An Update from Biologos

The Biologos foundation has been very helpful to this blog site's insistence on reconciling the Christian faith with today's scientific research and discoveries. From time to time, as I find Biologos' directional, I have included those sets of articles for consideration in the exploration of how Emergent Christianity embraces science with the Christian faith in the hopes of re-gaining an expanded Bible and a vision of God's world from God's perspective.

Like this site here, as it concentrates on separating true Christian doctrines and from religious dogmas, Biologos has been re-creating a faith-based reference site for baseline discussions amongst Christians from different walks of faith in the hopes of providing concrete direction to the many areas of biblical topics that can be confusing or mis-applied.

Let us give thanks to Darrel Falk and his intrepid team of explorers for showing the deep relevancy between science and that of the Christian faith. And for those science teachers amongst us you'll find the Biologos workshops and seminars a ready tool for your classroom lectures that you may join and participate as you read further.

These are exciting times of discovery that continue to show the mystery, the infinity, the wisdom of God through the process of mediated creation that He has begun and continues to create. Praise God for He is worthy to be praised! He is our Lord and King. He is Majestic. None other rules over His Godhead. He alone is the Lover of our souls. We are His as He is mine. His wonders are too mysterious. His creation too vast. We cannot comprehend His greatness. We can but only bow our heads and give thanks to the greatness of His majesty, His wisdom, His love. Amen.

R.E. Slater

relevancy22

December 23, 2011

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BioLoguration II

http://biologos.org/blog/biologuration-ii

December 21, 2011

The BioLogos staff in San Diego

Today's entry was written by Darrel Falk. Darrel Falk serves as president of The BioLogos Foundation. He transitioned into Christian higher education 25 years ago and has given numerous talks about the relationship between science and faith at many universities and seminaries. He is the author of Coming to Peace with Science.

Looking Back

Although BioLogos officially began in 2007 as an organization that would develop a website to answer questions that emerged from Francis Collins’ book, The Language of God, it began in earnest exactly three years ago with the submission and approval of an expanded grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

I remember that Christmas season well as Syman Stevens, Karl Giberson, Francis Collins and I excitedly began working towards the launch of The BioLogos Forum website in April of 2009. Except for Christmas Day itself, emails bounced onto our computer screen like popcorn and we were frequently all online at the same time. We were embarking on a project to show that biology and Christianity—even Evangelicalism—are harmonious. Our confidence in the faithfulness of God’s Word and in the reasonableness of using science as a tool for understanding God’s world drove us forward. The ensuing weeks were terribly exciting as we met regularly by phone, and then in person over Valentine’s Day weekend around the dining room table of Francis Collins and his wife, Diane.

About one week before the public launch of the website on April 28, 2009, in Washington, D.C, Francis broke the news to us that he might be asked to serve as the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and if that happened he would have to remove himself from BioLogos. That is exactly what happened, but before it did Francis wrote his first blog, BioLoguration. With that, BioLogos was officially launched. Francis was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate in August of 2009, and in reflecting on his departure, I wrote a blog entitled, The Vision Lives On.

I’ve always considered those two blogs as a sort of plumb-line by which we could measure whether BioLogos was accomplishing its mission. Looking back, I am thankful to see that for the most part, we are. Employees have come and gone. Syman is now working on a PhD at Oxford University and Karl resigned to devote all of his time to writing books and speaking. Others have since joined us and I have the privilege of working alongside a marvelous team, most of whom work faithfully behind the scenes. Through all these changes, we have continued to make an impact.

Where We Are Now

The BioLogos website has become a significant resource for people seeking ways to celebrate and explain the harmony between science and faith. In addition to blogs, scholarly essays, and links to countless other resources, our new BioLogos Resource Center contains over 100 short video clips featuring a wide variety of articulate Evangelicals, including some from a soon-to-be-released film co-sponsored with Highway Media called “From the Dust.”

Print media is also important to our success; this year we celebrated the publication of The Language of Science and Faith, a book co-authored by Karl Giberson and Francis Collins (which they began in the summer of 2009 while Francis was still able to work with us). We remain committed to developing quality resources to help those who are struggling to make sense of their faith in light of modern science and vice versa.

Although our website has long been the public face of BioLogos, it is only a small part of our outreach activities. One of our most important initiatives is the annual Theology of Celebration workshop in New York City, a gathering of many influential leaders within the Evangelical world. At this meeting we think and pray together about how the church can best respond to the issues of origins raised by science. Our next meeting, planned for March 2012, will focus especially on pastoral concerns.

Our summer workshops for science teachers in Christian schools have continued to be a great highlight as well. Those of us who have taught in the program consider this experience to have been among the most fulfilling of our careers, and the teachers themselves—after meeting in person for two, week-long workshops and online over the intervening year—viewed it the same way, almost without exception. Not all left the program with a BioLogos perspective, which is fine: our purpose in these workshops is to explore—to learn, think, pray, and worship together.

The Shape of the Future

The future looks bright for BioLogos. Our website, already strong, will become an increasingly helpful resource in the coming years for pastors, teachers, new Christians, high school students, college students, scholars and seekers. People will quickly be able to find resources that address their most pressing questions and enter into discussion about whatever they find most interesting.

BioLogos will also provide resources that will last for decades as the church, including conservative Evangelicals, comes to embrace as brothers and sisters those who accept mainstream science, even as many leaders and congregants remain hesitant about it themselves. We will be patient with each other; we will be loving; we will be an example of what it means to follow Jesus in the Romans 14 sense. By that I mean we will be careful that the minors not become major in the Kingdom of God. Still, we will clearly articulate what we believe and why, and we will provide resources for those who seek to understand.

Our programs for science teachers will expand significantly. Through workshops and new resources, teachers will be better equipped to clearly lay out data for their students and guide them through the process of interpreting it in a scientifically and theologically informed manner. The teachers themselves need to be heavily involved in helping us accomplish this.

During this coming year, if the funds become available, we will also initiate conversations with university campus ministries to aid Christian and non-Christian young people who are studying science, especially biology, in a secular environment.

The Need is Great

Our goal, quite simply, is to help the church understand why a growing number of Christians, many of whom have a traditional, orthodox faith firmly grounded in the Bible as God’s Word, see no conflict between mainstream science and Christianity. We also want to cultivate a world where Christian young people feel emboldened in their faith—rather than weakened—when they come to understand the strength of the scientific data. This is a monumental task, to be sure, but every day we sense God’s calling to continue in the work.

