Episode Transcript
Welcome to Faith and Science. I'm Dr. John Ashton.
Recently, I was looking at the revised national science syllabus in Australia for the students in year ten. And as I recall, there are a couple of main sections. And one section talked about, or was that the students were to be taught the Big Bang Theory as explaining the origin of the universe and how we get here. And I thought, this is really interesting because we're not allowed to teach creation in a science class. And yet creation in many ways makes more sense.
Many folk will have heard about how scientists talk about how the universe is so fine tuned and the laws of physics are so fine tuned that the gravitational constant and so forth, and the different forces that act and the coefficients that govern those forces, if they were any different, then the universe would not be here. It would not survive. And there is this overwhelming evidence of amazing design in the universe, and yet they're still pushing this Big Bang Theory that somehow this energy just expanded, this huge heat expanded and condensed into energy, condensed into matter, and expanded and formed all the different types of stars and planets and moons and things that we have, with all the different types of compositions and structures that we have.
And, of course, our earth formed just in this amazing situation, which is just perfect for life, just the right temperature for life based on carbon. And then we have the structure of the different atoms and carbon and its properties, with its four bonds and hydrogen, all the different elements, they're unique properties that enable them to form the compounds that we know as physical life, the plants, trees and animals and so forth, and how this is a totally sustainable ecosystem. We have the moon that produces the tides, and it's just right.
Everything is pretty well just right. Of course, we see the influences of sin. Now we have disease, and of course, we have people making, doing really bad and evil things, destroying each other and destroying the environment. But when we look at the big picture, we can see that there's just overwhelming evidence for design. And scientists, however, are coming up with these theories that somehow it all formed by the laws of physics.
Well, I'm really surprised to know that they're continuing to teach the Big Bang Theory in schools, because back in 2004 there was an open letter on cosmology to publish to the science community. It was called an open letter to the scientific community. It was published by E Lerner, spelled Lerner, and it was published in New Scientists on May 22, 2004.
So it's quite a few years ago now, and this is what this letter said. It said, the Big Bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, that is, things that we have never observed: inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples.
So I'm just reading the letter now. “Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the Big Bang Theory. In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would at least raise serious questions about the validity of the underlying theory.” So that's the first paragraph of the letter. And so we can see here he's emphasising that there are fatal contradictions between what astronomers actually observe and what this theory predicts. It's different. The Big Bang Bang theory doesn't actually work. It doesn't predict what we observe, what astronomers observed.
And the second paragraph goes on to say, “But the Big Bang Theory can't survive without these fudge factors, without the hypothetical inflation field, the big Bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.” So, this was, as I said, written back on May 22, 2004. A couple of paragraphs down the letter says, “What is more, the Big Bang Theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation.”
This is astounding that the theory is still taught, isn't it? This is something that was written back in May 22, 2004. And this I'll read again.
“What is more, the Big Bang Theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation.” And it says, the successes claimed by the theory supporters consist of ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old earth centred cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles. So again, what they're saying is that the proponents of this theory, which are the research scientists out there, the different universities that are continuing to push this theory, is their ability that they just keep changing things to fit the observations. They just change their parameters so that they do fit the observations, not make a theory that then they can predict what an observation is. So really, this shows major force. Now, this has been out there since 2004.
Now, to give you an idea, some of the people, well, there are a lot of people, a couple of hundred people signed this letter, but some of them include Hiltonup. Now, he's one of the leading astronomers in the world from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. Another one was Thomas Gold, another top astronomer.
He's dead now, but he was professor of astronomy at Cornell University in the United States. And these are the sort of people that have signed the letter there. We've got astronomers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, from the Los Alamas National Laboratory in the United States, and so forth.
And Eric Lerner, who published the letter, is from the Lawrenceville Plasma Physics company in the United States. Now, it's very interesting. That was back in 2004.
