biblical perspective, Earth is special. The universe is designed to be beautiful. It's designed to be for signs, seasons, days and years, Genesis says. It's not designed to house life. Earth is designed to house life. A lot of Christians don't like to hear that. And I think they watch a lot of TV and they say, wouldn't it be exciting to find aliens? And don't get me wrong, I like science fiction as much as the next person, but it's science fiction. It's not true. It doesn't line up with scripture, really. A lot of it's evolution-based. What about the original Earth? According to the Big Bang, the Earth was a molten rock when it was first created, and no water. What does the Bible say? The Earth was created as a paradise. On the first day, it was all water. God formed it out of the water. See, a lot of Christians say, well, you can believe in the Big Bang as long as you add in that God started it. But folks, the Bible and the Big Bang teach two completely different versions of history. They're not reconcilable. See, a lot of Christians say, well it's okay, as long as you don't believe in biological evolution, you can go ahead and believe in millions of years in the Big Bang, but I'm not an evolutionist. But see, if you do that, all you're doing is rejecting the last two chapters of the story. You're accepting the rest of the atheistic version of origins, and you're just rejecting the last two chapters, and you're tacking God on. But it doesn't work. And as Ken mentioned earlier, you can't add those millions of years of death and suffering before Adam sinned, because that underlines the Gospel message. Christians try to have it both ways. They want to say, well, I'm a Christian and I believe the Bible, but they also want to add in the evolutionary story of origins. And when they try to make them agree, guess which one gets modified? See, they're two different stories, and you can't believe them both as is. If you're going to try to believe both the Bible and the Big Bang, you've got to modify one of them. People always go for Scripture. They always try to cut and paste Genesis, reinterpret the words. Well, maybe day doesn't mean day. It means millions of years. No, folks, and that wouldn't help you anyway, because the order is wrong, you see. It doesn't work. Let's be honest about it. These are two different stories, two different versions of history. Which one are you going to believe? That's the real issue. Who are you going to trust? God's word or man's guess about the past? That's the real issue. Are you going to trust God, who is actually there, who never makes mistakes, who knows everything, who always correctly interprets evidence, who never lies, and who is actually responsible for creation? Who are you going to trust? Man, who wasn't there, makes mistakes, has limited knowledge, often misunderstands, misinterprets the evidence, never has all the evidence, sometimes dishonest and had nothing to do with creation. Who are you going to trust? When you put it that way, it seems kind of obvious, doesn't it? It's not hard. See, science ultimately is fallible. And don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for science. I am a PhD scientist. But ultimately, it's not perfect, is it? Sometimes theories change because we uncover new evidence and we have to say, oh gosh, we're thinking wrong about this. So, ultimately, if the Big Bang were good science, we would still have to reject it in favor of scripture because scripture is never wrong. It's the authoritative word of God. God knows everything. So even though we know some things about science, God knows everything about science. He can't be wrong. He spoke the universe into existence. What he says is true. It becomes true. That being said, though, the Big Bang is not, in any way, even remotely, good science. Not at all. Not when you understand it. Let's talk about the nature of science. What is a scientific model? I have the definition here. It's a schematic description of a system, theory, or phenomenon. So it describes some aspect of the universe that accounts for its known or inferred properties, so it explains that part of the universe, and may be used for further study of its characteristics. So in other words, it makes predictions. And that's really the important part. A model is a mental construct that allows you to explain some aspect of the universe and make predictions about the future. A good model is relatively simple. The fewer unnecessary assumptions, the better the model. So I don't want to just assume a lot of things arbitrarily. That would be a good model, and a good model makes many correct, specific predictions. Now let's just give you a couple of examples of this. The heliocentric model of the solar system, which is what hopefully you've all been taught, that the planets go around the Sun, and we think that that's a good model. It works, it makes sense. It's not the only model that's been around. There was a model that said the planets go around the Earth. The Sun and the planets go around the Earth. The geocentric model of the solar system. And it turns out you can actually get that model to work if you make the planets orbit in little circles as they go around the Earth. These little circles were epicycles. They had to add that on to the model to make it work. And that's awfully complicated, isn't