بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم
The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology)
By: Theodore Walker Jr. and Chandra Wickramasinghe
إعداد: أ. مصطفى نصر قديح
· Sir Fred Hoyle (b. 1915, d. 2001) is a major figure in the history of astronomy and in the history of cosmology. In 1948, with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi, Hoyle developed “steady state” cosmology. In 1949, in BBC radio talks, Hoyle began referring to an alternative cosmology as “big bang” cosmology (Harrison 2005: 296; Longair 2006: 335; Mitton 2008: 390; Gingerich 2014: 111) (see The Nature of the Universe: A Series of Broadcast Lectures [1950] by Fred Hoyle). Hoyle’s labels—“steady state” and “big bang”—are still widely used. In 2000, Geoffrey Burbidge, Jayant V. Narlikar, and Hoyle developed a revised steady-state cosmology called “quasi-steady-state” cosmology. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p3]
· Credit for originating and developing the cosmology Hoyle labeled “big bang” goes to several individuals. Usually, the first is Belgian astronomer and priest Georges Edouard Lemaître (Abbé Lemaître) (b. 1894, d. 1966). And, along with Albert Einstein (b. 1879, d. 1955), credit often goes to Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (b. 1758, d. 1840), William de Sitter (b. 1872, d. 1934), Vestro Melvin Slipher (b. 1875, d. 1969), Edwin Hubble (b. 1889, d. 1953), Milton Humason (b. 1891, d. 1972), George Gamow (b. 1904, d. 1968), Arno Penzias (b. 1933), and Robert Woodrow Wilson (b. 1936). [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p3]
· According to Robert Jastrow, Vestro Melvin Slipher’s 1913 discovery of a dozen red-shifted galaxies was “the first hint that the universe is expanding” (1978: K1). Also, Jastrow credits William de Sitter for producing an expandinguniverse solution to Einstein’s equations (1992: 24). And he credits Milton Humason, an observatory janitor who taught himself astronomy, with assisting in the development of big bang cosmology. Humason worked with Edwin Hubble. Hubble measured distances, while Humason measured speeds (Jastrow 1992: 28–29).
In 1826, Heinrich Olbers showed something paradoxical. He showed that an infinite, static universe would yield a sky filled with starlight. The problem of Olbers’s paradox was solved by Hubble and Humason’s 1929 discovery. Inspired by Slipher’s 1913 red-shift discoveries, Hubble and Humason discovered more extragalactic red shifts. These red shifts indicated that the universe is expanding rapidly. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p3]
· Hoyle is usually remembered mainly for contributing to the development of steady-state and quasi-steady-state cosmological models and for naming an alternative model “big bang.” And though he argued against big bang models, he nevertheless made highly significant contributions to the development of contemporary astronomy and cosmology. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p8]
· Rather than accepting this late modern tendency, we advance a different view. A connection between the discoveries of science and some sort of generalized “religious” worldview cannot be denied. We cannot simply dismiss arguments for an all-pervasive cosmic consciousness. For example, consider the so-called coupling constants of physics. These numbers have to be arbitrarily chosen with enormous precision. Otherwise, cosmic processes would not admit the possible development of our lives. Was this “fine-tuning” a random life-favoring fluke? Or was it the deliberate act of a super intelligence? [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p24]
· Fred Hoyle is an iconic figure of twentieth-century astronomy. He made long-lasting and fundamental contributions to our knowledge of the cosmos. He accepted logic and mathematics as final arbiters in all matters concerning the cosmos. In the conventional sense of that word, Hoyle started his scientific career as an atheist. Hoyle’s fidelity to evidences from logic, mathematics, and observational science, however, pushed him toward theism. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p24]
· Hoyle broke with this tradition in the 1940s. He introduced nuclear physics into astronomy by pioneering the concept of nucleosynthesis in stars. In 1946, Hoyle published “The Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen,” a ground-breaking paper. Here, he showed how chemical elements were synthesized from hydrogen by stellar nuclear reactions. He also linked the evolution of stars to nuclear reactions in their cores (Hoyle 1946a). The main energy-producing nuclear reaction in stars converts hydrogen into helium. The further conversion of 4He (helium, atomic number 4) to 12C (carbon, atomic number 12) and thence to heavier elements was thought to be impossible. Hoyle, through his calculations in nuclear physics, came to a different conclusion. He argued that there must be a hitherto undiscovered resonance in the nucleus of 12C (an unstable energy level) if 4He is to burn into 12C. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p25-26]
· Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe argued that the arrangements of organic molecules into living forms—for example, chains of amino acids assembled into enzymes—had such miniscule probabilities that to envisage their self-assembly taking place in the oceans of the Earth is ludicrous in the extreme. In Evolution from Space (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe 1981b), it was calculated that the chance of arriving at the correct arrangements of amino acids into the 2000 or so enzymes crucial for life in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000 . Hoyle encapsulated the essence of this calculation in his famous “Boeing 747 analogy.” He wrote: The chance that life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p30]
· By comparing the chance assembly of 2000 enzymes to the chance assembly of a Boeing 747, Hoyle was illustrating the incredible improbability of both. Similarly, in Evolution from Space: A Theory of Cosmic Creationism, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe wrote:life cannot have had a random beginning. Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes, the necessary typewriters, and certainly the waste paper baskets required for the deposition of wrong attempts. The same is true for living material. (1981b: 148).
