Robert Jastrow (1925–2008), a leading figure in NASA’s Apollo program to land men on the moon and the founding director of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, aptly summarized this topic.
Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy.67
Jastrow, an agnostic and big bang believer, did not have the advantage we now have of seeing all 32 recent evidences (summarized in Table 27) that contrast the big bang vs. the stretching explanations. Nor is there any reason to believe that Jastrow ever considered the stretching explanation. He recognized that no known physical forces could produce a big bang and its inflation.
Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on Earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think a scientifically proven fact.68
Robert Jastrow’s most quoted statement by far is still true today, except for three modifications I inserted in brackets:
For the [atheistic] scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He [believes he] has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries [actually, a few thousand years].69
With both the big bang and stretching explanations, it is difficult to imagine time beginning, the sudden presence of matter and energy in a small universe, then a brief but enormous expansion of space when all the laws of physics did not operate. The big bang theory says that space and light expanded for less than 10-32 of a second (a billionth, billionth, billionth of a hundred thousandth of a second) from a mathematical point—trillions of billions of times faster than the speed of light today. The stretching explanation says that days after the creation of time and all matter, a smaller universe than we have today was rapidly stretched out, along with light waves in that space. Although no scientific explanation can be given for either form of expansion, the stretching interpretation best fits the observable evidence.
We also can appreciate why at least eleven Bible passages, involving five different writers, mention the “stretched out heavens.” Another verse, Psalm 19:1, takes on a new depth of meaning: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” Can any human mind take it all in?