CHAPTER 26. CONFESSIONS THAT THE UNIVERSE DID HAVE A BEGINNING
CHAPTER
26.
CONFESSIONS
THAT THE UNIVERSE
DID
HAVE A BEGINNING
Up to the beginning of the 20th century, the prevailing view was that the universe was of infinite dimensions, and that it had existed and would continue to exist for ever. According to this view, known as the Static Universe Model, there was no question of the universe having any beginning or an end.
This perspective, which represents the basis of materialist philosophy, regarded the universe as being a stable, fixed and unchanging accumulation of matter, while denying the existence of any Creator.
In these days, the threshold of the 21st century, modern physics has proven, with many experiments, observations and calculations, that the universe had a beginning and was created in a single moment with an explosion known as the Big Bang.
In addition, it has been established that contrary to materialist claims, the universe is not fixed and stable, but is rather in a constant state of flux and change, and is also expanding. These facts are today accepted by the scientific world.
Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German Professor of Neurology and a well-known evolutionist science writer:
To put it another way, scientists encountered phenomena suggesting that the universe had a beginning.
This idea seemed so revolutionary, or unscientific to put it in other terms, or odd, a word beloved of many scientists, that a number of concepts and opinions were put forward in order to avoid the striking conclusion that would be reminiscent of those in ancient myths and religions. We are not going to discuss these often complex concepts and universal models here. Because as stated at the beginning, we consider that the American Penzias and Wilson’s discoveries represent a final answer to this question. The universe did indeed have a beginning. 389
Anthony Flew is a British philosopher known for several decades as an atheist but who later expressed his views in favor of theism:
Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarrassed by the contemporary cosmological consensus. For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof, that the universe had a beginning. So long as the universe can be comfortably thought of as being not only without end but also without beginning, it remains easy to urge that its brute existence, and whatever are found to be its most fundamental features, should be accepted as the explanatory ultimates. Although I believe that it remains still correct, it certainly is neither easy nor comfortable to maintain this position in the face of the Big Bang story. 390
Dennis Sciama is a scientist who, together with Fred Hoyle, spent many years defending the fixed universe theory. In Stephen Hawking’s words:
Defending the steady-state theory alongside Fred Hoyle for years, Dennis Sciama described the final position they had reached after all the evidence for the Big Bang theory was revealed. Sciama stated that he had taken part in the heated debate between the defenders of the steady-state theory and those who tested that theory with the hope of refuting it. He added that he had defended the steady-state theory, not because he deemed it valid, but because he wished that it were valid.
Fred Hoyle stood out against all objections as evidence against this theory began to unfold. Sciama goes on to say that he had first taken a stand along with Hoyle but, as evidence began to pile up, he had to admit that the game was over and that the steady-state theory had to be dismissed. 391
Stephen W. Hawking is a British theoretical physicist and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge:
Why should the Universe be in a state of high order at one end of time, the end that we call the past? Why is it not in a state of complete disorder at all times? After all, this might seem more probable. And why is the direction of time in which disorder increases the same as that in which the Universe expands? One possible view is that God simply chose that the Universe should be in a smooth and ordered state at the beginning of the expansion phase. We should not try to understand why, or question His reasons because the beginning of the Universe was the work of God. But the whole history of the Universe could be said to be the work of God. 392
Don N. Page is Professor of Physics at the University of Alberta:
There is no mechanism known as yet that would allow the Universe to begin in an arbitrary state and then evolve to its present highly ordered state. 393
Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy is a biologist at Hacettepe University and specializes in zoogeography:
Today, however, we know that infinite time and infinite space belong to God, that the universe is finite…394
Hoimar Von Ditfurth:
 Dennis Sciama |
We cannot know what there was before this point and at its beginning. That is a sphere closed to science. Even the question of why there was a beginning is unanswerable. In addition, the questions of the origins of the first structure of the initial matter, hydrogen, its characteristics, and what gave rise to that hydrogen, are all parts of this mystery. 395
Leonard Huxley is a biographer and writer, and Elder Professor of Physics in the University of Adelaide:
. . . “creation” in the ordinary sense of the world, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence; and that it made its appearance in six days . . . in consequence of the volition of some pre-existing Being. 396
Prof. Fred Hoyle is a British astronomer and a mathematician at Cambridge University:
The Big Bang theory holds that the universe began with a single explosion. Yet as can be seen below, an explosion merely throws matter apart, while the Big Bang has mysteriously produced the opposite effect—with matter clumping together in the form of galaxies. 397
CHAPTER
27.
