The most widely adopted paradigm in cosmology today is the inflationary big bang model.  This model begins with a philosophical assumption called the "Copernican principle", which states that our position in the universe cannot be special in any way.  Closely related is the "Cosmological principle", which postulates that the universe as seen by any observer is homogeneous and isotropic.
 
 
 

"However we are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology. In the earliest cosmologies, man placed himself in a commanding position at the centre of the universe.  Since the time of Copernicus we have been steadily demoted to a medium sized planet going round a medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly average galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of galaxies. Indeed we are now so democratic that we would not claim that our position in space is specially distinguished in any way. We shall, following Bondi (1960), call this assumption the Copernican principle."

Hawking, S.W. and Ellis, G.F.R., The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 134, 1973.

 

"Now at first sight, all this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in might seem to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe. ... There is, however, an alternate explanation:  the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too.  ... We have no scientific evidence for, or against this assumption.  We believe it only on grounds of modesty:  it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe!"

S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 1988, p 42.

 

‘The Copernican revolution taught us that it was a mistake to assume, without sufficient reason, that we occupy a privileged position in the Universe.  Darwin showed that, in terms of origin, we are not privileged above other species.  Our position around an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy in an ordinary supercluster [the local group of galaxies] continues to look less and less special. The idea that we are not located in a special spatial location has been crucial in cosmology, leading directly to the [big bang theory]. In astronomy the Copernican principle works because, of all the places for intelligent observers to be, there are by definition only a few special places and many nonspecial places, so you are likely to be in a nonspecial place’.

Gott, J.R. III, Implications of the Copernican principle for our future prospects, Nature 363, 315-319, 1993.

 

" [The big bang cosmos] has no centre and edge."

Harrison, E.R., Cosmology: the Science of the Universe, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK, p. 245, 1981.

 

"It is evidence that in the post-Copernican era of human history, no well-informed and rational person can imagine that the Earth occupies a unique position in the universe.  We shall call this profound philosphical discovery the Copernican principle, ....   We now explore the consequences of a much more powerful assumption, the Cosmological principle:  the universe as seen by fundamental observers is homogeneous and isotropic. ... The hypothesis of homogeneity can never be strictly tested, .... .  The power of the hypothesis is that our own observations are then all we need to test a cosmological model.""

Rowan-Robinson, Michael, Cosmology, 4th Ed.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, pg 63, 64.

 
 

For a recently published "white-hole" cosmology that disregards the Copernican principle, see J. Smoller and B. Temple, Proc. of the Nat. Acad. of Sciences 2003, 100, 11216.
 
 

For a recently published list of dissenters from Big-Bang cosmology, along with their reasoning, see the following link  cosmology statement  ,  and "Bucking the big bang", Eric Lerner, New Scientist vol 182 May 22 2004, pg 20.

Inflationary Big Bang Cosmology

 
 

 Cosmo-7                                                  Cosmo-8

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Explanatory power of the standard Big Bang theory:

 
1.  red-shifts increase linearly with distance

2.  CMB

3.  composition of the light elements
 
 
 
 
 

Issues/problems:
 

1.  Horizon problem - the universe as far as we can detect appears to be at the same temperature, in thermal equilibrium, yet the extent of the observable universe is greater than the distance that light could have traveled since the origin.  In other words, if you extrapolate backwords from the present, distant regions of the universe could not have been in contact when the CMB was emitted, yet they are in thermal equilibrium.
 

2.  Flatness - Today the mass density is within a factor of 10 of the critical density between open and closed (see next section) that allows the universe to be long-lived and galaxies to form.  To be within a factor of 10 today, the mass density must have been within an exceedingly small percentage of the critical density when the universe was born.  Why is the mass density of the universe so precisely tuned in our favor?
 

3.  Where did the ripples, or seeds of the large-scale structure, come from?
 
 
 
 

Explanatory power of the Inflationary Big Bang
 

1.  Space itself expanded faster than the speed of light in the inflationary epoch..  This explains how the universe could have been in thermal equilibrium at the beginning.
 

2.  The observable universe is only a small part of the entire universe.  The region we observe appears flat because we see only a very small portion, just as the surface of the earth appears flat at short distances even though it is a sphere.  The same would be true for an open geometry (see next section).
 

3.  Seeds of the galaxies arose naturally from the amplification of tiny quantum ripples.
 
 
 
 

Issues/problems:
 

1.  The mass density of the universe, even accounting for "dark" matter, is substantially less than the critical density.  Dark energy?  Currently, this view appears to require that 97% of "everything" is dark matter or energy.
 

2.  For "fine-tuning" aspects of the inflationary epoch see the final section.
 

3.  Testability?

Several different versions of how inflation occurred have now been proposed.  The essential common feature is the period of exponential expansion in the very early universe, which solves the horizon and flatness problems.  However, there is no evidence that any such phase ever occurred and it is in fact quite hard to see how such evidence could be obtained.