BioLogos cannot succeed without you, the members of our community. While we have been blessed to receive a renewal of our Templeton funds that support some of our core activities, we must raise private funds for all aspects of our education initiatives. Science teachers who are Christians, especially those in Christian schools, are in desperate need of professional support. Their resources are very limited. Just ask them! Ask them about workshops at Christian school conventions. Ask them how much professional development activity is available to them. Ask them whether they feel supported to really wrestle with the findings of science.

Thankfully, we as a community can help. One very generous couple has promised to provide a matching gift up to $100,000. Every gift received (or post-marked) before January 1st from a new donor will be doubled up to that level. Similarly, for previous donors, the amount given over and above that given last year will also be doubled.

BioLogos is a movement. Its purpose is not simply to change minds, but to change hearts. We believe, with near certainty, that God created through the evolutionary process, but our task is not to get everyone to see it our way. Our task is, however, to help everyone embrace the many Christians who already do think this way. We ask you to join us in the BioLogos movement today. Some members of our community are giving $25, which immediately translates into $50 because of the match. Others feel called to give much more. Believe me, gifts of all sizes do add up!

Final Thoughts

I entitled this essay BioLoguration II. There are a couple of reasons for that. One is simply that we’ve received our grant renewal and BioLogos now moves into the phase governed by the second grant. However, the other reason is that the first BioLoguration focused on introducing our mission and helping people to become aware of the need. That went exceptionally well, much better than we would have anticipated. Hundreds of thousands of people have visited our site— indeed, we have close to 50,000 visits each month. So now that many people know about BioLogos, we can say that the first phase is complete. Now we set out to help the church embrace the many Bible-believing, Jesus-loving disciples who think science is a reasonable, reliable tool for listening to what God has to tell us about his creation.

As the years go by, I expect there will be a BioLoguration III. The twenty-first century is the century of biology, biotechnology, and biomedical engineering. There is a need like never before for a Christian voice and conscience as society wrestles with great questions posed through this new knowledge.

Although the need for fully informed Christians is great, many of us aren’t there yet. Many of us are still wrestling with the evidence for evolution, theological ramifications, philosophical questions, tradition-specific concerns, hermeneutical issues, and how science can enrich and inform our worship. These are fascinating and wonderful issues, even as they are at times heart-wrenching. That’s phase II. BioLoguration II takes us into this stage. Once we make significant progress on this front, we’ll be ready for the all-important BioLoguration III. We invite you to prayerfully consider a gift today to bring out this brighter future.

Anuradha Koirala Indian-Nepalese Orphange to Stop Sex Trafficking

CNN Hero working harder than ever to stop sex trafficking
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/06/23/cnnheroes.koirala.qa/index.html?iref=allsearch

June 23, 2011 5:48 p.m. EDT

Maiti Nepal

83-Maiti Marg, Pingalsthan, Gaushala
P.O. Box 9599, Kathmandu, Nepal

Phone: 977-1-4492904
Fax: 977-1-4489978
E-Mail: info@maitinepal.org

program@maitinepal.org

Website: http://www.maitinepal.org

Anuradha Koirala was honored as the 2010 CNN Hero of the Year

at CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute.  Jun 23, 2011 | 03:21

CNN Hero fights to end sex trafficking

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Anuradha Koirala, the 2010 CNN Hero of the Year, is saving Nepalese from sex trafficking
  
• Koirala and actress Demi Moore featured in "Nepal's Stolen Children," a CNN documentary
• The documentary, part of the CNN Freedom Project, premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. ET
  

RELATED TOPICS

• Human Trafficking
• Nepal
• Demi Moore

(CNN) -- More than 17,000 women and girls from Nepal become sex slaves every year. Many end up in India, China or other Southeast Asian countries, and roughly half of them are children.

Anuradha Koirala -- the 2010 CNN Hero of the Year -- has been fighting to end this sex trafficking for nearly two decades. Since 1993, she and her organization, Maiti Nepal, have helped rescue and rehabilitate more than 12,000 women and girls.

Recently, Koirala partnered with actress Demi Moore on "Nepal's Stolen Children: A CNN Freedom Project Documentary." For the film, which premieres Sunday at 8 p.m. ET, Moore traveled to Nepal to meet Koirala and some of the people rescued by her group.

CNN's Kathleen Toner recently spoke with Koirala, 62, about how her life has changed since being honored as Hero of the Year and what work remains to be done.

Kathleen Toner: How did you feel when you were named Hero of the Year in November?

Anuradha Koirala: There were so many other people doing very good things who were being honored, so I wasn't expecting it. I was shocked.

I first thought of all of my girls at Maiti Nepal. I wished I was in front of them. I wished I was in my country. But I knew it was a chance to draw attention to the problem of sex trafficking.

When I returned home, they had a big rally with thousands of youths. I realized that the whole country was eager to work hard to make Nepal trafficking-free. It was wonderful.

Toner: How have things changed for you?

Koirala: I now feel that there is extra responsibility on me. I feel I must be even more committed since people around the globe are depending on me. I need to work even harder to get to the end.

We are working so hard. Our work is the same as before ... but (we want) to monitor more of the border crossings. The border with Tibet is a very important area. ... It's very difficult. People easily take a one-day pass to go across to Nepal, and no one monitors. We've found many girls being taken across the border and being used in different entertainment sectors and brothels, so now (we're considering) working there.

At this point, the most important thing we have to do is surveillance and stop, stop, stop girls from being exploited.

Toner: What was it like to work with Demi Moore on "Nepal's Stolen Children"?

Koirala: She was superb. I have seen artists, film stars, musicians and all kinds of celebrities, but often they look very snobbish, very superior. She was very down-to-Earth. She knew the issue and was really committed.

When we were working on the documentary, we had to go to the home of a girl who'd been trafficked, but it was very difficult. Her village was in the mountains, and her home was on a very steep hill. It was a very hard walk for half an hour.

(Moore) is very determined (to help). When she came to Maiti and met the girls, she was so good with the children. She really is committed to this issue. If more people like her come into this field, then maybe we will succeed someday.

Toner: What do people need to know about this issue?

Koirala: This problem of trafficking children and women needs to be addressed, because HIV and trafficking are synonymous with each other. The fundamental human rights of the girl child are being seriously violated. It is a heinous crime, and it harms the girls physically and psychologically. It's also increasing the transmission of HIV to a larger population.

We have to make more awareness, and everyone should be involved: NGOs, government ministries, police, media, community activists and the entire community. (We) can't reach every affected individual; families and communities need to be assisted and encouraged to take responsibility. ... At the end, the whole theme is sensitizing and increasing awareness of the public on a large scale.

Toner: It's such a widespread problem. Do you think that you are making progress?

