Biologos - Mountains, Meadows, and Marmots: Creation or Judgment?

In today's article by Joel Duff the observation could be made that "What one sees as the pinnacle of God's creative work another claims as all wreck and ruin." As posted in Relevancy22's many topics on Creation is the thought that:

"Christian cosmologies need a definitive upgrade from their

traditionally bleak judgments and bleaker future expectations

ingrained so deeply within the church tradition."

Joel attests to this fact too - that all we see in our present day world is God's greatest gift and glory to mankind.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater

March 12, 2017

Photo Credit: Joel Duff

Mountains, Meadows, and Marmots: Creation or Judgment?

http://biologos.org/blogs/guest/natural-and-biological-diversity-a-testament-to-gods-creative-power-or-a-consequence-of-sin

by Joel Duff (guest author)

March 9, 2017

This past summer I had the pleasure of sitting on a 13,000 foot ridge of La Plata Peak in Colorado for two hours while my oldest son ran up the final 1,300 feet to the top of the mountain. From this amazing perch I enjoyed looking out over dozens of mountain peaks topped with patches of snow and the presence of some friendly pikas and marmots while numerous forms of insects visited dozens of species of high alpine flowers.

My encounter with creation brought to mind Psalm 104, which recounts the acts of creation and proclaims that that:

“O LORD, how manifold are your works! 

In wisdom have you made them all; 

the earth is full of your creatures.” (v. 24 ESV)

Earlier in the same Psalm, mountains are mentioned: “The high mountains are for the wild goats; the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers” (v. 18). Likewise in Psalm 19, David proclaims that the “heavens declare the Glory of God.” In the book of Job we find God exhorting Job to look at a wide variety of attributes with which He endowed His creatures, asking Job who he is to question the wisdom of His creation.

At no time while gazing over the mountain tops, as I interacted with the animals and took pictures of the flowers, did it occur to me that what I was witnessing was anything less than the glorious, good creation of God.

More recently I found myself in a theater taking in scenes of God’s creation through the documentary Is Genesis History? hosted by Del Tackett. This beautifully produced film transported myself and the rest of a clearly awed audience to many natural wonders of this world. Even though my interpretation of Genesis is much different than his, I could share with the Tackett (and the audience) a great sense of wonder at these magnificent scenes. So you can imagine my surprise[1] as I watched the final scene which found Dr. Tackett looking out over a landscape similar to my mountain experience and proclaiming, “It’s glorious, but represents the judgement of God.”

As surprising as this statement may sound, Dr. Tackett was only stating the logical conclusion which flows from his young-earth creationism (YEC) worldview. For him, what you and I experience is not so much God’s good creation as it is the end-product of God’s judgement.

How so? According to Tackett and like-minded YECs, geological processes such as earthquakes, floods—including Noah’s Flood—volcanism, plate tectonics, uplift, subsidence, and the like, could not have been a part of God’s “very good” creation. Instead, they were brought into the world by Adam’s sin, which affected every aspect of creation—possibly including extraterrestrial planets and stars. But these very same processes are the immediate cause of every geological formation we see today. Thus, had Adam never sinned, there would be no Grand Canyon, no Niagara Falls, no Mt. Kilimanjaro, and no Mt. Everest. In fact, there might have been no high mountains at all.

Is the present-day diversity of living things also the result of the judgement of God?

Despite a lack of YEC literature addressing ecological interactions in the pre-Fall world, it is evident that the young-earth view of the radical reconstruction of the world following Adam’s sin touches far more than the physical surface of the Earth. It also applies to the living inhabitants of creation as well.[2]

Rather than looking out over a mountain vista, Dr. Tackett might also have taken us to a zoo and said: “Look at all of these magnificent creatures complete with marvelous adaptations for survival in deserts and mountain tops. They remind us of God’s judgment for sin.”

Why? Consider that YECs believe the in the pre-fall world, no animals with the “breath of life” experienced death. This biological “perfect” paradise precludes disruptive events such as mutations and natural selection resulting from resource competition. If immortal animals had all the plants they could ever need for food and were all able to reproduce without impediment, then the need for adaptations for protection, competition, and even mate attraction would be unnecessary. One wonders what the function of variation among individual members of a “kind”—if any existed—could have been. Was diversity solely aesthetic?[3]

According to Tackett, after Adam and his offspring’s sin brought radical climatic change and geological destruction to the face of the whole earth, especially at the time of the Flood, a great diversity of species and all their amazing features sprang forth as they adapted via evolutionary mechanisms—albeit at an impossibly fast pace—to new habitats, especially as a result of the Flood.

Where did the genetic information come from that allowed for this post-fall explosion of new species? The film explains that the initial “very good” creation included organisms front-loaded with immense genetic variation and thus the capacity to evolve into new species after sin entered the world. In addition to raising some difficult questions of theodicy and God’s foreknowledge, this doesn’t make any biological sense.

Hibernating pikas and marmots? Alpine species of plants? Polar bears and arctic foxes? None of these existed in the original creation, according to YECs. Just how few species existed in the original creation? The YEC literature is very sparse but extensive speciation proposed by Answers in Genesis points to an initial creation with low diversity. For example they speculate that the 1100 species of bats alive today, in addition to all fossil species, originated from a single bat ancestor.

Each of these modern bat species has remarkable and unique adaptations to diverse environments that may not have existed in the pre-Fall world, sculpted by the mechanisms of evolution unleashed by Adam’s sin. Therefore, from a YEC perspective, the diversity of life on Earth at which we— and so many biblical authors—marvel is not representative of God’s original creation.

God’s invisible qualities clearly seen in the post-Fall world?

Finally, as the last scene of the Colorado landscape faded from view, Romans 1:20 appeared on the screen: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Yet if the characteristics of living things and the very shape of the earth’s surface is evidence not of God’s power but of creation falling apart because of sin, how can God’s eternal power and divine nature be clearly seen in the world around us?

Mountains, weather, and biological diversity are consistently described in the Bible as being authored by God. In most contexts these natural features of the world are viewed with awe and reverence as good and wonderful things. We don’t find the psalmist blaming the existence of mountains on Adam’s sin nor even a global flood. Psalm 104 doesn’t attribute the lion roaring for its prey to Adam and Eve’s primal disobedience.

