Insight on the News
“Big Bang” Theory—a Fizzle?
● For many years scientists have theorized that the universe most probably began with a gigantic, violent “Big Bang” explosion of condensed matter. Now they are not so sure.
A University of California research team recently used extremely sensitive radio equipment aboard a high-flying U-2 jet to measure cosmic microwave background radiation, the “afterglow” of the supposed “Big Bang.” What they found surprised the scientists. “The big bang, the most cataclysmic event we can imagine,” said the researchers, “on closer inspection appears finely orchestrated,” with tightly controlled, smooth and uniform expansion.
“The new reports only compound the mystery of how, from this seemingly uniform, homogeneous explosion, the present universe evolved with all of its diversity, from galaxies to flowers,” marvels Walter Sullivan, science writer for the New York “Times.”
However, there is no “mystery” to this “finely orchestrated” event when one admits that it is evidence of a Grand Creator, whose “invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made.”—Rom. 1:20.
Is Psychotherapy the Answer?
● In the long run, how successful is psychiatric counseling? A recent follow-up study of many youths who received such therapy more than 30 years ago in Massachusetts, U.S.A., reveals that, “almost without exception, therapy appeared to have had a negative, or at least a nonpositive effect on the youngsters in later life.”—“Science News,” November 26, 1977, p. 357.
Half of more than 500 “average” and “difficult” children aged five to 13, picked at random, were given one-to-one counseling for about five years. The other half in each category received no counseling. A check of the subjects’ criminal records 30 years later revealed that those who received therapy engaged in more crime than those who did not. Additionally, says “Science News,” “the incidence of anti-social and criminal behavior increased (or was not decreased) among boys who received therapy over the longest period of time; had the most frequent contact with counselors; began therapy at an earlier than average age . . .” The Drexel University researcher says that such results indicate “that the most widely held beliefs about therapy may be untenable.”
‘Recompense for Error’
● “The amount of sexual activity of some homosexual males is a major reason for the high incidence of sexually transmitted disease in the gay community,” according to a report in “The Journal of the American Medical Association.” It asserts that “on a national level [in the United States], a homosexual male’s chances of getting syphilis are five times that of a heterosexual male.”
The report cites a memorandum from the U.S. Center for Disease Control, in which the point is made that, in a New York study, over half of syphilitic males who named their sexual contacts named partners of their own sex. “This information is particularly impressive when one realizes that nationally only one of every ten males is homosexual,” observes the report, adding: “This disproportionate incidence of infection is not limited to syphilis. Homosexual males have a higher incidence of other sexually transmitted diseases as well.”
While some may be inclined to view this as merely coincidental, others wisely realize that venereal diseases are part of the inescapable consequences when men fail to respect God-given moral standards. “God gave them up to disgraceful sexual appetites,” wrote the Christian apostle Paul, “for both their females changed the natural use of themselves into one contrary to nature; and likewise even the males left the natural use of the female and became violently inflamed in their lust toward one another, males with males, working what is obscene and receiving in themselves the full recompense, which was due for their error.”—Rom. 1:26, 27.