I was just thinking about Lemaitre as an example of the power of combining religious and scientific approaches.
As a scientist, he was undoubtedly educated on the idea that the universe had no beginning. But as a Catholic priest, he must have deeply believed in the moment of Creation as described in Genesis.
Perhaps, without his faith he would not have been "looking" for the moment of creation in the data, and would not have conceptualized the Big Bang. An atheist scientist may have missed this.
It's interesting to consider this in context of many scientists to whom we owe our understanding of the universe having been deeply religious (beyond what was normal during their eras.) An obvious another example is Newton, who probed theology deeply enough to arrive at what may even have been considered heretical views at the time.
My theory is that Religion is about the deep desire to understand and connect with the Creator, and at its truest, so is Science.
> But as a Catholic priest, he must have deeply believed in the moment of Creation as described in Genesis.
Catholicism permits a literal interpretation of creation in Genesis, but does not require it. Debates regarding literal vs allegorical interpretations of Genesis and similar biblical narratives go back at least as far as the 2nd century. For example, Clement of Alexandria (150-215 AD), one of the earliest Christian theologians, argued that the 7 days of creation were allegorical. AFAIU, allegorical interpretations of Genesis began to predominate in mainstream Christianity rather quickly, though even in Catholicism today there are literalists.
Some narratives are interpreted literally, but not in the obvious sense. For example, AFAIU "God created man in his image" was never interpreted by most Christians to mean physical image, but rather in the sense of moral consciousness, etc, and today (and perhaps even originally) interpretation as physical similarity would be, I think, heretical. Such nuance in meaning and implication is important for understanding, for example, the Galileo Affair, as well as the far more minor debates regarding the Big Bang (were there any major debates?). Also, because at any one point there's always some kind of literal vs allegorical debate within the context of the current Overton Window, someone's feathers always seem to get ruffled no matter the topic.
Thank you for all that great context. For what it's worth, as I study my religion more, I get a deeper appreciation for the non literal interpretations. After all what does it mean to have 6 days of creation when the sun wasn't even around for some of the days.
I do think "created" vs "always been there" is a pretty good definition of the chasm between religious and scientific views before the big bang
These debates between the created vs the eternal are all over the place in Christianity, not to mention most other religions.
Excluding all the gnostic and neoplatonist sects, one of the first big fights in Christianity was between the Arians and what would become mainline Christianity. It concerned whether Jesus was eternal or created. (Excuse me if that's a botched gloss.) The Arians believed Jesus was created, albeit before time. The orthodox Christians insisted Jesus was eternal and uncreated, though the Nicene Creed (drafted to refute and fight Arianism) uses the curious phrasing "eternally begotten". That and similar debates resulted in a ridiculously complex and fascinating ontology around ideas of substance, time, and creation.
EDIT: FWIW, for similar, non-Christian debates see, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash%27arism vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutazilism That's still Abrahamic and Greek-adjacent, though, which I think maybe results in a preoccupation with these questions, as compared to some other traditions which don't find them very interesting.
Your theory genuinely brings a smile to my face. It's nice to think of things "in their truest" and build bridges of commonality rather than setting them ablaze. Of course life is complicated, though
this stipulates that science believes there is a Creator. to me, at best, science's stance on a Creator is "data inadequate". i think science would be just fine if it happens that (Creator === false), but it would also be happy if (Creator === true) but there would at least be proof beyond faith for science to make that a fact.
The true scientist seeks to understand the deep truth. The fundamental pattern. The deep function and meaning.
At some point, this deep desire to understand is in itself a religious thing. Why bother understanding anything if it's all just random and and accidental? Why seek meaning and order in a universe if it's all just happenstance?
The very assumption of meaning and truth and order and the scientific pursuit of it, subtly implies that the scientist believes they are present, which (whether he sees it that way or not) implies something of intent.
The question of whether I'd attempt to decipher the code depends on whether I believe it would be intellectually engaging to do so. In the case of a code, yes, that probably requires that the code encodes something meaningful.
But it's not hard to think of structures where interesting patterns emerge without the structure having externally imbued meaning (or at least, it would be terribly difficult to prove that it does). Game of Life would be such an example: it's a structure that arises from some simple logical rules, there is seemingly no meaning behind it, but it produces interesting patterns that many people have studied extensively.
i understand your thought process on science becoming one's religion, but that also does not hold true for everyone. it is totally possible to admit one doesn't have all the answers and seeks those unknown answers without it becoming a religious crusade. one can accept that the answer is unknown, and just live with that. one can accept that the answer is unknown but through scientific rigor find an answer, and then be okay with accepting that answer.
not everything has to be a religious experience. my religious belief is that the need for religion is keeping humans from evolving further. it may not be very sound, but that's the beauty of religious beliefs. everybody is entitled to their own (at least in some countries).
right, but the OP i replied to used capital S Science, not Scientist. The individual beliefs of those practicing science is totally different than Science itself.
