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Dear children, you must be preparing for your exams now.
The exams will reveal what all you learned during the
past year. In Science classes, you are taught the theory
of evolution. Charles Darwin, the author of the theory
of evolution, published his thesis: 'On The Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection' in 1859. His
thesis was a challenge to the Bible and even God. Darwin
tried to prove that God did not create the universe, but
it evolved itself from nothing.
In
recent times, there are many other theories which
challenge Darwin's theory of evolution. But still many
scientists hang on to the theory so that they can keep
God out of the universe. Accepting a creator God means
accepting design and purpose and morality in human life.
Many modern scientists and athiests including
philosophers don't want God to direct their lives. They
want to make their own destiny or no destiny at all.
But
strong evidence that we observe in the natural world
points to a Creator who created everything with design
and a purpose. Some instances are quoted here.
Astronomers and cosmological physicists are trying to
learn how the universe originated and its various
components evolved, including all the millions of
galaxies, stars, planets, and other objects in the vast
cosmos. It seems there is no end to the speculative
writings and researches on these topics. Like “the
Lord’s mercies” they are “new every morning”
(Lamentations 3:22,23), though hardly as beneficial. As
one scientist noted rather wistfully while eulogizing
science as a whole:
Still,
even today certain major sciences offer scant prospect
of practical application. Astronomy and cosmology are of
little earthly use. That’s a valid point, though not
completely true, of course. The visible stars have for
centuries been of great use in navigation, surveying,
and chronometry.
But the
distant stars and galaxies, observable only through
giant telescopes, have been of use only in fueling
speculations about the origin and evolution of the
universe. That also is the primary motivation for the
scientists of NASA and their space program, as they are
trying to determine how the earth and the solar system
evolved, and even how life began.
The
noted columnist, George Will, quotes the physicist,
Steven Weinberg, as saying that our effort to understand
the universe is one of the very few things that lifts
human life a little above the level of farce, and gives
it some of the grace of tragedy.
That is
a darkly pessimistic outlook, obviously, but is the
logical conclusion of any consistent evolutionary
worldview.
As far
as the origin of the universe itself is concerned, the
predominant belief has been the theory of the Big Bang.
Actually, no one knows. The Big Bang concept at least
postulates a beginning, but that beginning consists of
an infinitesimal particle of space/time which explodes
and evolves over billions of years into our present
cosmos. One science writer, understand it says:
Don’t
imagine outer space without matter in it. Imagine no
space at all and no matter at all. Good luck. To the
average person it might seem obvious that nothing can
happen in nothing. But to a quantum physicist, nothing
is, in fact, something.
The
author of the above article calls this notion a “Grand
Guess.” It is certainly not anything that anyone knows!
The
so-called “Grand Guess” was put forth by M.I.T.
astrophysicist Alan Guth. According to this concept the
infinitesimal particle of space/time which exploded into
the Big Bang had to first go through a period of cosmic
inflation, which presumably would solve the various
difficulties present in the unmodified Big Bang theory.
The latter is said to be a “singularity,” where the
equations describing the phenomena of the expansion
cease to apply.
At such
places, physics dissolves into metaphysics. These
mathematical points admit of no explanation; they just
are.
Scientists can’t explain singularities. That means they
don’t know how to explain the Big Bang, although Guth’s
theory is said to handle most of the difficulties, and
most astronomers now accept inflation. However, that
doesn’t help much, so many modifications of inflation
have been proposed.
Roughly
50 forms of inflation have been proposed, named, and
studied, including double, triple, and hybrid inflation,
tilted hybrid inflation, hyperextended inflation that is
“warm,” “soft,” “tepid,” and “natural.”
Even if
astronomers really understood all about inflation—that
is the extremely rapid inflation of the universe to
about the size of a grapefruit in a tiny fraction of a
second prior to the explosive Bang—that would not answer
the question of how the universe began. That
“singularity” is still there.
Take
galaxies, for example. The most familiar, of course, is
the Milky Way, the galaxy of which our own sun is a
member. It is a spiral-disk galaxy, a type very common
in the cosmos. It is supposed that it began from vast
quantities of gas from the Big Bang explosion collapsing
through gravitational attraction of the molecules in the
gas.
Our
galaxy is a highly evolved entity. . . . it is an
elegant structure that shows both order and complexity.
. . . The end product is especially remarkable in the
light of what is believed to be the starting point:
nebulous blobs of gas. How the universe made the Milky
Way from such simple beginnings is not altogether clear.
It’s not clear at all. They simply do not know how our
galaxy began. Even less could be known about other
galaxies.
What
about individual stars? The standard guess is that the
first stars, called Population III, were formed only of
hydrogen and helium. Later stars with heavier elements
were supposedly generated when these first stars
collapsed, forming heavier elements in their heated
interiors which then traversed space to eventually
coalesce enough to form new suns. This remarkable
scenario is widely believed, but did it really happen?
Did
later stars come into being through variants on a common
theme (such as the collapse of molecular clouds) or in a
seething mosh pit of disparate forces and mechanisms? No
one knows. As far as those hypothetical first simple
stars are concerned—those stars whose collapse
eventually generated all the more complex stars—it is
not even known that they ever existed.
Astronomers have never seen a pure Population III star,
despite years of combing our Milky Way galaxy. Space
does not allow discussion here of the various
speculations about other components of the universe
(planets, satellites, asteroids, dark matter, etc.).
Ignorance about these matters is also quite profound. As
another prominent astronomer, Alan Sandage, once
observed:
The
study of origins is the art of drawing sufficient
conclusions from insufficient evidence.
Their
conclusions may vary widely from one cosmologist to
another, but they all try to keep them compatible with
their basic assumption of cosmic evolution over billions
of years.
It is
well to remember that they do not know how the cosmos
evolved—or stars, or galaxies, or anything else.
We who
believe the Bible to be the inspired word of the
God/man, Jesus Christ, who is the one man who has shown
His power over His creation by defeating death itself—we
know!
By the
word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host
of them by the breath of His mouth. . . . For He spake,
and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast (Psalm
33:6,9).
So,
dear children, you need not believe the theory of
evolution, because the evidence is more for creation.
God bless you.
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