it? Because you've got planets going in little circles going around a big circle, and there's no reason why they should do that. It's an arbitrary assumption that makes an incorrect model fit the observations. And I find that very interesting because it turns out that you can actually predict the positions of planets using the geocentric model, and it kind of works. But the heliocentric model is simpler. It has fewer arbitrary assumptions. It's a better scientific model. And that's been improved upon. Copernicus had the first idea of a... Well, he wasn't the first, but he promoted the idea of a heliocentric solar system. And then Kepler came along, the creation scientist, and he showed that the planets actually orbit in ellipses, not circles. And that model works even better. It makes even better predictions. And then one of my favorites, the great Isaac Newton, who was a devout Christian creation scientist who lived in the Bible, he came along and figured out why the planets orbit as they do. He discovered the law of gravity, which is a simple equation that describes the nature of gravitational forces between objects. And it's science at its best, because with Newton's law of gravity and the laws of motion that he pretty much discovered, he'd collected them from some previous information as well. But based on these simple assumptions, just a few of them, you can actually calculate why the planets orbit as they do, you can compute where they will be in the future, and we can do this with great precision. And in fact, when the planet Uranus had been discovered, in its motion track, it was actually off from what was expected, and scientists were able to say, you know, based on the way this planet is moving, there has to be another planet out there pulling on it. Did you know that? And these scientists said, OK, if you take, based on our calculations, based on Newton's Law of Gravity and Laws of Motion, if you point your telescopes right here, you will see another planet that is pulling on Uranus. And astronomers pointed their telescopes at that spot, and lo and behold, there was a planet there. It was the planet Neptune. It was discovered because of Newton's Laws of Gravity and Motion. That's science at its best. Simple, relatively few assumptions, and it makes correct, specific predictions. That's good science. How does the Big Bang stack up? How does it compare as a scientific model? Well, we're going to add points for specific correct predictions, and we subtract points for unnecessary assumptions, arbitrary assumptions, and then we'll just tally the score. Is the Big Bang relatively simple? Well, you know, in its first version it was, but the first version of the Big Bang is not what you'll hear today. The Big Bang today is incredibly complicated. It is not simple, which is why it takes a PhD to get all the details of this stuff. I had to simplify it a bit just to explain it here, really. The recent versions of the Big Bang are highly complex with many arbitrary assumptions that are required to make the model compatible with observations. You see, in order to get the universe from a Big Bang, a universe like today, they have to make a lot of assumptions about the initial conditions, how galaxies form and things like that. Lots of assumptions that can't be demonstrated to be correct. Arbitrary assumptions, you might say. So, it's certainly not simple. But does it make correct predictions? That's our other criterion. Well, it really doesn't. I mean, I haven't heard of people saying, the Big Bang predicts that if you point your telescope here, you'll see this looking just like that, and it turns out to be true. No, that doesn't happen. Now, people will say, well, the Big Bang predicted the cosmic microwave background, and that requires a little explanation. You see, if you could see microwaves instead of instead of visible light. If you go outside at night and look up, the sky would be glowing faintly with microwaves. Everywhere you look, there's this faint, soft glow of microwaves. And people said, oh, see, the Big Bang predicted that. And it did, but it wasn't the only model. There were others that predicted cosmic microwave background. So that's kind of a weak prediction, you see. And furthermore, the temperature of the cosmic microwave background, it's 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. It's very cold. And the Big Bang had predicted a range of temperatures, 1 Kelvin to 50, 1 degree above absolute 0 to 50. So it's quite a range. And so this is what I would call a very vague prediction. It's kind of like if I said to you, OK, according to my model, tomorrow something will happen. I don't say what it is. I just say something's going to happen tomorrow. And then tomorrow, lo and behold, something happens. And as I say, my model is right. That would be an example of a vague prediction. And you wouldn't be very impressed, would you? If I said, however, tomorrow you will be struck by lightning, unfortunately, at 1.17 p.m. in the afternoon, if it happened, you would say, well, gee, that's a pretty good model. Don't worry, it's just hypothetical. But if that happened, you would say, gosh, that's a good model. It makes specific, correct predictions. And the Big Bang does not. It does not make specific, correct predictions. It's made some specific predictions, but