Bad news for the Big Bang Model

This post is based on a presentation by Dr Jason Lisle of the Biblical Science Institute.

Space telescopes give us clearer, sharper, and more complete views of the universe by eliminating the limitations imposed by earth’s atmosphere. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) revolutionized our view of the universe with ultra-sharp images and UV capability. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) operating in infrared is seeing stars and galaxies further away than any other telescope. The next space telescope to be launched will be the Roman space telescope (Appendix A).

Hubble space telescope

The HST has a 2.4m mirror and was launched in 1990. It’s about 550 km (350 miles) from the earth and detects light in the visible range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Galaxies in one HST deep-field image have a redshift of 6, which means they are about 12.8 billion light years away. One’s worldview affects their interpretation of astronomical data (see Appendix B). The secular view is that looking out into space is like looking back in time because we are seeing the galaxies as they were a long time ago when the light was emitted. But this time period exceeds the age of the universe according to the Bible.

The secular view is that the galaxies are 13.8 billion years old. So, they interpret the observations as though we are seeing the galaxies as they were about 1 billion years after the supposed big bang (Appendix C). That is a big issue because in this view galaxies are supposed to take many of hundreds of millions of years to form. So, they were surprised to see fully designed galaxies at these tremendous distances in the HST image.

Galaxies in another HST image went out to a redshift of 8.3, which is about 13.1 billion light years away. But there were still galaxies at that distance (as though they had been spoken into existence by God)!

The astronomers wanted to look far enough back into time to before they thought galaxies had formed. But the range of the HST is limited because at higher redshifts (into the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum), the signal moves outside its detection range.

James web space telescope

The JWST has a 6.5m mirror and was launched in 2021. It’s about 1.5 million km (930,000 miles) from the earth. The sunshield is about the size of a tennis court.

This telescope was designed to detect infrared light that the HST can’t see. They wanted to detect stars and galaxies at distances further away from the earth than the HST can detect.

It was designed to confirm the big bang model and the secular ideas about galaxy formation. They expected to see a time before galaxies had formed. At a redshift of about 14 they expected to see no galaxies.

The secular predictions for the JWST were:

1. There would be fewer galaxies at great distances and none beyond redshift 14 (less than 300 million years after the big bang) because they would not have formed yet.
2. The farthest (earliest) galaxies would have low mass and be clumpy and irregular because they would be immature.
3. The farthest galaxies would have no heavy elements (sometimes called “metals”) because they would not have formed yet.

Before any data was available from the JWST, Dr Lisle made these predictions based on his understanding of biblical creation:

1. There would be lots of galaxies at great distances even beyond redshift 14.
2. The farthest galaxies would be mature (fully formed) – massive and well-structured. God made them mature like He made Adam and Eve (Hawke, 2021).
3. The farthest galaxies would have heavy elements (like carbon and oxygen).
4. Secularists will respond to their failed predictions with statements like: “The JWST discovers that galaxies formed much earlier than previously thought”. And they will revise their ideas of galaxy evolution, but not the Big Bang Model itself.

The results of the JWST data show:

1. There are lots of galaxies at great distances even beyond redshift 14.
2. The farthest galaxies are mature (fully formed) – massive and well-structured.
3. The farthest galaxies have detectable heavy elements.

So, all of the secular predictions were wrong and all of the creation predictions were right. And rather than giving up their ideas about the big bang, they modified their ideas about galaxy evolution to accommodate these new observations!

Conclusion

The JWST failed to confirm the Big Bang Model. Instead, discoveries of the JWST confirm biblical creation and disprove long-held ideas about galaxy evolution. The distant regions of the universe are complex, and not simple.

The Bible says, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display His craftsmanship” (Ps. 19:1NLT). And, “Through everything God made, they [people] can clearly see His invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature” (Rom. 1:20).

Nature can’t create complexity like the elements of the periodic table or the structure of a star or galaxy. That comes from its powerful Creator. Astronomy declares the glories of God, not the glories of the Big Bang Model!

Appendix A: The Roman Space Telescope

The Roman Space Telescope (RST) is a future NASA infrared space telescope in development and scheduled to launch to a Sun–Earth L2 orbit in Sept 2026. It has a 2.4m wide primary mirror.

Appendix B: A biblical worldview

According to the biblical worldview, the astronomical universe was created rapidly over a few days near the beginning of time to be functionally mature and huge in size (Hawke, 2021). This was a miraculous event. God’s functionally mature creation makes the ideas of biological evolution and the big-bang obsolete and un-necessary. And it means that the complexity of stars and galaxies hasn’t changed with time – it was built into the original creation. Also, the complexity of species hasn’t changed with time – it was built into the original genomes.

Dr Lisle (who has a biblical worldview) believes that we are seeing these images of the stars and galaxies as they are now and not as they were many years ago – he believes that the bible uses an anisotropic synchrony convention, where we see events in real time (Lisle, 2010). But this is not essential for the biblical worldview.

Appendix C: The Big Bang model

In the standard Big Bang cosmological model, galaxy formation was understood to be a gradual process:
– First stars: 100-200 million years after the Big Bang
– Small clumps of stars: 200-400 million years after the Big Bang
– Galaxies assembling: 500 million – 1 billion years after the Big Bang
– Spiral galaxies: 1-2 billion years after the Big Bang

JWST dramatically challenged these timelines by finding large, massive, well-formed galaxies much earlier than the model predicted. For example, surprisingly mature and massive galaxies have been found 300-400 million years after the big bang. The oldest (most distant) galaxy detected by April 2026 by JWST is MoM-z14, with a redshift of 14.44 and a date of 280 million years after the big bang. And heavy elements like nitrogen and carbon were present in its emission spectra.

NASA scientists state, “With JWST, we are able to see farther than humans ever have before, and it looks nothing like what we predicted” and “There is a growing chasm between theory and observation related to the early universe”.

References

Hawke G, 2021, A functionally mature creation.
Lisle J, 2010, Anisotropic synchrony,  convention – A solution to the distant starlight problem, Answers Research Journal vol. 3, 191–207.
Lisle J, 2026, Discerning Truth: Discoveries of the James Webb Space Telescope (Video).

Acknowledgement

This post is based on a presentation by Dr Jason Lisle of the Biblical Science Institute.

Written, April 2026