Rowan-Robinson, Michael, Cosmology, 4th Ed.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, pg 101.

 

 
 
 

Perhaps the greatest challenge to naturalism   -   there was a beginning!

Naturalism appears to end prior to 10^-43 s after this creation event.  There is a singularity, where the laws of the universe break down (can no longer be applied).

 

"This is how astronomers might imagine the set of instructions used by a Creator:  Start with a Big Bang, run it through a fraction of a second of inflation to sprinkle it with seeds for structure, throw in a few simple laws of physics and voila! - 10 billion years or so of cosmic evolution and out pops humanity."

J. Bennett, On the Cosmic Horizon, pg 153.

 

"The question of 'the beginning' is as inescapable for cosmologists as it is for theologians."

G. Smoot, Wrinkles in Time, pg189.

 

"Explaining this initial singularity - where and when it all began - still remains the most intractable problem of modern cosmology."

A. Linde, "The Self-reproducing Inflationary Universe", Scientific American, Nov. 1994, p 55.

 

"Why did the Universe begin in an explosion?  What did the Universe look like before the explosion?  Did the Universe even exist before that moment?  These questions have no answer in science.

R. Jastrow, "God and the Astonomers", p 89.

 

We have used his law (the 2nd law of thermo.) in determining that the universe had a beginning, creation.  Even though the tools of the physicist are unable to break into the secrets of the first moment, we can conclude that it initiated a period of low, but increasing entropy.

R. Peacock, A Brief History of Eternity, pg 114.

 
 
 
 

Philosophical objections to the creation event:
 
 
 

"Philosphically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me. ... I should like to find a genuine loophole."

Arthur S. Eddington, Nature 127, 1931, 450.

 
 

Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang" in derision.  As he put it
 

"The big bang theory requires a recent origin of the Universe that openly invites the concept of creation."

 Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, pg 237.
 

 

Hoyle confessed his "aesthetic objections to the creation of the universe in the remote past"

     F. Hoyle, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 108, 1948, 372-382.
 
 
 
 

"If we accept the big bang theory, and most cosmologists now do, then a 'creation' of some sort is forced upon us."

Barry Parker, Creation - the story of the Origin and Evolution of the Universe, p 202

 
 

Geoffrey Burbidge, in a radio discussion with Hugh Ross, stated that the COBE satellite experiments come from "the First Church of Christ of the Big Bang", quoted by Henry Schaeffer III in "Steven Hawking, the Big Bang, and God", 1994
 
 
 
 

Confronted with the proof of the expansion of the universe, Einstein gave grudging acceptance to the "necessity for a beginning"^a) and to "the presence of superior reasoning power"^b)

^a) quoted by A. Vilbert Douglas in The Journal of the Royal Astronomical Soc. of Canada 50, 1956, 100.
^b) quoted by Lincoln Barrett in The Universe and Dr. Einstein,1948, p 672.
 

 

Apart from being philosophically unacceptable, the Big Bang is an over-simple view of how the Universe began, and it is unlikely to survive the decade ahead.  ...  In all respects save that of convenience, this view of the origin of the Universe is thoroughly unsatisfactory.  For one thing, the implication is that there was an instant at which time literally began and, so, by extension, an instant before which there was no time.  That in turn implies that even if the origin of the Unvierse may be successfully supposed to lie in the Big Bang, the origin of the Big Bang itself is not susceptible to discussion.  It is an effect whose cause cannot be identified or even discussed.

"Down with the Big Bang", John Maddox, editor of Nature, Nature 340, 1989, pg 425

 

 
 

Naturalistic alternatives in the face of the singularity and beginning of space-time
 
 

i) another dimension to time  (imaginary time)
 
 

"So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator [the cosmological argument]. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be.  What place, then, for a creator?"

S. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, pp. 140-141.

 

"Maybe the universe has no boundary in space and time.  At first sight, this seems to be in direct contradiction with the geometrical theorems, that I mentioned earlier.  These show that the unvierse must have had a beginning, a boundary in time.  However, there is another kind of time called imaginary time, that is at right angles to the ordinary real time, that we feel going by.  One can follow the history of the universe in imaginary time, and it is very different from the history in real time.  In particular, the history of the unvierse in imaginary time, need have no beginning or end.  Imaginary time behaves just like another direction in space."

S. Hawking, TheUniverse in a Nutshell, lecture at the American Physcial Society meeting, March 1999.

 

Henry Schaeffer III comments on this:
 

In Hawking and Hartle's no boundary proposal, the notion that the universe has neither beginning nor end is something that exists in mathematical terms only.  In real time, which is what we as human beings are confined to rather than in Hawking’s use of imaginary time, there will always be a singularity, that is, a beginning of time.

Among his contradictory statements in A Brief History of Time,Hawking actually concedes this.  "When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities ... .   In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science break down" (p 136).

    quoted by Henry Schaeffer III, in "Steven Hawking, the Big Bang, and God", 1994.
 