they weren't correct. In terms of simplicity, we're negative points, and in terms of correct predictions, not specific correct predictions, maybe I'll give them a point for the cosmic microwave background, but I'd say we're already in the hole. We're already negative if we're keeping score, and we haven't even started talking about the scientific problems with the Big Bang yet. So in other words, there's nothing really positive about the Big Bang model, and there are many negatives. That's the way I would sum it up. Let's talk about some of these problems, scientific problems with the Big Bang. I want to start with a few that you will probably find in most astronomy textbooks. Most Big Bang supporters are honest about the next few problems because they believe they've solved them. And we'll talk about that too. But you will find the flatness problem mentioned in a lot of textbooks. The flatness problem has to do with the expansion rate of the universe versus the force of gravity. You see, it turns out expansion tends to make the universe bigger. Gravity would want to stop that expansion and make it smaller, because gravity is an attractive force and wants to pull things together. Well, it turns out the expansion rate and gravity are very finely balanced. And they're pretty close today, but if the Big Bang were true, at the moment of the bang, those two forces would have to be almost exactly balanced in order to get the universe today. despite the fact that physics allows for any range of possibilities. Gravity can be much stronger or expansion can be much stronger, infinitely so. And yet they come out to exactly one when you compare the ratio of the two, almost exactly one right at the moment of the Big Bang. It doesn't make sense. It's an arbitrary assumption. There's no explanation for it. It's a problem with the Big Bang model. The horizon problem. This is actually a light travel time problem. That is, it's a problem getting light from one place to another in less time than seems possible. You see, the cosmic microwave background has a very uniform temperature. That is, if I were to look, again, if I could see microwaves and I could see the temperature of those microwaves, they would be the same everywhere in the universe. All the different places in the universe have the same temperature, all about 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. The problem is, early in the Big Bang, those different places in the universe, A and B here, would have started out at very different temperatures. And yet today, they have the same temperature. Well, what's the problem here? Well, the problem is there has not been enough time for light to travel from A to B to equilibrate the temperatures. You see, if those two places could exchange light, they could come to equilibrium, they could come to the same temperature. But there has not been enough time, despite the fact they started out with very different temperatures by the Big Bang supporters and assumptions. This is a light travel time problem. And those of you that are familiar with creation research, you might have heard of the so-called distant starlight problem. The idea that the Q Big Bang supporters will say to creationists, oh, you can't trust the Bible because those stars are so far away. It ought to take billions of years for that light to get here. How do you do it? They say, you've got a light travel time problem. I can turn around and say, yeah, but so do you. You've got a light travel time problem, too. The Big Bang is a serious light travel time problem. And I think creationists have some really good possible explanations. We're not all in agreement on which one's right, but there are several ways in which God could have gotten a light year very quickly. There's a lot of different ways to do it. But the point is the Big Bang has the same kind of problem. So that's the horizon problem. The monopole problem. If you think of a battery, it's got a plus and a minus terminal on a battery. And there are particles that are just plus or just minus, like an electron is just minus. It's just a negatively charged particle. Well, in the same fashion, a magnet has a north and a south. And so we would expect that there would be particles that have just a north pole or just a south pole. These would be called magnetic monopoles. They don't have to exist, but physics says that if the temperature is hot enough, these particles should be created. And according to the Big Bang theory, the universe would have been very hot when it was initially created. In fact, it starts off with infinite temperature. So if the universe started off very, very hot, it should have created magnetic monopoles. But we don't find any magnetic monopoles. So it seems to me the most reasonable interpretation of the evidence is that the universe was never so hot, and therefore the Big Bang didn't happen. This is a serious problem with the Big Bang. Now, my Big Bang colleagues have attempted to solve these problems with an idea they call inflation. So if you've ever heard of inflationary Big Bang, that's the latest thing. It's the idea that we can maybe solve these problems with an accelerated rate of expansion. So the universe starts out expanding, kind of slowly if you will, and then it expands very quickly, and then it goes back to the slower rate again. So