Re. Intelligent Design - it's noteworthy that the Big Bang theory was once derided by the scientific establishment as a non-scientific attempt to inject a Creator into science. In light of this history, perhaps people should not be so quick to dismiss ID.
1927 to 1978 for the Big Bang theory - makes one wonder how Intelligent Design will be sign 50 years from now.
Big bang theory is introduced
1927
Georges LeMaitre (1894-1966) showed that religion and science -- or at least physics -- did not have to be incompatible. LeMaitre, born in Belgium, was a monsignor in the Catholic church.
He was fascinated by physics and studied Einstein's laws of gravitation, published in 1915. He deduced that if Einstein's theory were true (and there had been good evidence for it since 1919), it meant the universe must be expanding. In 1927, the year he got his PhD from MIT, LeMaitre proposed this theory, in which he stated that the expanding universe was the same in all directions -- the same laws applied, and its composition was the same -- but it was not static.
....
In 1929 at the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies were moving away at high speeds. He was, like most people, unaware of LeMaitre's 1927 theory. But LeMaitre used Hubble's dramatic discovery as evidence for his theory. It was easy. If you imagined the galaxies rushing away from us as a movie, just run the movie backwards. After a certain time, all those galaxies will rush together.
.....
This argument ended when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson found evidence of cosmic background radiation, which LeMaitre and other theorists had determined would be the residue of the big bang's explosion many billions of years ago.
pbs.org
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."
aish.com |
