Dear Editor:
In a letter earlier this year, Otto Hottendorf asserts, “Scientists claim that the universe was created by the Big Bang, which was a very great light, created by God.” By the way he words it, he makes it sound as if scientists claim that God created the Big Bang and the universe, which is absurd. Scientists claim the universe was created by the Big Bang. Scientists do not claim, as a group, that God created the Big Bang. Otto takes an widely accepted scientific theory, ends the sentence with the religious interpretation, and concludes that the scientific theory “proves” the theistic one as a matter of fact.
Otto says, “With each particle of matter, there is an antiparticle.” Wrong. There’s less of it than normal matter. There’s only an antiparticle for every charged particle, like protons and electrons. Neutrons have no charge, and no antiparticle counterpart. Stephen Hawking proved this years ago. Otto is confusing particles with matter. Charged particles do have antiparticles, but not when they come together to form solid objects.
Otto says, “When God created the Big Bang, God did it out of nothing.” If he’s referring to the Biblical story, he’s right. If he’s talking about the Big Bang, then he’s wrong. All the matter in the universe is the same amount prior to the Big Bang. It was simply condensed into an infinitesimal point of infinite mass/energy.
He says, “M + -M = 0.” Wrong. M + -M equals energy. They’re not the same thing.
He says, “All of the matter created in the universe went forward in time/space, and all of the antimatter went backward in anti-time-antispace, which is the reason the antimatter can’t be found.” That antimatter “can’t be found” is silly. It didn’t “go backward in anti-time-antispace,” nor is there even such a thing as “anti-space.” Matter can only move forward in time in our universe. There’s a lack of matter in space, as in a vacuum, but not “anti-space.” Antimatter exists where there’s no normal matter, as in outer space, and scientists have created it in labs.
Otto says, “When matter travels at the speed of light, there is no passage of time.” Wrong. Time does pass at the speed of light. It simply passes at a rate relative to the observer, hence the term relativity. This is because speed and gravity alter the flow of time. The faster you travel, the slower time passes. Caroll Alley, Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, tested this in 1975 with two synchronized clocks, one on a plane, one on the ground. After the 15-hour flight, the plane’s clock was 50 millionths of a second ahead of the ground clock. Otto twists this around to mean that time doesn’t pass at all.
Otto says, “When Einstein solved relativity, he discovered the universe was expanding” First, Einstein didn’t solve relativity, he discovered it. Second, Einstein believed the universe was static, not expanding. Edwin Hubble discovered the expansion of the universe, and it was his discovery of the Doppler Effect, not relativity, that led to this.
If you want to interpret Genesis literally, consider this: The Earth was created on the third day (Genesis 1: 9-13). If you interpret “six days” literally, then what did God use to measure the first two?
I don’t understand why some people feel the Bible not only contains truths, but that it’s “factually” true, and why literalists are so insistent on confusing spiritual truth with factual truth, as if by hijacking the word “fact,” as some do, that their beliefs are somehow given greater validation.
Scientific reasoning involves observation and conclusion, based on rational thinking, and repeat experiments that can be externally validated. Religion concerns itself with the philosophical, and moral underpinnings of humanity. The two are not in dispute, and both coexist peacefully. St. Augustus himself wrote that the “six days” should not be interpreted literally.
Pope John Paul II, in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Rome, declared evolution as a fact of nature and noted that there is no war between science and religion, saying, “Consideration of the method used in diverse orders of knowledge allows for the concordance of two points of view which seem irreconcilable. The sciences of observation describe and measure with ever greater precision the multiple manifestations of life–while theology extracts–the final meaning according to the Creator’s designs.”
Science and religion exist for different reasons. To confuse the two is an insult to both.
The editors, not bothering to seek technical expertise to verify the scientific aspects of Otto’s letter, publish whatever letter passes their way, with no regard to the truth, despite their disclaimer that they reserve the right to use editor’s notes to clarify points raised in a letter. So much for accuracy in journalism.
Luigi Novi