Talk:Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory/sandbox

Since the acceptance of the Big Bang theory as the dominant physical cosmological paradigm, there have been a variety of reactions by religious groups as to its implications for their respective religious cosmologies.

The Big Bang itself is a scientific theory, and as such stands or falls by its agreement with observations. But as a theory which addresses the origins of reality it carries theological implications regarding the concept of creation ex nihilo (a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing"). In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state Universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory.

Pope Pius XII declared, at the November 22, 1951 opening meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that the Big Bang theory does not conflict with the Catholic concept of creation.