This is the third part of that article ( Im responding to Scott adams post):

‘Something Is Missing’—What?

AFTER gazing at the stars on a clear, dark night, we come inside, chilly and blinking, our minds spinning with vast beauty and a multitude of queries. Why is the universe here? Where did it come from? Where is it going? These are the questions that many try to answer.

After five years of research into cosmology, which carried him to scientific conferences and research centers all over the globe, science writer Dennis Overbye described a conversation with world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking: “In the end what I wanted to know from Hawking is what I have always wanted to know from Hawking: Where we go when we die.”

Although tinged with irony, these words reveal much about our age. The queries are not so much on the stars themselves and the theories and conflicting views of the cosmologists that study them. People today still hunger for answers to the basic questions that have haunted mankind for millenniums: Why are we here? Is there a God? Where do we go when we die? Where are the answers to these questions? Are they to be found in the stars?

Another science writer, John Boslough, observed that as people have left religion, scientists such as cosmologists have become “the perfect priesthood for a secular age. They, not religious leaders, were the ones who would now reveal all the secrets of the universe bit by precious bit, not in the guise of spiritual epiphany but in the form of equations obscure to all but the anointed.” But will they reveal all the secrets of the universe and answer all the questions that have haunted mankind for ages?

What are the cosmologists revealing now? Most espouse some version of the big bang “theology,” which has become the secular religion of our time, even as they quibble incessantly over the details. “Yet,” Boslough noted, “in the context of new and contradictory observations, the big bang theory begins to appear more and more like an overly simplistic model in search of a creation event. By the early 1990s the big bang model was . . . increasingly unable to answer the most fundamental questions.” He added that “more than a few theorists have expressed the opinion that it would not even last out the 1990s.”

Perhaps some of the current cosmological guesswork will turn out to be correct, perhaps not—just as perhaps there really are planets coalescing in the ghostly glow of Orion’s nebula, perhaps not. The undeniable fact is that no one on this earth really knows for sure. Theories abound, but honest observers echo Margaret Geller’s astute observation that despite the glib talk, something fundamental seems to be missing in science’s current understanding of the cosmos.

Missing—The Willingness to Face Unpalatable Facts

Most scientists—and this includes most cosmologists—subscribe to the theory of evolution. They find talk unpalatable that gives intelligence and purpose a role in creation, and they shudder at the mere mention of God as Creator. They refuse even to consider such heresy. Psalm 10:4 speaks disparagingly of the supercilious person who “makes no search; all his ideas are: ‘There is no God.'” His creative deity is Chance. But as knowledge increases and chance and also coincidence collapse under the growing load, the scientist begins to turn more and more to such no-no’s as intelligence and design. Consider the following examples:

“A component has evidently been missing from cosmological studies. The origin of the Universe, like the solution of the Rubik cube, requires an intelligence,” wrote astrophysicist Fred Hoyle in his book The Intelligent Universe, page 189.

“The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known that we were coming.”—Disturbing the Universe, by Freeman Dyson, page 250.

“What features of the Universe were essential for the emergence of creatures such as ourselves, and is it through coincidence, or for some deeper reason, that our Universe has these features? . . . Is there some deeper plan that ensures that the Universe is tailor-made for humankind?”—Cosmic Coincidences, by John Gribbin and Martin Rees, pages xiv, 4.

Fred Hoyle also comments on these properties, on page 220 of his book quoted above: “Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy accidents. But there are so many of these odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them.”

“It is not only that man is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to this principle, a life-giving factor lies at the centre of the whole machinery and design of the world.”—The Anthropic Cosmological Principle,” by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, page vii.

A Listing of Some of the Physical Constants Necessary for Life to Exist

The charges of electron and proton must be equal and opposite; the neutron must outweigh the proton by a tiny percent; a matching must exist between temperature of the sun and the absorptive properties of chlorophyll before photosynthesis can occur; if the strong force were a little weaker, the sun could not generate energy by nuclear reactions, but if it were a little stronger, the fuel needed to generate energy would be violently unstable; without two separate remarkable resonances between nuclei in the cores of red giant stars, no element beyond helium could have been formed; had space been less than three dimensions, the interconnections for blood flow and the nervous system would be impossible; and if space had been more than three dimensions, planets could not orbit the sun stably.—The Symbiotic Universe, pages 256-7.