When Abraham and Lot, as recorded in Genesis 13, look down into the Dead Sea Valley, they don’t bemoan the fact that because of Adam’s sin a great rift in the Promised Land had opened up, creating the Dead Sea and a difficult passageway allowing access to the valley floor. But following the young-earth view to its logical end, had Adam not sinned the land before them would have had no sharp cliffs, barren spaces, or extreme heat or cold.[4]

Lot described this place as “like the garden of the Lord.” (Gen 13:10) But his response makes no sense in the young-earth perspective. How could this in any way be like the garden of the Lord if every plant, animal and even rock of the valley had been radically transformed as a result of Adam’s transgression? In the YEC worldview, this land would not have been recognizable to Adam and Eve in the prelapsarian world.

The evolutionary creationist sees God’s hand in every aspect of creation, present and past. For us, the beauty of creation is much more than just a shadow of a former time. Nature is damaged, in our view, not by a radical physical transformation at the moment of the first sin, but by the ravages of a broken humanity who does not worship the Creator as they should. We are not tending and keeping the “Garden” as it was intended.

It is difficult not to conclude that the original creation, as envisaged by YECs, must have been a rather monotonous place, lacking much of the geological and biological diversity of God’s creation that we can observe today. This perspective doesn’t align with the world that the biblical authors wrote about, nor does it align with the evidence from the world that we see today. We need a better way to understand what God has told us about who we are and how He formed this world we live in. At BioLogos, we are pursuing that better way.

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Notes

References & Credits

[1] My reaction is not unique, others—Reasons to Believe, in particular—have made similar observations in response to this scene.

[2] “Creation’s Original Diet” (Answers in Genesis), is one of a few articles that explores the pre-Fall creation ecology. Especially notable in this article are the emphasis on the lack of resource scarcity and availability of all plants—and presumably all plant parts—as food in the pre-Fall world. But whether speciation could have occurred or even if there were diversity of climates and ecosystems in the pre-Fall world is rarely discussed in the YEC literature (at least, that I am aware of, but I’ve read most of the popular literature on this subject). See also: “Did Adam step on an ant before the fall?” (AiG) in which the we are told that “accidents never happen in a perfect world.”

[3] Even the names given to animals by Adam (if we assume that they were passed from Adam to the Israelites) are inconsistent with the YEC understanding of the Edenic ecology. Many animals are given names that reflect their adaptations for survival in a world of death. For example, the root word for Lion in Hebrew is “'ariy”, which means “in the sense of violence.”

[4] George E. McCready Price, one of the intellectual founders of modern young earth creationism,provides a vision of the prelapsarian world that comports well with the sentiments expressed by Tackett in that final scene: “The earth, as Adam first saw it, was supremely beautiful. No bare, rocky cliffs towered up between him and the sunlight, frowning destruction upon his feeble steps; no wide, dreary swamps breathed pestilential vapors into his Eden home; no pathless deserts intervened between him and distant lands.”

And later: “Even the mild, soft climate, of singular uniformity over all the earth, north and south, was little changed after the expulsion from Eden, until that awful time when "all the fountains of the great deep" were "broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened," and a third dreadful curse rested upon the earth as the result of sin.”

Source: Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity, p. 154 and 155 (pub. 1902)

About the Author

Joel Duff is a professor of biology at The University of Akron. He earned his B.S. in biology from Calvin College, and a Ph.D. in botany from the University of Tennessee. He research focuses on understanding biological diversity by examining differences in DNA sequences and genome structure. He has worked on numerous plant and animals systems and has authored more than 40 research articles in science journals. He is an active writer and speaker exploring the intersection of science and Christian faith. He is a contributor to the book Grand Canyon: Monument to an Ancient Earth and blogger at Naturalis Historia (thenaturalhistorian.com). He is an avid nature photographer and enjoys exploring God’s creation with his wife and five children.

Debating Christianity's Traditional Creational Explanation - "Creatio ex nihilo" or "Creatio ex continua"?

By way of a disclaimer here at Relevancy22 my overall premise is that (1) God is dependent upon nothing and (2) God is Creator of all - even if it is "nothing". This is my philosophical Christian position more commonly described as "creatio ex nihilo" - creation from nothing. It is also a widely held traditional position of Christian orthodoxy.

However, in physics - and especially in quantum physics - there is no such thing as "nothing." And so my creational position would go on to say that "nothing cannot be created out of nothing unless that nothing really isn't nothing but actually held something within its composition." This is the "creatio ex continua" position - creation from something which is a less widely accepted position but nonetheless orthodox teaching of Christianity as well.

The problem here is that one cannot be the other. Either it is or it isn't. And if we continue to define these positions in dualistic categories than we may miss the essence of each position as separately understood.

But before I go on to explain what I mean here I want the reader to know that "creatio ex continua" is not strictly a panentheistic position as some would like to read into it. But a more modified relational process theological position stating the ontological linkage between our Redeemer-Creator with His creation. That is, though God created from nothing philosophically speaking (for argument's sake) God is still uniquely linked to His creation even as a quantum singularity is linked to its point of origin.

As such, I am not describing an ontological interdependency between God and the world (sic, classic panentheism in the liberal process sense) but in another sense - in the more conservative sense of process theology - God and His creation are indeed uniquely linked creationally.

This then is the process side of God's creatorship without the antecental panentheistic elements that have been philosophically attached to it by a more liberal process theology which I take liberty to prohibit through a more conservative relational interpretation of process theology.

Now, let me return to my earlier thought. Within the realm of physics there is always "something" inside of "nothing" - whether it be a vacuum of space which really isn't a "vacuum of nothingness." Or tightly-wound inter-dimensional spaces which appear empty but aren't. Or even the primordial soup of the Big Bang itself which then consisted of a "nothing" composed perhaps of an intense (or blinding) darkness (or light) of "energy and force" intertwined with one other.

And remember, under intense gravitational forces, light cannot escape. Thus my supposition of a "darkness or void" as versus a "blinding light" per se.... But who knows, in the realm of poetry maybe all this primordial soup was very light itself with no darkness at all since space itself did not exist as we know and experience it today.

Nor did time before the eruption of the Big Bang. Why? Because time could not have begun having become overwhelmed in the spatial soup of gravity's forces and liquefied into 2 or 1-dimensional space itself.