CONFESSIONS THAT THE ORDER IN THE UNIVERSE
CANNOT HAVE COME ABOUT BY CHANCE
Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Arizona State University:
Everywhere we look in the Universe, from the far flung galaxies to the deepest recesses of the atom, we encounter order. . . Central to the idea of a very special, orderly Universe is the concept of information. A highly structured system, displaying a great deal of organized activity, needs a lot of information to describe it. Alternatively, we may say that it contains much information.
We are therefore presented with a curious question. If information and order always has a natural tendency to disappear, where did all the information that makes the world such a special place come from originally? The Universe is like a clock slowly running down. How did it get wound up in the first place? 398
Careful measurements put the rate of expansion very close to a critical value at which the universe will just escape its own gravity and expand forever. A little slower and the cosmos would collapse, a little faster and the cosmic material would have long ago completely dispersed. It is interesting to ask precisely how delicately the rate of expansion has been “fine tuned” to fall on this narrow dividing line between twocatastrophes.
If at time I S (by which the time pattern of expansion was already firmly established) the expansion rate had differed from its actual value by more than 10-18, it would have been sufficient to throw the delicate balance out. The explosive vigour of the universe is thus matched with almost unbelievable accuracy to its gravitating power. The Big Bang was not evidently any old bang, but an explosion of exquisitely arranged magnitude. 399
The laws [of physics] . . . seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. . . . The universe must have a purpose. 400
It is hard to resist that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in the numbers, has been rather carefully thought out. . . . The seemingly miraculous concurrence of numerical values that nature has assigned to her fundamental constants must remain the most compelling evidence for an element of cosmic design. 401
Had nature opted for a slightly different set of numbers, the world would be a very different place. Probably we would not be here to see it . . . Recent discoveries about the primeval cosmos oblige us to accept that the expanding universe has been set up in its motion with a cooperation of astonishing precision. 402
If the world’s finest minds can unravel only with difficulty the deeper workings of nature, how could it be supposed that those workings are merely a mindless accident, a product of blind chance?403
If you wanted to produce carbon and oxygen in roughly equal quantities by stellar nucleosynthesis, these are the two basic levels you would have to fix, and your fixing would have to be just about where these levels are actually found to be. . . . A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics . . . and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. 404
I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars. 405
Hoimar Von Ditfurth is a German Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and a well-known evolutionist science writer:
If dozens of mutual relationships and just about countless natural phenomena, of which we have only become aware as the result of centuries of experiments and a great deal of hard work by scientists, are not sources of amazement and astonishment, genuine awe, then what will be? There is an endless list of astonishing natural phenomena that we have only learned as the result of scientific research, from the dimensions of the universe and the laws governing the rate of expansion of stars to the secret-filled relationship between matter and energy, and from the events taking place in the cell nucleus, in which is stored the blueprint for a living organism to the discovery of the electrical currents in our brains. . . . Indeed, looking at the unique properties inherent in the formation of a single protein molecule performing biological functions, it appears impossible to account for the atoms needing to combine at the right moment, in the correct sequence, and with the correct electrical and mechanical properties, to do so by chance. 406
In addition, scientific findings reveal that all the physical balances in the Universe have been very finely arranged in order to support human life. |
W. Press, an astrophysicist, writing in an article in Nature magazine:
There is a grand design in the Universe that favours the development of intelligent life. 407
CHAPTER 28.