Well, in 2017, there was an article published in Scientific American in the February edition of Scientific American 2017, and it was called pop goes universe. And the subtitle was, the latest astrophysical measurements combined with theoretical problems cast doubt on the long cherished inflationary theory of the early cosmos and suggests we need new ideas. Now, when you go into this article, it's quite astounding, because inflation theory underpins the Big Bang Theory.
If with no inflation theory, the Big Bang Theory doesn't stand up, it's not there at all. And these scientists raise some very important questions. Now, the scientists, what they say is in their article, and I'm just reading from the new Scientist article itself, right? And so it starts off by saying, on March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency held an international press conference to announce new results from a satellite called Planck.
The spacecraft had mapped the cosmic microwave background radiation. And so this, again, is, this cosmic microwave background radiation is really the main evidence that the scientists try to pin the Big Bang Theory on. So they're saying that they've been able, this satellite enabled them to map them.
The new map, the scientists told the audience of journalists, confirms a theory that cosmologists have held dear for 35 years, that the universe began with a bang, followed by a brief period of hyper-accelerated expansion known as inflation. This expansion smoothed the universe to such an extent that billions of years later, it remains nearly uniform all over space in every direction and flat, as opposed to curve like a sphere, et cetera. So we can see here that the scientists told the audience of journalists that their data confirms the Big Bang Theory.
Now, these scientists that publish this article now seriously question that. And what they're saying is, in the years since before, more precise data gathered by the Planck satellite and other instruments have made their case only stronger. And yet, even now, the cosmology community has not taken a cold, honest look at the Big Bang inflationary theory or paid significant attention to the critics who question whether inflation happened.
Rather, cosmologists appear to accept at face value the proponent's assertion that we must believe the inflationary theory because it offers the only simple explanation of the observed features of the universe. But we will explain. The Planck data added to theoretical problems have shaken the foundations of this assertion.
So what these scientists in the scientific American article go on to say that, hang on, these scientists that measure the cosmic background radiation, they did this big press conference to tell the world, hang on, we've confirmed the Big Bang Theory, but these scientists now have written to Scientific American and this article has been published saying, well, hang on, when we explain, when you look at the data, it doesn't confirm the Big Bang Theory. And so the article, of course, is very technical, but it has been explained in another article that was called the big Bang blow up at Scientific American. Now, this was an article by Jake Herbert, PhD, that was published.
And if you guess, Google the big Bang blow up at Scientific American by Jake Herbert. H-E-R-B-R-T. It'll come up and it's very, very interesting.
So he sort of breaks it down more to a bit of, into more lay language, and I'll just explain. He writes in February 2017 issue of Scientific American contains an article by three prominent theoretical physicists from Princeton and Harvard who strongly question the validity of cosmic inflation, which is an important part of the modern Big Bang Theory. They argue that inflation can never be shown to be wrong, it cannot be falsified, and therefore inflation isn't even a scientific hypothesis.
Did you get that? So this theory, this theory of inflation that underpins the Big Bang Theory, can't even be classified as a scientific hypothesis. So why is it being taught in a science class if christians can't allow creation to be taught in a science class as a competing theory? Because people say, well, it's not a scientific hypothesis, because it can't be falsified. We need to remember, the Big Bang Theory is in exactly the same situation.
It's very, very interesting to look at. Inflation theory was proposed by physicist Alan Guth to solve a number of serious problems in the early version of the Big Bang model. And so, as we've just said, supposedly the universe went an extremely short period of accelerated expansion right after the Big Bang.
Now, the authors of the scientific article are Anna Liges, and he is the John A. Wheeler. Now, John Wheeler was the guy earned his phd proposing the multi universe theory.
And so Anna is the John A. Wheeler postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Centre, Princeton University. That's where Einstein was one of the Ivy League unis in the United States at the Princeton Centre for Theoretical Physics.
The other author was Paul Steinhardt, who was the Albert Einstein professor in science at Princeton University. Now, Steinhardt was a former inflation theorist who. And so he was involved in developing the inflation theory, who has since become a vocal critic of the theory because he realises the major problems and shortcomings of the theory.
