From Denial to Acknowledgment

GOD: VOICE OF HUMAN NATURE published their research findings in a jointly-authored book, Evolution From Space (1981). According to an article that was published in The Hindustan Times (September 6, 1981), when Hoyle, an agnostic of Christian background, and Wickramasinghe, an atheist Buddhist, began researching the origin of life, they believed that the notion of a Creator was inconsistent with science. But then something quite remarkable happened. “Today,” the article explained, they are “changed, men. They believe.” The article ‘Conversion to God’ mentioned above is being reproduced. Conversion to God There wasn’t much to agree on when two of Britain’s most eminent scientists began researching life’s origin. But on one point they were both quite clear—that the notion of ‘Creator’ is inconsistent with science. Today, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, an agnostic of Christian background and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, an atheist Buddhist, are changed men. They believe. What convinced both men were the calculations they each did independently into the mathematical chances of life starting spontaneously. Each found that the odds against the spark of life igniting accidentally on Earth were staggering—in mathematical jargon, ‘10 to the power of 40,000.’ If you write down the figure ‘1’, you have the figure and add 40,000 noughts after it. “That number is such an imponderable in the universe that I am 100 per cent certain that life could not have started spontaneously on earth,” says Wickramasinghe, who has worked