| The universe, whose vast dimension pushes
the limits of the human's comprehension, functions without fail, resting
on sensitive balances and within a great order and has done so since the
first moment of its formation. How this enormous universe has come into
being, where it leads to and how the laws that maintain the order and
balance within it work, have always been matters of interest to people
in all ages, and still are. Scientists made countless researches into
these subjects and produced various arguments and theories. For scientists
who measured the order and design in the universe by using their reason
and conscience, it has not been difficult at all to explain this perfection.
This is because Allah, the Almighty, Who rules over the entire universe,
created this perfect design and this is obvious and clear to all people
who can think and reason. Allah proclaims this evident truth in the verses
of the Qur'an:
In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and
the alternation of night and day, there are Signs for people with intelligence.
(Surat Al 'Imran: 190)
Those scientists who ignore the evidence of creation, however, have great
difficulty in answering these never-ending questions. They do not hesitate
to take recourse to demagoguery, false theories without any scientific
basis, and, if forced into a corner, even deceptions to defend theories
that are entirely opposed to reality. Yet, all developments that have
taken place in science recently, up until the outset of the 21st century,
lead us to a single fact: the universe was created from nothing by Allah,
Who possesses superior might and infinite wisdom.
The Creation Of The Universe
For centuries, people searched for an answer to the question of "how
the universe came into being". Thousands of models of the universe
have been put forward and thousands of theories have been produced throughout
history. However, a review of these theories reveals that they all have
at their core one of two different models. The first is the concept of
an infinite universe without beginning, which no longer has any scientific
basis. The second is that the universe was created from nothing, which
is currently recognized by the scientific community as "the standard
model".
The first model, which has proven not to be viable, defended the proposition
that the universe has existed for an infinite time and will exist endlessly
in its current state. This idea of an infinite universe was developed
in ancient Greece, and made its way to the western world as a product
of the materialistic philosophy that was revived with Renaissance. At
the core of the Renaissance lay a re-examination of the works of ancient
Greek thinkers. Thus, materialist philosophy and the concept of an infinite
universe defended by this philosophy were taken off the dusty shelves
of history by philosophical and ideological concerns and presented to
people as if they were scientific facts.
Materialists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels vigorously embraced
this idea, which prepared an apparently solid ground for their materialist
ideologies, thereby playing an important role in introducing this model
to the 20th century.
According to this "infinite universe" model which was popular
during the first half of the 20th century, the universe had no beginning
or end. The universe had not been created from nothing, nor would it ever
be destroyed. According to this theory, which also laid the basis for
materialist philosophy, the universe had a static structure. Yet, later
scientific findings revealed that this theory is totally wrong and unscientific.
The universe has not existed without beginning; it had a beginning and
was created from nothing.
Sir Fred Hoyle |
The idea that the universe is infinite, that is that it had no beginning,
has always been the starting point of irreligiousness and ideologies that
make the mistake of denying Allah. This is because in their view, if the
universe had no beginning, then there was no creator either. Yet, science
soon revealed with conclusive evidence that these arguments of the materialists
are invalid and that the universe started with an explosion called the
Big Bang. Coming into being from nothing had only one meaning: "Creation".
Allah, the Almighty created the whole universe.
The renowned British astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was among those who were
disturbed by this fact. With his "steady-state" theory, Hoyle
accepted that the universe was expanding and argued that the universe
was infinite in scale and without beginning or end. According to this
model, as the universe expanded, matter originated spontaneously and in
quantities as large as required. This theory, which was based on extremely
unworkable premises and advanced by the sole concern of supporting the
idea of an "infinite universe without beginning or end" was
in direct opposition to the Big Bang theory, which was scientifically
proven closer to a great number of observations. Hoyle and others continued
to resist this but all scientific development worked against them.
The Expansion of the Universe and the Big Bang
The universe came into existence out of nothing with a Big Bang.
The present perfect system of the universe came about because of
the scattering of all particles and forces that were formed in great
harmony and order from the first moment of this big explosion.
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In the 20th century, great strides were made in the field of astronomy.