Koirala: Yes. If not, I would not have been chosen (as CNN Hero of the Year). But more sensitizing and awareness is needed.

Nothing is impossible if the whole world collaborates. If CNN supports us, if the U.S. government supports us, if all of the world supports us, why can't we (end sex trafficking)? But I think I have to live also for another 20 years.

See the full story on CNN Hero Anuradha Koirala:
Rescuing girls from sex slavery

On Idols, Happiness and Personal Meaning

Who Stole My Happiness?

http://peterrollins.net/?p=3435

by Peter Rollins

posted 12/12/11

One of the first problems that we are confronted with concerning the “Thing” which we imagine will bring us fulfilment (money, fame, health, relationship etc.) is, of course, that we can’t seem to ever get our hands on it. If we do reach out and grasp we open our hands and find out that it isn’t actually the “Thing” after all (because it has not satisfied in the way we fantasised). This is not to say that a form of happiness and satisfaction is beyond us, just that the imagined fulfilment of desire is an impossible dream (that would turn out to be a nightmare were it ever possible). The belief in something that can fulfil us (in theological terms “the idol”) is then oppressive because it always seems out of reach, robbing our current situation of meaning.

This is, of course, a rather mundane and well-documented phenomenon. However what is reflected on less is the way that we imagine others having the “Thing” and how this affects the way we relate to them.

Take the example of a minister standing in front of his congregation preaching against the sexual sins of the world. Let us imagine him working himself into a sweat about the orgies, sex parties and deviant behaviour going on just beyond the walls of the church. One of the striking things about this is the way that all of his pent up emotion and moral indignation often seems like nothing more than a thin veil hiding the truth that he is jealous of all the fun they are having. They are having so much pleasure while he is not, they have the “Thing” that he doesn’t.

To approach this from a different angle I recently talked with a woman who broke up with someone and subsequently felt bad because she knew that he was very unhappy as a result of the split. She told me of how, a couple of months later, she found out from a friend that he was much better and in a new relationship. When she heard the news she expressed joy to her friend. However she admitted to me, and herself, that the initial “sorrow” she felt at him being unhappy actually contained a form of hidden pleasure while the “pleasure” she had at thinking he was happy veiled a sorrow.

Her feelings had nothing to do with her disliking the man or not wanting him to prosper; it was rather connected to her (implicit) belief in the "Thing."

This is also seen to play out when someone breaks up with us. It is not uncommon to imagine that the other person is out partying all the time, meeting new people and generally having a ball. All the while we are unhappy, unstable and unable to leave the house. They appear to have the pleasure that we lack and we resent them for it, even wishing them harm. More than this we are willing to hurt ourselves in order to rob them of their pleasure (the most extreme form being suicide – where we will end our own life to rob them of the "Thing").

The point of these brief comments is to draw out how our belief that there is something which can satisfy our desire and render us whole, [which] is not only oppressive because (i) we can never seem to grasp it, but also is oppressive because (ii) of the way that we think others have. When we are truly able to see the other as being just as riven with desire and lack as we are then reconciliation becomes more possible.*

This is a subject that I go into in much more depth in my next book (due out October 2012).

* * * * * * * * * *  * * *

*If I might attempt to complete Peter's thought, we might imagine ourselves no less fulfilled or happy than another person similarly plague by personal thoughts of unfulfillment and unhappiness. Each of us have our own personal "idols and meaning" issues. Each of us are just as torn as the other. But in different ways. This is a sin issue. Rather than being content with life's many little perfections of beauty around us we always want more from God. Our pride and ego would drive us to lust and discontent. These are different than dreams and passions which would drive us to God's re-purposing of our lives. One is an idol. The other is worship.

R.E. Slater

December 15, 2011

How (not) to Honor Christmas

Blessed are the entitled? (*Reposted from December 8, 2010)
http://rachelheldevans.com/blessed-are-the-entitled

by Rachel Held Evans
December 8, 2011

photo © 2007 Sharon Mollerus | more info (via: Wylio)

“Christmas survived the Roman Empire,
I think it can handle the renaming of the Tulsa parade.”
- Jon Stewart (watch the video)

Ever witness a kid digress into complete meltdown mode after his parents refused to buy him that new video game?

“But I want it! It’s mine! Give it to me!”

Entitlement can get ugly, especially around Christmastime.

And the only thing more embarrassing than watching a little kid throw a fit is watching a grownup throw one.

“If you don’t play religious music at your store, we’ll boycott it!”

“We demand that manger scenes be placed in front of all government buildings!”

“How dare you say ‘happy holidays’ to me? I want to speak with the manager!”

“I want it! It’s mine! Give it to me!”

I’m not sure when or why it happened, but in some circles, entitlement has been declared December's Christian virtue. Suddenly it’s not enough that Americans spend millions of dollars each year marking the birth of Jesus. Now we’ve got to have a “Merry Christmas” banner in front of every parade and an inflatable manger scene outside of every courthouse... or else we’ll make a big stink about it in the name of Jesus. Having opened the gift of the incarnation—of God with us—we’ve peered inside and shrieked, “This is not enough! Where are the accessories? We want more!”

This is a strange way to honor Jesus, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped…but made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” (Philippians 2:8)

Jesus didn’t arrive with a parade. He arrived in a barn.

Jesus wasn’t embraced by the government. He was crucified by it.

Jesus didn’t demand that his face be etched into coins or his cross be carried like a banner into war. He asked that those who follow him be willing to humble themselves to the point of death, to serve rather than be served, to give rather than receive.

What a tragedy that history’s greatest act of humility is being marked by petty acts of entitlement and pride.

Don't tell anyone, but sometimes I wonder if the best thing that could happen to this country is for Christ to be taken out of Christmas—for Advent to be made distinct from all the consumerism of the holidays and for the name of Christ to be invoked in the context of shocking forgiveness, radical hospitality, and logic-defying love. The Incarnation survived the Roman Empire, not because it was common but because it was strange, not because it was forced on people but because it captivated people.

Let’s celebrate the holidays, of course, but let’s live the incarnation. Let’s advocate for the poor, the forgotten, the lonely, and the lost. Let’s wage war against hunger and oppression and modern-day slavery.

Let’s be the kind of people who get worked up on behalf of others rather than ourselves.

And "...your daughters will prophesy"

http://rachelheldevans.com/daughters-will-prophesy

by Rachel Held Evans
December 13, 2011

“Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. - Jesus, Matthew 10:41

Josiah became king of Israel when he was just eight years old.