it starts out, then it inflates, and then it goes back to the slower rate. And in principle, that could solve some of these problems, or at least reduce them. It could reduce the flatness problem, because if you expand the universe this way, it tends to make gravity and inflation rate closer to equal. It could solve the horizon problem, because the light could go very far when the universe is small, you see, and then it gets pushed apart. And it could solve the monopole problem by pushing the monopoles so far away from each other that even though they exist, we've never seen one, you see, because they're too far separated. So in principle, it could reduce or even eliminate these problems. But inflation, if you think about it, it's not something that's been proven to be true. It's just an additional set of assumptions. It's some extra arbitrary parameters that we've added in to try to make the model fit. And it feels like we're adding in epicycles, like in Ptolemy's model of the solar system. Just additional assumptions to make an incorrect model fit the evidence. At least it feels that way to me. For that matter, inflation has problems of its own. For example, how do we turn on inflation? Or for that matter, how do we stop it in a smooth fashion? It's just a set of extra assumptions that has problems of its own. But there are more problems that would not be solved by inflation anyway. The singularity problem, actually a set of problems. The singularity, of course, that's to point where the universe was all together in a single point. That's the singularity, because you have infinite density, infinite temperature, and zero space. That's what a singularity is. Well, the existence of a singularity is a bit bothersome, because usually in physics, if you ever do any physics, if you're solving a physics problem and you end up with an infinity, it usually means you did something wrong. Okay, and so that's a symptom that this may not be right. It doesn't prove that it's wrong, but it's certainly something that would make us say, maybe we should reconsider. Maybe we did something wrong. Secondly, physics breaks down at that level. You see, known physics, like general relativity, Einstein's theory of relativity, actually, as you get down to very small spaces, it no longer applies, and we don't know what does. In other words, no known physics can describe the conditions in a singularity. And so Big Bang supporters have to just assume that the Big Bang is possible, because we don't know if the physics will actually work there, if it's ever discovered. And finally, the singularity is a problem because it doesn't really explain the cause of the universe. That is, Big Bangers can't explain why the singularity is there or why it exploded. It's an arbitrary cause, whereas the Bible gives a sufficient cause for the universe. God created the universe. The one thing the Big Bang doesn't really explain is the origin of the universe. It doesn't explain how that singularity got there, why it exploded. The baryon number problem is another problem, and that sounds very complicated, but basically the question is, where's the antimatter? You see, we can take energy, high levels of energy, and from that we can produce particles, we can produce matter, but you'll always produce an equal amount of antimatter. Energy can make matter antimatter, and if they come back together, you get another form of energy again. So the Big Bang starts out with just pure energy, which is supposed to cool and form matter, but it should have formed an equal amount of antimatter. Where's the antimatter? As far as we know, the universe is made entirely of matter, with only trace amounts of antimatter. It should have equal amounts. This is a huge problem, given that the universe is very big and has a lot of matter in it. What about distant mature galaxies? You know, we've taken telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, look down in space as far as we can, and we've seen these incredible, beautiful galaxies. I don't know if any of you have ever seen that, like the Hubble Deep Field, these beautiful images where the telescope peers right out into space, and they're just beautiful, stunningly beautiful images. Well, this was a bit of a surprise to those people who believe in the Big Bang, because they were expecting to see galaxies just starting to form, galaxies starting to come together. But see, that's a problem because we see fully formed, or should I say, fully designed galaxies at these incredible distances. And it doesn't surprise those of us that believe in creation. It's not a problem if you believe in the Bible because we would expect God made these galaxies. We don't believe in the Big Bang. A lot of these things are not problems at all for the Bible. They're only a problem if you believe in millions of years and the Big Bang. Population three stars are an additional problem for the Big Bang. Did you know that the Big Bang, by evolutionists' own admission, by Big Bang supporters' own admissions, cannot produce anything heavier than lithium? So you get the three lightest elements, hydrogen, helium, lithium. All those other atoms on your periodic table, and there are quite a few, if you recall, all of those cannot be produced in the Big Bang. None of them can be. Only hydrogen, helium, and lithium. That's