Do scientific theories like the inflationary theory explain the origin of the universe?

Scientists come up with various theories for the origin of the universe: the Big Bang Theory, the super-string theory, the inflationary universe theory. Do these theories actually explain the origin of the universe? How can we understand that these theories are inadequate?

To hear the answer

Question.

Scientists often come up with various theories about the origin of the universe. For example, earlier there was the big bang theory, now there is super string theory, there is the inflationary universe theory and various other theories like this. So, do these theories actually explain the origin of the universe and how can we understand that these theories are an inadequate explanation for the origin of the universe? Answer.

The first point to understand whenever scientists are talking about the origin of the universe is that ultimately any explanation that does not involve God has to deal with an eternal perplexity explaining how something came from nothing. How not just something is not just one small thing but the whole universe came from nothing and this is a barrier that materialist science can never cross except by misleading word jugglery. So, for example, let us consider what is known as the inflationary universe theory.

The inflationary universe theory is postulated by several scientists and the idea of this theory is often claimed that it explains how everything came from nothing but these theories are actually misleading in their claims because what they are explaining is not how everything universe came from nothing but how universe came from a nothing that is redefined to contain a lot of things. So, ever since the time that Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time became a big bang in popular science publishing, it became a bestseller that was considered fascinating by those who did not read it and incomprehensible by those who read it. That book claimed to explain how the universe came from nothing and Stephen Hawking himself had raised the question at that point which even today is an answer within science.

Why does the universe go through all the bother of existing? So, first of all, why does the universe exist and why does it come from, how does it come from something at all? So, since that time down to Stephen Hawking's more recent book The Grand Design, I will try to explain how something comes from nothing, that is the ultimate issue. But actually speaking, if you look at the details of the book, what we find is that they have redefined nothing to not mean actually literally nothing but to mean a vacuum that is filled with waves, some particles and is filled with the laws of quantum mechanics. So, as I was telling, for example, Lawrence Cross wrote a book called A Universe from Nothing which became a sort of bestseller.

But what does this book actually propose? Like the inflationary universe theory, it doesn't explain how something came from nothing but how something very, very big came from something very, very small and that very, very small is a chunk of matter. They may call it ultimately a quantum vacuum but that vacuum is not nothing. That is, as I said, filled with waves.

It is populated with all sorts of queer energies, fields and particles. And even Cross in his book explains very clearly that although he can outline how the universe came out from the beginning when there was the quantum vacuum, he doesn't explain, he says, he candidly says that although in a footnote that actually the basic principles for quantum mechanics are assumed to have been latent within whatever was present before the universe took off. So that means the quantum vacuum or whatever be the term that is used by different scientists for different theories ultimately is certainly not nothing.

It is a vehicle for laws at the very least. And where those laws came from is something which science has no answer to. And once they have redefined nothing so that it contains whatever is necessary for the particular scientific theory to work, then speculating about how the universe came from there is not at all a difficult issue.

But the crucial point remains that ultimately we cannot, by going backward, backward, backward from everything to something to something very small, we cannot come to nothing. Because somewhere we have to make that inexplicable, incomprehensible, inconceivable, translogical leap of going either from from something to nothing, which in the history of the universe would mean coming, going, proceeding from nothing to something. So either if we go back, or we go forward, we go back from now to the origin of the universe, or we move forward from the origin of the universe to now, somewhere there has to be a leap that takes place from nothing to something.

And that leap is something which cannot be explained by science in and of itself. So science may say that matter and antimatter is produced, but then before the matter and antimatter to be produced, there has to be a quantum mechanical vacuum and that quantum mechanical vacuum is not nothing. So there is a researcher Jim Holt who has written a book which is subtitled the Existential Detective Story in which he analyses rigorously what actually is nothing.

So entitled, Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story. This book interviews dozens and dozens of scientists who are occupied with this question, scientists, philosophers, thinkers, and he finds that most of them waffle about the definition of nothing and then try to prove that they have explained how something has come from nothing. So the definition of nothing that is logically and scientifically sound which he arrives at by discussing with various researchers is given in that book by physicist and cosmologist Alex Blinken.

He says that if we conceive space-time as a substratum of the universe and space-time is like a sphere which shrinks downwards, downwards, downwards so that it has at the end of it zero radius, then it is the most complete nothingness that scientific concepts can capture. So it is from it not only stuff absent, that means there is no matter within it, but there is no duration and there is no location. There is no space, there is no time, there is no matter within space-time.

There is absolutely nothing. Now if from this nothing something has to come out, no scientist has explained that till now and not only has no scientist explained that, no scientist will be able to explain that because there is the, as I said, translogical leap that is required for explaining how something can come from nothing. So sometimes some of the materialist scientists who try to avoid bringing God into the question, try to use high sounding words and try to evade the essential issues, but there is no point in getting bewildered by the various terminologies that are involved because ultimately this is not a scientific issue.

It is a philosophical issue and it is not a complex philosophical issue. It is a simple common sense issue. So we should not let anybody delude us into thinking that the mathematics or the physics or whatever is involved in this is so complex that we cannot understand it.

Actually ultimately the question is very simple that how does something emerge from nothing and for something to emerge from nothing different scientists may come up with different theories, but then for establishing their theories they very conveniently redefine nothing to contain whatever is required for their theory to start off. So therefore in the inflationary universe theory the idea is that there is a very small chunk of matter and then there is some sort of vacuum and the vacuum and the matter interact and then the matter starts expanding and for its expansion also there are the laws of physics, the quantum laws which are essential to be there and when all these are combined together then the universe starts off. So there is nothing which contains laws, which contains particles, which contains some chunk of matter.

