Birth of the Universe

/in /by

In Ross Douthat’s 2025 book Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, the New York Times columnist and award-winning author advocates for the common sense of religious belief over the defeatism of the non-believer. “We’ll start with religion’s intellectual advantage: the ways in which non-belief requires ignoring what our reasoning faculties tell us, while the religious perspective grapples more fully with the evidence before us,” he says. “Reason still points godward, and you don’t have to be a great philosopher or a brilliant textual interpreter to follow its directions. Ordinary intelligence and common sense together are enough.”

Apparently not, because the Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that describes the origin and development of the universe. It says that the universe “begins” from a superhot, superdense chaotic state—often called a “singularity”—approximately 14 billion years ago, and has been expanding ever since. Despite its catchy name, the “big bang” is not an explosion in space but rather an expansion of space itself. No reason is provided as to why one second before the “bang,” there was no universe that could be expanded, and one second later, there it was, expanding. This apparent spontaneous emergence from nothingness remains one of the most compelling and perplexing aspects of the theory, inherently inviting further philosophical and theological reflection.

This theory is of long vintage. It has its roots in philosophy, mathematical physics, and observational astronomy. The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus is the first to suggest an initial universal conflagration, whereby all things were born of and will return to the original primordial fire. In 1931, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest and physicist, proposes what he calls the “primeval atom” or “cosmic egg”—a theory that the universe has a definite beginning. He doesn’t name it the Big Bang; that label comes later, ironically coined by one of its critics, Fred Hoyle, a British mathematician and astronomer best known as the foremost proponent and defender of the Steady State theory of the universe.

Empirical support, as defined by the theory’s proponents, arrives when Edwin Hubble observes in 1929 that galaxies are moving away from us in every direction—a phenomenon now known as the redshift—suggesting the universe is expanding. If you imagine running time backward, this “redshift” seems to imply that all matter and energy may have been once concentrated in a single point.

In 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson discover the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB), which they say is the afterglow of that ancient, hot beginning. This discovery earns them the Nobel Prize. The theory evolves into a ponderous framework, incorporating ideas such as cosmic inflation, nucleosynthesis, and the formation of large-scale structures, but at its heart remains the basic idea: the universe had a beginning, it is expanding, and its past is accessible through scientific inquiry. Whether God spoke the universe into existence, ignited the “bang,” or whether it all began in a God-induced quantum fluctuation is a question that remains unsettled. I may choose to accept it, provided that I can be free to remain in my faith-based metaphysical contemplation of God’s great power.

Beyond the widely recognized Big Bang theory, several alternative models are proposed to explain the universe’s origin, each offering distinct perspectives. None of them explicitly exclude God as the Prime Mover or the Intelligence behind the initial Event. As Douthat says, “the fact the world seems not ordered but enchanted, with many individually tailored signs of a higher order of reality. These come through the incredible variety of encounters described by words like spiritual and mystical and numinous, which vindicate religion through direct experience.”

The Steady State theory is introduced in 1948 by British scientists Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle. They propose that the universe has no beginning or end in time (an interpretation suggesting the eternity of God and the universe he created) and appears to maintain a constant average density. As the universe expands, they say, new matter is continuously created to fill the resulting voids, ensuring a “steady state” of existence. A theory as compelling as the Big Bang theory, if not more so.

A quartet of scientists, Barrow and Dabrowski in 1995, and Steinhardt and Turok in 2002, continue the quest for the origin of the universe by proposing the Oscillating Universe model. This model suggests a perpetual cycle where the universe undergoes infinite expansions (Big Bangs) and contractions (Big Crunches). After each contraction, a new expansion begins, implying an eternal series of universes. It is possible that they mean a sequential series of universes, rather than multiple universes. The concept of an oscillating universe offers a quasi-poetic framework for considering the eternal nature of cosmic evolution.

An extension of the inflationary universe model proposed by Vilenkin in 1983, Guth’s theory of Eternal Inflation (2000) suggests that the rapid expansion of space (inflation) is a continuous process. Within this ever-inflating framework, pocket universes, including our own, emerge where inflation has locally ceased, leading to diverse regions with varying physical properties. Whether an “inflationary” God initiates or participates in this expansion is not explicitly stated, but it is clearly not excluded a priori.

Finally, we have the Ekpyrotic Universe model, proposed by Khoury, Ovrut, Steinhardt, and Turok in 2001. Rooted in string theory, this model proposes that our universe resulted from a collision between two three-dimensional branes (short for “membranes”) within a higher-dimensional space. Such a collision generates the hot, dense state characteristic of the Big Bang, suggesting a cyclical process of cosmic evolution through repeated collisions. This theory, while complex, prompts intriguing questions: Might the branes be of divine origin? From where do they emerge? By virtue of what power do they collide?

In reviewing the primary sources for the Steady State theory, Oscillating Universe model, Eternal Inflation, and Ekpyrotic Universe, I find no mention of God or theological concepts. Not that I was expecting it, in what are clearly purely scientific (read, atheistic) papers. These cosmological models focus on physical processes and mathematical frameworks to explain the universe’s origins and dynamics, without invoking divine intervention or theological considerations. They present no objections to religious views of God and to any desire to attribute the origin of the universe to him. This compatibility between contemporary cosmology and a divinely initiated universe forms a foundational premise for the psychospiritual inquiry undertaken in this book, inviting a reconsideration of how reason can lead toward rather than away from theological perspectives (Collins, 2006).

