Posted on 06/23/2003 11:31:49 AM PDT by yonif
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http://www.aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/The_Big_Bang_and_the_Big_Question_A_Universe_without_God$.asp |
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The Big Bang and the Big Question: A Universe without God?
Until the early twentieth century, astronomers entertained three possible models of the universe: 1. The universe could be static.
According to this theory, though the mutual gravitational attractions of stars and planets might hold them together in the form of solar systems and galaxies, each of these stellar-terrestrial groups slide through space along its own random trajectory, unrelated to the courses tracked by other groups of stars and planets.
The static model works for atheists and believers: Such a universe could have been created by God at some point in history, but it also could have existed forever without God. 2. The universe could be oscillating.
It might be a cosmic balloon alternately expanding and contracting. For a few billion years it would inflate, expanding into absolute nothingness. But the gravitational attraction of every star and planet pulling on every other would eventually slow this expansion until the whole process would reverse and the balloon would come crashing back in upon itself. All that existed would eventually smash together at the universe's center, releasing huge amounts of heat and light, spewing everything back out in all directions and beginning the expansion phase all over again.
Such a universe could also have been created by God or could have existed forever without God. 3. Finally, the universe could be open.
It might be a cosmic balloon that never implodes. If the total gravitational attraction of all stars and planets could not halt the initial expansion, as in the oscillating model, the universe would spill out into nothingness forever. Eventually the stars would burn out and a curtain of frozen darkness would enshroud all existence. Such a universe could never bring itself back to life. It would come into existence at a moment in history, blaze gloriously, and then pass into irrevocable night.
Crucially, the latter model proposes that before the one-time explosion, all the universe's matter and energy was contained in a singularity, a tiny dot that sat stable in space for eternity before it detonated.
This model proposes a paradox: Objects at rest -- like the initial singularity -- remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force; and yet, since the initial dot contained all matter and energy, nothing (at least, nothing natural) existed outside of this singularity that could have caused it to explode.
The simplest resolution of the paradox is to posit that something supernatural kicked the universe into being. The open model of the universe thus implies a supernatural Creator -- a God. THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY
In 1916 Albert Einstein released the first drafts of his general theory of relativity, and the scientific world went wild. It appeared that Einstein had revealed the deepest secrets of the universe. His equations also caused a few problems -- technical dilemmas, mathematical snags -- but not the sort of thing to interest newspapers or even popular science journals.
Two scientists noticed the glitches. Late in 1917 the Danish astronomer Willem de Sitter reviewed general relativity and returned a detailed response to Einstein, outlining the problem and proposing a radical solution: general relativity could work only if the entire universe was exploding, erupting out in all directions from a central point.
Einstein never responded to de Sitter's critique. Then, in 1922, Soviet mathematician Alexander Friedmann independently derived de Sitter's solution. If Einstein was right, Friedmann predicted, the universe must be expanding in all directions at high speed.
Meanwhile, across the sea, American astronomer Vesto Slipher actually witnessed the universe's explosive outward movement. Using the powerful telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, Slipher discovered that dozens of galaxies were indeed rocketing away from a central point.
Between 1918 and 1922, de Sitter, Friedmann, and Slipher independently shared their findings with Einstein, but he strangely resisted their solution -- as if, in his brilliance, he realized the theological implications of an exploding universe.
Einstein even wrote a letter to Zeitschrift fur Physik, a prestigious technical journal, calling Friedmann's suggestions "suspicious," and to de Sitter Einstein jotted a note, "This circumstance [of an expanding universe] irritates me." In another note, Einstein reassured one of his colleagues, "I have not yet fallen in the hands of priests," a veiled reference to de Sitter, Friedmann, and Slipher. THE HUBBLE DISCOVERY
In 1925, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble dealt the static model of the universe a fatal blow. Using what was then the largest telescope in the world, Hubble revealed that every galaxy within 6 x 1017 miles of the Earth was receding.
Einstein tenaciously refused to acknowledge Hubble's work. He continued teaching the static model for five more years, until, at Hubble's request, he traveled from Berlin to Pasadena to personally examine the evidence. At the trip's conclusion, Einstein reluctantly admitted, "New observations by Hubble ... make it appear likely that the general structure of the universe is not static."
Einstein died in 1955, swayed but still not fully convinced that the universe was expanding. THE SOUND OF THE BIG BANG
Ten years later, in 1965, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were calibrating a supersensitive microwave detector at Bell Telephone Laboratories in New Jersey. No matter where the two scientists aimed the instrument, it picked up the same unidentified background noise -- a steady, three-degree Kelvin (3K) hum. On a hunch, the two Bell Labs employees looked over an essay on general relativity by a student of Alexander Friedmann. The essay predicted that the remnants of the universe's most recent explosion should be detectable in the form of weak microwave radiation, "around 5K or thereabouts."
The two scientists realized they had discovered the echo of the biggest explosion in history: "the Big Bang." For this discovery, Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize.
The discovery of the "3K hum" undermined the static model of the universe. There were only two models left: one that worked without God and one that did not.
The last issue to be settled was: Had the primordial universe exploded an infinite number of times (the oscillating model) or only once (the open model)?