And so, space was limited to 2 dimensions, or perhaps 1 dimension, and time was without existence so that in a sense you could describe these physical conditions of our early universe as a kind of "eternality" without presence, form, or prior antecedence. Moreover, creation's beginning point - as the science of quantum physics understands it - is known as a "singularity" of the space-time event.

Therefore, what traditional Christianity would call "nothing" - which played off the older Greek idea of "nothing" - is actually not "nothing" but something. Something quantumtative. But then again, how would the non-scientific church have known about this physical absurdity if quantum physics hadn't yet been discovered?

Too, it wasn't until the mid-20th century that these quantum scientific discoveries were known. And lest of all by traditional Christianity which historically runs decades, if not centuries, behind the academic curve of knowledge because of its religious belief structures so resistant to change. Let alone supposing that more ancient cosmologies (sic, Wikipedia) would be helpful in explaining this kind of singular discussion. Why? Because quantum physics is not yet a 100 years old. Till then the world never knew of early creation's physical description in these scientific terms.

And don't suppose the bible would either. It was written by ancient cultures thus immediately dating its resources of human knowledge. Which is both the beauty of the Bible and the frustration of its interpreters. Some would read into its pages more than it is saying thus overlaying personal dogmas with personal interpretations to orthodox doctrines. Whereas other readers would more properly hold back in granting too much interpretative license and when doing so gain the beauty of God's written revelation by its silence. And for many of us, the silence of Scripture is as helpful as its pointedness of salvific revelation. For by it we may think more creatively, more expansively, with the newer academic findings at hand across as many inter/intra-disciplinary fields as possible without the Scriptural inhibition of forbidding or detraction.

And so, to press the point a bit further - and in a kind of equivocal argument - the concept of "nothing" could be equivocated with the concept of "zero" - which in mathematics and science is the most infinite of numbers one can rest a theory upon (sic, Wikipedia again). Meaning that "zero isn't necessarily zero" and neither is "nothing necessarily nothing."

Hence, this blog site here leans to the philosophical grounds of traditional Christianity's "creatio ex nihilo" premises but posits that in the actuality of our current universe the alternate teaching of "creatio ex continua" may perhaps be the better physical explanation even as "creatio ex nihilo" is perhaps the better philosophical argument (cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg here and here and here).

My last thought is that the theological historian Dr. Olson makes "creatio ex nihilo" foundational for God's Transcendence, Grace, and Separateness from evil. However, we have demonstrated many times that this traditional Christian dogma (or blik) is not necessary in upholding this linkage in order to retain those foundational ontological, relational, and metaphysical arguments.

Lastly, if you're confused, then please read the traditional article below by Roger Olson and then look up all the "creatio ex continua" articles here on this site starting with the first several linked immediately above including the index given at the bottom of this post. Hopefully what I am doing here is not positing something new in a sense, but rather attempting to update the oldness of traditional Christianity with the newness of our technological age without grossly exceeding interpretive bounds with more pertinent and relevant questions.

When doing this it seems everything changes - and perhaps well it should! But in the changes we must attempt to neither bind the Scriptures nor our Lord in the process. Whether it be by our insistence upon adhering to the older doctrines of the church or by turning a blind eye to what newer discoveries are telling us about ourselves, the universe, and God Himself through the narrative of church history and human event as they provide greater depth to our reading of the Bible.

And yet, in all things, may all honor and glory be given to our glorious Redeemer God in the unity of the church bound in the great mystery of the Son and Spirit.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

February 2, 2015

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Why I Believe in “Creatio ex nihilo” (Creation out of Nothing)

(Even Though the Bible Doesn’t Directly Teach It)

source link

by Roger Olson

January 30, 2015

Comments

Every once in a while I meet someone who, while exhibiting every sign of being a true Christian, denies the traditional Christian doctrine of “creatio ex nihilo”—creation out of nothing. This belief, the “prior actuality of God” (Austin Farrer’s term), combined with the idea that God created in the beginning out of nothing (not “Nothingness”—Greek philosophy’s me-ōn), is not directly taught in Scripture. However, the early church fathers, especially (but not only) the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caeasarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus), insisted on it against Greek philosophy and Roman religious myths. Gradually it was raised to the status of dogma by most branches of Christianity even if rarely, if ever, explicitly stated as such in creeds or confessions of faith.

Why?

Creation out of nothing is the only alternative to four alternative beliefs about creation that are absolutely untenable for Christian thought:

1 - One is pantheism or panentheism—belief that God and the world are either identical or interdependent. In either case the world is part of God or so inextricably united with God eternally that God is dependent on it. (Here “world” refer to creation, the universe, finite reality.)

2- Another alternative belief about creation is that God created the world out of some pre-existing matter that he did not himself create. In that view God “created” by organizing an eternal something that was chaotic and stood over against him.

3 - Yet another alternative belief is that God created the world out of himself in which case the world is made of “God stuff”—God’s own substance.

4 - Finally, a mostly modern, secular view is that some world (or substance, energy) has always existed and God, if he exists at all, has nothing to do with its origin or development.

If there is a fifth possibility, alternative to creation out of nothing, I am not aware of it. All that I have considered “boil down” to one of those four.

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Many Christians, to say nothing of non-Christians, embrace one of the alternative beliefs about creation, for whatever reasons, and feel permitted to do so because neither Scripture nor creedal orthodoxy explicitly requires creation out of nothing. (Some Christian denominations may require it, but most do not explicitly say so.)

So is creation out of nothing just speculation on the part of orthodox Christian theologians? Why has this idea been so prominent and defended so strongly by traditional Christian theologians if Scripture and creeds do not explicitly require it? Why do I believe in it while admitting it is not explicitly taught in Scripture and points to an impenetrable mystery?

Creation out of nothing is not mere speculation; it is based on other beliefs that are explicitly taught in Scripture and that are part and parcel of traditional, orthodox, classical “Great Tradition” Christianity.