For that view of the universe as God’s work “to be safely discarded as irrational, modern science would need to have proved more than the fallibility of the Ptolemaic system, or done more than sow doubts about the historicity of the early books of Genesis. It would need to have demonstrated that it’s a fundamental mistake to interpret the universe as a whole as something structured, ordered, seemingly artistically created and mathematically designed” (Douthat, 2025).

The Search for God

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This is the story of a relationship between a natural, terrestrial human being and a supernatural, extraterrestrial being, which I choose to call the entity. It is not a science-fiction story. It is my brief narrative describing my own and humanity’s search for that supernatural entity and our efforts to understand it, describe it, and communicate with it. I choose the pronoun it quite intentionally, because, as I shall describe, I don’t know the gender of this entity—if it even has anything close to a gender. An entity, per Merriam-Webster, is something that has separate and distinct existence and objective or conceptual reality.

Some of the earliest researchers of the entity, mainly in Greece, Turkey, and neighboring areas, have names and documented histories—they lived and breathed, had families and friends, and authored reflections about their understanding of it. Others lack a documented history, possibly never existed, or are simply composite figures onto whom historians or storytellers have projected actions, thoughts, and feelings. The writers of many religious texts, including the Bible, chose to remain anonymous, or were known as its authors for a brief time, or never revealed their identity.

The concept of the entity as being God with the capital g emerged into human awareness slowly. The search required the thinking, actions, and emotional impulses of hundreds of human generations. The effort continues to this day, and my book is a snapshot of that ongoing quest, a quest that implicitly demands intellectual and existential courage from those who pursue it. Why courage? Because it navigates profound uncertainty and the limits of human understanding (Nussbaum, 1990), it is fraught with the risks in being spectacularly wrong, was and still is the target of critics, detractors and persecutors.

In the beginning, I’m guessing, there must have been a first perception of “something not like us” by a representative individual, whom I may call the Caveman. The Caveman witnessed lightning, heard thunder, felt earthquakes, and instinctively perceived these natural phenomena as supernatural. Caveman’s relationship with entities “not like us” was likely one of fear, shock, and awe.

Many generations later, storytellers equipped with more advanced knowledge, better language skills, and thinking time began crafting and sharing origin-of-the-world stories. Why they wanted to know the origin of their world is not clear, but since we’re continuing to search for our origins to this day, my guess is that it was and still is an innate desire of the human being. Their stories, necessarily fantastic and invented of whole cloth, were passed down through the generations as songs, poems, myths, and legends. Nearly all stories (I hesitate to call them theories) attributed the existence of the world to a supernatural and powerful “originator.” At this early stage, however, definitions remained vague and inconsistent. Was the originator singular or plural? Was it located above, below, inside, or outside of the physical world? Most importantly, who or what was it?

Hundreds more generations passed. Eventually, in present-day Greece and its surrounding regions, philosophers (literally, “lovers of wisdom”), individuals who devoted their lives to contemplation and who regarded knowledge as intrinsically valuable, refined the earlier stories and constructed philosophical theories, cosmogonies (studies of the universe’s origin), and theologies (studies of the gods—there were many back then). The wide array of gods, spirits, and supernatural entities from the Caveman’s era persisted and flourished within popular culture, and were vividly represented in art, literature, poetry, and theatrical works. Many of these entities appeared as anthropomorphic figures (supernatural beings with human-like qualities and appearance), as animals, or natural forces.

In an attempt to make sense of this growing pantheon and clarify its purpose, later generations of philosophers gravitated toward the notion of one principal entity as singular creator, prime mover, or intelligent designer. Concurrently, concepts regarding the immortality, eternity, the nature of a divine being, and its direct intervention in human affairs emerged and gained emotional currency. The possibility of a meaningful relationship—rooted in friendship or love, or kinship—between the entity and individual humans began to be explored. The refinement of the characteristics, expectations, and limitations inherent in this relationship remains ongoing.

During the polytheistic era, which we now consider as a pagan (from the Latin pagus, the village) religion, the relationship was understood as adherence (or religion, literally “binding oneself”) to prescribed rules of thought, emotion, and behavior intended to appease or secure the favor of the gods. Within these communities of believers, certain individuals (who weren’t busy hunting, gathering, or farming) took on the role of interpreters, mediators, teachers, and “local” representatives of the entities. Monuments and temples were erected to honor, symbolize, or house the principal ones. Long-established burial practices dating back to the Caveman signified the enduring belief in life after death. The earlier experiences of awe and fear associated with the weather and other natural phenomena evolved into concepts, such as the sacred, the holy, and the hallowed. Pagan religious practices mandated, or at least strongly encouraged, acts of veneration, sacrificial offerings, purification rituals, and acts of atonement. Meanwhile, ancestral fears about incurring the gods’ wrath or displeasure remain—Will the lighting strike me? It won’t if I’m “good,” right?
Anonymous religious writers—the former storytellers, now fully literate—compiled scriptures and narrative texts capturing generations’ worth of accumulated knowledge about the gods. While some traditions simplified their pantheons and transitioned toward monotheism (belief in one entity), others continued their polytheistic traditions, a few of which survive to this day.

Given the inherent difficulty, despite strenuous and mind-boggling feats of imagination, of discerning the personality, attributes, and intentions of an invisible, extraterrestrial, and profoundly non-human entity—and of establishing and maintaining human-like relationships (such as those characterized by love, friendship, or familial bonds) with such an entity—religious practices evolved as the critical mediums for establishing such a connection. For a significant portion of humankind, local religious traditions mediated their relationship with the entity or entities, increasingly suggesting, recommending, or imposing how humans should interact and behave toward it and toward one another.