Researchers knew the issue could be settled by determining the average density of the universe. If the universe contained the equivalent of about one hydrogen atom per ten cubic feet of space, then the gravitational attraction among all the universe's particles would be strong enough to stop and reverse the expansion. Eventually there would be a "big crunch," which would lead to another big bang (and then to another big crunch, etc.). If, on the other hand, the universe contained less than this density, then the big bang's explosive force would overcome all the gravitational pulls, and everything would sail out into nothingness forever. THE PANIC AND ITS RESOLUTION
Curiously, the death of the static model inspired panic in many quarters of the scientific world. Mathematicians, physicists, and astronomers joined forces to prove the eternity of the universe.
Dr. Robert Jastrow, arguably the greatest astrophysicist of the time and director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Center for Space Studies, was named head of the research project. For fifteen years Jastrow and his team tried to demonstrate the validity of the oscillating model, but the data told a different story.
In 1978 Jastrow released NASA's definitive report, shocking the public with his announcement that the open model was probably correct. On June 25 of that year, Jastrow wrote about his findings to the New York Times Magazine:
This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." ... [But] for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; [and] as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
Dr. James Trefil, a physicist at the University of Virginia, independently confirmed Jastrow's discovery in 1983. Drs. John Barrow, an astronomer at the University of Sussex, and Frank Tipler, a mathematician and physicist at Tulane University, published similar results in 1986. GENESIS CONFIRMED
At the 1990 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Professor John Mather of Columbia University, an astrophysicist who also serves on the staff of NASA's Goddard Center, presented "the most dramatic support ever" for an open universe.
According to the Boston Globe reporter covering the conference, Mather's keynote address was greeted with thunderous applause, which led the meeting's chairman, Dr. Geoffrey Burbridge, to comment: "It seems clear that the audience is in favor of the book of Genesis - at least, the first verse or so, which seems to have been confirmed."
In 1998, Drs. Ruth Daly, Erick Guerra, and Lin Wan of Princeton University announced to the American Astronomical Society, "We can state with 97.5 percent confidence that the universe will continue to expand forever."
Later that year, Dr. Allan Sandage, a world-renowned astrophysicist on the staff of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, was quoted in The New Republic saying, "The big bang is best understood as a miracle triggered by some kind of transcendent power."
Newsweek columnist George Will began his November 9, 1998, column with this quip: "Soon the American Civil Liberties Union or People for the American Way, or some similar faction of litigious secularism, will file suit against NASA, charging that the Hubble Space Telescope unconstitutionally gives comfort to the religiously inclined." PERMISSION TO BELIEVE
The same year, Newsweek reported a recent and unexpected swing of opinion among the once passionately agnostic: "Forty percent of American scientists now believe in a personal God - not merely an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a deity to whom they can pray."
There are, of course, mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists who choose not to believe in God today. For a variety of reasons, they choose instead to have faith that new natural laws will be discovered or that new evidence will appear and overturn the current model of an open, created universe.
But for many in the scientific community, the evidence is persuasive. For many, modern cosmology offers permission to believe.
LAWRENCE KELEMEN is the author of Permission to Believe: Four Rational Approaches to God's Existence (Targum/Feldheim, 1990) and Permission to Receive: Four Rational Approaches to the Torah's Divine Origin (Targum Press, 1996). He studied at U.C.L.A., Yeshiva University of Los Angeles, and Harvard University. He was also a downhill skiing instructor on the staff of the Mammoth Mountain Ski School in California and served as news director and anchorman for KMMT-FM radio station. Currently he teaches medieval and modern Jewish philosophy at Neve Yerushalayim College of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem.
This essay is excerpted from "Jewish Matters: A pocketbook of knowledge and inspiration." "Jewish Matters" includes short essays on topics from relationships, prayer, happiness, and Shabbat, written by top male and female educators from around the world. Deep, funny, and fascinating, "JM" is available in Jewish bookstores, and on Amazon.com , and Chapters.ca. More information and excerpts can be seen at www.jewishmatters.com.
Copyright © 1995 - 2003 Aish.com - http://www.aish.com
It's a shame that Newton (a Christian heretic in any case) never saw the Mandelbrot set. The detail and complexity of that object overwhelms anything to be found in the natural world, and yet it unfolds from the most trivial of mathematical expressions.
If you want to call that "design"--and I am very sympathetic to that point of view--then I'm willing to accept that the universe was designed. I believe that the universe unfolded from pure mathematics in the same way that the Mandelbrot set does. That's how a truly omnipotent, omniscient God would have done it. That also tells you why I'm a Deist, and part of why I went into physics.
Well, wait a minute; If you're willing to 'LEAN', if you will, towards GRAND DESIGN, then WHY would you argue with me that somethings could have happen by chance?
For instance, lets assume God used Choas to create LIFE. If he used ORDER to create the world so that CHOAS could degenerate it into life, then God still created Life. All you're doing is argueing that He did it from the Big Bang forward, whereas I'm saying that he touched a few molecules on Earth and made the Universes best 'Wedding Cake'.