Here is where I think many modern Christians, both conservative and progressive, across that spectrum, fail to realize there are necessary Christian beliefs that are not explicitly taught in Scripture. Yes, admittedly, they are “man-made doctrines” and are more part of Christian philosophy, Christian presuppositions underlying explicit dogmas about Christ, the Trinity, and salvation, than confessional, systematic theology itself. (This is a somewhat artificial distinction but I find it helpful at times and this is one such “time” or instance. Some would call it “the Christian worldview”—the set of basic perspectives, “blik” [to borrow a term from philosophy R. M. Hare], that underlie Christian dogmas about God, Christ, and salvation.)

Creation out of nothing is part of what Emil Brunner called “Christian ontology”—derived from revelation but not explicitly revealed. Without it certain revealed truths cannot be maintained or defended; they slip away without this ontological, metaphysical foundation.

Creation out of nothing (in the beginning, not moment-by-moment as Jonathan Edwards speculated) is necessary, as I said, because without it one will believe in one of the alternative views mentioned above and will eventually find crucial gospel tenets dissolving. It is the only alternative to those views of creation and alone supports and defends the revealed gospel of truth about God, Christ, and salvation.

Now, I find it necessary to warn not to attempt to provide an alternative to creation out of nothing by saying God created “out of love.” That is not an alternative to creation out of nothing; it is simply speaking of God’s motive or disposition behind and for creation—not the what out of which God created. It is completely compatible with creation out of nothing and does not replace it. When someone says God created “out of love” they are not expressing an alternative to creation out of nothing.

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All of the above is to say that there is a Christian ontology, a Christian metaphysical worldview, perspective about reality, that is not itself explicitly revealed but is established because it is the only support for what is revealed and expressed in classical, orthodox Christianity. Often its support is that alternative views are simply untenable in light of revealed truth and, if held, lead inexorably to distortions of the gospel itself.

So what revealed truths, held and taught by all branches of catholic and orthodox Christianity (including the Reformers) make creation out of nothing necessary in spite of its impenetrable mysteriousness?

First is the transcendence of God, God’s holiness, wholly otherness, majesty, power, glory and freedom. Throughout Scripture God is revealed as not dependent on anything in creation for his actuality. Do you need a proof text? Paul to the Athenians in Acts 17:22-31: God does not need anything and gives life and breath to all mortals. Some may point to another portion of Paul’s soliloquy in Athens—that we “live and move and have our being” in God and are “God’s offspring.” None of that undermines and indeed must be interpreted in light of God does not need anything. That is a constant theme throughout Scripture: That God is “above” creation and does not need anything outside of himself to be God. A God who needs the world for anything is not the God of the Bible. “Without the world, God is not God” is Hegel’s heresy, the root of all panentheism, and it undercuts and undermines God’s holy transcendence. This is “another God,” not the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Isaiah, Jesus and Paul.

Second is the gratuity of grace, the revealed truth that redemption is solely gift and that grace for salvation cannot be forced or necessary. It also cannot be presumed as if God owed it to himself or anyone or anything. This belief is integral to Christian soteriology and arises out of biblical revelation and out of the very meaning of grace itself: “For by grace are you saved…and that not of yourselves….” (Ephesians 2:8-9) If creation out of nothing is not firmly held and defended, the freedom of God in redemption and salvation, grace itself as sheer gift, slips away.

Third, finally, is the reality of evil and God’s non-involvement in and non-participation in evil. Creation out of nothing protects the reality of evil from being reduced to illusion (our not-yet-knowing of our own divinity) or necessity (in which case it is not really evil).

These three Christian ideas, derived from revelation itself, if not directly revealed, depend on creation out of nothing. One or more of them completely undercuts and undermines all the alternative perspectives on reality. Only creation out of nothing protects God’s holy freedom and wholly otherness, the gratuity of redemption, and the reality of creaturely opposition to God as evil/sin.

In other words, even though creation out of nothing is not explicitly revealed or normally stated in creeds and confessions of Christian denominations and churches, it inevitably appears as we bore down to inspect and think about the presuppositional pillars that uphold ecumenical Christian belief and experience. It is an aspect of Christian ontology which is just as important as Christian doctrine. The line between the two is admittedly blurry, not absolutely distinct, but we might say that Christian ontology appears not so much directly out of revelation as out of close inspection of Christian beliefs based on revelation in light of alternative religions, philosophies and worldviews in culture. Creation out of nothing was discovered, not invented, by the church fathers as they examined the worldviews, religions and philosophies around them in Hellenistic culture. So today we need to rediscover it and embrace and defend it as we examine modern and postmodern secular and pagan worldviews, religions and philosophies in and among which the same alternative beliefs about God and creation arise (as in Hellenistic culture).

In other words, we can no longer take creation out of nothing for granted; alternative beliefs about God and the world are seeping and creeping into Christian churches. We need to find spaces for teaching Christian ontology (under whatever name). We need to correct Christians who are confused about God and creation, especially those who are coming to believe that creation (e.g., our souls) are “part of God” or that God “did his best with what he had” in creation which is the explanation for evil.

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Note: This is an opening to a conversation among Christians. I don’t expect non-Christians to believe in creation out of nothing (although some might). If you choose to comment or question, please keep that in mind. If you are not a catholic-orthodox and/or evangelical Christian (concerned for biblical revelation and basic Christian orthodoxy) you are free to ask questions about Christian belief including creation out of nothing, but please do not misuse this blog to promote your alternative belief system or worldview (or metaphysical/ontological skepticism). If you perceive yourself to be a catholic-orthodox and/or evangelical Christian and choose to respond negatively (with disagreement) state whether you agree with the three basic Christian dogmas/doctrines I stated that I argue require (together) belief in creation out of nothing. In any case, keep in mind that the purpose here is dialogue. Keep it civil.

continue to -

Critique of Aquinas' View of God's Activity in the World

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"

The Science Behind "Creatio Continua" versus "Creatio Ex Nihilo" (Process v. Classical Thought)

Multiverse Timeline

Introductory Questions

• Can humans manufacture matter from nothing?
• Can light be turned into matter?
• What Does the First Law of ThermoDynamics have to do with all this?

Observations

The First Law of ThermoDynamics says, "Energy can neither be created nor destroyed."

Then Albert Einstein came along and theorized that "Energy" and "Matter" can be interchangeable.

E = M   or   M = E

Atoms, of course, is matter on a quantumtative scale. A molecule is made up of many atoms.

