To Alfvén, the Big Bang was a myth - a myth devised to explain creation. "I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory," he recalled. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas' theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.
But if there was no Big Bang, how -and when- did the universe begin? "There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time," Alfvén explained. "It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago."
"Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion he said. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not, he admited, be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200" he noted. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science."
Alfvén admited that his plasma universe theory may take a long time to penetrate the popular consciousness. "After all," he asserted to a group of physicists, "most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe." The group, at first incredulous, quickly nods in agreement as Alfvén continueed, "every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy."
