Seeing God Through The Science Window

I-4: How Was the Earth formed?
St. Augustine, late in the fourth century, commented on creation as recorded in Genesis. He maintains that the answer is clear in Scripture. From the first instant of time, God created the world out of nothing. However, Augustine did ponder the sequence of creation in Scripture. He wondered about how the creation of light on the first day (Let there be light) coincided with the creation of the Sun, the moon, and the stars on the fourth day. Augustine dealt with this paradox by proposing that God "made all things at once.” Augustine’s thinking led to the extreme” all in an instant” description of Creation.
Discoveries about the age of the Earth and its progressive development do not support the concept of Creation as a finished product in one instant. So, does this fly in the face of God as the Creator and the majesty of his work? Not so. Science and religion are much closer to each other than many think when it comes to the creation of the Universe. Sir Isaac Newton, the 17th-century mathematician who is the source of understanding of the laws of gravity and physical motion, believed that our solar system did not “arise out of chaos by the mere laws of nature.” He said the Universe was “created by God at first and conserved by him to this day in the same state and condition.” His science window supported God as an Almighty creator. Newton saw a more impressive and ordered creation than Augustine's “one and done” model. From Newton’s time, scientific discoveries advanced at a rapid pace. But each discovery brought a grander picture of the created Universe.
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, scientists detected other details of the Universe occurring over billions of years extending far beyond the Earth. The great astrophysicist Stephen Hawking provides an excellent summary of the physical creation in his book The Grand Design. The title of Hawking’s book is revealing. Even though he was not able to come to terms with the existence of God, he acknowledged that the chance that random events would lead to the Universe and Earthly life as we know it is extremely small. He made a case for intelligent design.
Today there is widespread acceptance of a grand start to the Universe beginning with an amazing explosion commonly referred to as the Big Bang. Just as the theme song to the TV show Big Bang Theory says, it all started with the substance of the Universe consolidated in a tiny, hot, dense state. This tiny ball was small. All of the energy of the Universe we see was squeezed into a space the size smaller than a grain of sand. This may have been the remainder of a previous universe that collapsed upon itself or the first seed of an all-new universe. Either way, the question remains, how did the “seed” get there in the first place? That was a key part of Theologian, Thomas Aquinas’ argument in favor of the existence of God. Something had to pre-exist in the Universe to give the substance and push for the Big Bang.
From what we know now, the first moments of the Universe were incredible. In a minuscule fraction of a second, the Universe expanded to the size of galaxies. This micro-micro second period of our Universe is called “inflation.” The whole lot of the Universe expanded like a rapidly inflating balloon. There really is no center or “zero point” for the Universe. As inflation progressed, bits that would become individual galaxies moved away from each other like points on the skin of a balloon.
In the first second of time, space and the laws of physics very quickly solidified. From there, order started to emerge out of the chaos. First to take shape were subatomic particles. Then bigger particles like protons and neutrons. Technically, protons and electrons formed directly from the energy available in the ultra-hot Big Bang, and then neutrons, via proton-electron collisions, formed. The first nuclei were the protons. The first atoms were pure hydrogen. Fusion of hydrogen nuclei became the basis for helium once neutrons were formed. About three minutes later, the Universe had cooled to 1 billion °C. This allowed protons and neutrons to come together through fusion and form nuclei, the charged cores of atoms. The most common product of fusion is the element helium. The center nucleus of helium contains two protons and two neutrons fused together. The source of matter for this fusion process is the hydrogen nucleus. The fusion of hydrogen to form helium is the ongoing heat engine within our Sun.
But after 20 minutes, the Universe was no longer hot enough for fusion. What was left was a hot, cloudy soup of electrons and hydrogen and helium nuclei. This stage lasted for about 380,000 years. Eventually, the cosmos cooled enough for electrons to pair up with nuclei and make the first atoms. It then took hundreds of millions of years for the first stars to form and light up the darkness and even longer for the Universe to start to resemble what we see today. That is why a significant difference exists between the scientific age of the Universe, generally thought of as 13.7 billion years, and the age of the Earth, widely believed to be 4.5 billion years.
The Church has no official position on the age of the Earth. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that the findings of modern science have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimensions of the cosmos, the development of life forms, and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. (CCC283)