First, the Russian physicist Alexandre Friedmann discovered in 1922 that
the universe did not have a static structure. Starting out from Einstein's
theory of relativity, Friedmann calculated that even a tiny impulse might
cause the universe to expand or contract. Georges Lemaître, one
of the most famous astronomers of Belgium, was the first to recognise
the importance of this calculation. These calculations led him to conclude
that the universe had a beginning and that it was continuously expanding
right from the outset. There was another very important point Lemaître
raised: according to him, there should be a radiation surplus left over
from the big bang and this could be traced. Lemaître was confident
that his explanations were true although they initially did not find much
support in the scientific community. Meanwhile, further evidence that
the universe was expanding began to pile up. At that time, observing a
number of stars through his huge telescope, the American astronomer Edwin
Hubble discovered that the stars emitted a red shifted light depending
on their distances. With this discovery, which he made at the California
Mount Wilson Observatory, Hubble challenged all scientists who put forward
and defended the steady state theory, and shook the very basis of the
model of the universe held until then.
Georges Lemaître |
Hubble's findings depended on the physical rule that the spectra of light
beams travelling towards the point of observation tend towards violet
while the spectra of light beams moving away from the point of observation
tend towards red. This showed that the celestial bodies observed from
the Californian Mount Wilson Observatory were moving away from the earth.
Further observation revealed that the stars and galaxies weren't just
racing away from us; they were racing away from each other as well. This
movement of celestial bodies proved once more that the universe is expanding.
In Stephen Hawking's Universe, David Filkin relates an interesting
point about these developments:
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The analysis of the light of the two stars
of Alpha Centauri over a period of time showed a series of changes
in their spectra. The way the red and blue shifts vary revealed
a picture of two stars completing orbits around each other once
every 80 years.
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Edwin Hubble |
…Within two years, Lemaître
heard the news he had scarcely dared hope for. Hubble had observed that
the light from galaxies was red shifted, and, according to Doppler effect,
this had to mean the universe was expanding. Now it was only a matter
of time. Einstein was interested in Hubble's work anyway and resolved
to visit him at the Mount Wilson Observatory. Lemaître arranged
to give a lecture at the California Institute of Technology at the same
time, and managed to corner Einstein and Hubble together. He argued his
"primeval atom" theory carefully, step by step, suggesting that
the whole universe had been created "on a day which had no yesterday."
Painstakingly he worked through all the mathematics. When he had finished
he could not believe his ears. Einstein stood up and announced that what
he had just heard was "the most beautiful and satisfying interpretation
I have listened to" and went on to confess that creating the "cosmological
constant" was "the biggest blunder" of his life. 1
Albert Einstein, during a visit to the Wilson Observatory, where
Edwin Hubble made his observations. |
The truth that made Einstein, who is considered one of the most important
scientists in history, jump to his feet was the fact that the universe
has a beginning.
 |
According to the Doppler effect, if a galaxy stays
at a constant distance from the earth, the spectra of light waves
will appear in the "standard" position (top). If the galaxy
is moving away from us, the waves will seem stretched and red shifted
(middle). If the galaxy is moving towards us, the waves will seem
squashed up and blue shifted (bottom). |
Further observations on the expansion of the universe gave way to new
arguments. Starting from this point, scientists ended up with a model
of a universe that became smaller as one went back in time, eventually
contracting and converging at a single point, as Lemaître had argued.
The conclusion to be derived from this model is that at some point in
time, all matter in the universe was crushed together in a single point-mass
that had "zero volume" because of its immense gravitational
force. Our universe came into being as the result of the explosion of
this point-mass that had zero volume and this explosion has come to be
called the "Big Bang".
The Big Bang pointed to another matter. To say that something has zero
volume is tantamount to saying that it is "nothing". The whole
universe is created from this "nothing". Furthermore, this universe
has a beginning, contrary to the view of materialism, which holds that
"the universe has existed from eternity".
Big Bang with Evidence
 Once the fact that the universe started to form after a great
explosion was established, astrophysicists gave a further boost to their
researches. According to George Gamow, if the universe was formed in a
sudden, cataclysmic explosion, there ought to be a definite amount of
radiation left over from that explosion which should be uniform throughout
the universe.