You've even put forth the idea that a SALT DOME is a work of incredible odds. Heck, I don't disagree. He certainly was a master. So if the chances of SALT coming together to make a SALT DOME seems a bit rare, imagine if it could walk, breath, communicate and reproduce. NOW that's something to behold!!
I'll accept that God's grand design was mathematically based, but as the Creator of the Universe, He also gave the insight to learn and master the Mathematics to see his work, to His most perfect beings, you and I.
You got me good, with that one!! LOL!
Here I was, pretty sure I'd need all the wits I could gather to argue the complexities of everything I wrote, and you give in!! That's just not FAIR!
Thanks for educating and teaching me so much. Have a great day.
Wait a minute yourself. I thought your point is that life could not have happened by chance, so therefore it must have been built "by hand".
My own expectation is that life evolved by insensible degrees from nonlife. If the entire process were laid bare before us, there would be enormous debate about what qualifies as the simplest life form, and what only qualifies as "mere" organic chemistry. (Even today, people argue about whether viruses and prions qualify as life forms.) Wherever the line would be drawn, however, the "first life form" would have an enormous history behind it.
But if I'm wrong, and it really was a matter of chance, then so be it. There seem to be worlds enough (and time) for that, so there's still no requirement for divine intervention.
For instance, lets assume God used Choas to create LIFE. If he used ORDER to create the world so that CHOAS could degenerate it into life, then God still created Life.
By that standard, there can be nothing in existence that is not designed. There can be no test that says, "this is designed" or "this is not designed", because all it will ever say is "designed". Even if that's true from some perspective, it's not a useful heuristic.
I'm saying that he touched a few molecules on Earth and made the Universes best 'Wedding Cake'.
It's a rather inadequate conception of God you have, that He would have to do anything so vulgar as move atoms "by hand" into positions where they would not naturally have gone. Why wouldn't He write the laws of physics and chemistry so that they would automatically allow for such things in the first place? What makes people so faithless, that they think they can find gross seams in their God's handiwork?
You've even put forth the idea that a SALT DOME is a work of incredible odds.
I've done no such thing. Salt domes are self-evidently likely objects. I was presenting you a reductio ad absurdum for that probability calculation technique. Garbage in, garbage out.
Heck, I don't disagree. He certainly was a master.
But I can't smell it for you, I guess. All I can do is point it out.
Well, I went to my CRC handbook and looked up the compounds formed by helium, and I knew I'd met my match. :-)
Good observation. The author of the piece likewise thusly concluded:
"But perhaps that is where we should be left: in the dark, tortured by confusing hints, intimations of immortality, and a sense that, dear God, we really do not yet understand."
Some have "faith" to believe the Universe was formed from nothing by nothing specific, others place their faith in the scriptures' accuracy on the matter of the Creator's design. Each is accountable for his own step of faith.
Bob, Prion Protein is still a protein, made up of Amino Acids, the same as you and I. A prion protein is simply a protein that evolved to be a 'parasite', if you will, on life. It's as if you and I had the same father, only you turned to a life of crime and robbed me. If the Prion Protein had a different "FATHER", as in my example, I'd be impressed, but a prion protein, while amazing, isn't another life form alien to our own. It is, rather, derived from Amino Acids that randomly coagulated, as atheist's insist must have happen.
What is a protein? Proteins are long chains of smaller molecules called amino acids, linked together. Much of the work on the origin of life has focused on the question of how amino acids came into being and how they got linked into proteins. Amino acids contain primarily carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms. All of these would have been present in some form in the atmosphere of the young Earth: unlike today's atmosphere, it was not a mixture of mostly oxygen and nitrogen gas, but may instead have contained nitrogen along with carbon monoxide or dioxide (emitted from volcanoes), or perhaps methane (a compound of carbon and hydrogen). Although the molecules of amino acids are small and simple in comparison with proteins, they are elaborate when compared with the molecules of these gases.
If amino acids are the ONLY building blocks of life, as I have supposed in every post I've made, and together they form proteins, which has been proven to turn "rogue", then they are still part of the same genetic family of life on Earth, no matter how big or small.
Show me a protein that formed on another planet, and I'll be impressed.
Precisely for the reasons of modern science today. I hope you know I was speaking figuratively about God's 'Hand' touching a few molecules.
Let's suppose that God created a system so elaborate as to design itself into Life. He designed the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, etc.--not to mention molecular laws, which are opposed to physics, to allow life to form. What would stop His supreme creations, you and I, from becoming gods ourselves? He must have supposed that we would eventually covet this process and turn out life like some mad "Brave New World'.
Instead, as I believe, He kept this last secret for Himself. That we might not create life, as He created it, so that we might become gods ourselves.
But, of course, then you could argue that if we would offend God with such a creation, why would he allow homosexuality, abortion, and Ted Kennedy, surely things that offend God as much, or more, then creating life, I suppose.
It's something attributable to Sir Thomas More, although you can probably trace it in some form or other all the way back to Plato.
The physicist (and all-around genius) Stephen Wolfram has concocted a nascent Theory of Everything using cellular automata. He describes it in his book A New Kind of Science. I've started reading at it, but it's heavy weather.
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