It is certainly not nothing which is conceived of or required of for answering the philosophical question how something can come from nothing. So now what is the answer that Krishna consciousness offers us to this question? Some of the Abrahamic religions argue that God creates ex nihilo, that means God creates out of nothing. That is not the Vedic understanding.

Certainly God can do anything and everything, but creating something out of nothing is a logical and philosophical dilemma which paralyzes often the Abrahamic religions but for which the Vedic scriptures have a competent answer and the Vedic answer is that God never creates nothing out of something or rather something out of nothing because God does not exist alone at the start of creation. Now of course at this point if the first point which we may say is that at the beginning there was God, the question may come up where did God come from? But the answer for that question misunderstands the very definition of God. God, if we understand the definition properly, is sarva-karana-karana.

He is the cause of all causes and as a cause of all causes, if he had a cause then his cause would be God. So wherever this trace of backward causal origin ends, that point is God. So we sometimes think of Krishna as a historical person or as a person with height and shape and form and often we don't understand the philosophical implications of God.

Actually the absolute truth is the source of everything. The absolute truth also manifests as a person like us but that doesn't mean that he is just like us. Krishna is the absolute truth and especially when we are understanding the philosophical issues of the origin of the universe, it's vital to keep in mind the philosophical definition of what God is when we understand him as the absolute truth.

God is the cause of all causes. So God is the creator of the fabric of space and time. God is the creator of matter and the laws by which matter interacts.

God is the creator of the energies and the fields which enable matter to function according to the laws, which facilitate, interact. So basically if we have a novelist who writes a novel, then the novelist writes, creates the characters, creates the storyline, the timeline, the complications in the plot, the atmosphere, everything that is required. But within that fabric of space and time, which is there within the novel, the novelist doesn't exist.

The novelist exists outside and the novelist's existence is independent of the novel. Similarly, God exists outside the fabric of space and time and God exists eternally in the spiritual realm and he exists in the spiritual realm, but the Vedic understanding, so this is understanding which is more or less common to all religions, that God exists outside the fabric of space and time and if a person starts searching within the novel, okay, this character came from this character, this character came from this character, but where is the author in this chain? The author is not there in the novel. The author is separate from the novel.

Similarly, God is separate from the creation. God exists outside the whole fabric of space and time. Now the distinctiveness of the Vedic understanding is that God does not exist alone.

Along with God, his associates are there and more importantly from the point of view of creation, even matter is there. So matter exists sometimes in unmanifest form at the interventions between the two existences of the universe and then it again manifests itself. So therefore, matter from the Vedic perspective is also eternal.

So there is no problem of how God can create matter out of something because matter is also eternal and what God does is activates matter by his glance. So now God activates by his glance and he injects consciousness within matter in the form of souls and then the whole creation sets off. There is a lecture on creation which is also there on the site to explain how creation takes place.

But more focused on the topic here, if we think again from our logic and our experience, we will see that if we had to choose a starting point, for any construction project, if there were just some kind of matter, no matter how complex and on the other hand, there were a machine, there were a person who could actually start off the construction. The matter itself could not start off the construction because matter doesn't have consciousness, matter doesn't have initiating capabilities, matter doesn't have intelligence. On the other hand, if there were an intelligent person who wanted to construct a building, then he could surely go ahead and construct it.

So from the point of view of common sense, logic and our day-to-day experience, a conscious being could start off the creation much more probabilistically than matter. In fact, from our experience point of view, matter's self-organizing capabilities are zero. The matter may organize itself if there are some laws acting, but you have to understand that at the beginning there are no laws also.

So now that something came from nothing or something came from something and so now we are discussing the second issue. Something coming from nothing is logically impossible and that is not the Vedic understanding even with respect to God. God doesn't bring matter out of nothing.

So if matter is also existing, then somebody may argue, okay, matter is existing and matter organized itself. Why do we need God? But that is the issue that we are addressing here, that actually matter cannot organize itself. We have no experience of matter organizing itself unless there is at least some kind of consciousness on and some sort of organizing skills available, either in the form of principles or laws.

On the other hand, this intelligent person, he can organize. So therefore, the Vedic understanding that there is matter and there is God and by God's will, by God's glance and by God's guidance, matter organizes itself. This is the most logically and philosophically sound explanation of how the universe originates.

And as devotees, if we are faced with any new theories, ultimately many theories will come and theories will go. So theoretical physicist John Wheeler, who is famous for having constructed the basis of much of modern gravitational theory, quips that never run after a bus or a woman or cosmological theory, because there will always be another one in a few minutes. It is a typical materialistic joke, where he is pointing out that cosmological theories are a dime a dozen.

And we don't have to get bewildered or intimidated by new sounding theories. Ultimately, the details in science may change and maybe many. The principles don't.

And the principle is not a matter of technical mathematical complexity. It is a matter of common sense. How does something come from nothing? Ultimately, no scientific theory explains that.

And if we have to start from something for something to come, then starting from an intelligent person is far more cogent and coherent than starting from that matter. And if we start only from that intelligent person, still we face the problem of how that person creates something out of nothing. But if you understand, the absolute truth is not just existing in isolation.

He has material energies which are coexistent with him eternally. And the creation of the universe means that he's simply activating those energies. Then we have the most complete understanding of how the universe comes about.

And that is the Vedic understanding. Thank you very much.