Recently, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Ken Ham, outspoken creationist, debated if Ken Ham's model of creation is a viable model of the origins of life, the universe, everything.
The debate was very interesting and appreciatively civil.
"I am very glad that agreeing to and becoming a young earth creationist is NOT a stipulation to being a Bible believing Christian.
Scientists around this time began to observe that the universe was expanding.
In the beginning, when God began to create heaven and the earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water...
What?
The debate was very interesting and appreciatively civil.
Bill Nye's argument is driven home by the brilliance of his greatest unspoken point as one of my good friends said about the debate:
"I am very glad that agreeing to and becoming a young earth creationist is NOT a stipulation to being a Bible believing Christian.
Conversely, I am very glad that agreeing to and becoming an atheistic evolutionist is NOT a stipulation to being an effective student and practitioner of science."
I really loved that Bill Nye kept arguing that "Ken Ham's creation model is not viable" heavily inferring that the literal interpretation of the Bible in regards to science is flat wrong. Conversely, Nye never argued against intelligent design or similar creation models with a higher being created everything. Nye's main argument that blatant interpretation of science using the literal modern words of an ancient religious text is far more likely to encourage scientific ignorance of the greater population. Teaching the idea that "you just have to believe it, any evidence against it is god testing you" is dangerous.
Bill Nye the Science Guy invites us in response to a question on what was before the big bang,
"This is what drives us; this is what we want to know, let's keep searching. Nobody knows why. To us this is what drives us, what causes us to get up in the morning and go to work everyday - to try to solve the mysteries of the universe."
Together let's pursue questions unanswered, hard question.
Walking in the way of Jesus is not mutually exclusive with being a student of science.
On 7 Days and 14 Billion Years...
Let me tell you about my journey as a student of science and a disciple of Christ:
Recently, I read Albert Einstein's book Relativity: The Special and General Theory which he writes, in his words, "for the layman." (Ironically, Einstein's definition of "layman" is roughly someone with a bachelor's degree in engineering.) In his book, he intricately describes how time and space and speed is relative (what you thought it was deeper than that?). He goes on to explain that time and space itself bends and twists, lengthens and shortens, expands and contracts, so that light is always travelling at a constant speed no matter the perspective of the observer. He developed the theory and all of the math behind it between 1907 and 1915.
Scientists around this time began to observe that the universe was expanding.
A man named Hubble looked up at the night sky and noticed that distant galaxies were moving away from us.
A Catholic priest named Lamaitre realized that for the universe to be expanding, it had to originate from a single point. He theorized that the beginning of this universe started with a big bang.
Fifty years later, another group of scientist but the first satellite into space, and twelve years after that, another group of scientist put two men on the moon. We suddenly realized that the universe is a big place and worth exploring. As we were regularly putting satellites into orbit, we discovered something - the clocks in the satellites very quickly lost their accuracy and were drastically slower. They put more and more accurate clocks (accurate to 20 billionths of a second!) into the satellites but kept having the same issue. These engineers began to see that Einstein was right! Time actually flows slower in orbit than on the earth because the gravity of the earth contracts time and it flows faster on the earth. So, they adjusted the clocks to tick faster on the earth, but in orbit, they tick at the same rate as on the earth.
Fifty years later, another group of scientist but the first satellite into space, and twelve years after that, another group of scientist put two men on the moon. We suddenly realized that the universe is a big place and worth exploring. As we were regularly putting satellites into orbit, we discovered something - the clocks in the satellites very quickly lost their accuracy and were drastically slower. They put more and more accurate clocks (accurate to 20 billionths of a second!) into the satellites but kept having the same issue. These engineers began to see that Einstein was right! Time actually flows slower in orbit than on the earth because the gravity of the earth contracts time and it flows faster on the earth. So, they adjusted the clocks to tick faster on the earth, but in orbit, they tick at the same rate as on the earth.
In the mid 90's, yet another group of engineers sent a very powerful telescope into orbit to take some detailed photos of the stars. The Hubble Telescope came back with some of the most brilliant photos of the universe that went beyond the expectations of engineers the built it. These engineers began to notice that the universe not only is expanding but is accelerating! Using Einstein's models and the pictures of distant galaxies, they were able to figure out both how far away and how much time it took for the light of those starts to reach the earth. They peered farter and father out and discovered and "edge" to the universe that they were observing. This edge is roughly 46 billion light years away (one light year is the distance that light travels in a year) and its light took 14.6 billion years to reach the earth; relativity explains the drastic difference between the distance and the time. The light from the sun takes roughly 8 minutes to reach the earth, by the way.
In the beginning...
All of a sudden, scientists - particle, astronomical, and theoretical physicists - begin to resound ancient Jewish poets.