What is light? Light consists as quantum units of energy called "photons." Thus light is composed of photons which we call light (another term for this energy is "radiation").

When two photons are smashed together they produce "quarks" and "gluons." A quark is a unit of quantum matter; and a gluon is a unit of quantum energy. Thus, smashing two photons together produces both matter and energy.

2 Photons --->  Smashed Together

produces

Quark(s) + Gluon(s)   =   Matter + Energy

Nothing is created. Nothing is destroyed. What is changed are the matter/energy states. Thus retaining the First Law of ThermoDynamics (in theological terms this is known as creation ex continua in Latin, meaning "creation from something").



Big Band Timeline



This event was massively demonstrated in the early history of the primordial universe when it consisted entirely of primordial quantum energy. Within this intense energy a quantum state existed in which "time" was liquefied into a spatial mass giving a maximum of 3 dimensions, and more probably, 2 dimensions - not the 4 or more dimensions that we live in today (sic, string theory requires at least 11 dimensions). And since only space existed, and not time, there existed an infinity of time without reference to itself until released in the Big Bang explosion. At this moment, in the merest fraction of a second, energy violently expanded outward, time was released, and the universe was birthed. And as the universe expanded (known as inflation) it rapidly cooled over an intervening period of several hundreds of thousands of years. And as it cooled it formed into units of quantumtative matter which created the universe we now live in today leaving behind "time islands" of hot mass (stars, galaxies, etc.) amid a much larger lattice of massless cold and darkness known as dark matter and dark energy. Taken together, all the stars and galaxies form 5% of the visible universe. Leaving 27% of it as dark matter which cannot be explained. And a remaining 68% as dark energy (cf. link here) which also cannot be explained.

We can express this event in a simple formula:

Light   --->   Matter

Now what is matter? Matter consists of a paired combination of quantum particles arranged as "matter and anti-matter."

By smashing matter particles with anti-matter particles we may reverse the process and produce light.

2 paired particles   --->   Matter + Anti-Matter  --->  Light

And, as discussed, light consists as a pair of quantum energy particles known as photons.

Light = 2 photons

Thus, from light we may produce matter by smashing two photons together. And, from matter we may produce light by smashing a unit of matter with a unit of anti-matter to get light.

"Can we manufacture matter?" - Epic Science



Published on Oct 18, 2013

Is it possible to make matter out of nothing? What about matter out of energy?

Learn more about matter/energy in this video from Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Quantum Conclusions

So, yes, humans can manufacture matter from light; and turn light into subatomic matter particles. But this process is not creatio ex nihilo but creatio continua. We have neither created something from nothing nor made that something disappear to nothingness. According to the First Law of ThermoDynamics, all energy must be retained, and can neither be created nor destroyed. It is simply transferred between quantum states of energy, or matter, according to Einstein's theory of General Relativity. More simply, energy and matter may be interchanged, exchanged, or rearranged, as transitional quantum states between one another.

Theological Conclusions

From the outset, "creatio ex nihilo" (sic, Latin for "creation from nothing") becomes a moot point to the scientific discoveries of quantum physics.... Meaning there is no "creatio ex nihilo" to be created from because the universe has already been shown by quantum physics to have a beginningless mass where time was non-existent because of (infinitely) dense gravitational forces (for more on this see, The Quantum Evolution of the Universe, amongst other articles).

If anything, we might more accurately describe creation as "creatio ex continua" (creation from something that always was) as Wolfhart Pannenberg did in his theologic writings many years earlier. (You may find this argument here on a previous article I wrote, Christian Apologetics in a Postmodern, Quantum Age, in the third section down under the title "My Postmodern, Quantum Response: to Craig's Modern Epistemic Apologetics").

Thus answering how God created. And if we go with a multiverse state of physics than God created from something... not nothing. This is the Process Model of Theism. However, as a matter of philosophical argument, we might suppose that "God would not be God if He couldn't create from nothing" as Classical Theists posit. And in the long run of things, given the nature of each theistic system, it has been demonstrated that the process model holds the upper hand re scientific proof, but that the classical model may be retained without demoting our idea of God being God based upon philosophic arguments one way or another.

"[In Process Theology] it is an essential attribute of God to be fully involved in, and affected by, temporal processes, an idea that conflicts with traditional forms of theism that hold God to be in all respects non-temporal (eternal), unchanging (immutable), and unaffected by the world (impassible). Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal, immutable, and impassible, but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in other respects temporal, mutable, and passible."  - Wikipedia

"... process philosophical thought paved the way for open theism, which sits more comfortably in the [progressive] Evangelical Christian camp." - Wikipedia

More simply said, let us move on from our favorite predilections and learn to see relevant, newer theologic systems as more helpful than we first thought. Process wants a God who is here... One who is with us, who is experiencing our experiences. However, Christian classicism saw a God who was out there, away from us, up in the heavens, who was sometimes with us, but more generally removed from our human experiences as a heavenly being, speaking to us as He would a Job, unmoved and unfeeling. This is the Greek-Hellenistic side of Medieval Christianity which the church has inherited through its traditions and cultures.

All rhetoric aside, the argument becomes moot in Jesus as classicism must now adjust its dogmas by virtue of God's incarnation. Who, in His holy Being, doeth now bear mankind's humanity with us. More specifically, God can no longer stand wholly apart from our humanity, nor remain dispassionately unmoved (or stoical) from our physical sufferings and ethical dilemmas, by reason of His experience as a man (even though the philosophical argument could be made that God was never dispassionate even in His eternal state regardless of classicism's speculated need for His incarnation by some, God being God and all). Even so, by Jesus' incarnation all philosophies may drop away as to whether God was impassive, or passionate, towards man's humanity with the historical occurrence in time and space of His incarnation as fully God and fully man (cf. hypostasis). And because of God's incarnation amongst mankind, He passionately understands us now as our Creator-Redeemer (though we suspect that He knew this subject intimately even before His incarnation). Which is what process theology is plainly stating.

As to the charges of panentheism, they are true. God and the cosmos are one. But not ontologically, as some process theologians would state, for God is the Creator of the cosmos, and not the created of the cosmos.

Nor is God "the All" so popularized by Oprah Winfrey, whose philosophy wanders into pantheism (not pan-en-theism, as stated above) where God and the universe are an ontological oneness. Yes, God is "the All" but He is also greater than "the All." Even distinguished from "the All" as separate from "the All" as its Creator-Redeemer.

