How did we come to be, and how do science and religion each explain the origin of the universe?

This article compares the Big Bang theory, a scientific theory, to creationism, a religious belief, discussing the blind spots and reliability of each explanation, and explaining the differences between the two perspectives.

 

How did we come into existence? It’s the most fundamental question of all, and the one that sent humans out into space. Some people will point to the biblical theory of creation, while others will point to modern cosmological theories from science, such as the Big Bang theory. However, most modern people who are familiar with science would say that the Big Bang theory is based on science, and would criticize creationism as unscientific, dismissing it as a religious story or lacking in factuality. There is some truth to this. Religion is not subject to scientific verification. The scientific method is the process of using evidence based on experience and measurement to determine how phenomena work, and since it’s impossible to measure or universally experience the existence of a supernatural deity, it’s impossible to determine the existence of God through science. However, just because creationism is unscientific does not mean it is false, nor should it be treated as such. In the modern world, science has been elevated to such a high status that we tend to take it at face value, which often leads to a binary thinking: some scientific laws are true and others are false. In this way of thinking, science, which criticizes religion for being unverifiable and based on blind faith, is also a religion that blindly believes in scientific knowledge. Therefore, I would like to break away from this viewpoint and take a broader view of the world with the attitude of ‘I might think that way’ instead of blindly believing in religion. In this article, we will look at the cosmological view of religion and science through cosmology in science and creationism in Christianity.
In modern science, cosmology is the collection of all scientific theories, but it is also a field that is heavily philosophical. Questions such as “How does the universe work?”, “What is the nature of reality?”, and “Did the universe need a creator?” were originally discussed in philosophy, but are now discussed in science. Before we get into these discussions, it’s worth taking a look at where science stands. Modern cosmological science, but not all science, is based on the scientific determinist position that the future and past of the universe are strictly determined by a complete set of laws. It limits the role of philosophy by excluding the possibility of miracles or an active role for God. It also bypasses the realist and anti-realist debate by adopting a model-dependent realism, which states that there is no concept of reality that does not depend on pictures or theories. Based on this fundamental position, various models of the universe have been conceived, and science understands the universe through them. According to modern science, the universe began with the Big Bang. About 13.7 billion years ago, a very small point of energy was concentrated in a very high density, and one day it exploded, simultaneously giving rise to the laws of nature and the beginning of time. The Big Bang Theory was once in conflict with the steady-state universe, but based on Hubble’s observation that the universe is expanding, the Big Bang Theory became the leading cosmological theory. From there, the M-theory emerged as a unified theory that unifies many different cosmological theories. According to M-theory, there are an infinite number of universes and their creation does not require the intervention of a supernatural being, but arises naturally from the laws of physics. As you can see from the above argument, science doesn’t need God. This may be a natural consequence of the fact that when science originally conceived of its cosmological models, it eliminated the possibility of divine intervention. We are learning these results in the name of science, but I question whether we can call it science at all. It is not based on empirical evidence and measurements, but on assumptions and a few extrapolations of evidence. Of course, it is impossible to experience and measure beyond 13.7 billion years, so it is based on a model-dependent theory of reality, but it is more of a belief than a science. In other words, cosmology has many blind spots.
The biggest blind spot of modern cosmology is its reliance on chance. The Big Bang theory also relies on chance. It explains the creation of orderly stars and galaxies out of the chaotic chaos of the explosion by saying that subtle differences in the density of matter immediately after the explosion contributed to the formation of atoms, which in turn formed stars and galaxies. Does this make sense given the sophistication of the universe? given the sophistication of the universe? More specifically, the anthropocentric principle suggests that when it comes to the nuclear forces that make up matter, a 1% change in the nuclear force can change the production of oxygen and carbon in stars by thousands of times. The universe would not exist if the gravitational force, which is crucial to its organization, changed by one part in 10³¹. Einstein’s cosmological constant is precisely tuned to one part in 10⁵³. If neutrons were just 0.14% heavier than protons, nuclear fusion in stars would stop. If the mass ratio of electrons and protons varied by just 1%, life could not exist. The nucleus of a carbon atom has an excited state energy of 7.65 MeV. Without