A Natural Human Need

None of this is to disparage the hard work of sincere scientists, including cosmologists. Especially do Jehovah’s Witnesses appreciate their many discoveries concerning creation that reveal the power and the wisdom and the love of the true God, Jehovah. Romans 1:20 declares: “His invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.”

The inquiries and labors of scientists are the natural human response to a need that is as basic to mankind as the need for food, shelter, and clothing. It is the need to know answers to certain questions concerning the future and the purpose of life. God has “set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”—Ecclesiastes 3:11, The Holy Bible—New International Version.

This is not such bad news. It means that mankind will never know it all, but neither will they ever run out of new things to learn: “I saw all the work of the true God, how mankind are not able to find out the work that has been done under the sun; however much mankind keep working hard to seek, yet they do not find out. And even if they should say they are wise enough to know, they would be unable to find out.”—Ecclesiastes 8:17.

Some scientists object that making God the “solution” to a problem kills the incentive for further research. However, a person who recognizes God as the Creator of the heavens and the earth has an abundance of further fascinating details to discover and intriguing mysteries to probe. It’s as though he has a green light to move on into a delightful adventure of discovery and learning!

Who can resist the invitation of Isaiah 40:26? “Raise your eyes high up and see.” We have raised our eyes high up in these few pages, and what we have seen is the ‘something missing’ that has eluded the cosmologists. We have also located the fundamental answers to those recurring questions that have nagged the mind of man throughout the ages.

The Answers Are Found in a Book

The answers have always been there, but like the religionists of Jesus’ day, many people have blinded their eyes, shut their ears, and hardened their hearts to answers that did not match their human theories or their chosen life-style. (Matthew 13:14, 15) Jehovah has told us where the universe came from, how the earth got here, and who will live on it. He has told us that earth’s human inhabitants must cultivate it and lovingly care for the plants and animals that share it with them. He has also told us what happens when people die, that they can come back to life, and what they must do to live upon the earth forever.

If you are interested in having the answers given to you in the language of God’s inspired Word, the Bible, please read the following scriptures: Genesis 1:1, 26-28; 2:15; Proverbs 12:10; Matthew 10:29; Isaiah 11:6-9; 45:18; Genesis 3:19; Psalm 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:5; Acts 24:15; John 5:28, 29; 17:3; Psalm 37:10, 11; Revelation 21:3-5.

Why not read these scriptures with your family or with a neighbor or with a group of friends in your home some evening? Be assured it will make for an informative and lively discussion!

Are you intrigued by the mysteries of the universe and moved by its beauty? Why not get to know better the One who created it? Our curiosity and wonder mean nothing to the inanimate heavens, but Jehovah God, their Creator, is also our Creator, and he cares for those meek ones who are interested in learning about him and his creations. The invitation is now being given throughout the earth: “‘Come!’ And let anyone hearing say: ‘Come!’ And let anyone thirsting come; let anyone that wishes take life’s water free.”—Revelation 22:17.

What a heartwarming invitation this is from Jehovah! Rather than by a mindless, purposeless explosion, the universe was created by a God of infinite intelligence and definite purpose who had you in mind from the beginning. His reserves of unlimited energy are carefully controlled and always available to sustain his servants. (Isaiah 40:28-31) Your reward for getting to know him will be as endless as the majestic universe itself!

“The heavens are declaring the glory of God; and of the work of his hands the expanse is telling.”—Psalm 19:1.