Described as Israel’s last good king, he reigned for thirty-one years during a final period of peace before the Babylonian exile. About halfway through his reign, Josiah learns that the long-lost Book of the Law—the Torah— has been discovered in the temple. Upon hearing the words of the Torah read aloud, Josiah tears his robes in repentance and summons a prophet, for he sees how far Israel has strayed from God’s ways.

Contemporaries of Josiah included the famed prophets Jeremiah, Zephaniah, Nahum, and Habakkuk—all of whom have books of the Bible named after them. But Josiah did not choose any of those men. Instead he chose Huldah, a woman and prophet who lived in Jerusalem. “Huldah is not chosen because no men were available,” writes Scot McKnight, “she is chosen because she is truly exceptional among the prophets.”

Huldah first confirms the scroll’s authenticity and then tells Josiah that the disobedience of Israel will indeed lead to its destruction, but that Josiah himself would die in peace. Thus, Huldah not only interpreted but also authorized the document that would become the core of Jewish and Christian scripture. Her prophecy was fulfilled thirty-five years later (2 Kings 22).

The Bible identifies ten such female prophets in the Old and New Testaments: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, Isaiah’s wife, Anna, and the four daughters of Philip. In addition, women like Rachel, Hannah, Abigail, Elisabeth, and Mary are described as having prophetic visions about the future of their children, the destiny of nations, and the coming Messiah.

When the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians at Pentecost, Peter draws from the words of the prophet Joel to describe what has happened:

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
Your young men will see visions,
Your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
And they will prophesy (Acts 2:17-18)

The breaking in of the new creation after Christ’s resurrection unleashed a cacophony of new prophetic voices, and apparently, prophesying among women was such a common activity in the early church that Paul had to remind women to cover their heads when they did it. While some may try to downplay biblical examples of female disciples, deacons, preachers, leaders and apostles, no one can deny the Bible’s long tradition of prophetic feminine vision.

I believe that right now, we need that prophetic vision more than ever.

Right now, 30,000 children die every day from preventable disease.

Right now 3 million women and girls are enslaved in the sex trade.

Right now a woman dies in childbirth every minute.

Right now, women age 15-44 are more likely to be maimed or to die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.

Meanwhile, the evangelical church has busied itself with endless debates about the “appropriate roles” of women in the church and complaints about the supposed “feminization of the Church,” as if women are no longer needed for the Kingdom, as if we’ve stepped outside our bounds. Meanwhile, churches are spending years debating whether a female missionary should be allowed to speak on a Sunday morning, whether students older than ten should have female Sunday school teachers, whether women should be allowed to read from Scripture in a church service, whether girls should be encouraged to attend seminary, whether women should be permitted to collect the offering or write the church newsletter or make an announcement. Those of us who are perhaps most equipped to speak and act prophetically in response to the violence, poverty, and inequality that plague our sisters around the world are being silenced ourselves.

Folks who see the leadership of women like Huldah and Junia as special exceptions for times of great need are oblivious to the world in which we live. Those who think the urgency of Pentecost has passed are deluding themsleves. They “have eyes to see but do not see and ears to hear but do not hear.”

Women around the world need the voices of all their sisters to cry out in one accord.

I’m with Sarah on this one. We cannot afford to wait for permission to make change; women themselves must be the change.

So, ladies—speak out.

Preach.

Prophecy.

Stand with your sisters.

Change the world.

And if a man ever tries to use the Bible as a weapon against you to keep you from speaking the truth, just throw on a head covering and tell him that you’re prophesying, just like the Bible says you can do.

To those who will not accept us as preachers, we will have to become prophets.

Emergent Christianity and a Calvinistic Philosopher's Assertion for Theism and Evolution

Reading through the NYT article below reminded me of the several themes we have been discussing these past many months concerning the Emergent Christian faith and the world's (and church's, for that matter) many interpretations of realism. One of those themes explored is the belief in God (theism) within late 20th Century Postmodernism leading towards an era (perhaps) of Authentication for the early 21st Century. As versus the atheistic and agnostic counter positions which would include the evolutionary Darwinian philosophy of naturalism.

Clearly Evolutionary Creation does not require the view of Darwinian Naturalism to be held as a plausible view of biblical creation. It has been shown in many articles the appropriateness of a theistic view as related to this subject.* In fact, the onus is actually on the competing views of atheism and agnosticism to show the validity of their arguments. It is but left for the theist to assert his interpretation of scientific results and make argument where and when necessary (as Mr. Plantinga illustrates below in his most recent book).

Further, we have asserted here the general support of all scientific study and research without finding it necessary to "modify" those results towards a Christian philosophy (counter to neo-evangelicalism and Christian fundamentalism's more lingering resistance and doubts). We are comfortable in accepting all theories and postulates. And are confident that within science itself lies the necessary mechanisms for debate, doubt, synthesis, and restructuring through continuing examination, resultant corollaries with newer, displacing, scientific theories. (Interestingly, this also has been occuring within the branch of Theology as well!)

Consequently, it is left to the Christian faith to theologically (NOT scientifically) interpret those results (in terms of metaphysics, ontology, epistemologies, etc). Organizations like Biologos have been doing just that. So too have religious departments been working with both their philosophic and scientific counterparts towards a fuller understanding of God's universe from our many temporal, and limited, understandings. Article after article has been posted here showing the great amount of effort that has been occurring through postmodernistic cultural inquiries and study, by debate and argument, by prayer and prayerful insight. The Christian knows that God is true and that His creation will reveal God's many wonders and splendors despite occurrences of non-Christian interpretation. Good scientific research will eventually verify this belief as is even now being shown in recent discoveries.

Lastly, it is true that Emergent Christianity is allowing for a broader, more moderating version of Christianity than has been found to either the right or to the left of its position. First and foremost is its postmodernistic vision of today's global cultural outreach. The Christian faith has much to offer the world's many religions and cultures. Why? Because Jesus' Gospel will emancipate and deeply enrich every participating religion and culture that chooses to follow Him. What Emergent Christianity does not require is the forcing of the Christian faith upon others. It is respectful of every man and woman's free will of choice, and subsequent interpretation of Jesus to himself and his culture which follows a good, studied discernment of Scripture and doctrine.

Nor does Emergent Christianity force its culture upon its adherents. Every culture is left to freely adapt and assimilate itself to its best understanding of Christ as presented by postmodernism's re-constructive theologic work currently being undertaken throughout universities and emergent churches regarding who Jesus is, how we may comprehend Him, His Word, and ourselves. And as distinct from the many barriers of common Christian folk religion, religious dogmas, restrictive worship styles, and personal faith practices. Emergent Christianity seeks a truer form of personal liberty in each one of these areas as testimony to God's love and grace.

