Christian apologist Ken Ham says the brand-new James Webb Space Telescope is displaying jaw-dropping images of a vast universe but is not returning evidence for the Big Bang Theory.
The $10 billion instrument is the most powerful telescope ever built and can see faint objects that its predecessor – the Hubble Space Telescope – could not record. Before the new telescope launched into space, many astronomers theorized that it would allow scientists to peek back in time to the early universe.
But Ham, the CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis, says in a new blog that images from the telescope “haven’t helped those who cling to the big bang.” The theory posits that the universe originated billions of years ago in a single explosion from a single point and has been expanding ever since.
“The data doesn’t match what’s predicted if the big bang happened,” Ham wrote.
He cites a blog post by physicist Eric J. Lerner, an author who holds a secular worldview but who has been highly critical of the Big Bang Theory.
In it he writes, The James Webb images are “blatantly and repeatedly contradicting” the Big Bang Theory that the universe “began 14 billion years ago in an incredibly hot, dense state and has been expanding ever since.”
Ham wrote, “… As you look at the images from the James Webb Space Telescope, be in awe of the incredible beauty, wonder, and order of the heavens. But don’t stop there. Turn in praise to the One who created all of that and sums it up with the simple phrase, ‘He made the stars also’.”