 

I found this article that pretty much reinforces his post (Be sure to hit the link for part 2 at the bottom):

What the Big Bang Explains—
What It Doesn’t

EVERY morning is a miracle. Deep inside the morning sun, hydrogen is being fused into helium at temperatures of millions of degrees. X rays and gamma rays of incredible violence are pouring out of the core into the surrounding layers of the sun. If the sun were transparent, these rays would blast their way to the surface in a few searing seconds. Instead, they begin to bounce from tightly packed atom to atom of solar “insulation,” gradually losing energy. Days, weeks, centuries, pass. Thousands of years later, that once deadly radiation finally emerges from the sun’s surface as a gentle shower of yellow light—no longer a menace but just right for bathing earth with its warmth.

Every night is a miracle too. Other suns twinkle at us across the vast expanse of our galaxy. They are a riot of colors, sizes, temperatures, and densities. Some are supergiants so large that if one were centered in the position of our sun, what remained of our planet would be inside the surface of that superstar. Other suns are tiny, white dwarfs—smaller than our earth, yet as heavy as our sun. Some will peacefully drone along for billions of years. Others are poised on the brink of supernova explosions that will obliterate them, briefly outshining entire galaxies.

Primitive peoples spoke of sea monsters and battling gods, of dragons and turtles and elephants, of lotus flowers and dreaming gods. Later, during the so-called Age of Reason, the gods were swept aside by the newfound “magic” of calculus and Newton’s laws. Now we live in an age bereft of the old poetry and legend. The children of today’s atomic age have chosen as their paradigm for creation, not the ancient sea monster, not Newton’s “machine,” but that overarching symbol of the 20th century—the bomb. Their “creator” is an explosion. They call their cosmic fireball the big bang.

What the Big Bang “Explains”

The most popular version of this generation’s view of creation states that some 15 to 20 billion years ago, the universe did not exist, nor did empty space. There was no time, no matter—nothing except an infinitely dense, infinitely small point called a singularity, which exploded into the present universe. That explosion included a brief period during the first tiny fraction of a second when the infant universe inflated, or expanded, much faster than the speed of light.

During the first few minutes of the big bang, nuclear fusion took place on a universal scale, giving rise to the currently measured concentrations of hydrogen and helium and at least part of the lithium in interstellar space. After perhaps 300,000 years, the universewide fireball dropped to a little below the temperature of the surface of the sun, allowing electrons to settle into orbits around atoms and releasing a flash of photons, or light. That primordial flash can be measured today, although greatly cooled off, as universal background radiation at microwave frequencies corresponding to a temperature of 2.7 Kelvin.* In fact, it was the discovery of this background radiation in 1964-65 that convinced most scientists that there was something to the big bang theory. The theory also claims to explain why the universe appears to be expanding in all directions, with distant galaxies apparently racing away from us and from each other at high speed.

Since the big bang theory appears to explain so much, why doubt it? Because there is also much that it does not explain. To illustrate: The ancient astronomer Ptolemy had a theory that the sun and planets went around the earth in large circles, making small circles, called epicycles, at the same time. The theory appeared to explain the motion of the planets. For centuries as astronomers gathered more data, the Ptolemaic cosmologists could always add extra epicycles onto their other epicycles and “explain” the new data. But that did not mean the theory was correct. Ultimately there was just too much data to account for, and other theories, such as Copernicus’ idea that the earth went around the sun, explained things better and more simply. Today it is hard to find a Ptolemaic astronomer!

Professor Fred Hoyle likened the efforts of the Ptolemaic cosmologists at patching up their failing theory in the face of new discoveries to the endeavors of big bang believers today to keep their theory afloat. He wrote in his book The Intelligent Universe: “The main efforts of investigators have been in papering over contradictions in the big bang theory, to build up an idea which has become ever more complex and cumbersome.” After referring to Ptolemy’s futile use of epicycles to rescue his theory, Hoyle continued: “I have little hesitation in saying that as a result a sickly pall now hangs over the big bang theory. As I have mentioned earlier, when a pattern of facts becomes set against a theory, experience shows that it rarely recovers.”—Page 186.

The New Scientist magazine of December 22/29, 1990, echoed similar thoughts: “The Ptolemaic method has been lavishly applied to . . . the big bang cosmological model.” It then asks: “How can we achieve real progress in particle physics and cosmology? . . . We must be more honest and forthright about the purely speculative nature of some of our most cherished assumptions.” New observations are now pouring in.