And then the other author is Abraham Leub, who's chair of the astronomy department at Harvard University. And he has argued that cosmologists should seriously consider abandoning inflation theory and look for alternatives or contemplate alternatives. And so these are top astrophysicists in their field, working at Princeton and Harvard.
Now, of course, it's very interesting. So if we're just recapping on what's happening here, so we get this data back from the satellite, the scientists that are supporting the Big Bang Theory, they somehow have to support this evidence for inflation, right? And they make this a statement to journalists that essentially we now have data from this satellite that confirms inflation theory and the Big Bang Theory for the origin of the universe. Now, when these three guys from Harvard and Princeton University published their paper in Scientific American, this upset all these people, all these people that are dependent on the inflation theory.
And so a whole lot, 33 high profile physicists, including Alan Guth, who developed the theory, and Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist there at Cambridge, and so forth, and a number of others. They and Lawrence Krauss published a rebuttal on the Scientific American website. They claimed to refute what the Harvard and Princeton astronomers had said.
And so this gives you a bit of an idea of the sort of involvement there. But it's interesting that despite you had 33 guys or 33 astrophysicists, I'm not sure if they're all men, were they not? Some are women, despite, and all high profile researchers. But they actually failed to convincingly answer the charges raised by the Harvard Princeton group.
In fact, one argument that they resorted to, this is how desperate the scientists were to preserve their Big Bang Theory. This was an argument they used, which the author of the review points out is rather an emotional argument. It's not a scientific argument.
This is what they argued, this is what they were trying to defend. The Big Bang Theory they wrote. According to the high energy Physics database inspire, there are now more than 14,000 papers in the scientific literature written by over 9000 distinct scientists that use the word inflation or inflationary in their titles or abstracts.
By claiming that inflationary cosmology lies outside the scientific method, the Harvard Princeton authors are dismissing the research of not only all the authors of this letter, but also that of a substantial contingent of the scientific community. Now, the reviewer makes this very interesting comment against that argument. He says, however, whether or not inflation theory falls within the scientific method, or whether or not it is correct, isn't determined by how many inflation reflated papers have been published.
We don't arrive at the truth by counting noses. And this is a very important point. You see, what's happened is, and we can see this now that you've got some really high ranking scientists that are pushing inflation theory that underpins the big bang, and without it, you don't have a Big Bang Theory. Doesn't work. Right? So scientists then have no explanation for the origin of the universe, but they're resorting to. And so all this stuff gets published and keeps getting published, but it's based on shaky ground. The people who attempted to rebut the paper also argued that inflation theory is falsifiable. So that, remember, that's one of the main claims that the Harvard Princeton group made, that the theory wasn't falsifiable.
So what the rebuttal authors that want to support the Big Bang, they've said, hang on, it is falsifiable. But the Harvard team actually responded by pointing out that the leading inflation theorist, Alan Guth, has acknowledged that inflation theory, and they quote Alan Guth as saying, anything that can happen will happen. Get it? The theory is set up so that anything that can happen will happen.
Now, that's not science. And they pointed out that inflation essentially predicts everything, so it can make no testable predictions. And they also referred to a 2014 online video showing Alan Guth admitting that no single experiment could falsify inflation.
So therefore, we have, in actual fact, an admission that the theory can't be falsified, and therefore it's not a scientific hypothesis. Now, it's interesting that another claimant, the reviewer, points this out, too, so I'll just read what he says. So this is the reviewer that is summarising, really, the complexity of the original scientific paper published in Scientific American.
Right. That points out that really, we don't have the evidence to support the Big Bang Theory that is claimed.
So I'll just read. This is his summary. One other claim, made almost in passing of the pro inflation theorists stood out. They claimed that the relative abundances of the light chemical elements were successfully predicted by the Big Bang model.