it. So where did all this other stuff come from? Well, the only way Big Bang supporters can think to produce these are inside stars. They say, well, stars then formed after the Big Bang, and those stars made these heavier elements in the core. And that is theoretically possible. It is theoretically possible that stars can produce heavier elements in the core. But if you think about it, if all the heavier elements came from stars, then the first stars would not have had any, right? The first stars that formed after the Big Bang would not have any heavy elements. because they're produced in stars, so the first stars can't have any. And some of these stars should still be around today, so we should be able to see what they call Population III stars, stars with no heavy elements in them at all. And do we see any of these stars? It turns out that every star we know of has some heavy elements in it. There are no Population III stars, as far as we can tell. And we've got quite a sample to choose from, because there are over 100 billion stars in our galaxy, but none of them have what they call metals, the heavier elements in them. None of them. That's a huge problem if you believe in millions of years in the Big Bang. But it's not a problem if you start from the Bible, the authoritative and fallible Word of God. God made the stars, he gave them the right ratio of elements that he wanted for his pleasure. So, you have to ask yourself, why do people believe it? I mean, given that the Big Bang goes against the recorded history of creation, And given that it has really no positive aspects to it, it doesn't make successful specific correct predictions. It's very complex, has lots of arbitrary assumptions. It has a tremendous number of problems, some of which evolutionists have proposed solutions to, some of which they really don't know how to solve. Given that it has all these difficulties, why do people believe it? That's a question that I've pondered quite a bit, because I'm an astrophysicist and I certainly don't buy into this. I understand the information. Well, you know, I think a lot of times people get locked into a way of thinking. Because you see, we don't just... The evidence doesn't just speak for itself, does it? It always requires interpretation. We always look at evidence, we have a way of thinking about things, and when we look at the evidence, we interpret that evidence according to our worldview. And I think that people who believe in the Big Bang are used to thinking that way, and so when they look at the evidence, they automatically interpret it as being the result of the Big Bang. on that Nova series I was watching last night, they equated the cosmic microwave background with the Big Bang. They said, you're looking at the Big Bang. No, not at all. You're looking at the cosmic microwave background. That is a result of the Big Bang, that's just an interpretation. And it's one that has a lot of problems, as you've seen here. But if you can get people to step back and reconsider their worldview, then you can make progress. If you say, well, I understand what you believe, I understand the Big Bang, but step back and look at these things, look at all these evidences from the vantage point of scripture, you're going to find that they make a lot more sense. But I found that it's a little bit of a difficult challenge because men love darkness rather than light. You see, we have a sin nature that causes us to reject truth. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? And so it's a difficult challenge to get people to break away because we instinctively rebel against what God has said. So some conclusions here. So the Big Bang is a naturalistic story of origins. It's not compatible with the Bible. Not at all. And so Christians should not try to add in the Big Bang to the Bible. And you wouldn't want to anyway. Not only does it destroy the foundation of scripture, not only does it undermine the gospel message, but the Big Bang has scientific problems. You wouldn't want to believe it for scientific reasons. It's not a good scientific model. It's very complex, and it doesn't make specific correct predictions. Furthermore, the Big Bang has a large number of scientific problems. These include flatness, the horizon problem, monopoles, the singularity problem, the baryon number problem, distant galaxies, and population three stars. And I could have listed a lot more, but we're short on time, so that's just the number that I picked. But, conversely, the Bible is a reasonable description of origins. It lacks the above problems. It's recorded history. And it was written by inspiration of God himself, who surely knows how the universe began. See, it's very arrogant of us to try and tell God how he created the universe. I mean, that's what frustrates me with Christians who try to believe the Big Bang, and they say, oh, see, God, you didn't get the timescale right here, and you didn't get the order right either, but we can fix it up if we reinterpret it this way. How arrogant is that? To tell our creator how he did it. Let's let him tell us how he did it. That's the real key, isn't it? So I want to encourage you that you don't need to cave into the world's ideas. You can trust in the authority of the Word of God from the very first verse. Thank you. I'm not sure if I'm going to make it.