Nor is God dependent upon His creation even though He has intricately (and mysteriously) bound Himself to it by decree, by incarnation, by His death, and redemption of it. Each phase of this process should be necessarily understood as relational processes whereby God is creation's Creator, Sustainer, Nurturer, Provider, Savior, and Redeemer. As such, God is shown to be deeply involved with His creation (even as ancient Judaism proclaimed, though it now denies God's incarnation in Christ Jesus). Nor is God impassively separated from His experience of creation's groans and sufferings against the early claims of the church's more classical doctrines erroneously based upon the predominant philosophies of Greek Hellenism.

This then is the position of Relational Theism, which is the halfway-house between the two competing positions of process theology v. classical Christian thought (or theism). The idea of Relational Theism (which we have worked on here quite a bit at Relevancy22) would meld both systems into one synthetic soup, making the waters even murkier than they were before... but hopefully clearer as well. As purists, neither side likes a synthesis of their positions, do they not? But then again, the extremes of any position are fraught with their own special dilemmas when not taking into account the other's arguments and observations.

For myself, the process model bears relevancy over the classic model for the postmodern age that the church now lives within. Even as we have developed it here as a synthesis between two competing positions, which have been described as relational-process theism. A theism that is neither fully classical, nor fully process. That stumbles over each other when trying to assert (or deny) ex nihilo creation. Where in the end we mince about words rather than seeing the reasonableness of either view.

Life is messy. And so is doctrine. Let us learn to open our spirits to believing that we are not alone in this world. Nor this wide, and amazingly complex (multi)universe. No. Within it, around it, about it, is our Creator-Redeemer God who is truly with us in all that He is and was and will be. Whose everywhere-bound-presence should be our comfort and help, our hope and deep knowledge that we are not abandoned. Nor alone. Nor left to ourselves, whatever trials and tribulations come. To know that God is there as He has always been there. That He is - and has become - our Titanium. Amen.

(For more discussion on these matters, simply go to the sidebars to the right under "theism." Thank you.)

R.E. Slater

November 4, 2013

continue to -

Index to past articles on "Particle Physics, Quantum Science, and the Universe"

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5 Cheat Sheets with Michio Kaku | Mysteries of The Universe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A_lGRGc0co&list=PL0AD0581D8B41A28C

Michio Kaku Explains String Theory

Michio Kaku: Is God a Mathematician?

"How does a mathematician read the mind of God? The Mind of God is read through cosmic music.

It is the music of strings, resonating through eleven dimensional hyperspace of supersymmetry. The

latest renaissance of mathematics." - Dr. Michio Kaku

From Universe to Multiverse

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Light Changed to Matter, Then Stopped and Moved

http://www.photonics.com/Article.aspx?AID=28520

Also reported at PHY.org - http://phys.org/news90077438.html

 CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Feb. 8, 2007 -- By converting light into matter and then back again, physicists have for the first time stopped a light pulse and then restarted it a small distance away. This "quantum mechanical magic trick" provides unprecedented control over light and could have applications in fiber-optic communication and quantum information processing.

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Harvard University professor Lene Hau explains how she stops light in one place then retrieves and speeds it up in a completely separate place. (Photo: Justin Ide/Harvard News Office)

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In quantum networks, information optically transmitted over the network is converted into matter, processed, and then converted back into light. The physicists at Harvard University hope that their discovery could provide a possible way to do this, since matter, unlike light, can easily be manipulated. Their findings were published this week in the journal Nature.

"We demonstrate that we can stop a light pulse in a supercooled sodium cloud, store the data contained within it, and totally extinguish it, only to reincarnate the pulse in another cloud two-tenths of a millimeter away," said Lene Vestergaard Hau, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

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In a "quantum mechanical magic trick" devised by Harvard University physicists, a light pulse is extinguished in one ultracold atom cloud (purple), converted to matter and then revived in another before being allowed to exit the second cloud in its original state. (Image courtesy of Sean R. Garner)

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This marks another milestone for Hau in light manipulation. In 1998, she slowed light, which travels in free space at a speed of 186,000 miles a second, to just 38 miles per hour in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Einstein and others have theorized that the speed of light in free space can't be changed. Two years later, she stopped light completely in a similar cloud, then restarted it without changing its characteristics. She received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (so-called "genius grant") for these experiments.

In her latest work, Hau and her co-authors, Naomi S. Ginsberg and Sean R. Garner, found that the light pulse can be revived, and its information transferred between the two clouds of sodium atoms, by converting the original optical pulse into a traveling matter wave which is an exact matter copy of the original pulse, traveling at a molasses-like pace of 200 m (600 ft) per hour. The matter pulse is readily converted back into light when it enters the second of the supercooled clouds -- known as Bose-Einstein condensates -- and is illuminated with a control laser.

"The Bose-Einstein condensates are very important to this work because within these clouds atoms become phase-locked, losing their individuality and independence," Hau said. "The lock-step nature of atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate makes it possible for the information in the initial light pulse to be replicated exactly within the second cloud of sodium atoms, where the atoms collaborate to revive the light pulse."

Within a Bose-Einstein condensate -- a cloud of sodium atoms cooled to just billionths of a degree above absolute zero -- a light pulse is compressed by a factor of 50 million, without losing any of the information stored within it. The light drives some of the cloud's roughly 1.8 million sodium atoms to enter into "quantum superposition" states, with a lower-energy component that stays put and a higher-energy component that travels between the two clouds.

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Diagram showing the time line for the Harvard research. (Image courtesy of Naomi S. Ginsberg, Sean R. Garner and Lena V. Hau)

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The amplitude and phase of the light pulse stopped and extinguished in the first cloud are imprinted in this traveling component and transferred to the second cloud, where the recaptured information can recreate the original light pulse.

The period of time when the light pulse becomes matter, and the matter pulse is isolated in space between the condensate clouds, could offer scientists and engineers a tantalizing new window for controlling and manipulating optical information; researchers cannot now readily control optical information during its journey, except to amplify the signal to avoid fading. The new work by Hau and her colleagues marks the first successful manipulation of coherent optical information.

