To many people, unaccustomed to dialectical thinking, the notion of infinity is difficult to accept. It is so far at variance with the finite world of everyday objects, where everything has a beginning and an end, that it seems strange and unaccountable. Moreover, it is at variance with the teachings of most of the main world religions. Most of the ancient religions had their creation myth. Medieval Jewish scholars put the date of Creation at 3760 B.C., and in fact, the Jewish calendar dates from then. In 1658, Bishop Ussher worked out that the universe was created in 4004 BC. Throughout the 18th century, the universe was considered to be six or seven thousand years old at most.

But – you might object – 20th century science has nothing in common with all these creation myths! With modern scientific methods we can get an exact picture of the size and origins of the universe. Unfortunately, things are not as simple as that. Firstly, despite colossal advances our knowledge of the observable universe is limited by the power of even the largest telescopes, radio signals and space probes, to provide information. Secondly, and more seriously, is the way in which these results and observations are interpreted in a highly speculative manner, frequently bordering on mere mysticism. All too often, one has the impression that we have indeed regressed to the world of the creation myth (the “Big Bang”), complete with its inseparable companion, the Day of the Final Judgement (the “Big Crunch”).

Gradually, beginning with the invention of the telescope, the advance of technology has pushed the boundaries of the universe further and further away. The crystal spheres which ever since Aristotle and Ptolemy had hemmed in the minds of men, were finally shattered, along with all the other barriers that the religious prejudices of the Middle Ages had placed in the way of progress.

In 1755, Kant postulated the existence of distant collections of stars, which he called “island universes”. Yet as late as 1924, the entire universe was estimated to be only 200,000 light years in diameter, and consisted of just three galaxies – our own and the two neighbouring ones. Then the American cosmologist, Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953), using the new 100-inch telescope at Mount Wilson, in Southern California, showed the Andromeda nebula to be far outside our own galaxy. Later, other galaxies were discovered still further away. Kant’s “island universes” hypothesis was shown to be correct. Thus the universe was rapidly “expanded” – in the minds of men – and has continued to expand ever since, as more and more distant objects are discovered. Instead of 200,000 light years, it is now thought to measure tens of billions of light years across, and time will show that even the present calculations are nowhere near big enough. For the universe, as Nicolas of Cusa and others thought, is infinite. Before the Second World War, it was thought that the age of the universe was only two billion years. That is slightly better than Bishop Ussher’s calculation. But it was still hopelessly wrong. At present there is a fierce dispute among the supporters of the big bang concerning the supposed age of the universe. We shall return to that later.

The big bang theory is really a creation myth (just like the first book of Genesis). It states that the universe came into being about 15 billion years ago. Before that, according to this theory, there was no universe, no matter, no space, and, if you please, no time. At that time, all the matter in the universe is alleged to have been concentrated at a single point. This invisible dot, known to big bang aficionados as a singularity, then exploded, with such a force that it instantly filled the entire universe, which is still expanding as a result. Oh, by the way, this was the moment when “time began”. In case you are wondering whether this is some kind of joke, forget it. This is precisely what the big bang theory states. This is what the great majority of university professors with long strings of letters after their name actually believe. There is the clearest evidence of a drift towards mysticism in the writings of a section of the scientific community. In recent years, we have seen a flood of books about science, which, under the guise of popular accounts of the latest theories of the universe, attempt to smuggle in religious notions of all kinds, in particular, in connection with the so-called theory of the big bang.

The New Scientist (7 May 1994) published an article entitled In the Beginning Was the Bang. The author, Colin Price, trained and worked as a scientist, but is now a Congregationalist minister. He begins by asking: “Is the big bang theory disconcertingly biblical? Or to put it another way, is the Genesis story disconcertingly scientific?” And he ends with the confident assertion: “No one would have appreciated the big bang story more than the authors of the first two chapters of the book of Genesis.” This is quite typical of the mystical philosophy that lies behind what Mr. Price, no doubt with tongue in cheek, but quite accurately describes as the big bang story.