this excited state, there would be insufficient carbon synthesis for life in the center of a star. Summarizing these various adjustments, the British theoretical physicist Roger Penrose claimed that there is a one in 10¹²³⁰ (1/10¹²³⁰) chance that the universe came into existence by chance. This sophistication of the universe is acknowledged by scientists, and Dr. Stephen Hawking, who can be considered a representative of modern cosmologists, also acknowledged it, saying that the laws of the universe seem to be custom-designed to support us. Therefore, to solve this blind spot of the Big Bang theory, Stephen Hawking and other scientists are looking for an alternative, and the alternative is the multiverse theory, or M-theory. The M-theory models that our universe is just one universe among many, and that it was created by an infinite number of explosions. Therefore, out of the infinite number of universes, one or two are lucky enough to be hospitable to life, and this is the universe we live in. However, not only is there no evidence for this theory, but there is no mathematical verification of it. Believing in a hypothesis like this probably requires more faith than believing that God created the universe. In this sense, the cosmology advocated by modern science is almost a religion. So how does creationism explain it?
Creationism differs from the above in that it holds that the world was created intentionally by God, not by chance. Creationism says that God created the world in six days. And the biblical genealogy indicates that the universe is about 6,000 years old, which is a far cry from the 13.7 billion years that science says the universe is. However, such claims are impossible to verify scientifically because they involve a supernatural being, God. Therefore, it is not possible to establish scientific principles or derive laws, but people who believe in creationism support it by finding scientific evidence or disproving it through the Bible, which contains accounts of such events. An example of a supportive approach is that the world was created in six days and the universe is about 6,000 years old, which is not scientifically verifiable because we have not experienced or measured it. However, the claim that the universe is 6,000 years old can be approached scientifically to some extent. We know the age of the Earth and the age of the universe primarily in terms of billions of years. This is done by using the half-life of radioactive isotopes, which makes one assumption. One assumption is that they always decay at the same rate at any given time, and the other is that they must be in a pure state. If these two assumptions are not true, then the age calculation above is incorrect. A recent example of this is the radioactive isotope C14, which has a half-life of 57 years. C14 has a fast half-life of 5730 years and is used to measure objects that are tens of thousands of years old. At that rate, it shouldn’t be found in objects over a million years old, but it is, making the measurements unreliable. Another is that the calculation of the age of the Earth through uranium is wrong. Uranium has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years, which means that the age of the earth is calculated by assuming that it is pure uranium, i.e., pure uranium with nothing else mixed in, and calculating the amount of lead that is released as a result of the half-life. But if it’s not pure uranium and there was lead in the first place, it’s a different story. Not only that, but the amount of helium produced in the process of becoming lead is less than scientists claimed (they claimed it was blown out into space), which adds to the problem of dating it. In addition to dating, we can also think about the age of the universe by looking at models of galaxies and the shapes of stars. We know that the more distant galaxies are currently receding at a faster rate, and that the stars that make up those galaxies are receding at different rates. If we consider the universe to be around 13.7 billion years old, then the models of older and younger galaxies should be completely different, but they look very similar. This means that the universe is not that old.
As you can see, creationism has some scientific evidence to support it, even if it’s not completely proven. However, creationism depends on God’s intentions from start to finish, and cannot be proven fundamentally, but only indirectly through evidence from other sciences or by refuting scientific contradictions. However, the fact that it is impossible to scientifically verify the theory itself through supporting evidence is not a reason to say that creationism is not true. In other words, the answer to the fundamental question of whether it is right or wrong depends on the individual’s faith or lack thereof.
Religion and science are different realms. But that doesn’t mean that science can’t address areas that religion can’t address, or that religion can’t address areas that science can address. But at some point, we seem to have drawn these lines. We need to move away from dichotomous thinking and look at science and religion from an objective perspective. Not only religion is based on faith, but science is also based on faith in leaps of faith, as we have seen above, and there are many blind spots, such as being discussed in a way that does not fit the nature of science, but we should not blindly believe in science because it is highly objective and close to the truth. Therefore, we should not impose the criteria of science and non-science on religion to determine what is true and what is false.