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Wonders of Creation 86
What turns a vague
theory into a scientific certainty? How do we know for sure if something is a
firmly established scientific fact, or a theory which needs more evidence
before it is accepted generally by the scientific community?
To the general
public science is seen as a discipline of certainties. It is a world where
everything is measured, weighed, counted and quantified. All the laws of nature
are understood, all the properties of matter are known, and chemical reactions
are so clear they can be written up before they are tested or demonstrated.
All scientists
have a bias because all scientists are human, and as such they have their own
philosophies, opinions, and religious thoughts. They never approach their work
in a completely neutral frame of mind because to do so would be impossible.
Take for example
the formulation of the “Big Bang” theory. Up until about 1927 most scientists
believed in a static, or eternal universe, but a Belgian cosmologist George Lemaitre thought of another possibility: a universe which
began at some time in the past, in “a day without a yesterday” as he put it,
and absurd though the idea seemed at the time, it was soon picked up by other
scientists.
The Big Bang
theory received some support in 1929 when Edwin Hubble showed the speed of
galaxies was proportional to their distance from Earth – in other words, the
further away they were, the faster they were travelling.
This suggested to him that they might have all originated from some single
point and blown outwards from there in the past.
His theory was
supported over the next forty years by other findings, but the more 'evidence'
there was, the more contradictory some of it seemed, and new theories had to be
included to help explain the observations and theories which supported the
original theory. Pope Pius XII supported the Big Bang theory because it hinted
at a Creator. Atheists, funnily enough, criticized it for exactly the same
reason. Creationists said the universe was not the result of an explosion, but
a creative act, and the structure and youth of the stars and galaxies was evidence enough to show this.
The main
principles behind good science are that it must be reproducible, observable,
and consistent with the evidence.
Is the Big Bang
reproducible? Of course not. It is a theory only, for
which some evidence has been interpreted as supportive. Evidence which
does not support it is suppressed or downplayed.
Is the Big Bang
observable? No. It is supposed to have happened billions of years ago, and
no-one was around at the time.
Is the Big Bang
consistent with the evidence? No, there is a great deal of contradictory
evidence. For example the universe does not look like the result of an
explosion. Normally an explosion destroys and fragments material, scattering it
far and wide. The universe is structured. It is full of orderly, complex,
structured galaxies. It is full of billions and billions of stars which are all
around about the same age, which indicates that they were all formed about the
same time. The rarity of supernovae (collapsing stars) is evince
of youth. The stability of galaxies is evidence of youth – if they were as old
as Big Bangers say, galaxies should long ago have disintegrated.
Another assumption
about the Big Bang is the suggestion that the universe is expanding. Logically,
something that expands must have originally been more compact, but this is
“natural” thinking, and omits the possibility that things may have been
different in the past. Creationists can point to many instances where apparent
age had nothing to do with actual age: the creation of Adam and Eve, the
creation of life on Earth, the restoration of eyes, ears and other body parts
by the healing power of God through Jesus, the Resurrection and other miracles.
It is quite possible that God could have created a universe 'up and running'.
If a scientist had arrived on the scene one minute after God created the sun,
he might have assumed that the sun evolved slowly over millions of years. That scientists would be completely wrong, but his
interpretation would have been logical, based on his assumptions about “natural
processes.”
Despite what
'science' says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” and
all the theories about origins fall flat in the face of miracles.