Questions the Big Bang Does Not Answer

A major challenge to the big bang has come from observers using the corrected optics of the Hubble Space Telescope to measure distances to other galaxies. The new data is giving the theorists fits!

Astronomer Wendy Freedman and others recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to measure the distance to a galaxy in the constellation of Virgo, and her measurement suggests that the universe is expanding faster, and therefore is younger, than previously thought. In fact, it “implies a cosmic age as little as eight billion years,” reported Scientific American magazine just last June. While eight billion years sounds like a very long time, it is only about half the currently estimated age of the universe. This creates a special problem, since, as the report goes on to note, “other data indicate that certain stars are at least 14 billion years old.” If Freedman’s numbers hold up, those elderly stars would turn out to be older than the big bang itself!

Still another problem for the big bang has come from steadily mounting evidence of “bubbles” in the universe that are 100 million light-years in size, with galaxies on the outside and voids inside. Margaret Geller, John Huchra, and others at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have found what they call a great wall of galaxies some 500 million light-years in length across the northern sky. Another group of astronomers, who became known as the Seven Samurai, have found evidence of a different cosmic conglomeration, which they call the Great Attractor, located near the southern constellations of Hydra and Centaurus. Astronomers Marc Postman and Tod Lauer believe something even bigger must lie beyond the constellation Orion, causing hundreds of galaxies, including ours, to stream in that direction like rafts on a sort of “river in space.”

All this structure is baffling. Cosmologists say the blast from the big bang was extremely smooth and uniform, according to the background radiation it allegedly left behind. How could such a smooth start have led to such massive and complex structures? “The latest crop of walls and attractors intensifies the mystery of how so much structure could have formed within the 15-billion-year age of the universe,” admits Scientific American—a problem that only gets worse as Freedman and others roll back the estimated age of the cosmos still more.

The Light-Year—A Cosmic Yardstick The universe is so big that measuring it in miles or kilometers is like measuring the distance from London to Tokyo with a micrometer. A more convenient unit of measurement is the light-year, the distance that light travels in a year, or about 5,880,000,000,000 miles [9,460,000,000,000 km]. Since light is the fastest thing in the universe and requires only 1.3 seconds to travel to the moon and about 8 minutes to the sun, a light-year would seem to be truly enormous!

“We Are Missing Some Fundamental Element”

Geller’s three-dimensional maps of thousands of clumped, tangled, and bubbled galactic agglomerations have transformed the way scientists picture the universe. She does not pretend to understand what she sees. Gravity alone appears unable to account for her great wall. “I often feel we are missing some fundamental element in our attempts to understand this structure,” she admits.

Geller enlarged on her misgivings: “We clearly do not know how to make large structure in the context of the Big Bang.” Interpretations of cosmic structure on the basis of current mapping of the heavens are far from definitive—more like trying to picture the whole world from a survey of Rhode Island, U.S.A. Geller continued: “Someday we may find that we haven’t been putting the pieces together in the right way, and when we do, it will seem so obvious that we’ll wonder why we hadn’t thought of it much sooner.”

That leads to the biggest question of all: What is supposed to have caused the big bang itself? No less an authority than Andrei Linde, one of the originators of the very popular inflationary version of the big bang theory, frankly admits that the standard theory does not address this fundamental question. “The first, and main, problem is the very existence of the big bang,” he says. “One may wonder, What came before? If space-time did not exist then, how could everything appear from nothing? . . . Explaining this initial singularity—where and when it all began—still remains the most intractable problem of modern cosmology.”

An article in Discover magazine recently concluded that “no reasonable cosmologist would claim that the Big Bang is the ultimate theory.”

Let us now go outdoors and contemplate the beauty and the mystery of the starry vault.

* A kelvin is the unit of a temperature scale whose degree is the same as the degree on the Celsius temperature scale, except that the Kelvin scale begins at absolute zero, that is 0 K.—the equivalent of -273.16 degrees Celsius. Water freezes at 273.16 K. and boils at 373.16 K.