The Big Bang’s Cause

Hint: It wasn’t an Exploding Nothing

“Let there be light?” In fact, light didn’t propagate until 378,000 years after the Big Bang. Photo by Sofia Tang courtesy of Unsplash

This article is one of a series of articles introduced by Flawed Reasons to Believe in God. If you’re new to the series, you should read the Introduction before (or after) reading the material below.

In the beginning, there was Nothing, but then it exploded. Of course, that’s deliberate humor and nothing remotely like the Standard Model of Cosmology. Even when we believed a singularity started it all, the singularity was not a Nothing. The Big Bang is a misnomer; there was no giant explosion. Instead, today’s best explanation of our “In the Beginning” story is that the universe was born in a brief burst of exponential expansion of its initial hot, dense state. Modern cosmologists dismiss the idea of a singularity. Even black holes do not contain a singularity at their center.

The name "Big Bang" was coined when Physicist Fred Hoyle uttered it to make fun of the crazy idea on the BBC in 1949. Hoyle and a few other physicists subscribed to the steady-state hypothesis. Steady-state advocates believed the Universe was static and eternal. They thought the universe was homogenous and maintained its homogeneity by creating new matter and consuming an equal amount of existing matter. To them, the question, “Why is there something and not nothing?” was silly because they didn't think there had ever been…