Hindu and Non-Religious Views of the Universe’s Origin

Different questions about the universe

The universe includes space, time, matter and energy: not just Earth, but everything that exists physically. Asking about its origin can involve several different questions. How did it develop? Does it depend on a divine reality? Can anyone know its ultimate beginning?

Hindu sacred texts approach these questions in different ways. Some describe the universe’s relationship with the divine; others explore creation through questions and poetic images. They should not be treated as one identical account. Non-religious approaches generally look to scientific evidence and natural processes rather than divine action.

The Rig Veda: creation as a mystery

The Hymn of Creation, in the Rig Veda 10.129, explores what might have existed before the familiar world. It describes a state without sky, the division between day and night, or even the ordinary distinction between existence and non-existence. Its language suggests that the beginning cannot easily be described using categories drawn from life today.

The hymn refers to “That One Thing”, darkness, warmth and the emergence of desire. Desire is described as the “primal seed and germ of Spirit”, suggesting an impulse towards creation. These are religious and poetic images, not a sequence of scientific measurements.

Its ending is especially important. It asks, “Who verily knows” where creation came from, and states that the gods came later than the world’s creation. This raises a difficulty: if the gods were not there at the beginning, how could they explain it as witnesses?

Even the one who oversees the world may know its origin, “or perhaps he knows not”. The hymn therefore leaves room for uncertainty. It does not offer a simple, confident description of a god making everything. For Hindus who emphasise this passage, questioning and humility can be part of religious reflection rather than signs of rejecting religion.

The Bhagavata Purana: a universe that undergoes dissolution

Many Hindu accounts understand the universe cyclically: creation and dissolution belong to repeated cosmic cycles. Dissolution means that the universe’s existing form ends or is absorbed, rather than necessarily disappearing for ever.

Bhagavata Purana 12.4.4 describes the naimittika, or “occasional”, annihilation. Lord Narayana lies on the bed of Ananta Shesha and “absorbs the entire universe within Himself while Lord Brahma sleeps”. Narayana is the divine creator in this passage; Brahma is associated with creation, and Ananta Shesha is the serpent on whom Narayana rests.

The picture is of the universe being drawn back into the divine. Brahma’s sleep and the description of the annihilation as occasional place this ending within a larger cyclical understanding. Destruction is therefore not simply a permanent defeat of creation: the universe remains dependent on divine reality through its different phases.

This differs from treating creation as a single event completely separate from everything that follows. The passage concerns the universe’s dissolution, but it helps explain Hindu beliefs about its origin by presenting creation and its ending as parts of an ongoing divine process.

The Bhagavad Gita: the universe within the divine

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna teaches Arjuna. In 11:7, Krishna tells him to behold “the whole universe of moving and stationary beings” situated in “only one part in this body of Mine”.

The inclusion of moving and stationary beings makes the vision comprehensive: the whole universe is contained within Krishna’s divine form. The passage teaches that the universe is not independent of the divine and that divine reality is greater than the universe it contains.

Unlike a scientific account, this verse does not explain how matter expanded or how galaxies formed. Its main concern is the relationship between the universe and the divine. A Hindu could therefore accept a scientific explanation of physical development while using this passage to understand the universe’s deeper significance.

The Big Bang and Brian Cox’s view

The Big Bang theory explains the universe’s development from an extremely hot, dense early state. Space expanded, and the universe cooled; over time, matter formed the structures we observe, including stars and galaxies. This was not an ordinary explosion into an already empty surrounding space: the expansion concerns space itself.

Evidence includes the redshift of light from distant galaxies, which supports an expanding universe, and cosmic microwave background radiation, the cooled remnant radiation from the early universe. These observations make the Big Bang an evidence-based scientific explanation rather than simply a guess.

The physicist Brian Cox accepts this scientific account but distinguishes what science can explain from what remains unknown. In a 2011 interview, he gave the universe’s estimated age as 13.73 billion years, while stressing that this estimate depended on the scientific model and evidence available at the time.

Cox argued that scientists understand much about the universe’s development from roughly a billionth of a second after the Big Bang onwards. However, when asked about its ultimate beginning, his answer was “we don’t know”. He does not believe in God, but he does not claim that science has answered every question about origins or that religion and science must always conflict.

Humanists and atheists can accept the Big Bang without adding a divine explanation. They may argue that explanations should be based on evidence and that an unanswered question is not, by itself, evidence for a creator. This does not mean that every non-religious person claims the universe certainly appeared “by chance”.

How far do the views conflict?

There are strong reasons for seeing compatibility. The Rig Veda’s questions about whether anyone knows the ultimate origin can be compared with Cox’s acknowledgement of uncertainty. Neither requires pretending that every question has been settled. However, this similarity does not mean the hymn predicted the Big Bang.

A Hindu may also interpret scripture as teaching about divine dependence and meaning, while science explains physical processes. On this reading, the universe could develop through the Big Bang while still being contained within, or dependent upon, the divine. Accepting the scientific account does not logically require atheism.

There are also genuine differences. A Hindu belief that the universe depends on a divine reality conflicts with an atheist’s rejection of gods. If a scriptural description is treated as a literal physical account that contradicts scientific evidence, the two explanations cannot both be accepted in the same way. Equally, accepting evidence for the Big Bang does not establish that the universe is repeatedly absorbed into Narayana: cyclical divine creation and scientific cosmology are not identical claims.

A justified conclusion is that Hindu views and the Big Bang need not conflict over physical development, especially where scripture is read symbolically or theologically. Nevertheless, disagreement remains over divine reality and the authority used to explain it. The extent of conflict depends on the particular Hindu interpretation and non-religious position being compared.