"This work could provide a missing link in the control of optical information," Hau said. "While the matter is traveling between the two Bose-Einstein condensates, we can trap it, potentially for minutes, and reshape it -- change it -- in whatever way we want. This novel form of quantum control could also have applications in the developing fields of quantum information processing and quantum cryptography."

This research was supported by the Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, the National Science Foundation and NASA.

For more information, visit: www.harvard.edu

How Postmodern Hermeneutics Helps in Reading The Bible

Today's article rehearses once again a subject we have spoken to in earlier discussions (please refer to the sidebars under "Science," "Creation," and "Genesis"). To rehearse, today's discoveries states that "ex nihilo creation" is probably untrue according to quantum physics. This means that matter had to be present in order for it to be "re-purposed, re-arranged, and re-ordered" (in the thermodynamic sense of energy conservation).

What it doesn't mean is that God cannot create matter from nothing (as most infer when jettisoning the idea of "ex nihilo creation) but is simply a testament that God re-created, re-formed, or re-fashioned, the matter present in the early universe into the universe we know today. Since this idea is usually misunderstood by the traditional Christian reading of Genesis we may leave the possibility open at both ends dependent upon our ideas of "God being God" (simplistically put: Is God "above/beyond the universe?" per classic doctrine. Or, is God "beside/alongside the universe?" per process theology and various perambulations of panentheism). Again, we have addressed both concepts in previous posts under the sidebars by the same name and shall defer to those ideas without rehearsing them here.

In earlier eras - and without the practical help of science - biblical theologians and church philosophers subjugated their answers within previously formed philosophical opinions (e.g., Greek Platonism or Greek Aristotelianism). As such, Justin Martyr argued for Platonism while Tertullian argued for Aristotelianism. Many years later, and with the advantage of many years of church discussion, thinking, and evaluation, we find ourselves with a few more options than just those of Plato and Aristotle. Especially so since the science of biblical hermeneutics has rapidly developed beyond these classic dualistic Greek approaches to the study of the universe and man, God and the bible.

 

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Platonism - noun (philosophy)

 

The philosophy of Plato (428 - 348 BC) or his followers that taught the belief that physical objects are impermanent representations of unchanging Ideas. And that the Ideas alone give true knowledge as they are known by the mind.

 

Aristotelianism - noun (philosophy)

The philosophy of Aristotle (384-322 BC) speaks to logic, metaphysics, ethics, poetics, politics, and natural science; "Aristotelianism profoundly influenced Western thought." As a philosophy it placed emphasis upon deduction and logic upon the investigation of concrete and particular things and situations.   ----------------

Events like our singular universe's birth at the "Big Bang" - or the birth of Multi-verses in similar, simultaneous events - demonstrate the idea mathematically that "ex nihilo creation" is untrue contra ancient ideas. This means that it would be wrong to approach Gen 1-3 scientifically and to read our 21st Century ideas into the Hebraic text's ancient cosmological myths and observations (I like to refer to the bible's ancient accounts as historic(al) theological narratives rather than so crudely as myths).

... As an aside, I should note that the Genesis text was written in the 7th or 6th century BC from an Ancient Near-Eastern perspective that would fall into the category of comparative mythology to the other ancient societies around it (Mesopotamia, Sumeria, Egypt, etc).

What this means then is that the later Greek philosophers deduced their philosophies upon what they then knew (even as we do today). Which may have been considerably more material than what the early church theologians had to work with later after so many long years of devastating world war by the kingdoms of Persia, Greece/Mesopotamia, Rome in their lootings and burnings of the treasuries of the surrounding nations and one another. By inference the ancients - like the Greek philosophers and historians - probably had demonstrably more resources at hand than perhaps the latter day theologians of the early church like Justin Martyr and Tertullian who were working off the remaining Greek ideas of their day, along with what they could find of surviving ancient Near-Eastern documents lost within the ancient libraries of Alexandria, Athens, and Rome. Even now this is our problem today as we rely on surviving archaeological resources and archived documents over the many long eons of chaotic world history.

That said, Greek philosophy (Hellenism) was captured by the church and drawn into itself as its resident-cobbled-dogmas of the day. To this perceived knowledge was added regionally formed opinions that either survived, or did not, as the church's theology developed through early and late Medievalism until theologians like Thomas Aquinas came along to restore some order to Christian thinking and philosophy along the lines of Scholasticism. As a 12th Century Catholic monk and scholar Aquinas "was the foremost classical proponent of natural theology, and the father of Thomism. His influence on Western thought is considerable, and much of modern philosophy was conceived in development or refutation of his ideas, particularly in the areas of ethics, natural law, metaphysics, and political theory. The works for which he is best known are the Summa Theologica and the Summa contra Gentiles." Scholasticism is "not so much a philosophy or a theology as a method of learning. Scholasticism places a strong emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference, and to resolve contradictions."

... But I digress and only mention this abbreviated history of Christian Thought to show how the church's received tradition of classical Christianity is being re-applied under today's postmodernistic biblical studies that must de-construct and re-interpret past historical contexts within the evolving fluidity of contemporary language and its linguistic ambiguity from one era to the next, from one culture to the next. To so simply state with assurance that one believes in "ex nihilo creation" or not is to carry with these phrases many unqualified assumptions. Assumptions that don't get us anywhere except into ad naseum discussions round-and-round-and-round without accomplishing anything.

For me, I am interested in the logic, the deductions, and the context of these statements. Practically this means that a simplistic literal reading would weigh out each word without regard to cultural and historical development of this statement's background (including us today as modern interpretive redactionists). Whereas a non-literal reading would weigh out the content of what is being said, why its being said, who is saying it, and explore the reason for such observations. In my estimation, "ex nihilo" discussions then cannot be formed from a literal reading and should be politely put to bed as uninformative, unhelpful, and passé. They only serve to show our short-sightedness about God, His paradoxical Creatorship, and His Sovereign rule, as He moves heaven-and-earth towards redemption completion.

