Topics:

• Up until the the last 100 years or so, everyone agreed that the universe was eternal
• This is at odds with the traditional Christian view that God created the universe
• Materialism, the view that matter is all there is, requires eternally existing matter
• Discovery #1: Hubble discovers that the universe is expanding (redshift observation)
• The expanding universe was resisted by proponents of the eternal universe, like Einstein
• Some naturalists even proposed speculative static models like the steady-state model
• However, not of the speculative models fit with observations and experimental results
• Discovery #2: Penzias and Wilson discover the cosmic microwave background radiation
• Measurements of this background radiation confirmed a prediction of the Big Bang theory
• The steady-state theory was falsified of by the discovery of this background radiation
• The oscillating model was proposed to prevent the need for an absolute beginning
• But the oscillating model is not eternal, it loses energy on each “bounce”
• A paper by Alan Guth and Marc Sher from 1982 proved that our universe will not bounce
• In addition, experiments reveal that the universe will expand forever, and not contract
• The beginning of the universe is more at home in a theistic worldview than an atheistic one
• The beginning of the universe fits in well with the Bible, e.g. – Genesis 1, Titus 1, etc.

In case you are wondering about what the evidence is for the Big Bang, here are that are most commonly offered:

Three main observational results over the past century led astronomers to become certain that the universe began with the big bang. First, they found out that the universe is expanding—meaning that the separations between galaxies are becoming larger and larger. This led them to deduce that everything used to be extremely close together before some kind of explosion. Second, the big bang perfectly explains the abundance of helium and other nuclei like deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) in the universe. A hot, dense, and expanding environment at the beginning could produce these nuclei in the abundance we observe today. Third, astronomers could actually observe the cosmic background radiation—the afterglow of the explosion—from every direction in the universe. This last evidence so conclusively confirmed the theory of the universe’s beginning that Stephen Hawking said, “It is the discovery of the century, if not of all time.”

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