> "Lemaître talks in great length about his rival Sir Fred Hoyle, an English physicist who was one of the best-known and fierce proponents of the Steady State model but who also accidentally coined the term "Big Bang." Although he repeatedly calls out Hoyle for being wrong during the interview, Lemaître remarks that he has the "greatest admiration" for his colleague's work.
> Lemaître explains that the Steady State model could work only if the hydrogen required to make stars appeared "like a ghost" from nowhere, which he argued would go against the principle of conservation of energy, the idea that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed from one type to another, which he described as "basically the most secure and solid thing in physics."
> "Instead, Lemaître argues in the video, the expansion could be traced back to the "disintegration of all existing matter into an atom," which created "an expanding space filled by a plasma" via a "process that we can vaguely imagine."
I like the image presented by Iain M. Banks in Excession of 'cosmic fireballs' generating successive Big Bangs one after the other in an infinite series to be kind of interesting, each one expanding outwards like concentric shells of an onion (in a sort of 2D model), resulting in a succession of stacked universes, not sure if that's at all valid or plausible (timing seems to be an issue).
> Lemaître explains that the Steady State model could work only if the hydrogen required to make stars appeared "like a ghost" from nowhere, which he argued would go against the principle of conservation of energy, the idea that energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed from one type to another, which he described as "basically the most secure and solid thing in physics."
Let’s assume that the premise of this rebuttal of Steady State is correct. So, let’s assume that Steady State is true if and only if hydrogen in the stars appear out of no where and thus breaking conservative of mass/energy.
Then, why should we accept the metaphysical explanations of the Big Bang’s source of energy and mass? Where did all the mass and energy for the Big Bang come from? Was it always there to begin with?
The Big Bang theory itself has many other problems that the mainstream scientific community continue to ignore and paper over. The latest evidence from the latest deep space telescope do not sit well with established science. They will not be able the hide the non-cosmological redshift skeleton for much longer.
> The Big Bang theory itself has many other problems that the mainstream scientific community continue to ignore and paper over. The latest evidence from the latest deep space telescope do not sit well with established science. They will not be able the hide the non-cosmological redshift skeleton for much longer.
Not to disappoint you, but the latest evidence you are talking about is more of a problem for the people studying galaxy formation than it is for the Big Bang theory. The evidence for the Big Bang is very solid. We can literally see the state of the Universe when all matter has been a hot, dense plasma. I fully expect some details to be ironed out, but that spacetime started with a (near) singularity is extremely well established and I wouldn't expect that to change. Don't think redshift is the only or even the best evidence for the Big Bang.
My superficial understanding is that - according to some people at least - the big bang is supposed to be neutral, merely dividing nothing into something and anti-something, aggregately summing up to zero.
I enjoyed your writing, but disagree with your premise that creationism and the steady-state model are at odds. In fact, Lemaître was opposed to mixing science with religion and insisted the two were never in conflict. Whether the universe originated from a primeval atom (Lemaître's words) or is a Poincaré recurrence is completely orthogonal to Voltaire's question of the watchmaker - regardless whether time is cyclic or not still leaves open the question of why there is a clock to begin with, instead of nothing at all? The mechanics of the clock are mostly immaterial.
Pretty great, I read the translation on arxiv.org[0] and he said that at the start of the universe there was only one or a few quanta. I'm not sure how much information you can encode in that, probably not much, I would guess a couple kilobytes max? What I think he's saying about God is that any initial "push" or change he did to the quanta can't really control anything, so he would have to be in the universe in some other way or be able to control it from outside. I think I'm correct that all large structures in the universe came from when the universe was really hot/high energy and small enough that quantum fluctuations in that state could expand with the universe to become very large. Even with the best possible predictions, a theoretical "before universe" (not that it makes sense) God probably could not do much of anything with control of those couple kilobytes of information. To clarify, earlier in the universe quantum fluctuations could cause bigger changes relative to the size of the universe because the universe and everything inside it gets bigger/further apart as time goes on.
As a scientist, he was undoubtedly educated on the idea that the universe had no beginning. But as a Catholic priest, he must have deeply believed in the moment of Creation as described in Genesis.
Perhaps, without his faith he would not have been "looking" for the moment of creation in the data, and would not have conceptualized the Big Bang. An atheist scientist may have missed this.
It's interesting to consider this in context of many scientists to whom we owe our understanding of the universe having been deeply religious (beyond what was normal during their eras.) An obvious another example is Newton, who probed theology deeply enough to arrive at what may even have been considered heretical views at the time.
My theory is that Religion is about the deep desire to understand and connect with the Creator, and at its truest, so is Science.