CONFESSIONS REGARDING DARWINISM’S
NEGATIVE EFFECT ON MORAL VALUES
In the 19th century, the theory of evolution began to exert an influence over a wide sphere, beyond such branches of science as biology and paleontology, extending from human relations to the analysis of history, from politics to society. Efforts were made to adapt Darwin’s idea of the struggle for survival in nature—as a result of which the fittest would survive while the weak were eliminated—to human thought and behavior. Applying Darwin’s claim that nature was a battleground to human societies served as a justification of class conflicts, a social order in which the strong oppressed the weak, racism, colonialism, exploitation, repression and other forms of inhumanity.
Reading between the lines, even evolutionists admit the inhumanity that Darwinist ideas continue to inflict on societies:
Theodosius Dobzhansky is a geneticist and evolutionary biologist at Columbia University:
Natural selection can favor egoism, hedoism, cowardice instead of bravery, cheating and exploitation, while group ethics in virtually all societies tend to counteract or forbid such “natural” behavior, and to glorify their opposites: kindness, generosity and even self-sacrifice for the good of others of one’s tribe or nation and finally mankind. 408
P. J. Darlington is of Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, Cambridge:
The first point is that selfishness and violent are inherent in us, inherited from our remotest animal ancestors. . . . Violence is, then, natural to man, a product of evolution. 409
Robert Wright, author of the book, The Moral Animal:
Evolutionary theory, after all, has a long and largely sordid history of application to human affairs. After being mingled with political philosophy around the turn of the century to form the vague ideology known as “social Darwinism,” it played into the hands of racists, fascists, and the most heartless sort of capitalists. 410
We were victims of a cruel social ideology that assumes that competition among individuals, classes, nations or races is the natural condition of life, and that it is also natural for the superior to dispossess the inferior . . . . The law of natural selection is not, I will maintain, science. It is an ideology, and a wicked one. . . . 411
389 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 1 (The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs), p. 56.
390 Henry Margenau, Roy Abraham Vargesse, Cosmos, Bios, Theos, La Salle II: Open Court Publishing, 1992, p. 241.
391 Stephen Hawking, Evreni Kucaklayan Karinca, Alkim Kitapcilik ve Yayincilik, 1993, pp. 62-63.
392 Stephen W. Hawking, “The Direction of Time,” New Scientist, Vol. 115, 9 July 1987, p. 47.
393 Don N. Page, “Inflation Does Not Explain Time Asymmetry,” Nature, Vol. 304, July 7, 1983, p. 40.
394 Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kalıtım ve Evrim [“Heredity and Evolution”], p. 21.
395 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 3 [“The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 3”], p. 7.
396 Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, MacMillan, 1938, Vol.1. p. 241.
397 Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, London, 1984, pp. 184-185.
398 Paul Davies, The Accidental Universe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, Preface.
399 Paul Davies, Superforce: The Search for a Grand Unified Theory of Nature, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984, p. 184.
400 Ibid., p. 243.
401 Paul Davies. God and the New Physics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983, p. 189.
402 Paul Davies. The Accidental Universe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982, Foreword.
403 Paul Davies, Superforce, pp. 235-236.
404 Paul Davies. The Accidental Universe, p. 118.
405 Fred Hoyle, Religion and the Scientists, London: SCM, 1959; M. A. Corey, The Natural History of Creation, Maryland: University Press of America, 1995, p. 341.
406 Hoimar Von Ditfurth, Dinozorların Sessiz Gecesi 1,[“The Silent Night of the Dinosaurs 1”], p. 123.
407 W. Press, “A Place for Teleology?,” Nature, Vol. 320, 1986, p. 315.
408 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Ethics and Values in Biogical and Cultural Evolution” Zygon, the Journal of Religion and Science, as reported in Los Angeles Times, Part IV (June 16, 1974), p. 6.
409 P.J. Darlington, Evolution for Naturalists, 1980, pp. 243-244.
410 Robert Wright, The Moral Animal, New York:Vintage Books, 1994, p. 7.
411 Earthwatch, March 1989, p. 17; cited in Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God, Baker Book House, 1989, p. 57.
