A Brief History of the Way We View the Universe

And now for something completely unrelated to China. I've been watching the odd religious debate unfold over the internet now and then, and while I don't particularly feel like getting into one (they always develop the same way) I think that an understanding of scientific ideas about the universe and how they have interacted with Christian views over the centuries is something people should be aware of. It is unfortunate that I do not know how these same ideas have interacted with other religions; if someone else does, please enlighten me.

The earliest modern idea about the universe is the Ptolemiac geocentric view. This holds that the Earth is the centre of the universe, and everything, including the Sun, revolves around it in fixed spheres. This view was held from the 1st century right through to the 17th, with full support from the church - the final sphere was for the 'fixed stars', and beyond that was plenty of room for heaven and the domain of God.

Copernicus had a different view - the heliocentric view, that says the Sun is the centre of the universe, and the Earth is just another planet that revolves around it. He put forward this theory only on his deathbed, during the 16th century, out of fear of the church.

Copernicus was right to fear - when Galileo invented the telescope in the 17th century, he was able to confirm that Copernicus was right (or at least, more right than the current view). This got him in trouble with the Inquisition: he was forced to recant, and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.

It wasn't until Newton, also in the 17th century, published his law of gravity and demonstrated that it perfectly described the motions of the celestial bodies, that the heliocentric model was finally accepted. The church was no longer able to defend the Ptolemiac view.

After it was discovered that the stars were much further away than anyone had guessed before, scientists started coming up with other views of the universe. These went so far as to suggest that even the Sun is not the centre of the universe - that it is just one of many stars. This led to the steady state theory, which says that the universe is infinitely large, and has always existed, and thus there is no centre.

The steady state theory was popular with scientists for a long time, even after Hubble discovered that the universe was not constant - it was expanding. The steady state theory provides no place for God, because there is no 'outside' - there are stars in every direction. After Hubble's discovery, however, a new theory gained in popularity - the big bang. This theory is pretty well-known, I will not describe it.

The big bang theory got the attention of the church again. Finally, they had something that not only provided space for God and heaven (since the idea that the universe has a size also implies that there is something for it to exist in - not entirely correct, but close enough for religion), but provided a scientific theory that required a prime mover - something to start it all - in essence, a god.

This is still pretty much the state of affairs these days. The steady state theory is pretty much non-existent, as the weight of evidence has continued to mount against it, and the church likes that science cannot predict what happened before the big bang, since the big bang theories themselves say that the laws of science break down at the big bang. However, in the last couple of decades Steven Hawking managed to annoy the Pope quite a bit, since he proposed a new addition to the Big Bang theory.

It states that although time, like space, is finite - at some point it ends and the universe collapses - it is also without end, like a circle. If you go for long enough in one direction, you end up where you began; this theory states that if you wait for long enough, you will end up at the same point in time. Thus, when the universe collapses, it immediately expands again, and that pesky point in time where the laws of science break down no longer exists. This means the universe no longer requires a prime mover, and has, for all intents and purposes, existed forever.

It is a good argument to use when a Christian asks you: "who started the big bang?"

A better answer is: "the flying spaghetti monster."