A century ago, the creation of the universe was a concept that astronomers as a rule ignored. The reason was the general acceptance of the idea that the universe existed in infinite time. Examining the universe, scientists supposed that it was just a conglomeration of matter and imagined that it had no beginning. There was no moment of "creation"–a moment when the universe and everything in it came into being.

This notion of an infinite universe fit in very well with atheism. It is not hard to see why. To hold that the universe had a beginning could imply that it was created and that, of course requires a Creator–that is, Allah. It was much more convenient and safer to circumvent the issue by putting forward the idea that "the universe exists for eternity", even though there was not the slightest scientific basis for making such a claim.

Unsurprisingly, the discoveries in the 20th century proved with compelling evidence that at some time, all the matter in the universe was compacted in a single point-mass that had "zero volume" because of its immense gravitational force. Our universe came into being as the result of the explosion of this point-mass that had zero volume. This explosion has come to be called the "the Big Bang" and its existence has repeatedly been confirmed by observational evidence.

Jan 21, 2004

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