Teachings of the Catholic Church - Questions     

U.S. News & World Report article, “What Came Before Creation?”:

1. Briefly, what is the central tenet of the Big Bang theory?  What 1965 scientific discovery seems to have confirmed the Big Bang theory?

2. When asked what came before the Big Bang, how do advocates of the hot-dense theory of creation generally respond?

3. This article, like the one on Newsweek, notes that the universe we inhabit seems “strangely fine-tuned” to living consciousness.  Explain.

4. Briefly, what is the fundamental assertion of Alan Guth’s “inflationary” model of the universe?

5. The article suggests that there is still “one thing we don’t know” and quotes Oxford University professor Derek Parfit to this effect.  What is the one thing we don’t know.

*For a good overview of the development of the Big Bang theory and its modern cousin, the “Inflationary Universe,” see pp. 1-11 of the article by William Carroll in your reader entitled “Thomas Aquinas and Big Bang Cosmology.”

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