Moreover, Emergent Christianity desires to worship-and-work as one unified body with other similarly committed Jesus followers by seeking communal unions as can be found in the broad spectrum of conservative Christians to practising progressive Christians.  However, Emergent Christianity is also willing to be abandoned by both ends of this spectrum if,  while pursuing its own version of a loving, more realistic faith, than (i) what the religious right is offering; or, a better, more firmer ground of truth, than (ii) what the religious left is offering. Emergent Christianity seeks association with Evangelicalism in all its many forms (including Calvinism) as much as it seeks unity with the many denominational expressions of the Progressive Christianity. But in the realisation that each-and-all participating groups must be willing to change and adapt to either a more loving, or a more biblical, theological interpretations-and-practices than are presently being observed. And to adopt those interpretations-and-practices which would lead to a better, more wholistic, foundation of Christianity unity, and fellowship, as honoring to Jesus, our Savior and Lord, in concerted missional outreach to the postmodern world.

R.E. Slater

December 15, 2011

*per Evolutionary Creationism:

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/evolution-is-god-just-playing-dice.html,

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/gods-role-in-creation.html,

http://relevancy22.blogspot.com/2011/11/misconceptions-about-evolutionary.html

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Books

Philosopher Sticks Up for God
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/books/alvin-plantingas-new-book-on-god-and-science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all%3Fsrc%3Dtp&smid=fb-share

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER
Published: December 13, 2011

Adam Bird for The New York Times. The

philosopher Alvin Plantinga, whose new

book is called “Where the Conflict Really

Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism.”

There are no atheists in foxholes, the old saying goes. Back in the 1950s, when the philosopher Alvin Plantinga was getting his start, there were scarcely more religious believers in academic philosophy departments.

Growing up among Dutch Calvinist immigrants in the Midwest, Mr. Plantinga

Had he not transferred to Calvin College, the Christian Reformed liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his father taught psychology, Mr. Plantinga wrote in a 1993 essay, he doubted that he “would have remained a Christian at all; certainly Christianity or theism would not have been the focal point of my adult intellectual life.”

But he did return, and the larger world of philosophy has been quite different as a result. From Calvin, and later from the University of Notre Dame, Mr. Plantinga has led a movement of unapologetically Christian philosophers who, if they haven’t succeeded in persuading their still overwhelmingly unbelieving colleagues, have at least made theism philosophically respectable.

“There are vastly more Christian philosophers and vastly more visible or assertive Christian philosophy now than when I left graduate school,” Mr. Plantinga said in a recent telephone interview from his home in Grand Rapids, adding, with characteristic modesty, “I have no idea how it happened.”

Mr. Plantinga retired from full-time teaching last year, with more than a dozen books and a past presidency of the American Philosophical Association to his name. But he’s hardly resting on those laurels. Having made philosophy safe for theism, he’s now turning to a harder task: making theism safe for science.

For too long, Mr. Plantinga contends in a new book, theists have been on the defensive, merely rebutting the charge that their beliefs are irrational. It’s time for believers in the old-fashioned creator God of the Bible to go on the offensive, he argues, and he has some sports metaphors at the ready. (Not for nothing did he spend two decades at Notre Dame.)

In “Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism,” published last week by Oxford University Press, he unleashes a blitz of densely reasoned argument against “the touchdown twins of current academic atheism,” the zoologist Richard Dawkins and the philosopher Daniel C. Dennett, spiced up with some trash talk of his own.

Mr. Dawkins? “Dancing on the lunatic fringe,” Mr. Plantinga declares. Mr. Dennett? A reverse fundamentalist who proceeds by “inane ridicule and burlesque” rather than by careful philosophical argument.

On the telephone Mr. Plantinga was milder in tone but no less direct. “It seems to me that many naturalists, people who are super-atheists, try to co-opt science and say it supports naturalism,” he said. “I think it’s a complete mistake and ought to be pointed out.”

The so-called New Atheists may claim the mantle of reason, not to mention a much wider audience, thanks to best sellers like Mr. Dawkins’s fire-breathing polemic, “The God Delusion.” But while Mr. Plantinga may favor the highly abstruse style of analytic philosophy, to him the truth of the matter is crystal clear.

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’ ”

Mr. Plantinga readily admits that he has no proof that God exists. But he also thinks that doesn’t matter. Belief in God, he argues, is what philosophers call a basic belief: It is no more in need of proof than the belief that the past exists, or that other people have minds, or that one plus one equals two.

“You really can’t sensibly claim theistic belief is irrational without showing it isn’t true,” Mr. Plantinga said. And that, he argues, is simply beyond what science can do.

Mr. Plantinga says he accepts the scientific theory of evolution, as all Christians should. Mr. Dennett and his fellow atheists, he argues, are the ones who are misreading Darwin. Their belief that evolution rules out the existence of God — including a God who purposely created human beings through a process of guided evolution — is not a scientific claim, he writes, but “a metaphysical or theological addition.”

These are fighting words to scientific atheists, but Mr. Plantinga’s game of turnabout doesn’t stop there. He argues that atheism and even agnosticism themselves are irrational.

“I think there is such a thing as a sensus divinitatis, and in some people it doesn’t work properly,” he said, referring to the innate sense of the divine that Calvin believed all human beings possess. “So if you think of rationality as normal cognitive function, yes, there is something irrational about that kind of stance.”

Longtime readers of Mr. Plantinga, who was raised as a Presbyterian and who embraced the Calvinism of the Christian Reformed Church as a young man, are used to such invocations of theological concepts. And even philosophers who reject his theism say his arguments for the basic rationality of belief, laid out in books like “Warranted Christian Belief” and “God and Other Minds,” constitute an important contribution that every student of epistemology would be expected to know.

But Mr. Plantinga’s steadfast defense of the biochemist and intelligent-design advocate Michael Behe, the subject of a long chapter in the new book, is apparently another matter.

“I think deep down inside he really isn’t a friend of science,” Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, said of Mr. Plantinga. “I’m not objecting to him wanting to defend theism. But I think he gets his victory at the level of gelding or significantly altering modern science in unacceptable ways.”

Mr. Dennett was even harsher, calling Mr. Plantinga “Exhibit A of how religious beliefs can damage or hinder or disable a philosopher,” not to mention a poor student of biology. Evolution is a random, unguided process, he said, and Mr. Plantinga’s effort to leave room for divine intervention is simply wishful thinking.

“It’s just become more and more transparent that he’s an apologist more than a serious, straight-ahead philosopher,” Mr. Dennett said.

When Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Dennett (who said he has not read Mr. Plantinga’s new book) faced off over these questions before a standing-room-only crowd at a 2009 meeting of the American Philosophical Association, the event prompted ardent online debate over who had landed better punches, or simply been more condescending. (A transcript of the proceedings was published last year as “Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?”)