In the years following this hypothesis, scientific findings
followed one another, all confirming the Big Bang. In 1965, two researchers
by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson chanced upon a form of radiation
hitherto unnoticed. Called "cosmic background radiation", it
was unlike anything coming from anywhere else in the universe for it was
extraordinarily uniform. It was neither localised nor did it have a definite
source; instead, it was distributed equally everywhere. It was soon realised
that this radiation is the relic of the Big Bang, still reverberating
since the first moments of that great explosion. Gamow had been spot-on,
for the frequency of the radiation was nearly the same value that scientists
had predicted. Penzias and Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for their
discovery.
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| The gigantic
horn antenna at Bell Laboratories where Arno Penzias and Robert
Wilson discovered the cosmic background radiation. Penzias and
Wilson were awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery in 1978. |
 It took only eight minutes for George Smoot and his NASA team
to confirm the levels of radiation reported by Penzias and Wilson, thanks
to the COBE space satellite. The sensitive sensors on board the satellite
earned a new victory for the Big Bang theory. The sensors verified the
existence of the hot, dense form remaining from the first moments of the
Big Bang. COBE captured evidentiary remnants of the Big Bang, and the
scientific community was compelled to acknowledge it.
Other evidence had to do with the relative amounts of hydrogen
and helium in the universe. Calculations revealed that the proportion
of hydrogen-helium gasses in the universe is in accord with theoretical
calculations of what should remain after the Big Bang.
The discovery of compelling evidence caused the Big Bang theory to gain
the complete approval of the scientific world. In an article in its October
1994 issue, Scientific American noted that "the Big Bang model
was the only acknowledged model of the 20th century"
Confessions were forthcoming one by one from the names who had defended
the "infinite universe" concept for years. Defending the steady-state
theory alongside Fred Hoyle for years, Dennis Sciama described the final
position they had reached after all the evidence for the Big Bang theory
was revealed:
There was at that time a somewhat acrimonious
debate between some of the proponents of the steady state theory and observers
who were testing it and, I think, hoping to disprove it. I played a very
minor part at that time because I was a supporter of the steady state
theory, not in the sense that I believed that it had to be true, but in
that I found it so attractive I wanted it to be true. When hostile observational
evidence became to come in, Fred Hoyle took a leading part in trying to
counter this evidence, and I played a small part at the side, also making
suggestions as to how the hostile evidence could be answered. But as that
evidence piled up, it became more and more evident that the game was up,
and that one had to abandon the steady state theory.2
The launch of the COBE satellite
further substantiated that the
universe was formed as a result of a big explosion.
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Allah Created the Universe from Nothing
With ample evidence discovered by science, the thesis of
an "infinite universe" was tossed onto the scrap-heap of the
history of scientific ideas. Yet, more important questions were forthcoming:
what existed before the Big Bang? What force could have caused the great
explosion that resulted in a universe that did not exist before?
There is a single answer to be given to the question of what
existed before the Big Bang: Allah, the All-powerful and the Almighty,
Who created the earth and the heavens in great order. Many scientists,
be they believers or not, are obliged to admit this truth. Although they
may decline to admit this fact on scientific platforms, their confessions
in between the lines give them away. Renowned atheist philosopher Anthony
Flew says:
Notoriously, confession is good for the
soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician
atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus.
For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof of
what St. Thomas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely,
that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably
thought of as being not only without end but also beginning, it remains
easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its
most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates.
Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither
easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big
Bang story. 3
Some scientists like the British materialist physicist H.
P. Lipson confess that they have to accept the Big Bang theory whether
they want it or not:
If living matter is not, then, caused
by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation, how has it come
into being?… I think, however, that we must…admit that the only acceptable
explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists,
as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject that we do not like if the
experimental evidence supports it.4
In conclusion, science points to a single reality whether
materialist scientists like it or not. Matter and time have been created
by a Creator, Who is All-Powerful and Who created the heavens, the earth
and all that is in between:Almighty Allah.
It is Allah who created the seven heavens and
of the earth the same number, the Command descending down through all
of them, so that you might know that Allah has power over all things
and that Allah encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Surat at-Talaq:12)
1. David Filkin, Stephen Hawking's
Universe:The Cosmos Explained, Basic Books, October 1998, pp. 85-86
2. Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time A Reader's Companion (Edited
by Stephen Hawking; prepared by Gene Stone), New York, Bantam Books, 1982,
p. 62-63
3. Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, La
Salla IL: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p. 241
4. H. P. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution", Physics
Bulletin, vol. 138, 1980, p. 138
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