Theories that appeal to such highly improbable chance assemblies are scientific failures. Like the complexity of Boeing 747s and of Shakespeare’s works, the complexity of life exceeds the possibility of random assembly.
[Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p30]
· Dawkins argues against impossibly improbable “Boeing 747 macromutations” made by junkyard hurricanes, and in favor of more probable “Stretched DC8 macromutations . . . made by modifying an earlier airliner, the DC8” (234). Critics who have challenged this “Boeing 747” improbability argument have asserted without proof that a process of step-wise natural selection toward the survival of the fittest would operate so as to lead to the emergence of a living cell (a living “Stretched DC8” from a nonliving predecessor). This process has been shown possible in biology only as a means of fine-tuning life from previous life (a living DC8) under highly restricted conditions. Its operation in a cumulative manner leading to the origin of life (leading from nonlife to a living cell) remains an illusion. The universe has to “contain” the genetic information for evolution if such a step-wise process is to lead from nonlife to life. Computer simulations that have been offered in defense of this position are inadvertently deceptive and misleading. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p31]
· At larger distance scales, the universe appears to be homogeneous, smooth, and expanding. At smaller distance scales, we see inhomogeneous collapsing clumps. Therefore, it is observationally significant to distinguish smooth long-range astronomy from clumpy short-range astronomy. Additionally, it is mereologically significant to distinguish whole from parts (including parts greater than billions of light years). [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p44]
· The work of Einstein, Lemaître, Hubble, and Gamow provides the backdrop for cosmological models developed during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In 1948, Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle proposed an alternative to the big bang theory. They argued that the expanding universe observed by Hubble and Humason was actually a phenomenon that was the same from whichever point of vantage in the universe. This new cosmology was called the “steady-state” theory of the universe and remained a serious rival to the standard big bang cosmological models well into the 1960s. In order to fit the observations, however, the steady-state theory required a new physics, for it required the creation of new “matter” from an energy field as old “matter” continued to expand. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p45]
· A large set of observations are now interpreted to imply a big bang origin of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Most (if not all) of the “matter” we observe with our most powerful telescopes certainly originated in a gigantic explosion. Modern cosmological data are interpreted to imply the presence of both dark matter and dark energy. The dark energy accounts for 70 percent of the total mass energy of the Universe, the dark matter for 25 percent of the mass energy, and the normal matter of galaxies account for less than 5 percent. These estimates are, however, model-dependent. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p46]
· Consider the extreme complexity (a very specific complexity) of even the simplest life. The chances of even the simplest microbe arising from random processes are outrageously remote. The probabilities are less than 1 in 101000! The stupendous improbability of life arising from random chance argues in favor of a nonrandom cause. Gibson, Schild, and Wickramasinghe (2010) argued for the possibility of an abiotic origin of life on one of 1080 primordial planets within the first million years of the history of the big bang. Nevertheless, this is still a probabilistic miracle. [Theodore Walker & Chandra Wickramasinghe: The Big Bang and God (An Astro-Theology), Palgrave Macmillan 2015, p59-60]
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