Mr. Plantinga, who recalled the event as “polite but not cordial,” allowed that he didn’t think much of Mr. Dennett’s line of reasoning. “He didn’t want to argue,” Mr. Plantinga said. “It was more like he wanted to make assertions and tell stories.”

Mr. Plantinga and Mr. Dennett do agree about one thing: Religion and science can’t just call a truce and retreat back into what the paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called “non-overlapping magisteria,” with science laying claim to the empirical world, while leaving questions of ultimate meaning to religion. Religion, like science, makes claims about the truth, Mr. Plantinga insists, and theists need to stick up for the reasonableness of those claims, especially if they are philosophers.

“To call a philosopher irrational, those are fighting words,” he said. “Being rational is a philosopher’s aim. It’s taken pretty seriously.”

Alan Guth on Inflationary Cosmology

<sup>Genesis 1.1-5: The First Day

1</sup>In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. ²The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

³And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

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Introduction

I. An Inflationary Universe, String Theory & Cern's Latest Preliminary Discovery

Brian Greene and Lawrence Krauss on CERN’s Higgs Announcement
http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/ask_brian_greene_and_lawrence_krauss_cerns_higgs_announcement?utm_source=Fb_BG&utm_medium=Wall&utm_campaign=Higgs

2011.12.13 The Cosmos higgs boson large hadron collider physics

About This Video

On the morning of December 13th, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced that its Large Hadron Collider had found evidence which leads them to believe that the elusive Higgs Boson may reside at the 126 gigaelectron volts(GeV) of energy with a confidence level of 2.8 sigma. A sigma of greater than 5 is required to announce the discovery of a new particle. World Science Festival co-founder Brian Greene was at Arizona State University at the time, and he met with theoretical physicist and WSF alum Lawrence Krauss in order to field some questions sent in about the Higgs Boson and the future of physics as we know it.

II. The Eternal Inflation of the Cosmic Landscape

http://worldsciencefestival.com/videos/eternal_inflation_of_a_cosmic_landscape

2011.12.08

About This Video

The search for a unified theory of physics has led theorists far and wide for answers. String theory is a major contender in the race to find the unified theory, but there are things that it doesn’t explain. Surprisingly, the answers have been coming from cosmologists. Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind explains how a vast energy landscape becomes populated with bubbles, each with their own complex landscapes.

"Bubbles within bubbles within bubbles in an infinite but discrete array of possibilities" - res

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Start of Article

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The Man Who Put the “Big” in “Big Bang”: Alan Guth on Inflation

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/degrees-of-freedom/2011/12/06/alan-guth-interview/

By Davide Castelvecchi | December 6, 2011| 

Alan Guth in his early days at Standford

On the night of December 6, 1979–32 years ago today–Alan Guth had the “spectacular realization” that would soon turn cosmology on its head. He imagined a mind-bogglingly brief event, at the very beginning of the big bang, during which the entire universe expanded exponentially, going from microscopic to cosmic size. That night was the birth of the concept of cosmic inflation.

Such an explosive growth, supposedly fueled by a mysterious repulsive force, could solve in one stroke several of the problems that had plagued the young theory of the big bang. It would explain why space is so close to being spatially flat (the “flatness problem”) and why the energy distribution in the early universe was so uniform even though it would not have had the time to level out uniformly (the “horizon problem”), as well as solve a riddle in particle physics: why there seems to be no magnetic monopoles, or in other words why no one has ever isolated “N” and “S” poles the way we can isolate “+” and “-” electrostatic charges; theory suggested that magnetic monopoles should be pretty common.

In fact, as he himself narrates in his highly recommendable book, The Inflationary Universe, at the time Guth was a particle physicist (on a stint at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and struggling to find a permanent job) and his idea came to him while he was trying to solve the monopole problem. Twenty-five years later, in the summer of 2004, I asked Guth–by then a full professor at MIT and a leading figure of cosmology– for his thoughts on his legacy and how it fit with the discovery of dark energy and the most recent ideas coming out of string theory.

The interview was part of my reporting for a feature on inflation that appeared in the December 2004 issue of Symmetry magazine. (It was my first feature article, other than the ones I had written as a student, and it’s still one of my favorites.)

To celebrate “inflation day,” I am reposting, in a sligthly edited form, the transcript of that interview.

Twenty-five Years of Cosmic Inflation: A Q&A With Alan Guth

Davide Castelvecchi: What is cosmology?

Alan Guth: Cosmology is the study of the history and large-scale structure of the universe, and my own niche in cosmology is the very early universe—the first small fraction of a second of the history of the universe.

DC: How is it possible that people can understand the universe itself, as opposed to studying things the universe contains?

AG: We do have a number of pieces of information that we can put together to try use as a basis for constructing theories. Observations about the distributions of galaxies within the visible part of the universe, and the motions of galaxies. Also now very important are observations of the cosmic background radiation—radiation that we believe is the afterglow of the big bang’s explosion itself. And now we have very precise measurements, both of the spectrum of this radiation and also of the small ripples that exist in its intensity pattern. The radiation is almost perfectly uniform. In all different directions in the sky, the intensity we observe is the same to about one part in 100,000. But nonetheless, one does see minute differences from one direction to another. This pattern of ripples is tied directly to two things: theories about how the ripples were formed—which is where inflation comes in—and also to theories that calculate how the structures in the universe have formed from the ripples. Another important ingredient in terms of the observational basis for cosmology is the chemical abundances that we observe in the universe. Those are measured from the spectral characteristics of gas clouds and stars, and can be compared with theories about how the chemical elements were formed in the first few minutes of the history of the universe. And wonderfully, the calculations agree very, very well with the observed abundances of the lightest elements.

DC: When you first had the idea of inflation, did you anticipate that it would turn out to be so influential?

AG: I guess the answer is no. But by the time I realized that it was a plausible solution to the monopole problem and to the flatness problem, I became very excited about the fact that, if it was correct, it would be a very important change in cosmology. But at that point, it was still a big "if" in my mind. Then there was a gradual process of coming to actually believe that it was right.

DC: What’s the situation 25 years later?

AG: I would say that inflation is the conventional working model of cosmology. There’s still more data to be obtained, and it’s very hard to really confirm inflation in detail. For one thing, it’s not really a detailed theory, it’s a class of theories. Certainly the details of inflation we don’t know yet. I think that it’s very convincing that the basic mechanism of inflation is correct. But I don’t think people necessarily regard it as proven.

