From Denial to Acknowledgment

with Hoyle since 1962. “It is quite a shock,” says Wickramasinghe, Sri Lankan-born Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College, Cardiff. “From my earliest training as a scientist, I was strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any deliberate creation. That notion has had to be very painfully shed. I am quite uncomfortable in the situation, the state of mind I now find myself in. But there is no logical way out of it.” They did calculations based on the size and age of the universe (15 billion years) and found that the odds against life beginning spontaneously anywhere in space were ‘10 to the power of 30.’ As they say in their book, Evolution From Space: “Once we see that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly minuscule as to make it absurd, it becomes sensible to think that the favourite properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate. Wickramasinghe says: Fred was tending much more than I towards the higher intelligent Creator. I used to argue against it, but I lost every argument. I can’t find any rational argument to knock down the view which argues for conversion to God. If I could have found an argument even a flimsy one—I wouldn’t have been party to what we wrote in the book. We used to have open minds; now we realize that the only logical answer to life is creation, not accidental random shuffling. I hope that one day I may return to favour a purely mechanistic explanation—I say ‘hope’ because I still cannot come to terms with my conversion. My being a Buddhist—albeit not ardent— was never a problem because it is an atheistic religion