The flow of sand in an hourglass. Wikipedia
Where Science Meets the Book of Mormon: Come Follow Me Lesson: August 5-11; Alma 39-42
We are told by Alma in Alma 40:8, “…all is as one day with God, and time only is measured unto men.”
The following are several excerpts from my book, The Infinite Creation: Unifying Science and Latter-day Saint Theology.1
If time is viewed mathematically as an infinitely long line, any division of that line, such as one’s lifetime, is meaningless (x/∞ is undefined). But with God, time is not an eternally long line, it doesn’t exist at all. We are told in the scriptures that, “…time only is measured unto men.” (Alma 40:8) That sounds a lot like what Albert Einstein, one of the founders of quantum physics, said, “Time is simply a human construct...”2 Furthermore, we are told in Abraham that there was a “beginning of time” (Abraham 1:3) and in Daniel that there is a “time of the end.” (Daniel 12:9) Therefore, there is a beginning and an end to earth’s existence and our sojourn here, which are measured by time. But before the beginning of time and after the end of time, there is no time in that infinity. Our individual time on earth is not an undefined portion of an infinite time line, but, rather, a key period during a defined time of earth, with a beginning and an end, in which we can obey commandments and receive ordinances that are critical to our eternal progression.
In a talk entitled, “Seeing beyond the Leaf,” given at the BYU Church History Symposium in March 2014, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf quoted Michael Crichton as stating, “You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.” President Uchtdorf then stated,
“One of the weaknesses we have as mortals is to assume that our ‘leaf’ is all there is—that our truth is complete and universal… I want to emphasize that the truth embraced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints extends beyond leaves... It extends beyond time and space and encompasses all truth.
Isn’t it a remarkable feeling to belong to a Church that embraces truth—no matter the source—and teaches that there is much more to come…We understand our knowledge is a work in progress, that the leaf we have before us is simply one microscopic snapshot—part of an infinitely vast forest of fascinating knowledge.”3
Joseph Smith was told that, “Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:29) All the matter we can understand at present was created at the time of the Big Bang, or later. But intelligence is some form of matter that is eternal and infinite, which was never created, and therefore can never be destroyed. With this profound knowledge of infinite matter, we can, at last, begin a scientific quest for the infinite.
Is intelligence some sort of infinite, dark matter? Another compelling question is: does dark matter predate the known, visible universe? Most cosmologists would say that it was created in the Big Bang, at the same time as the visible universe. However, if we don’t have any idea what dark matter is, how does that lack of information fit into the Big Bang model? And what about dark energy? Stephen Hawking would also say “no” to anything existing before the Big Bang because before the space-time singularity there was no time and with no time there was nothing.4 How do we know that dark matter or dark energy even cares about time? If we know next to nothing about them, do we know that they’re influenced by time at all? As we have no idea what dark matter is, except that it has mass, and we know even less about dark energy, how do we know if they even fit into the Penrose-Hawking singularity at all?
Probably the most famous statements concerning God’s role in the Big Bang, and Creation in general, were made by the British cosmologist and theoretical physicist, Stephen Hawking. In his book, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, Hawking stated:
“Hubble’s observations suggested that there was a time, called the big bang, when the universe was infinitesimally small and infinitely dense. Under such conditions all the laws of science, and therefore all ability to predict the future, would break down. If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time. Their existence can be ignored because it would have no observable consequences. One may say that time had a beginning at the big bang, in the sense that earlier times simply would not be defined…One can imagine that God created the universe at literally any time in the past. On the other hand, if the universe is expanding, there may be physical reasons why there had to be a beginning. One could still imagine that God created the universe at the instant of the big bang, or even afterwards in just such a way as to make it look as though there had been a big bang, but it would be meaningless to suppose that it was created before the big bang. An expanding universe does not preclude a creator, but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job!”5
The problem with Hawking’s conclusion that, “If there were events earlier than this time, then they could not affect what happens at the present time,” is that his paradigm presumes that everything both inside and outside the entire universe began at the time of the Big Bang. All of the known laws of physics, including quantum physics, deal only with events occurring inside the visible universe. For example, the universe itself is expanding at a rate faster than the speed of light. That can only be true because that expansion is not confined within the universe. Furthermore, neither Hawking nor anyone else knows anything about dark matter other than it apparently has gravity. It is certainly, at least at present, not part of the visible universe (thus the term “dark”) and, therefore, cannot be assumed to either have begun at the time of the Big Bang or to be controlled by the laws that originated at the Big Bang and govern the visible universe.
During the last few years of his life, Stephen Hawking was, famously, one of the most vocal scientists arguing that God had no place in the creation of the universe. He stated, for example, “The role played by time at the beginning of the universe is, I believe, the final key to removing the need for a grand designer and revealing how the universe created itself.”6 In a number of similar statements, Hawking made it quite clear that in his mind, time trumps everything, even God.
Hawking, in my opinion, correctly, pointed out that time and space began at the Big Bang and did not exist before that event. However, physics tells us that what was created at the Big Bang was what Hawking called “normal matter.” We cannot, however, say the same for dark matter or dark energy – the other 95+ percent of the universe. Hawking would have us believe that God is limited by E=mc2, but that equation only describes “normal matter,” which is defined by what we can see or detect because of light (the electromagnetic spectrum; time, space and light are expressed as c in Einstein’s famous equation).
The Big Bang theory does not actually describe the origin of the universe; it describes only the origin of the visible universe. We take the existence of energy, time, and space as axiomatic, but the Big Bang theory does not discuss from whence they came.
The universe did not expand into space – it was creating space and time as it exploded. During the infinitesimally small fraction of a second of initial inflation (10-34 second of the universe’s life), space itself expanded much more rapidly than the speed of light – but we have always been taught that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Einstein’s theory of relativity, however, which describes the speed of light as a limit, is only true within space and time. It does not apply to anything outside space and time or to the expanding space-time continuum itself. We might say of this early universe that it was expanding into infinity itself.
In conclusion: Both Alma and Einstein have told us that time is only a human construct. Therefore, limiting God withing a “box” we call time, is also a human construct — here, as humans have done for millennia, man is creating god, rather than the other way around, of God creating man. At present, because we can only comprehend the known, visible universe, we cannot understand God without applying the faith that He exists outside our artificial concept of time. It is interesting that Paul told the Hebrews, and us, “…without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”7
Trent Dee Stephens, PhD
References
1. Stephens, Trent D., The Infinite Creation: Unifying Science and Latter-day Saint Theology.1 Cedar Fort, Springville, Utah, 2020
2. The New Quotable Einstein, Alice Calaprice, ed., Princeton Univ. Press, 2005
3. Uchtdorf, Dieter F., The Gospel Encompasses All Truth, Ensign, February 2018
5. Hawking, Stephen, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes, p. 8-9, Bantam, New York, 1988
6. Hawking, Stephen, Brief Answers to the Big Questions, Bantam, New York, 2018
7. Hebrews 11:6
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