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Since the acceptance of the Big Bang theory as the dominant physical cosmological paradigm, there have been a variety of reactions by religious groups as to its implications for their respective religious cosmologies.

The Big Bang itself is a scientific theory, and as such stands or falls by its agreement with observations. But as a theory which addresses the origins of reality it carries theological implications regarding the concept of creation ex nihilo (a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing"). In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state Universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory.

Pope Pius XII declared, at the November 22, 1951 opening meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that the Big Bang theory does not conflict with the Catholic concept of creation.

Notes

1. Kragh, Helge (1996). Cosmology and Controversy. Princeton University Press. p. . ISBN 069100546X.
2. George F R Ellis (2007-08-08). "Issues in the philosophy of cosmology". Philosophy of Physics: 1183–1285. doi:10.1016/B978-044451560-5/50014-2.
3. Alexander, Vilenkin (1982-11-04). "Creation of universes from nothing". Physics Letters B. 117 (1–2): 25–28. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(82)90866-8. ISSN 0370-2693. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
4. Russell, R.J. (2008). Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega. Fortress Press. ISBN 9780800662738. Amazingly, some secularists attribute to t=0 a direct implication. The June 1978 issue of the New York Times contained an article by NASA's Robert Jastrow, an avowed agnostic, entitled "Found God?" Here Jastrow depicts the theologians to be "delighted" that astronomical evidence "leads to a biblical view of Genesis." Though claiming to be agnostic, he argued without reservation for the religious significance of t=0: It is beyond science and leads to some sort of creator.
5. Corey, M. (1993). God and the New Cosmology. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9780847678020. Indeed, creation ex nihilo is a fundamental tenet of orthodox Christian theology. Incredibly enough, modern theoretical physicists have also speculated that the universe may have been produced through a sudden quantum appearance "out of nothing." Physicist Paul Davies has claimed that the particular physicis involved in the Big Bang necessitates creation ex nihilo.
6. Lerner, E.J. (1992). The Big Bang Never Happened: A Startling Refutation of the Dominant Theory of the Origin of the Universe. Vintage Books. ISBN 9780679740490. From theologians to physicists to novelists, it is widely believed that the Big Bang theory supports Christian concepts of a creator. In February 1989, for example, the front-page article of the New York Times Book Review argued that scientists and novelists were returning to God, in large part through the influence of the Big Bang.
7. Manson, N.A. (1993). God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science. Routledge. ISBN 9780415263443. The Big Bang theory strikes many people as having theological implications, as shown by those who do not welcome those implications.
8. Davis, J.J. (2002). The Frontiers of Science & Faith. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 9780830826643. Genesis' concept of a singular, ex nihilo beginning of the universe essentially stands alone among the cosmologies of the ancient world and exhibits, at this point, convergence with recent big bang cosmological models.
9. Kragh, H. (1996). Cosmology and Controversy. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-02623-8.
10. Ferris, T. (1988). Coming of age in the Milky Way. Morrow. pp. 274, 438. ISBN 978-0-688-05889-0. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help), citing Berger, A. (1984). The Big bang and Georges Lemaître: proceedings of a symposium in honour of G. Lemaître fifty years after his initiation of big-bang cosmology, Louvainla-Neuve, Belgium, 10–13 October 1983. D. Reidel. p. 387. ISBN 978-90-277-1848-8.
11. Pope Pius XII (1951-11-02). "Ai soci della Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze, 22 novembre 1951 - Pio XII, Discorsi" (in Italian). Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |access_date= ignored (help)

References

• Leeming, David Adams, and Margaret Adams Leeming, A Dictionary of Creation Myths. Oxford University Press (1995), ISBN 0-19-510275-4.
• Pius XII (1952), "Modern Science and the Existence of God," The Catholic Mind 49:182–192.
• Ahmad, Mirza Tahir, Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth Islam International Publications Ltd (1987), ISBN 1-85372-640-0. The Quran and Cosmology
• Long, Barry, The Origins of Man And the Universe Barry Long Books (1998), ISBN 1-899324-12-7. The Origins of Man And the Universe

External links

• More universe theories
• Varg Vikernes' "Irminsûl" (Germanic paganism view)

• Metaphysical cosmology
• Religion and science