Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory
Open-knowledge reference entry
Since the emergence of the Big Bang theory as the dominant physical cosmological paradigm, there have been a variety of reactions by religious groups regarding its implications for religious cosmologies. Some accept the scientific evidence at face value, some seek to harmonize the Big Bang with their religious tenets, and some reject or ignore the evidence for the Big Bang theory.
The core tenet of most major monotheistic religions such as is that there is one God who created the universe and bestowed his blessings upon it. These faiths are generally in agreement with contemporary scientific cosmological thought as they believe the Big Bang theory generally reinforces the idea of one supreme God. However, this viewpoint is not universal amongst practicers of these faiths, resulting in a spectrum of opinions about how religious cosmology and the Big Bang theory truly support one another.
Background
The Big Bang itself is a scientific theory, and as such, stands or falls by its agreement with observations. However, as a theory which addresses the nature of the universe since its earliest discernible existence, the Big Bang carries possible theological implications regarding the concept of creation out of nothing. Many atheist philosophers have argued against the idea of the Universe having a beginning – the universe might simply have existed for all eternity, but with the emerging evidence of the Big Bang theory, both physicists and theistic philosophers have viewed it as capable of being explained by theism; a popular philosophical argument for the existence of God known as the Kalam cosmological argument rests in the concepts of the Big Bang. 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, who rejected the implication that the universe had a beginning.
Hinduism
The view from the Hindu Puranas is that of an eternal universe cosmology in which time has no absolute beginning, but rather is infinite and cyclic, as opposed to a universe which originated from a Big Bang.
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