DC: You recently wrote that “the case for inflation is compelling,” which sounds like a cautious statement.

AG: It’s certainly not as well confirmed as the big bang theory itself. But I guess I’d find it hard to believe that there could be any alternatives for solving the basic problems inflation solves, like the horizon and flatness problems.

DC: Do you have your favorite version of inflation among the many that have been proposed?

AG: Not really, except that I could say that I think cosmology is moving toward describing things in terms of string theory. And there have been a number of attempts to describe inflation in that context. I think that is the future.

DC: So you think that string theory will ultimately prove to be right?

AG: Yes, I do. I think it may evolve a fair amount from the way people think of it now, but I do think string theory definitely has a lot going for it.

DC: Is string theory physics or is it just fancy mathematics so far?

AG: I consider it physics. It’s certainly speculative physics so far — unfortunately, it’s working in a regime where there’s no direct experimental test. But there are nonetheless consistency tests. If the goal of string theory is to build a quantum theory that’s consistent with general relativity, that’s a very strong constraint, and so far string theory is the only theory that seems to have convinced a lot of people that it satisfies that criterion. Just from a sociological point of view, theoretical physicists have been looking for a consistent quantum theory of gravity for at least 50 years now, and so far there’s really only one theory that has reached the mainstream — string theory.

DC: Has string theory really reached the physics mainstream?

AG: Yes. I would say that nowadays, a theoretical particle physicist cannot ignore string theory.

DC: Speaking of sociology, in your book you describe your first attempts as a young particle theorist to describe your idea of inflation to cosmologists, and how communication would break down because people used different lexicons. Is the situation any different now?

AG: I think the situation has improved tremendously between particle physics and cosmology. Now I think that almost everybody in cosmology is reasonably fluent in the vocabulary of both fields, and I think everybody recognizes that there is a strong interface between these two fields. At the same time, now there are also important implications going the other way, with the discovery of dark energy.

DC: Is dark energy more relevant to particle physics than dark matter?

AG: I would say yes. I am not sure if everybody will agree — it depends on what your perspective is. I think dark matter is more relevant to the next age of particle physics experiments — hopefully supersymmetry and perhaps other interesting things that we may discover. On the other hand, there’s at least a good chance that dark energy is energy of the vacuum, so it seems to be telling us something about the fundamental structure of physical law, which is a big surprise. The vacuum energy has been a haunting question for particle theorists since the advent of quantum field theory in the 1930’s. As soon as we had quantum field theory we knew that the vacuum was not a simple state: It was a very complicated state with all kinds of quantum fluctuations going on. And there was no reason at all why the energy of the vacuum should turn out to be zero or small. In fact, nobody knows how to calculate the energy of the vacuum, but if particle physicists were to try to estimate it, the natural answer would be something like 120 orders of magnitude larger than the experimental bound. So it was always a big mystery, but until the advent of dark energy, the belief was that the real number was zero, because of some kind of symmetry that we didn’t understand yet — an exact cancellation between the positive and negative contributions.

If dark energy is the energy of the vacuum, now you need that symmetry to make it almost zero, and then some small breaking of that symmetry to make it a small number that’s not zero. And it all gets very complicated and baroque. Nobody has the faintest idea of how it might actually work. There is also the possibility that the vacuum energy is not determined at all by the fundamental laws of physics, but instead it’s determined anthropically, using the idea of a multiverse. It’s quite possible in the context of string theory that there are many vacuum-like states, and all of them are stable enough that they could provide the underpinnings of a universe. And the one that we happen to find ourselves in is determined by random choice. One would imagine that the universe would inflate eternally through all the different possible vacua of string theory, with infinite amounts of space of every type of vacuum produced — eventually.

DC: Is this the so-called string theory landscape idea?

AG: Yes, that’s the catchword. If this is right, it would mean that in most regions of space the cosmological constant is enormous, and there are some rare regions of space where the cosmological constant happens to be very small. But life can only form if the cosmological constant is very small. So it’s not a surprise that we find ourselves living in one of those regions. An idea like this five years ago would have been completely anathema to particle physicists. It is still anathema to many, but people pay much more attention to this kind of idea now.

DC: Does this connect to the idea of eternal inflation, with multiple universes bubbling off from a primodial vacuum?

AG: Yes, there are two ideas coming together here. One is the idea from string theory, that there’s a huge number of possible vacuum states. And the other is the idea of eternal inflation, that once inflation starts, it never ends, and it explores all possible vacua.

Andrei Linde

DC: Recently Stanford University cosmologist Andrei Linde, who also made seminal contributions to inflation theory, teamed up with string theorists to try to reconcile the two fields.

AG: Yes. I regard that as probably the most interesting approach. I’m a big fan of that work, though I’m not one of the authors. I think it’s the starting point towards what will become a solid embedding of inflation within the context of string theory. Before them, nobody had any good idea for describing within string theory a state that would have a positive cosmological constant.

DC: Does the existence of dark energy suggest a possible connection between the “false vacuum” state that produces inflation and the “true vacuum” state of the cosmological constant?

AG: In principle, yes, although the vacuum states in string theory are really quite complicated states, with a number of degrees of freedom that describe them. Certainly, the state which drove inflation in the early part of our universe had a large, positive cosmological constant. In the end, they would all be described in the same language of string theory, and they would have many similarities. But there also are many significant differences. They are very different energy scales. So I think it’s somewhat a question in the mind of the beholder to decide whether or not there is a close relationship or a distant relationship.

DC: Could there be two different kinds of “repulsive gravity” then, one which acted during inflation, the other one which is acting now?

AG: What I believe, and what is the conventional belief, is that the repulsive gravity is really a feature of general relativity itself — and in fact Einstein made use of it himself in 1917 when he introduced the cosmological constant and tried to use it to describe how the universe could be static, with ordinary gravity pulling everything together and repulsive gravity — the cosmological constant — pushing everything apart. So from the very beginning general relativity incorporated the possibility of repulsive gravity. What creates repulsive gravity is negative pressures. That’s the feature of the cosmological constant and also of states of scalar fields dominated by their potential energy, which is the way conventional inflation works.

Certainly the most plausible explanation for acceleration today, and for inflation early in the universe, was that the universe contains materials that have negative pressures. So at that level of description it’s the same mechanism — because it’s the only mechanism we know. But what the material is that creates the negative pressure is a more detailed question. Whether or not we believe that the KKLMT papers are on the right track, I think we don’t really know how closely related the actual state that drove inflation in the early universe was to the state the universe is in now, with this slow inflation that we attribute to dark energy.

DC: Could there ever be a particle physics experiment to probe dark energy?

