It's long been understood that science can not tell us anything about the state of existence prior to the Big Bang. Nevertheless, rationalists became committed to the idea of a collapsing universe, which allowed them to tell a story about creation reoccuring endlessly. This is part of their campaign to show that our existence is nothing special, which they think disproves the existence of a Creator.

Not it seems that, whatever happened before the Big Bang, creation will never happen again. I doubt that they'll agree that this makes G-d's existence that much more likely.

It's extremely important to understand that traditional arguments for the existence of God were crucial in two of the biggest developments in 20th Century cosmology. Father Lemaitre, the Jesuit mathematician, closely studied Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and noticed that it implied an expanding universe, which in turn implied a starting point, but that Einstein had fudged this monumental result with a "cosmological constant" that he had introduced in order to make his great theory conform with his nontheistic assumptions about the universe: that it was eternally old and uncreated -- and thus it had to utterly stable. In contrast, Lemaitre showed, along with another scientist working at the about the same time, that their probably was an origin point, what we now call the Big Bang. That Lemaitre was pleased that this agreed with St. Thomas Aquinas' prime mover proof for the existence of God is evident. Lemaitre got Einstein to meet with him and the great L.A. astronomer Edwin Hubble, who had discoverd that the galaxies were flying apart. Einstein announced that he had made the greatest mistake of his career by inserting the cosmological constant in order to make the universe seem uncreated. (Einstein was a very great man indeed, one who could admit when he had made a mistake.)

Similarly, in 1974 the scientist Brandon Carter revived the Argument from Design, last put forward in the 19th Century by the Rev. Paley who argued that when you find something as complicated as a watch, you know there's a watch designer. Living things are more complicated than watches so that implies the existence of a Designer. Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection showed that complex living things could evolve through accidents, so the Argument from Design was mothballed for a Century. Carter, however, noticed that while the evidence for the evolution of species was overwhelming, the Argument from Design was far from refuted on a cosmological scale. The problem that cosmologists had been avoiding was that our universe seemed awfully well designed for consciousness to evolve in it. For example, the strength of gravitational attraction was just right for the galaxies to last a long time after the Big Bang. More gravity and the universe would have crunched back together quickly; less gravity and it would never have coalesced into stars and planets for intelligent life (us) to evolve.

Other cosmologists answered by saying that perhaps our universe was just one part of a superuniverse in which all possible combinations of physical laws existed. This idea has been extremely fertile theoretically, although nobody has a way to test this multiple universe idea, meaning that cosmology is starting to resemble theological speculation.

In my experience, most of the strident atheists who offered Darwinism as the explanation for the origin of everything had never even thought about cosmology at all. Conversely, most strident anti-Darwinists have never thought hard about how cosmology provides a much more fertile ground for their war on atheists than does biology, where the truth of Darwinism is as well established as any historical concept possibly could be.

"It's turtles, all the way down."

Steve is correct: Darwinism would never have made any traction without the surrender in philosophy of the principal arguments for the existence of God (ontological, cosmological, teleological). For a variety of reasons, the enfeebling of Christian thought ceded the ground to the point that Kant's essays in the 1780s were believed to have ended the debate. But that is a mistake, and even Kant tried to defend the teleological (the argument from design).

Mnay people have noted that the physicists seem to postulate (or at least respect) some form of beginning or point of singularity at or just prior to the Big Bang. Biology cannot speak to the matter, which infuriates and splutters people like Richard Dawkins.

The point is that metaphysics is not as dead as the strident wish it to be. The biologists have lost the forest for the piece of dust on the back of the pine bark beetle.

David:

I don't know which rationalists you are talking about. They, or at least the astronomically knowledgeable among them, have long known that there are several possible outcomes of Big Bang theory.

In order for the cyclical version to work, astronomers had to find (I forget the exact number) something like 5-10 times the current calculated mass of the universe. Which means that rationalists would not be particularly surprised if the cyclical model didn't work out.

Also, keep in mind the Anthropic Principal.

What Jeff said. I know quite a few astronomers, and all of them have been agnostic on the open/closed universe question, pending better data.

This is an ax-grinding piece.

Jeff:

The anthropic principle suggests God.

It sure does.

Like everything that suggests god, it is unlikely and unprovable, though.

Suddenly you're a stickler for proof?

Well, preponderance of evidence, anyway.

The Scotch legists' option -- not proven -- is often a useful position to take.

The way I understand the Anthropic Principle is that one shouldn't read too much into the fact we exist.

Jeff:

You understand it backwards--the fact we exist, against such overwhelming odds, suggests we are the point of the Universe.

Well, based on the following, I think I understand it correctly:

"There are two versions of the anthropic principle, the weak and the strong. The weak...states that in [the universe] the conditions necessary for the development of intelligent life will be met only in certain [limited] regions. The intelligent beings in these regions should therefore not be surprised if they observe that their locality in the universe satisfies the conditions for their existence. It is a bit like a person living in a wealthy neighborhood not seeing any poverty."

The strong principle goes further, acknowledging we have no idea how many universes have existed or exist now. "...only in a few of these universes ... would intelligent beings develop and ask the question: "Why is the universe the way we see it?" The answer is then simple if it had not been different, we would not be here.

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, 124-5.

So, we could be the point of the universe. Or the die came up sixes.

There just isn't anyway to tell between the two.

Sorry, typed the last sentence of the quote wrong. Should be:

"The answer is then simple: if it had been different, we would not be here."

It's worth noting that theories of a Big Bang did not arise fullblown from the head of LeMaitre.

Observation as well as theory drives science, and the proof that there is more than one galaxy did not come until 1929, when LeMaitre was 35. That proof arose from work done around 1915 with Cepheid variable stars, when LeMaitre was about 21.

His theorizing and mathematizing may have been important, but once the recession of galaxies was discovered, the Big Bang arose out of the observations.