Let's look at two stories of the beginning of the universe:
In the beginning there was nothing.
Literally nothing. We can't even understand nothingness. Nothing.
In the beginning, when God began to create heaven and the earth - the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water...
Suddenly, the big bang occurs. All of matter and energy in the universe gets created, from nothing mind you. This matter and energy is so tightly packed and so intensely hot that sub-atomic particles can't even form. With an intense amount of energy, there is an intense amount of light.
God said, "Let there be light" and there was light.
Then the universe began to expand. As the universe expands, things start to cool and light shifts out of the light spectrum into infrared light. There is now darkness.
God saw that the light was good and separated light from darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.
As the universe expands, the matter begins to attract each to other forming subatomic particles, and hydrogen atoms. Great clouds of gas beginning pooling up into more and more separated areas of space.
God said, "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water, that is may separate water from water." God made the expanse and separated the water which was below the expanse from the water which was above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse Sky. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.
Galaxies begin to form. Stars begin to be burn, creating all of the atoms on the periodic table. Stars live and die creating this atoms which are the building blocks, the very seeds of the earth itself. Planets are formed around these stars.
Sometime later, the Milky Way is formed and our solar system is created. The sun and then the planets and the earth itself.
God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate day from night; they shall serve as signs for the set times - the days and the years; and they shall serve as lights in the expanse of the sky to shine upon the earth." And it was so. God made the two great lights, the great light to dominate the day and the lesser light to dominate the night, and the stars. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.
Comets bearing water come and collide with the earth and water begins to pool on the earth. Continents are formed and seas surround them.
God said, "Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear." And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering waters He called Seas. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
Life begins to spring up. Simple organism before complex organisms. There are plants and grasses and eventually trees.
And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation: seed-bearing plants, fruit of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.
There are invertebrates fish then amphibians and reptiles and birds. All water dwelling creatures because water brings life.
God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and birds that fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." God created the great see monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good. And there was evening and there was morning a fifth day.
Then there are land animals and then dinosaurs and then mammals.
God said, "Let the earth bring forth every kind of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind." And it was so. God made wild beasts of every kind and cattle of every kind, and all the kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good.
Then eventually humans.
And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And it was so. And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
A poem yet greater than a poem...
It hasn't been till the last twenty years that scientists discovered the accelerating expansion of the universe to even allow for the possibility for there to be light and then darkness before the creation of stars. It hasn't even been one hundred years since we discovered that the universe was began in an instant out of nothing. It has barely been two hundred years since a scientist discovered that life starts in water and grew to the complexity and diversity of today.
The poem in Genesis is over four thousand years old from when the Israelites were slaves in Egypt.
Stop.
Think about that for a second.
The fact that the a creation poem told four thousand years ago even slightly or recognizably aligns with what science has discovered in the last two hundred years is unbelievable.
This was a poem talked about between a group of people who were slaves in a rich land full of tales of their gods surround by other ancient peoples with their own tales of creation.
Tales of the gods showing up and forming a flat rock.
Tales of the gods carrying the sun around sky when the gods feel like it.
Tales of the gods holding the globe up on their backs.
Tales of the gods calling on the elements to do their will.
These Hebrews told a story of one God who created everything. Without Him, nothing was made!
Not even light itself! Not even the sun (who the Egyptians called Ra, the sun god)!
Not even light itself! Not even the sun (who the Egyptians called Ra, the sun god)!
This God.
This God calls himself, "I AM!"
This God calls himself, "I AM!"
This God brings order out of chaos.
This God called the order, good.
This God called everything that he made, good.
These ancient people, telling this story, told a poem of the creation of everything
...and somehow...
this poem closely parallels what we observe in science.
"This is what drives us; this is what we want to know, let's keep searching. Nobody knows why. To us this is what drives us, what causes us to get up in the morning and go to work everyday - to try to solve the mysteries of the universe."
Wait. Was 7 days or 14 billion years?
Yes.
What?
Yes.
Let's go back to relativity.
To quote my favorite sci-fi television show, time and space is "wibbly wobbly."
Einstein discovered that time contracts with the faster that an object goes. The closer that an object gets to the speed of light, the more that time slows down.
From the earth's slow moving perspective, the universe is 14 billion years old, and the earth itself is around 4.5 billion years old.
It might need to get some reading glasses.
However, from the perspective of the light travelling from the edge of the observable universe, light leftover from the big bang itself, the universe literally just began.
Right now.
To quote the dialog of one of my favorite sci-fi movies:
"Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now, is happening now.
What happened to then?
We passed then.
When?
Just now. We're at now now."
This sounds absurd and strange, but the universe is 7 days old, 14 billion years old, and 1 second old.
And we are just getting started.
Let's keep searching because this is what drives us.
No comments:
Post a Comment