AG: I guess I do not see the dark energy influencing or being influenced by particle physics experiments in the foreseeable future. It certainly is highly relevant for astrophysical observations. One important thing we’d love to know about dark energy is whether or not the energy density is constant over time, as it would be if it were a cosmological constant. Or, it could vary with time — in which case, our best explanation would be that it’s energy of a slowly evolving scalar field that fills all of space. That’s usually called the quintessence. There is some hope of answering that question by more detailed astronomical observations. And the best handle of that is probably still the distant supernovae, with experiments such as SNAP [the proposed space observatory Supernova Acceleration Probe].

DC: So is dark energy relevant to particle physics not so much on the experimental side, but because it points to an open problem in its theoretical foundations, i.e., the prediction that the vacuum of quantum field theory should create a much stronger repulsive force?

AG: Yes, in terms of trying to understand the foundations of theoretical particle physics, I think it’s very important. In particular, it seems to be suggesting that there may be no physical principles that determine what the vacuum of string theory is. Maybe it is just all possible vacua happening in all different places [*an infinite state of dimensionality? - res]. Now, I really hope that that turns out not to be the case, because I like to think that physics is more predictive than that. But that is certainly the direction that the dark energy is pointing towards — and it may turn out to be the right direction.

DC: In either case, will a better understanding of dark energy shed light on inflationary cosmology?

AG: Yes, I think so. If it turns out that the only explanation for the dark energy is this landscape idea, that says that if we want to understand how inflation really works, we have to understand it in the context of the landscape of string theory.

The skyline of Chicago as it might look if our eyes could see the cosmic microwave background. I thought of this while I was visiting the Adler Planetarium, where an exhibt showcased the original notebook in which Alan Guth wrote the words "SPECTACULAR REALIZATION" the night he had the idea of inflation. This is the view of Chicago as seen from the Adler itself.

DC: Inflation predicts that the universe is spatially flat, a fact which is in accordance with our best cosmological observations, in particular of the cosmic microwave background. Does inflation rule out the possibility that the universe might be spatially closed — what mathematicians call topologically compact? Before inflation and dark energy were talked about, the idea was that a universe that’s spatially flat would expand forever, whereas one that curves onto itself would recollapse.

AG: Not completely. The statement that the universe is flat is only an approximation. Inflation drives the universe towards flatness — in fact, if enough inflation happens, it drives it incredibly close to being flat. But you could still imagine a universe that started out closed, and at the end it would be very large, but still closed. It would look flat, because the radius of curvature would be huge. On the other hand, it does all become much more complicated, because remember that we’re talking about spacetime, and not just space. And inflation tends to make the spacetime structure of the universe very complicated, with inflation continuing in some regions and stopping in others. Imagining the kind of complicated things that can evolve, I think the right conclusion is that the words open and closed don’t really apply anymore. On a very large scale, the universe is really neither of those.

DC: Correct me if I’m wrong: The onset of inflation being a very local phenomenon, the universe to which our physical laws apply isn’t likely to have interesting topology, because it arose from a local fluctuation.

AG: That’s right. On scales much larger than we can observe there might be an interesting topology. But inflation would suggest that in the scales that we can observe, the topology would be locally R^3 [three-dimensional Euclidean space]. But this has not stopped cosmologists from exploring other possibilities. One of the anomalies that people are concerned about currently is the observation by WMAP [NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe] of the very low values of L — the low multiples. Those fluctuations are significantly smaller than what was expected from inflationary models. It could just be a fluke, but people have suggested other possibilities, such as a universe that is periodic in space, with periodicity of the order of the current horizon distance. But so far people have not found anything along those lines that’s consistent with the data that’s observed.

DC: A mathematician called Jeffrey Weeks, together with a group of physicists, have published a controversial paper in Nature last fall. They searched the WMAP data and claimed it revealed a “house of mirrors” pattern, and thus that the universe was spatially finite and with the topology of a Poincaré dodecahedral space. [This was described in the media as the so-called "soccer-ball universe"; Weeks and his coauthors had described his method for testing whether the universe is spatially finite in the April 1999 issue of Scientific American.] If that evidence were to be confirmed, would it pose a problem for inflation?

AG: Yes, I think it would be very hard to reconcile with inflation.

DC: Virtually all the cosmologists and astronomers I have talked to seem to think that the next big thing in inflation studies will be to look for traces of primordial gravitational waves in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. In particular, a pattern called the B-mode, if found, would carry information about the first instants of the universe, and thus about the mechanism of inflation. [See the article "Echoes from the Big Bang" by Robert Caldwell and Marc Kamionkowski in the January 2001 issue of Scientific American.]

AG: Yes, that is very exciting. The B-mode, if present, would be the sign that we have found the effect of gravity waves, and not just of density perturbations. Gravity waves would give us a handle on the energy scale at which inflation occurred. One of the big uncertainties in the wide class of inflation theories is that inflation may have at happened at any of a tremendously broad range of possible energies. The kind of physics that you want to think about, to understand how it happened, depend very much on that. So it would be very important to get some observational information.

DC: Is this going to be an exciting time for you, to see how things evolve?

AG: Certainly, yes. It’s been incredibly exciting, ever since COBE [NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer, whose results earned its scientists the Physics Nobel Prize in 2006]. In the early days of inflation, when I and a number of other people tried to calculate the density perturbations that would arise from inflationary models, I really never thought that anybody would ever actually measure these things. I thought we were just calculating for the fun of it. So I was kind of shocked when the COBE people made the first measurements of the non-uniformities of the CMB. And now they’re measuring them with such high precision — it really is just fantastic.

DC: And that could happen again — experiments that were considered beyond the realm of possibility will become reality?

AG: Yes, that seems to happen almost every year now.

For Further Reading:

• The Growh of Inflation, by Davide Castelvecchi. Symmetry, December 2004.
• Alan Guth’s Notebook, as described by Davide Castelvecchi in Symmetry.
• The Inflationary Universe, by Alan Guth.
• Echoes from the Big Bang, by Robert R. Caldwell and Marc Kamionkowski. Scientific American 284, 38-43, January 2001.
• Is Space Finite? By Jean-Pierre Luminet, Glenn D. Starkman and Jeffrey R. Weeks. Scientific American 280, 90-97, April 1999.
• The String Theory Landscape, by Raphael Bousso and Joseph Polchinski. Scientific American 291, 78-87, September 2004.

Sphere and skyline illustrations courtesy of Symmetry magazine.

About the Author: Davide Castelvecchi is a freelance science writer based in Rome and a contributing editor for Scientific American magazine. Follow on Twitter @dcastelvecchi.

*res - R.E. Slater