To debate the Creed, as one had said, is to debate its philosophical and theological orientations only. For Justin Martyr, he adopted Platonic ideas, while Tertullian on the other hand moved towards a straightforward deductionism about the one eternal God. To me, this is all well and good, but it seems more helpful to rely on today's postmodern sciences, philosophical ideas, and their gathering theological import for biblical studies, while resisting overtly reading our religious preferences backwards into the creation texts of Genesis as interpretive (classic) redactionists. This means that from today's scientific discoveries it seems very apparent that God created from the material than extant in our pre-existent universe. This doesn't mean that He didn't create that material, simply that He used that material, thus voiding the early church's arguments for one view over the other. Such arguments limited our expanding knowledge of God, the cosmos, ourselves, and globally responsible communities.

Under a postmodern frame of theological development we may do this, and not be so dependent upon ancient church observations for our contemporary derivations today. And this would include even that of the biblical writers viewpoints couched within their ancient cosmologies! What is more important is to try to determine why those biblical writers wrote their observations. And why God chose to utilize their observations and understanding towards a formed biblical revelation. This then frees the postmodern theolog to focus on the biblical content using all that we know (against what we have lost and have failed to recover through death, time, war and prejudicial bias) in the ancient world of biblical cultural and sentiment. And to not treat the bible so naively. Nor our heritage as so emphatic. Nor language as so propositional and definitive. Nor even time itself as without its dithering effects and affects upon God's Word and our accumulating understanding of it.

Consequently, a postmodernistic hermeneutic gives back to us God's Word in an amazing array of complexity and spiritual import more so than if we were to relax and fall back upon the church's classical doctrines, beliefs, and arguments. Arguments too often deemed more important than God's Word itself. For me and my house, I would chose the postmodern route of narrative and anthropologic hermeneutic (among others).

I leave you with these thoughts:

Genre (Genesis 1-2 as myth, history and science)
See also: Literary genre, Myth (disambiguation), and Narrative

The genre of a piece of writing is the literary "type" to which it belongs.^[79] The meaning to be derived from the Genesis creation narrative will depend on the reader's understanding of its genre: "it makes an enormous difference whether the first chapters of Genesis are read as scientific cosmology, creation myth, or historical saga".^[80] Misunderstanding of the genre of the text - meaning the intention of the author/s and the culture within which they wrote - will result in a misreading.^[81] Bruce Waltke cautions against one such misreading, the "woodenly literal" approach which leads to "creation science" and such "implausible interpretations" as the "gap theory", the presumption of a "young earth", and the denial of evolution.^[82] Another scholar, Conrad Hyers, sums up the same thought in these words: "A literalist interpretation of the Genesis accounts is inappropriate, misleading, and unworkable [because] it presupposes and insists upon a kind of literature and intention that is not there."^[83]

Genesis 1-2 can be seen as ancient science: in the words of E.A. Speiser, "on the subject of creation biblical tradition aligned itself with the traditional tenets of Babylonian science."^[84] It can also be regarded as ancient history, "part of a broader spectrum of originally anonymous, history-like ancient Near Eastern narratives."^[85] It is frequently called myth in scholarly writings, but there is no agreement on how "myth" is to be defined, and so while one scholar can say that Genesis 1-11 is free from myth, another can say it is entirely mythical.^[86] (Brevard Childs famously suggested that the author of Genesis 1-11 "demythologised" his narrative, meaning that he removed from his sources (the Babylonian myths) those elements which did not fit with his own faith.)^[87]

Whatever else it may be, Genesis 1 is "story" [or "narrative" - res], since it features character and characterisation, a narrator, and dramatic tension expressed through a series of incidents arranged in time.^[88] The Priestly author of Genesis 1 had to confront two major difficulties. First, there is the fact that since only God exists at this point, no-one was available to be the narrator; the storyteller solved this by introducing an unobtrusive "third person narrator".^[89] Second, there was the problem of conflict: conflict is necessary to arouse the reader's interest in the story, yet with nothing else existing, neither a chaos-monster nor another god, there cannot be any conflict. This was solved by creating a very minimal tension: God is opposed by nothingness itself, the blank of the world "without form and void."^[89] Telling the story in this way was a deliberate choice: there are a number of creation stories in the Bible, but they tend to be told in the first person, by Wisdom, the instrument by which God created the world; the choice of omniscient first-person narrator in the Genesis narrative allows the storyteller to create the impression that everything is being told and nothing held back.^[90]"

- Ibid, Wikipedia
 
R.E. Slater

July 22, 2013 

 

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Creation Debates Are Not New

 

by Scot McKnight

July 22, 2013

 

The first two centuries of the Christian church included serious debates between major theologians — like Justin Martyr and Tertullian — and they debated one essential idea: Did God create out of nothing or, did God create from pre-existing material? A problem actually arises from the translation of Genesis 1:1-2.

KJV: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”

NRSV: In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

Notice how this works: in the KJV, after God created the heaven and the earth, there was “without form, and void” while in the NRSV God’s creation turned things from formlessness and voidness into created order. The KJV, in some sense, has a problem setting up the possibility of a two-stage creation: first matter, then order out of matter. The NRSV’s translation could well imply the same, but perhaps not. Both translations are legit.

We talk about creation and science often on this blog, mostly through the posts of RJS (who is a professional scientist), but creation is not just a debate. It is an affirmation about God, that God is Life and that God is responsible for creation. Do you see any prospects for a resolution among Christians of a traditional bent to see legitimacy in theistic evolution or evolutionary creation or creationary evolution? Or is this a make or break issue?

All of this is discussed in Ronald Heine, Classical Christian Doctrine, because the first lines of the Nicene Creed says:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth, 
of all that is, seen and unseen.

At the time of Jesus and the apostle Paul, and a set of ideas still central by the end of 2d Century AD, there were two basic views: the Platonic view was that God “created” out of pre-existing materials while the Aristotelian view was that matter existed eternally.

Christians differed, too. Justin Martyr was like Plato in thinking God created out of existing materials while Tertullian argued — and his view captured the church — that God created out of nothing (ex nihilo). Tatian said God created matter and then out of matter created the order we see.

The fundamental issue comes down to the doctrine of God: if God alone is the origin of life, matter depends on and comes from God, and therefore the Aristotelian and pre-existing theories are defined off the map. If God alone is Life and if God is creator, then at some point in time matter did not exist and came to exist. Thus, creation is ex nihilo in orthodox thinking.

Of course, this says absolutely nothing about how God chose to create. A creationary evolution that affirms all comes from God coheres with orthodoxy as much as the creationist’s view.