Excerpt
From Einstein's Dilemma,
Chapter entitled The Steady State Theory Debunked

"Probably few facts have ever been more openly disturbing to scientists working in the disciplines of cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics - all studying the heavens - than the discovery during the 1930's that the universe had a beginning. The discovery was based not on a fortunate rediscovery of the first verse of the Bible, but on mathematical computations, mostly those of Einstein! The evidence was unequivocal and the discovery one of unmatched significance to startled astronomers.

News of great discoveries in science, especially if the heavens are involved, normally is received by the scientific community with enthusiasm, and announced throughout the world, but this discovery was different. It very deeply involved Albert Einstein and his impeccable mathematics. Instead of enthusiasm, the fact of a literal beginning to all that exists, spread a pall over the scientific community. At the same time, scientists the world over that believed God's word rejoiced, as did knowledgeable Christians everywhere. The disparity was distinct as darkness is from light. A beginning not only challenged, but declared false the long cherished Steady State Theory. The theory maintained that the Universe, including planet earth, was eternal, had no beginning, was self existing, and would continue on and on indefinitely without change and without end.

Among scientists holding the Steady State Theory, none was more irritated by the news that the theory was false than Albert Einstein. A mental turmoil raged in Einstein's conscience, and strangely, even after his close colleagues explained with greatest care, that the death knell of the theory was inherent in his own computations, Einstein continued to use his powerful influence to thwart and delay collapse of the theory. The tell-tale computations were in Einstein's 1917 publication on the General Theory of Relativity, a work of high acclaim by astronomers the world over.

In 1922, during Einstein's tenure as Director of the Physics Department, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, Berlin, a young mathematician/astronomer - Alexander Friedman was his name - studying Einstein's 1917 publication, noted certain errors or additions in the complex computations. Friedman dutifully and with great caution communicated his findings to Einstein, but only to be ignored. At length Friedman published Einstein's errors and, to be fair, in the same esteemed scientific journal, Annalen der Physik, used by Einstein. Einstein protested to the Journal that Friedman's mathematics were suspicious, if not wrong. According to astronomer Robert Jastrow, Einstein even resorted to rude behavior, so unlike him, toward the young mathematician who disclosed the errors, errors in mathematics being very unlike of Einstein.

When scientists are objective, science has a ready means of correcting itself. In matters of conflict, scientific or not, if distortion is involved, the small inner voice known as the conscience, warns of a wrong course up to a point, and it is wisdom to bow to that small inner voice. Ready submission to the sensitive conscience is the grand cure for irritability, even for scientists. Pretending that the conflict does not exist, only hardens the conscience and destroys objectivity. Objectivity is fairness in interpreting the significance and meaning of research findings, and quoting W. L. Straus Jr., John Hopkins University, "the greatest triumph of intellectual discipline should be suspended judgement". Who knows, I'm neither mathematician nor astronomer. The errors in Einstein's computations may have been accidental; they are described as being rather simple algebraic errors, but they also may have been deliberate, inflicted with the intention of guarding viability of The Steady State Theory, which, as we have already noted, Einstein treasured as a personal belief. The alternative was bowing in simple faith to the truth of God's Word, and in some ways, if only in being a Jew, God was not a stranger to Einstein. This makes it all the more sad that Einstein in his latter years considered belief in a personal omnipotent God the main source of present day conflicts between religion and science."