The study of the big bang

[jimmy85]

I read a quote of the work of Stephen Hawking, A Biref History of Time. In which he mentioned that the pope and teh church didnt agree to study the begining of the universe.

(quote)
Throughout the 1970s I had been mainly studying black holes, but in 1981 my interest in questions about the origin and fate of the universe was reawakened when I attended a conference on cosmology organized by the Jesuits in the Vatican. The Catholic Church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. **He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. **I was glad then that he did know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference – the possibility that space- time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 115-16.]
(end quote)

Is there nowadays any oposition in the study of the begining of the big bang in catholicism?

Also Hawking claims by scientific evidences that the universe didnt have a beginning. if his theory is proven it will mean that there was not a beginning nor a moment of creation.

Could theists still defend the believe in God even if this theories are proven to be true, refering to God as the spiritual creator of spiritual things and not as the creator of matter?

 

[Verisimilitude]

There are many theories to include a pulsating theory, the steady state theory, as well as the big bang to try and describe what we can observe from our point of view on Earth. I recently heard the red-shift measurements were inaccurate because of our movement with relation to the rest of the universe.

What ever the cause of the existance of the Universe…I think God started it all with “Let there be Light”.

Personally I hold a multiple big bang/pulsating type theory which in one way is a paradoxical steady state (constant change is steady in that view) about the Universe so Genesis 1:1 is as definative as I AM. Equally true and mysterious.

 

[I_A]

Father Georges Henri Joseph Éduard Lemaître (July 17, 1894 – June 20, 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer.

Fr. (later Msgr.) Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom’.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

 

[jimmy85]

Father Georges Henri Joseph Éduard Lemaître (July 17, 1894 – June 20, 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer.

Fr. (later Msgr.) Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, although he called it his ‘hypothesis of the primeval atom’.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre

yes, If im not wrong, the theory of the big bang applyed to catholicism believes that the universe came out of the nothing, ex nihilo, by an act of creation by God.

However, “hipoteticaly”, if the above mentioned theory about an infinite universe without a beginning is somehow proven, althought I doubt it, Then, Could catholics believe that God was the creator and shaper of the matter in the universe that have infinitely existed, without the concept of the creation out of the nothingness but of a creation out of something that already existed?

Thomas Jay Oord argues that Christians should abandon the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Oord points to the work of biblical scholars, such as Jon D. Levenson, who acknowledge that the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not present in Genesis. Oord speculates that God created our particular universe billions of years ago from primordial chaos. This chaos did not predate God, however, for God would have created the chaotic elements as well. Oord shows that God can create all things without creating from absolute nothingness.

Arguments against ex nihilo Wikipedia

 

[I_A]

I was making the point that it was a Catholic who founded the theory. If someone says “the pope, the big bad bogeyman, said we can’t study the big bang” would be making absurd and perhaps even slanderous claim. It would be also be extremely ignorant of the history of cosmology and physics (and the Galileo affair.) Did Jimmy actually read it from the book or is it a quote from a website?

 

[jimmy85]

I was making the point that it was a Catholic who founded the theory. If someone says “the pope, the big bad bogeyman, said we can’t study the big bang” would be making absurd and perhaps even slanderous claim. It would be also be extremely ignorant of the history of cosmology and physics (and the Galileo affair.) Did Jimmy actually read it from the book or is it a quote from a website?

It was a quote, I agree.