The Unity Of Truth

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface......................................................................................................xiiiAcknowledgments..............................................................................................xixIntroduction.................................................................................................xxiChapter 1 The Big Bang Theory, Where the Truths of Science and Religion Have Already Met.....................1Chapter 2 The Quantum Revolution.............................................................................13Chapter 3 The Great Paradox..................................................................................39Chapter 4 Resolving the Great Paradox........................................................................58Chapter 5 God................................................................................................76Chapter 6 Life...............................................................................................104Chapter 7 Human Nature.......................................................................................136Chapter 8 The Possibility of Extraterrestrial Life...........................................................156Chapter 9 Mystery and Paradox................................................................................167Chapter 10 It Is Spirit That Brings God's Virtues into Our Lives.............................................171Chapter 11 Passover and Easter...............................................................................174Chapter 12 Sacrifice.........................................................................................178Chapter 13 The Expanding Expressions of Experience...........................................................190Chapter 14 The Practice of Truth.............................................................................200Chapter 15 Conclusions.......................................................................................205Index........................................................................................................217

Chapter One

How the Big Bang Theory Came About

We start our quest at the beginning, at a point where the truth of science and the truth of religion have already overlapped—perhaps by accident, perhaps by intent—in a way that is quite mysterious and largely unknown to most scientists and religious people alike. The story starts out with the equations of general relativity that were developed by Albert Einstein in 1915 and with a suggestion from a Belgian Jesuit priest and physicist, Father Georges Lemaitre, of a novel solution to these equations. Father Lemaitre was the first (in 1927) to call to the attention of the world's physics and cosmology communities that a theory of cosmology could be constructed by identifying a point in time when the universe began. A little later, Alexander Friedman in Russia came to a similar conclusion.

The steady state theory of the universe that was most favored by the scientists of the time was unacceptable to theologians because it elevated the material universe to the position of being coeternal with God. However, Father Lemaitre found a solution within Einstein's equations of general relativity that predicted the existence of a definite point in time when our universe began. If this were true, our universe was not eternal, answering the objections of theologians. Once our universe came into being, it embarked upon a period of expansion that continues to the present day. This picture of our universe's beginning is remarkably similar to the creation story in the Bible (found in Genesis 1). Father Lemaitre never publically stated his intention to build a bridge between the biblical account of creation and the scientific account of creation, but it is hard to imagine that a man of the cloth would not have this motive in mind.

Initially, the physics-cosmology community did not take Father Lemaitre's proposal very seriously. But gradually, a fantastic story of discovery began to unfold as evidence mounted that favored Father Lemaitre's ideas. First there was the Hubble red shift, and later, to clinch the argument, there came the discovery by two Bell Laboratories communication engineers (in 1962) of cosmic microwave background noise. Interestingly, the term "big bang" was initially used as a term of derision by Fred Hoyle, a British steady state cosmologist. Like many other names of derision, this one has stuck. We will now tell the whole story of the discovery of the big bang theory of cosmology in the detail it deserves.

Evidence in Favor of the Big Bang Theory of the Universe

Perhaps the most significant event in human history happened approximately 13.5 billion years ago. It is called the big bang. Cosmologists now understand the big bang as a point along the timeline of history when time itself began. No time existed before the big bang; in fact, nothing (i.e., no things) existed prior to the big bang. No space, no time, and perhaps no laws of physics existed; nothing of a material nature existed in any sense of the word.

Physicists call the moment when the big bang occurred a singularity. A singularity is a lot like a black hole, except it works roughly in reverse. A black hole swallows up all the surrounding matter and energy (within its local event horizon) by the immense gravitational attraction of its point-like grasp. On the other hand, the big bang's singularity started out as a point and grew outward, serving as the genesis for all things within our universe. All of the matter and energy, all of the laws of physics and chemistry, and even space and time themselves expanded outward from that first infinitesimal moment at the point of creation called the singularity. Before the singularity, there was no matter, no energy, no space, and no time; but after the singularity, the potential for all things came into being within that very instant of the singularity.

How do we know the big bang singularity theory is true? There are several competing cosmological theories of creation, not to mention all of the creation stories contained in the world's religious traditions. What is so special about the big bang theory that drives us to take it so seriously? The answer is quite simple. There exists experimental evidence (and lots of it), of the kind that scientists love so dearly, in support of the big bang theory. What is so special about the big bang theory is that religious people of all cultures are able to recognize their own creation stories within this scientific account of creation.

Before discussing the evidence in support of the big bang theory, let us first discuss the concept of evidence in a general way. Science, as we know it today, got its start in the seventeenth century CE. (Of course there was a wealth of scientific literature produced by the ancient Greeks and Romans, but it wasn't until the Renaissance in Western Europe that science adopted the universal language of mathematics.) The cornerstone of science is in the gathering of experimental data about the natural world and applying reason and logic to this evidence for the purpose of developing new theories explaining the observed natural phenomena. Prior to the seventeenth century, what we in the twenty-first century think of as the disciplines of natural science, theology, and philosophy did not exist as separate branches of knowledge anywhere on earth. Prior to the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, if a new finding in the natural sciences could not be understood by reason and logic, scientists would defer to theology by assuming they were dealing with an act of God.

However, by the seventeenth century, scientific pioneers like Copernicus, Bruno, and Galileo were coming to understand that this method was a copout hindering the growth and advancement of the natural sciences. It was all too easy for the scientists of that day to refuse to dig further into the problem of finding a rational/logical explanation when theology held out such an easy explanation. Some mighty battles were fought between budding scientists and the church over such issues as the Copernican sun-centered solar system, and of course in the end, the church ultimately lost these battles.

