Expansion of the cosmos
At a faster pace than light
Renders Genesis a fairy tale,
It seems—alas, not quite.
The mental calisthenics
That it takes to make them fit
Will keep believers straining, when
An honest mind would quit
“A believer and a scientist”,
Is how she chose to live—
But disconfirming evidence
Meant something had to give
Azusa University
Is Christian to the core:
“The big bang proves the bible right!”—
Discrepancy no more!
It isn’t doing science
When, no matter what you find
The conclusion never alters:
See? The cosmos is designed!
All creations need creators
Why, it’s only common sense!
Seems the pre-expansion ‘verse
Is not the only thing that’s dense.
On the CNN Belief Blog, a Dr.Leslie Wickman, director of the Center for Research in Science at Azusa Pacific University, asks “Does the Big Bang breakthrough offer proof of God?”
The prevalent theory of cosmic origins prior to the Big Bang theory was the “Steady State,” which argued that the universe has always existed, without a beginning that necessitated a cause.
However, this new evidence strongly suggests that there was a beginning to our universe.
If the universe did indeed have a beginning, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there had to be an agent – separate and apart from the effect – that caused it.
That sounds a lot like Genesis 1:1 to me: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.”
And she’s a scientist! So you know this can’t just be her faith talking.
As a modern believer and a scientist, when I look up at the sky on a clear starry night, I am reminded that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). I am in awe of the complexity of the physical world, and how all of its pieces fit together so perfectly and synergistically.
In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, the writer tells us that God “established (his) covenant with day and night, and with the fixed laws of heaven and earth.”
These physical laws established by God to govern interactions between matter and energy result in a finely tuned universe that provides the ideal conditions for life on our planet.
Just ask the dinosaurs, who ruled for longer than we have been around, or the beetles or bacteria, either of whom dwarf us both by numbers and by mass. Or perhaps for humanity, who can’t live below the sea or above a certain altitude, but who, given the right sort of environment, will multiply ourselves into a famine situation, and who are doing our best to destroy these ideal conditions.
As we observe the complexity of the cosmos, from subatomic particles to dark matter and dark energy, we quickly conclude that there must be a more satisfying explanation than random chance. Properly practiced, science can be an act of worship in looking at God’s revelation of himself in nature.
Properly practiced, of course. And the worth of an explanation is often reflected in how “satisfying” it is.
One wonders how it is that a self-described practicing scientist can look at the same evidence that, for some, banishes God from His last hiding place, and call it evidence for His existence. Oh, that’s right–one doesn’t wonder at all: it’s her job. She’s the director of the Center for Research in Science at a place that already knows what all the really big answers are. After all, you can find these answers in the bible.
When BICEP tells stories sublime
of when there was no space or time
the science can wait
’cause that’s all I hate
all answers are clearly devine
When we hear that maybe there was
an era that smoothed out the flaws
in our ‘verse’s quilt
I wonder who built
that fabric ’cause – well, just because.
All of its pieces fit together perfectly? I have some severe pain because my own pieces don’t fit together.
The Steady State theory was refuted for most cosmologists with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965, which was predicted by the Big Bang theory. It would appear Dr. Wickman is just a bit out of date.
As she’s able to twist Scripture to conform to objective truth, here’s hoping all living Christians will get her message and stop fucking with science and human welfare.
“Properly practiced…” Properly by whose standards? Science doesn’t answer to myth.
Technically Cuttlefish it doesn’t banish God – just means he’d have to get all his licks in in the first 1/10 to the -35th of a second
simple logic of cause and effect
History teaches that simple answers are neat, plausible…and wrong.
Wickman says:
Statements like that are driven by fear. Sweet Jesus made it clear that anyone who preaches against the bible story should be killed:
If anyone causes one of these little ones–those who believe in me–to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:6)
I can imagine some kind of god working in that first Planck time and then standing back to observe the results, careful not to stick his finger in the pie. This would be indistinguishable from the atheistic case. That’s why I’m an agnostic atheist and not a dogmatic atheist. Not the Abrahamic God, of course. That tale is just nuts, given observed reality.
Steve, I like that scenario, and your view is similar to mine. Anthropomorphizing such a God, I wonder what a being capable of creating a universe would do to keep from being bored. Despite what YECs would say, there’s no evidence of tinkering in the post-expansion era – imagine if we found that the value of c were adjusted or time once ran backward. I suppose it could create new universes ad infinitum, but I think that would get old after the first billion or so.
As a physicist, she really ought to be aware that causality is an emergent property of thermodynamics. In situations where thermodynamics does not apply, it is no longer a meaningful concept.
Famine is not caused by reproduction.
Overpopulation woo stinks.
davidgentile @10
Olaf Stapleton’s Star Maker considered a godlike being who created multiple universes. The book is available from Project Gutenberg Australia.
I made a response to davidgentile @10 which is in moderation, probably because I gave a link to Project Gutenberg Australia.
@Al Dente, cool, thanks!