Introduction – The Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957.
This was the beginning of the Space Age which initiated the Space Race. Before this enormous embarrassment, the United States had struggled to launch an artificial satellite.
The Project Vanguard failure in December 1957 underscored the nation’s lack of preparedness compared to the USSR. The only hope now was a man many did not want to succeed, the former Nazi SS officer, Wernher von Braun, who headed the Nazi rocket development program.
Having no other viable choice, von Braun was given a chance, and his success was nothing short of phenomenal.
He directed the development and launch of the Jupiter-C rocket, which on January 31, 1958, carried America’s first satellite, Explorer 1, into outer space.
Von Braun received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin for a doctoral thesis on combustion. Widely acknowledged as a brilliant scientist, he saved the American space program and changed the world of science forever.
His theoretical work and experimental investigation of the injection, combustion, equilibrium, and expansion phenomena involved in liquid-fuel rocket engines were recognized as critical for the future technological development of rockets. More than any other single scientist, he brought us into the space age.
Although von Braun at first supported the German war effort, he soon became disenchanted with Hitler’s war aims and began to voice opposition against his policies.
After Germany surrender, he became one of the 118 “paperclip scientists” and the more than 4,500 German army technicians brought to the United States between 1945 and 1946. The American space program was largely a transplant of the German team.
Less well known was, that after his conversion to Christianity in America, he became a staunch supporter of the view that the universe and life were intelligently designed by a Creator.
Dr. von Braun wrote a good deal about his Christian faith and gave a number of speeches on the subject. An open supporter of creationism, he concluded that this view was “a viable scientific theory for the origin of the universe, life, and man”
In a letter he wrote in support of creation which was read to the California State Board of Education by Dr. John Ford on September 14, 1972, Dr. von Braun stated that, for him
the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. ….
The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based.
He concluded that to be forced to believe only one conclusion—that ultimately the universe was created by chance–violates the very objectivity of science itself.
Certainly, there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye? Mutations selected by natural selection cannot explain the brain of man or the human eye.
His observation was, the “more we learn about God’s creation, the more I am impressed with the orderliness and unerring perfection of the natural laws that govern it.
In this perfection, man—the scientist—catches a glimpse of the Creator and his design for nature. The man-to-God relationship is deepened in the devout scientist as his knowledge of the natural laws grows.”
American courts have ruled that this conclusion, held by one of the greatest scientists in America, whose work enabled cell phones, GPS, and the other blessings of satellites, cannot be taught in public schools.
About the modern controversy over teaching evolution in America, von Braun openly stated, God had “the same position in our modern world that He held before the natural sciences began to pierce through the wall of dogma erected by the Church.”
He was especially impressed by Paley’s watch hypothesis, and his own words reveal how important the design argument was to him, writing that the primary resistance to acknowledging the “Case for Design” as a viable scientific alternative to the current “Case for Chance” lies in the inconceivability, in some scientists’ minds, of a Designer.
The inconceivability of some ultimate issue (which will always lie outside scientific resolution) should not be allowed to rule out any theory that explains the interrelationship of observed data and is useful for prediction.
Von Braun also stressed he hoped that more scientists would “publicly say what I am saying here …with all the modern means at our disposal, with schools, churches, educational institutions, press, radio, and television, they should tell the world that religion and science are not incompatible; that, to the contrary, they belong together.”
Dr. von Braun knew the consequences of speaking out publicly for what he believed—and was willing to pay the price, both in Nazi Germany and in America.
He believed that objectively covering both sides of this issue is the proper approach to teaching origins in the schools.
He further added that the Creator and His creation are complimentary entities, explaining science and religion are like two windows in a house through which we look at the reality of the Creator and the laws manifested in His creation.
As long as we see two different images through these two windows and cannot reconcile them, we must keep trying to obtain a more complete and better integrated total picture of the ultimate reality by properly tying together our scientific and religious concepts.
Von Braun died in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 16, 1977, leaving the world a radically different place than when he was born in Wirsitz, Germany, in 1912.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries. All 60 of Bergman’s books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.