Today an understanding of the natural world is considered by most educated people worldwide to be the sole domain of science. When those who are trying to bring God back into the picture dare to intrude on the sacred domain of science, there is controversy. Is this progress? Maybe yes, maybe no. Perhaps in the twenty-first century science has taken for itself the same power and influence that was held by the church in the seventeenth century.

Hubble's Red Shift

Returning to the big bang theory, let us examine the experimental evidence in its favor. In the 1920s and the 1930s, an astronomer named Edwin Hubble made some very significant discoveries while observing with the new telescopes that had recently been constructed in the mountains east of Los Angeles, California. Hubble used an optical device called a diffraction grating spectrometer to accurately measure the exact frequency components associated with starlight he was observing. Hubble made the daring assumption that all atoms and molecules anywhere in the universe that were of identical composition to those same atoms and molecules on earth behave in exactly the same way as their earthbound cousins (i.e., hydrogen is hydrogen anywhere in the universe). Hubble also developed a technique for judging a galaxy's distance from earth based on its observed brightness.

By making use of the above assumption that distant galaxies are composed of the same type of atoms we experience here on earth, Hubble noticed that certain spectral emission lines of many well-known elements, such as hydrogen, were always shifted to lower frequencies when they were observed originating from distant galaxies. Since Hubble's observations always indicated a frequency reduction, he called this phenomenon a red shift because the color red is associated with the lowest frequency component of visible light. Next Hubble did something very creative: he used a piece of graph paper to plot each galaxy's red shift versus its distance from earth (as determined from the brightness criteria). The results were astounding. All of Hubble's data points lay along a tightly grouped straight line. This discovery told Hubble that a galaxy's red shift was directly proportional to its distance from earth, with the most distant galaxies having the most red shift.

Next Hubble made an association between the red shift and the now-familiar Doppler frequency shift that is associated with all types of wave phenomena emanating from moving objects (i.e., cars, trains, or galaxies). In all Doppler shift phenomena, observers on objects moving apart from one another experience a decrease in wave frequency. A familiar example of a Doppler red shift is a stationary observer listening to the whistle of a train moving away from a grade crossing.

However, when objects move toward each another, the observers experience an increase in frequency. Hubble never observed an increasing light frequency from any of the distant galaxies he observed, which is a very significant result because it indicates that all galaxies are moving away from Earth. The amount of Doppler frequency shift depends on the relative velocities of the two objects; the greater the relative velocity, the greater the Doppler frequency shift. Therefore, the more-distant galaxies having the greater red shift are moving away from earth more rapidly than the closer galaxies with less red shift.

Later cosmologists came to recognize that a simple Doppler shift explanation of Hubble's red shift data was not exactly correct. In fact, the galactic red shift is really caused by the expansion of space itself that took place after the big bang. Because of the expansion of space during the early universe, all waves, like light waves, are stretched in wavelength, lowering their frequency (i.e., they are red shifted). The conclusion science now draws from Hubble's red shift is that all galaxies are moving away from earth because all of the frequency shifts observed by Hubble were decreasing (red shifting). Since the amount of red shift is directly proportional to the galaxy's distance from Earth, the most-distant galaxies must be moving away from Earth most quickly and the closest galaxies are moving away from Earth more slowly.

Hubble's red shift phenomenon suggests a universe that is behaving like raisin bread cooking in an oven. As the bread rises, all of raisins move away from each other, with those raisins that are farther away from each other moving more quickly than those raisins that are close together. Since the Hubble universe is constantly expanding, it strongly suggests the existence of a point in the past when the universe was very small, compact, perhaps a point like singularity (i.e., the big bang!).

At the time Hubble was making these measurements, most scientists were still in favor of the steady state theory of the universe, which is a universe that neither grows nor decays. Hubble's data was enough to convince Einstein of the validity of an expanding universe. Einstein went on to modify his own theoretical understanding of the universe to include Hubble's observations of an expanding universe, as had been proposed earlier by Father Lemaitre. Slowly, over time, the scientific community became convinced that an expanding universe was not only possible but was the explanation that offered the best fit for the experimental data. Whether science was willing to admit it or not, the cosmology theory that best fit the experimental data was the theory in closest agreement with the creation stories of the Bible!

Thermodynamics, entropy, and the Big Bang

The second piece of evidence in support of the reality of the big bang has nothing to do with either astronomy or cosmology. In fact, this evidence is from the far-flung science of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics is the universal study of energy interactions within materials in the presence of heat. The first law of thermodynamics is also known as the law of conservation of energy. This first law tells us that the overall sum of all of the energies contained in the universe is a constant, never increasing or decreasing but remaining absolutely constant for all time. However, energy is constantly being transformed as it is traded back and forth among all the various components of the universe. Nevertheless, the total energy (i.e., the sum of all the energy in the universe) must remain a constant that is exactly equal to the energy contained in the big bang singularity at the moment of creation.

However, it is the second law of thermodynamics that is really interesting from the point of view of providing evidence in favor of the big bang theory. The second law of thermodynamics is also called the law of increasing entropy. Entropy, which is related to chaos and disorder, is a physical property of every physical system that can be difficult to understand. What is difficult to grasp about entropy is that it seems so far removed from our everyday experience, but it really isn't. Calculating the entropy increase of a closed thermodynamic system just requires dividing the energy input being delivered to system by the system's temperature. It is easy to show mathematically that in every case of a thermodynamic energy exchange, the entropy of a closed system always increases. This law is equally true for steam engines, transistors, dogs, moon rockets, human beings, and galaxies.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Unity Of Truthby ALLEN A. SWEET C. FRANCES SWEET FRITZ JAENSCH Copyright © 2012 by Allen A. Sweet, C. Frances Sweet, and Fritz Jaensch. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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