ATHEISM’S REACTION TO THE STANDARD MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE

In our first blog on a “beginning,” we said that for centuries theists have claimed the universe had a beginning, and atheists claimed it was past eternal. It seems that issue was settled in the 1920s when scientists used Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Hubble’s discovery of an expanding universe to arrive at the Standard Model of the Universe.

Since the 1920s, atheists have struggled mightily to counter this idea of a “beginning out of nothing” because they, like Einstein, realized that they would have to explain how a beginning could have occurred. Unfortunately, there is no way to logically explain a “beginning out of nothing” without God in the picture.

So atheists chose a different approach: Instead of trying to explain a “beginning out of nothing” as the Standard Model suggests, they would develop a competing theory that could prove there was “no beginning” and the universe was “past eternal.”

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES TO PROVE A “PAST ETERNAL” UNIVERSE

Atheists created the following theories to try and prove a “past eternal” universe, but each one died and was eventually abandoned:
• Oscillating Model
• Vacuum Fluctuation Model
• Eternal Inflationary Model
• Quantum Gravity Models
• Steady State Theory

THE DISCOVER OF A GHOSTLY WHISPER FROM THE BIG BANG EXPLOSION

As of 1959, two-thirds of scientists still clung to the “steady state theory” of the universe even though the evidence for the Standard Model was overwhelming.

However, in 1964 most of them abandoned steady state theory due to an earth-shaking discovery by two scientists working for Bell Labs.

These two guys working with Bell Labs had developed a gigantic ear called a “horn antenna” that allowed them to perceive the tiniest radio waves or electronic activity in the atmosphere.

To their surprise, they discovered radiation in the atmosphere. They figured out that this barely-perceptible radiation was a ghostly whisper from the past, residue from the original big bang that occurred 13.8 billion years ago!

This was so significant that the two scientists were awarded a Nobel prize. Their names were Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson and the radiation was dubbed “cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).”

The last of the scientist holdouts could no longer deny the Standard Model and a beginning of the universe. The Standard Model has prevailed as the dominant theory for the origin of the universe since that time.

Today, atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins long for a theory of physics to escape the idea of a “beginning” that would be similar to evolutionary theory in biology, but no help has yet arrived in physics!

THE CAUSE OF THE BIG BANG AND THE BEGINNING

So the question before us today is “What could possibly have caused a beginning and a big bang explosion?”

This is a question that most atheists don’t want to address. It creates problems because, outside of a Creator, there aren’t any good explanations.

Even though the Standard Model of the Universe, with all its accumulated evidence, creates a huge headwind, atheists have stubbornly dug their heels in and doubled-down with two possible bets. They either:
1. insist that the universe did NOT have a beginning, despite the evidence we’ve described above, or
2. they know it sounds weak, but some atheists simply insist that the universe “popped into existence without any explanation at all.”

POPPING INTO EXISTENCE WITH NO CAUSE

Now if you and I go to a magic show and a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat, what would you say if I insisted that the rabbit actually just materialized right then and there? This would probably be your response:
• Obviously, you would insist, with every rational fiber of your being, that I am nuts!
• “Nothing” you would say, “just pops into existence out of thin air!”
• Next, you would begin to explain to me how such a silly thing is impossible and you’d explain the various laws of science it violates.
• And then you would provide an alternative theory how the magician most likely had an already-existing rabbit and just concealed it from us or used distraction techniques to make us think it materialized out of thin air.

Now, what would you say if I kept on insisting that you were wrong and I knew for a fact that the rabbit actually just “popped into existence” at that very moment?

One more question: How is the rabbit “popping into existence” different in any respect from atheism’s current explanation that the universe just “popped into existence without any cause” a long time ago?

In the example, my idea of a rabbit just materializing was silly and irrational, and you provided an alternative theory about how the magician performed that trick.

A made-up story about the universe “popping into existence” is just as silly and irrational, but get this: atheists have never bothered to even provide a theory about how the “pop” occurred. They keep insisting that the “rabbit just materialized out of thin air.”

“It just materialized,” they tell us and “we don’t have to explain it!”

At least with the rabbit example, there’s a magician, but in the case of the universe “popping into existence,” there’s NO cause, just “nothing.” It’s simply a mystery!

We appreciate the fact that so many atheists now admit that there was a beginning, but if something begins to exist, there logically has to be a cause. Bunnies don’t materialize out of thin air, and universes don’t pop into existence!

We probably just don’t have enough faith to be atheists.