Sign up to Bukisa,
Get Paid
for Publishing
Your Knowledge!
|
 | Title: Dismantling the Big Bang
Author: Alex Williams and John Hartnett, PhD.
Publisher: Master Books
Format: Print book
Reviewer: Lynn Fowler |
The authors set out to present the extremely complex science of cosmology at a level that can be understood by an intelligent lay person, and by and large they succeed - although there were a few small areas where I found myself out of my depth. That said, this is not a book you would pick up unless you had a more than passing interest in science in general, and cosmology in particular.
The book begins with a very brief over view of four reasons to reject the "big bang" theory, four reasons to accept a Biblical 6-day creation, and four reasons not to try to compromise between the two.
Chapters 1 through 5 give the history of the "big bang" theory, and look at it in detail, showing from a scientific aspect why it is totally inadequate as an explanation for the beginnings of the universe. As a physicist and cosmologist, Dr Hartnett is well equipped to do this, and is courageous in taking his stand against the prevailing thought of the scientific community, a great part of which accepts the "big bang" theory as fact. In an appendix he writes, "The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed - inflation, dark matter, and dark energy are the most prominent examples. 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." He goes on to point out that nearly all funding and experimental resources in the field of cosmology are given to those who hold to the "big bang" theory, meaning that all others (not just creationists, but also any scientist wishing to pursue a different theory of cosmology) are cut out, making non-"big bang" research difficult at best and impossible at worst.
Having dismantled the "big bang" from a scientific point of view, the book goes on in Chapter 6 to look at the Biblical model, and in Chapter 7 to compare the two on a "scoreboard" to see which model best fits the observable data. Appendices look at other cosmological models and the theological issues involved.
Overall, this book is not light reading, but if you have any interest in science it is totally fascinating. Even if you find yourself a little stretched by some of the concepts presented, it is well worth the effort, and is a wonderful resource in the evolution/creation debate.
|
