From Denial to Belief

From Denial to Belief Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe is a Sri Lankan scientist, who heads the department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy at University College, Cardiff, in Wales. He has been conducting research into the origin of life since 1962 in the company of an eminent English scientist, Professor Sir Fred Hoyle. The results of their research have been published in the form of a book entitled, Evolution from Space. When the two scientists commenced their research they were both agreed on one point: that the notion of a Creator is inconsistent with science. But they were so shocked by the final result of their research that they had to revise their thinking. “From my earliest training as a scientist,” Wickramasinghe says, “I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of 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.” Both scientists made separate calculations into the mathematical chances of life having begun on earth spontaneously. Independently, they both arrived at the same conclusion: that the odds against life having ignited accidentally on earth were staggering in mathematical jargon 10 to the power of 40,000. Add 40,000 noughts to the figure I and you have the figure. “That number is such an imponderable in the universe that I am 100 percent certain that life could not have started spontaneously on Earth,” says Wickramasinghe. As they write in their book: “Once we saw that the probability of life originating at random is so utterly miniscule as to make it absurd, it became sensible to think that the properties of physics on which life depends are in every respect deliberate.” “Sir Frederick Hoyle was tending much more than I towards the higher intelligence Creator,” Wickramasinghe explains. “I used to argue against it, but I found myself losing every argument. At the moment 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 would not have been a party to what