ORIGINS

How did all this get here?  How did we?  Where did the earth and the heavens come from?  And people?

These must be obvious questions, because they have been answered over and over through the ages, with answers that have been many and varied.  Some of the answers are called "religious," because they involve gods and myths, and some of the answers have been called "scientific," because they have been advanced by academics.  But they have a lot in common.   

The number of possible answers continues to grow with scientific progress and with the growth of new religions and their variants.  While the number of scientists is greater than ever, the numbers of religions, and of the poor and ignorant, are also greater than ever, so the scientific and religious approaches continue to grow side by side.

The origin of the universe is one thing, the origin of people is another.  Somehow there came to be people on the earth; and most agree that the universe came first, before the people.  But the Creation stories are very different.

THE FAST CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE AND PEOPLE

Western accounts begin with Bibles, the religious books begun by the Hebrews and extended by Christians.  All the Bibles have a common account of a busy week when the universe, and the human race, were created by a God who somehow already existed.  

The creation of the universe is described in the King James Bible like this:

    01:001:001 IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED THE HEAVEN AND THE EARTH.
    
    01:001:002 AND THE EARTH WAS WITHOUT FORM, AND VOID; AND DARKNESS WAS UPON THE FACE OF THE DEEP. AND THE SPIRIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE FACE OF THE WATERS.
    
    01:001:003 AND GOD SAID, LET THERE BE LIGHT: AND THERE WAS LIGHT.

God then goes on to make Eve, she and Adam are expelled from the Garden, they have sons who somehow meet other women and populate the earth.  

There are interesting variants.  For instance, in one of the Apocrypha ("The Alphabet of Ben Sira"), it is stated that the first woman is Lilith, who refuses to to accept a sex-on-the-bottom position, and to whom Adam grants equality--

    ADAM AND LILITH IMMEDIATELY BEGAN TO FIGHT. SHE SAID, 'I WILL NOT LIE BELOW,' AND HE SAID, 'I WILL NOT LIE BENEATH YOU, BUT ONLY ON TOP. FOR YOU ARE FIT ONLY TO BE IN THE BOTTOM POSITION, WHILE I AM TO BE THE SUPERIOR ONE.' LILITH RESPONDED, 'WE ARE EQUAL TO EACH OTHER INASMUCH AS WE WERE BOTH CREATED FROM THE EARTH.'

But equality is insufficient, and Lilith leaves quickly.  The Lilith story is titillating to many with different axes to grind.  There is so little authoritative information about Lilith that she can be used to support many different ideas.  (She even appears in George Bernard Shaw's play "Back to Methuselah.")  

Of course, Few educated people accept the six-day, Adam-and-Eve account today.  It has become literature and myth, and even jokes.  Sample joke (from the computer world):

    "How was God able to create the universe in only six days."
    Answer: "He didn't have an installed base."
    
        (Meaning that there was nothing already there that had to connect to the new universe.)

THE FLOOD

The different Bibles contain stories that were also kicking around separately in the ancient world, separate from Hebrew culture.  For example, we are all familiar with the story of Noah.  But there are other accounts of a great and impossible flood that covered the world.  The account of the Flood in the book of Genesis has a remarkable parallel to a story of the Flood in a Babylonian stone-tablet document found in Assyria, in the ruined library of Ashurbanipal.

We can consider the story of Noah, and the Assyrian story of the Flood, side by side.  (We use floating links to show correspondences between the two accounts.)

In the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, it is the god Jehovah who gives the command to build the ark; in the Babylonian account, it is the god Shamash.  

In The Biblical account of the Flood (for instance, the King James version), God tells Noah to build an Ark.  In The Babylonian account of the Flood, the instruction is given by a god named Shamash to a "man of Shurippak", who is told to build a great ship.  In both stories the ship is loaded with everything possible, including animals.  (See correspondences between the two.)

Then comes the flood; and in both stories the hero releases a bird to see if the land has dried yet.  In the Babylonian version, the matter is settled by a raven not coming back; in the King James version, the matter is settled by a dove, who comes back with an olive leaf.  (See correspondences between the two.)