Right? So this is the people that want to keep the big Bang model going. And they've claimed that one of the evidences that the Big Bang Theory works is that it predicts the abundances of the light elements. And the light elements would be hydrogen, helium, lithium. They're the first three elements, so they go on.
Actually, this is not the case. So here we have the proponents of the theory of the Big Bang Theory claim that it successfully predicts the abundances of light elements.
But when this reviewer looked into the evidence provided, actually, this is not the case. The Big Bang model contains an adjustable parameter called the baryon to photon ratio, and this value was chosen by the Big Bang theorists to generate the amount of helium and hydrogen that matched the observed abundances. In fact, Lawrence Krause, one of the signers of the rebuttal letter, acknowledged in his popular book, a universe from nothing, that disagreement was obtained by fitting the value to the observed data.
Hence, it is quite misleading to claim that the Big Bang model predicted the correct abundances of hydrogen helium, since those values were chosen via the choice of the value for the baryon to photon ratio to fit the Big Bang model. Get that? They tweaked the values in their theory so that they got the right answer after they knew what the right answer was. This is what's going on at this high level in the academy, and this is being taught to our students as scientific facts, as proven facts.
And the review goes on even more. Furthermore, even with this adjustable parameter, the Big Bang Theory still cannot correctly account for the amount of lithium in the universe, which is the next lightest element. And they conclude that many Christians, or the writer, the reviewer concludes, who was a Christian himself, concludes, many Christians attempted to accept that the Big Bang was the means God used to create the universe.
But the Big Bang flatly contradicts scripture and is riddled with serious scientific difficulties, some of which have been highlighted in this recent spat among leading theorists. Furthermore, where would it leave christians if secular scientists should ultimately abandon the Big Bang? Christians should resist the temptation to accommodate genesis to the fallible, ever changing ideas of secular scientists. And I think this sums it up well, and it sums up the major problem that we have in our education system at the moment, and that is that our young people, our future scientists, our future nurses, our future theologians, our future everyday homemakers, are being taught that the origin of the universe was this just natural Big Bang. You don't need God. But that's wrong. If there's actually no scientific theory that can explain the origin of the universe. We've just seen that, yeah, inflation theory can't be falsified, and it can fit anything, and it's been artificially made to work. But even when they'd make these adjustments, it only fits for a couple of the elements. Once we start looking at the others, it doesn't work. And yet this is being taught as scientific fact. And yet we have from scripture, from so much evidence from scripture, that God is real and that the genesis account can be believable. We've got the evidence of the global flood.
Everywhere around the world, you can see the strata that was laid down catastrophically, huge sediments that spread over continents, you need massive mortar movements to move these sentiments and bury, and bury these animals the way they've been buried.
We have the testimony of prophecy in scripture where God said, look, I will explain to you that I am God. I will give you prophecies, and particularly in Isaiah, which we know was written 600 bc, thereabouts. And these prophecies are fulfilled hundreds of years later, just like Isaiah said. And there's so many.
I have at home an encyclopaedia of biblical prophecy published by Princeton University Press. And we have the personal answers to prayer of christians. We have the evidence of changed life. We have so much evidence that there is a loving God who created us and wants that relationship with us. And I guess the whole purpose of the programme, me giving these talks, is to encourage you to look for that relationship yourselves. To those listeners, and if you are already a Christian, to tell other people about the evidence. Go on your social media pages. Tell your friends.
Tell your friends about these programmes. Tell your friends if they have doubts about creation, there's the website creation.com. It has lots of material.
We have a loving Saviour that we can go to in prayer, seek forgiveness for all our wrong and God will supernaturally come into our lives and change us. This is the good news. This is what we need to be spreading and telling people while we have the opportunity.
You've been listening to Faith and Science. And remember, you can relisten to these programmes by googling 3abnaustralia.org.au and click on the listen button.
I'm Dr. John Ashton. Have a great day. You've been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia radio.
