Is God Dead?: The Stars and Cold Coffee

Ty B. Kerley

DMin

Last week, standing with the Bible skeptic Michael on the common ground that science affords, we continued to look to the stars to see what we might learn. What we have been looking for is evidence that the universe had a beginning, because if the universe had a beginning, then it had to have a Beginner.

In the early twentieth century Albert Einstein ventured to say that the universe is continuously expanding and that the planets and moons and stars are all moving further and further away from each other. Then, some 20 years later, a man named Edwin Hubble confirmed Einstein’s equations. Of course, this was all just mathematical theory at the time. By the end of the twentieth century the Hubble telescope (named after Edwin Hubble) was looking out unto the far edges of the universe. And what the Hubble telescope saw was absolutely amazing.

The Hubble was able to take light that was being emitted by the distant stars at the very edge of the universe and analyze it by passing the starlight through a prism. In this way they were able to separate the different wavelengths of light just like what happens in a rainbow. But they noticed two things that were odd. The red band of light had moved, or shifted from its normal location in the rainbow. They also observed that the blue band of light from other stars had shifted as well. But this is exactly what Einstein and Hubble had predicted; a shift in the position of the red light in the stars that were moving away, and a shift in the position of the blue light in the stars that were moving closer.

Astrophysicists naturally call this “redshift,” and “blue shift.” But that is not all of the story. The degree to which the red or blue light has shifted is directly related to how far away the star is, and how fast it is moving. It is very much like Doppler radar that the highway patrol uses to clock you speeding. What all this data proves is that the planets and moons and stars are all moving further and further away from each other, and their speed is decreasing. Here is something else that is interesting; the only event that behaves in this same manner is an explosion, a Big Bang of sorts. The instant before an explosion occurs all the material is confined in a very small and very dense location; think of a hand grenade. An instant after the explosion, all the material is broken up into pieces and those pieces begin to move away from each other. But as those pieces move further and further away from their pre-explosion location their speed gets slower and slower. That is exactly what is observed among all the planets and moons and stars that Hubble is looking at. What that means is that at one point in time past the entire universe was a single infinitely dense particle; what scientists call “The Initial Singularity.” Christians call this initial singularity; “in the beginning God created.”

But there is still more. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states, “The total entropy of an isolated system can never decrease.” That simply means that all temperatures in a system eventually become equal. If I had a big hot cup of coffee sitting on my desk. Over time the coffee would cool off, or we would say my coffee got cold. But actually, my coffee would give up its heat to the air in the room. The temperature of my coffee would go down, and the temperature of the room would go up. The increase in the room temperature would be almost non-detectable because the room is so large but eventually the temperature of the room and my coffee would come into balance. The same is true of the stars and the universe. Over time the stars burn their fuel giving heat to the universe. However, the universe is so vast and so cold that the temperature of space does not go up by a detectable amount. The fuel in the sun and in the stars is in finite, limited supply. Eventually all the stars will burn out and the emptiness of space will absorb the heat. It is no different than your car. You fill it up at the station, drive it, and eventually you run out of gas. The same is true for the stars. They were “filled up” with gas at some beginning point, they are burning that fuel now, and they will eventually all run out of gas. This is what scientists mean when they talk of “the heat death of the universe?” At some point millions of years from now all the stars will burn out and the universe will go dark, and cold.

The point in all this is simple: If the universe has existed from all eternity past, why haven’t the stars already burned out? If the universe had existed from eternity past, we would not be here today because the stars would have already burned all their fuel. Since we have sunlight and starlight, that tells us the universe had a definite beginning at some point in time past. That is just one more indication that the universe had a beginning which points to a Beginner. Join us again next week as we wrap up (for the time being) our back porch star-gazing with the Bible skeptic Michael.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!

Ty B. Kerley, DMin., is an ordained minister who teaches Christian apologetics, and relief preaches in Southern Oklahoma. Dr. Kerley and his wife Vicki are members of the Waurika church of Christ, and live in Ardmore, Okla. You can contact him at: dr.kerley@isGoddead.com.