Today, few educated people accept the literal account of a Flood which covered the whole earth, with all the land species rescued in a boat; but to the ill-informed people of 3500 years ago, it may have seemed perfectly plausible-- particularly since they probably had no idea how many land species existed or how high plateaus and mountains are, or how much water it would take.

BIBLES AND HUMANOID GODS

The Biblical stories defined western culture, and that of the Mideast as well.  But there are many different Bibles-- although people who believe strongly in the Bible generally think there is only one.  But, as theologian Thomas Long puts it, "BIBLES ARE THE PRODUCTS OF CENTURIES OF THEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL STRUGGLE."  

Different Bibles include the Hebrew Torah (from which comes the Christian Old Testament), the Coptic Bible, the Catholic Bible in Latin and Greek, the King James Bible (a translation into English for the Anglican denomination), the Catholic translation into English (the Douay Bible), and those of various other denominations, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons.  

(To say nothing of the Apocrypha, related books which are halfway out of the Bible.  An Apocryphon (singular) is a book originating in Biblical times but not accepted as part of official Bibles.  Apocrypha include the books of Ezra, Tobit, Wisdom of Solomon, Epistle of Jeremy, Alphabet of Ben-Sira, and on and on.  There is no knowing how many apocrypha there are, or how mamy more will be discovered.)

But all these different Biblical views assume The notion of a God with particular interest in one species, us, the human race, who supposedly somehow resemble this God, being made in His image.  Since we are made in His image, we may assume, for example, that He has a protruding nose and two legs.  But if there is such a two-legged God, that implies that the God has physical coordinates somewhere out there, where with good enough telescopes we might see Him kicking around.  

In a more serious vein, the Darwinian view is of course that man evolved naturally among the primates, as one particularly versatile variant species of the primate order.  Darwin himself states it simply:

    THUS WE CAN UNDERSTAND HOW IT HAS COME TO PASS THAT MAN AND ALL OTHER VERTEBRATE ANIMALS HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED ON THE SAME GENERAL MODEL, WHY THEY PASS THROUGH THE SAME EARLY STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT, AND WHY THEY RETAIN CERTAIN RUDIMENTS IN COMMON.  CONSEQUENTLY WE OUGHT FRANKLY TO ADMIT THEIR COMMUNITY OF DESCENT:  TO TAKE ANY OTHER VIEW, IS TO ADMIT THAT OUR OWN STRUCTURE, AND THAT OF ALL THE ANIMALS AROUND US, IS A MERE SNARE LAID TO ENTRAP OUR JUDGMENT.  


WHAT WAS THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE?

Getting back to the universe (as if it were possible to leave it!), our earliest perceptions of it must have been quite simplistic.

If you stand out in the open on a good night, the universe seems to consist of a bowl of sky, across which sun, moon and stars pass at different speeds.  This is how it must first have appeared to early human beings.  We below seem to stand on an irregular, but relatively flat, earth.

It took us a long time to reach today's understanding of the universe's size and age.

It has taken us a very long time to see that the bowl of the sky only views a portion of a great-three-dimensional space, with millions of stars and galaxies, and ourselves at the lip of Deep Time of billions of years-- not the few thousand years of the Bible.

Cosmology is the science of the physics of the universe, including its beginnings.  There are many scientific theories of cosmology, but in a way they boil down to only two.  Some say the universe has always been here, others say it somehow started.  These are the two basic views: the steady-state view and the Big Bang view.  

STEADY STATE

The steady-state theory of Fred Hoyle (also Bondi and Gold) says that the universe has always been pretty much the way it is, except that it continues to expand and matter flies away.  To keep things steady, the steady-state theory proposed a process of continuous uniform creation-- where new matter is continuously created to make up for the matter that flies away.  

According to this view, the universe had no beginning and will have no end.

