We tend to think our scientific and cosmological theories are devoid of religious thinking. But, it was actually a priest, George Lemaître, who originally proposed the Big Bang theory. In this extract from their new book, Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins, argue belief in the Big Bang as a singularity and the beginning of space and time, is just that, a belief. We have no evidence that can prove this version of the Big Bang. Afshordi and Halper argue some of our cosmological models have taken on creation myth status and attract very religious styles of thinking in the scientific community.

If you enjoy this article, check out our HowTheLightGetsIn London 2025 festival, where we'll be explore the role religion plays in cosmology in the debate 'The Big Bang Miracle'.

The religion within cosmology

Looking back on my own past, my memories are filled with the imagery of my youth, from waking up to sounds of prayer calls at dawn to the terrifying encounter with the morality police at my college campus, when Ghazal and I were escorted to the security headquarters for the “crime” of speaking together in a classroom. This background may give me a rare perspective on the topic of science and religion. The first half of my life was lived under an Islamic theocracy, where religion was invoked to justify, quite literally, every aspect of public and private life. But the second half was driven by science, not because the Canadian and United States governments are guided by it (they aren’t), but rather because I left my home country in pursuit of science, to uncover the deepest and darkest mysteries of the cosmos.

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Put differently, you can take the cosmologist out of religion, but can you take religion out of the cosmologist?

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When I came to the United States for graduate school in 1999, I brought with me my religious upbringing, from kindergarten through high school and then college. While living religiously was the norm back home, keeping the faith as a stranger in a strange land did take its toll. Despite its bad reputation, the United States is actually very inclusive and welcoming to different cultures compared to where I came from, and so it didn’t take long for me to find people of common outlooks. With liberal presidents in power (Clinton in Washington, DC, and Khatami in Tehran), the US-Iran animosity of the 1980s, fueled by the Iranian Islamic revolution and the hostage crisis, was in apparent decline, and there was reason for optimism. But history has a way of repeating itself. Shortly after I arrived in Princeton, nineteen Muslim men (out of seven hundred million worldwide) hijacked US airliners and struck them against the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Even though the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, and Lebanon, four months later, George W. Bush would declare Iran, Iraq, and North Korea to be an axis of evil that needed to be defeated to right all the wrongs of the world. For me, a faith that used to be a source of comfort, connection, and community had suddenly become a liability.