 
 

Jane Hawking has commented on this aspect of her husband's work. "Stephen has the feelings that because everything is reduced to a rational, mathematical formula, that must be the truth," Jane explained.   He is delving into realms that really do matter to thinking people and, in a way that can have a very disturbing effect on people - and he's not competent."

    quoted by Henry Schaeffer III, in "Steven Hawking, the Big Bang, and God", 1994
 
 
 

'Hawking's proposal suffers from the problem that it does not yet have a completely well-defined theory in which to embed it.  That is, it really is a notion of quantum gravity, and so far we do not have a complete quantum theory of gravity in which to embed this idea."

Alan Guth, quoted by F. Hereen in "Show me God", pg 109.

 

"The only way to make the argument coherent is to take it to apply to any temporal extremity, but in this case the consequences of the no boundary condition will be symmetric, if one end of the universe has to be ordered, so must the other be."

H. Price, Time's Arrow and Archimedes Point, pg 92.

 
 
 

ii) quantum theory of gravity  -  allows the universe to come into existence from absolutely nothing?
 
 

Extrapolating back still further in time, at t ~ 10^-43 s we reach what is known as the Planck time, when a quantum theory of gravity is required to extraplolate back any further in time.  Although much effort has gone into producing a quantized theory of gravity, and thereby unifying all the forces of physics, there is no generally accepted theory of this type yet.  The most successful of the attempts to date is the 'superstring' theory of Green and Schwartz.  It seem unlikely that such theories will be testable in the foreseeable future.

Rowan-Robinson, Michael, Cosmology, 4th Ed.  Oxford Univ. Press, 2004, pg 102.

 

"It is said that there' s no such thing as a free lunch.  But the universe is the ultimate free lunch."

Alan Guth, quoted by S. Hawking in "A Brief History of Time" pg 129

 

Start out with no universe at all - absolute nothingness.  Absolute nothingness does not equal empty space, because according to general relativity, space is already stuff...  Start out with no space, no time, no nothing.  Then you make a quantum transition ....

Alan Guth, in a lecture at the "Nature of nature" conference, Baylor Univ. 1999.

 

""It is rather fantastic to realize that the laws of physics can describe how  everything was created in a random quantum fluctuation out of nothing and how over the course of 15 billion years, matter could organize in such complex ways that we have human beings sitting here, talking, doing things intentionally."

Alan Guth, quoted by Lemley in "Guth's Grand Guess", Discover, April 2002, pg 36.

 

Some critics' views:
 

"What is a big deal - the biggest deal of all - is how you get something out of nothing.  Don't let the cosomologists try to kid you on this one.  They have not got a clue either - despite the fact that they are doing a pretty good job of convincing themselves and others that this is really not a problem.  "In the beginning," they will say, "there was nothing - no time, space, matter, or energy.  Then there was a quantum fluctuation from which ...."   Whoa!  Stop right there.  You see what I mean?  First there is nothing, then there is something.  And the cosmologists try to bridge the two with a quantum flutter, a tremor of uncertainty that sparks it all off.  Then they are away and before you know it, they have pulled a hundred billion galaxies out of their quantum hats"

David Darling, "On Creating Something From Nothing", New Scientist, 151 (2047), (1996), p 49.

 

"A quantum vacuum is not nihil.  Where do quantum mechanics and the fluctuating fields including those of general relativity come from?""

John Polkinghorn, quoted by Overmann in "A case against accident and self-organization", pg 157.

 

"On the quantum fluctuation hypothesis, the universe will only come into being if there exists an exactly balanced array  of fundamental forces, an exactly specified probability of particular fluctuations occurring in this array, and an existent space-time in which fluctuations can occur.  This is a very complex and finely tuned nothing!"

Keith Ward, "God, Chance, and Necessity", pg 40.

 

"This view is fallacious however, because sudden quantum appearances don't really take place out of "nothing".  A larger quantum field is first required before this can happen, but a quantum field can hardly be described as being "nothing".  Rather, it is a thing of unsearchable order and complexity, whose origin we can't even begin to explain.  Thus, trying to account for the appearance of the universe as a sudden quantum fluctuation doesn't do away with the need for a Creator at all; it simply moves the whole problem backwards one step to the unknown origin of the qunatum field itself.

M. A. Corey, "God and the New Cosmology", pg 43.

 

The nothingness "before the creation of the universe is the most complete void that we can imagine - no space, time, or matter existed.  It is a world without place, without duration or eternity, without number - it is what the mathematicians call "the empty set."  Yet this unthinkable void converts itself into the plenum of existence - a necessary consequence of physical laws.  Where are these laws written into that void?  What tells the void that it is pregnant with a possible universe?  It would seem that even the void is subject to a law, a logic that exists prior to space and time."

Heinz Pagels, "Perfect Symmetry", pg 365.