HOYLE APPROACHED THE PROBLEM MATHEMATICALLY AND TRIED TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF THE CREATION OF THE MATTER SEEN ALL AROUND US, WHICH IN THE BIG BANG THEORY IS ALL CREATED AT THE START. HE PROPOSED THAT THE DECREASE IN THE DENSITY OF THE UNIVERSE CAUSED BY ITS EXPANSION IS EXACTLY BALANCED BY THE CONTINUOUS CREATION OF MATTER CONDENSING INTO GALAXIES THAT TAKE THE PLACE OF THE GALAXIES THAT HAVE RECEDED FROM THE MILKY WAY, THEREBY MAINTAINING FOREVER THE PRESENT APPEARANCE OF THE UNIVERSE.

THE BIG BANG THEORY

The Big Bang theory (a term coined by Fred Hoyle, who did not like the theory) takes the position that all matter and energy was created at one instant, and the universe has flown apart ever since.  (Hawking has publicized this view considerably.)

At the instant of Beginning, all matter and potential energy were infinitely compressed to a single point.  Then time began and in the first fraction of a second this compressed conglomerate exploded, flying apart into a mutual web of co-created space and matter and energy.  

After the first couple of hours, things became relatively eventful and familiar, and soon stars emerged, and the rest is history.  

Today this theory is much more popular than Steady State, which indeed many cosmologists regard as disproven.  It is said that ALONE AMONG ALL COSMOLOGIES, THE STEADY STATE MODEL MAKES SUCH DEFINITE PREDICTIONS THAT IT CAN BE DISPROVED EVEN WITH THE LIMITED OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE AT OUR DISPOSAL.

However, science is always twisting and turning, with new possibilities opening at every turn.  For instance, a new theory called "chaotic inflation theory" has recently appeared-- "CHAOTIC INFLATION THEORY OR ETERNAL INFLATION WHICH SOMETIMES POSITS AN INFINITE UNIVERSE WITH NEITHER BEGINNING NOR END IN WHICH INFLATION OPERATES CONTINUOUSLY, ON A SCALE BEYOND THE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE, TO CREATE THE MATTER OF THE COSMOS."

It seems this is reviving the steady-state view, with new twists.  CHAOTIC INFLATION THEORY HAS MANY SIMILARITIES WITH STEADY STATE THEORY, ALTHOUGH ON A MUCH LARGER SCALE THAN ORIGINALLY ENVISAGED.  Hoyle, who is now in a permanent steady state (he died in 2001), would be pleased.

OBJECTIVITY

Scientific "objectivity" is not what most people think.  There are always biases.
It is interesting to see the motivations and attitudes behind the theories.  For instance, religion (pro and con) continues to be a motivating force behind scientific theory.  

An example: physicist Georges Lemaitre, one of the originators of the "Big Bang" theory, had an implicit religious position.  Lemaitre, AS HE WAS ALSO AN ABBOT OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH ARGUED THAT GOD HAD CREATED 'A PRIMEVAL ATOM' WHICH HAD GROWN TO BECOME THE UNIVERSE. "

Whereas Fred Hoyle, the best-known exponent of the Steady-State theory, was protecting an atheistic position: "FRED HOYLE WAS UNHAPPY ABOUT ACCEPTING A GOD GIVEN CREATION, AND AS AN ATHEIST ATTEMPTED TO DEVELOP A THEORY WITHOUT SUCH AN INTERVENTION. THIS WAS TO BECOME THE STEADY STATE THEORY."

Aesthetics, too, plays a part.  Theories are supposed to make sense and hold together; aspects which break the unity are an affront, as when scientists refer to "AN AESTHETICALLY UNATTRACTIVE FEATURE OF THE THEORY".

Art, too, can inspire science.  Another non-scientific inspiration for the Steady-State theory came from a popular horror movie: THE STEADY STATE THEORY OF BONDI, GOLD AND HOYLE WAS INSPIRED BY THE CIRCULAR PLOT OF THE FILM DEAD OF NIGHT THEY WATCHED TOGETHER.

This is interesting, because The film "Dead of Night" was an extremely good, clever and scary postwar horror movie.  Its final plot twist: its end is also its beginning, starting the story all over again.  So the viewer, about to be relieved that the film is over, suddenly understands that it will never be over-- thus perpetuating, in principle, the scariness.  

So much repeats, so much goes on.  The universe is here, and so are people.  What to think about it all can be daunting.  What to do about it is another question.