Monday, February 23, 2009

Big Bang

A nineteenth-century British author wrote that the universe is filled with roaring Godstuff, and it rolls over and through us all the time. Many people deny its existence. I used to be one of those who questioned, but now I understand that God is true, faithful, loving, all-powerful, and all-present.

One of the most puzzling questions of our time is how the universe was created. Those who believe in the roaring Godstuff understand that God created the universe. The Bible says he did that in six days and rested on the seventh day.

Were those seven days literally seven 24-hour periods? No one knows. The Hebrew word for “day” can mean “a day,” “today,” or an indefinite period of time—“a time.”

According to this linked site,

The source of energy, matter and the universe itself is the ultimate mystery of, well, the universe.

Based on a widespread afterglow called the cosmic microwave background (and other evidence), scientists think that the cosmos formed from a "Big Bang" -- an incomprehensible expansion of energy from an ultra-hot, ultra-dense state.

Describing time before the event, however, may be impossible.

Still, atom smasher searches for particles that formed shortly after the Big Bang could shed new light on the universe's mysterious existence -- and make it a bit less strange than it is today.

Here’s what happened, according to Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

He created light, space, the sky, time, land, water, and vegetation in the first three “days.” Then in the fourth “day,” he flung stars and planets aloft—the Big Bang. It can’t be explained, any more than the mind of a human can recreate a picture of the Spirit of God hovering over the formless dark water.

In the beginning, God—