Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Saturday, July 11, 2020

James H. Cone - Black Theology & Black Power


James Cone at a theology conference in Detroit in August 1980 | NCR photo/Stephanie Russell


"There is no future for America without black people," Cone concludes, echoing Baldwin's warnings. "The identity of America and black America is inextricably bound together." - James Cone

"Black people are not a fad. We are not going anywhere, and no one can speak for us. That includes white theologians." Black theology, he told the reporter, "is nothing but black people speaking for themselves about God and the meaning of their struggle for dignity in the United States." - James Cone

Black Lives matter (BLM) has become a derisive acronym used by white christians accusing our sisters and brothers of unworthy beliefs and subversive activities. Let's set the record straight by going to the source, that of Black Liberation Theology. A theology teaching liberation from oppression, tolerance under abuse, clarity over lies, and humility against unholy white or religious power. Black Theology is a study of the gospel of Christ against the injurious teachings of whiteness allied with Empire. - re slater

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James Cone's memoir recounts journey
as pioneer in black theology

by Chris Herlinger
Dec 5, 2018


James H. Cone encouraged his students at Union Theological Seminary to find their voices, saying whether "theologians acknowledge it or not, all theologies begin with experience." That was a touchstone of Cone's teaching, and those of us lucky to have had Cone as a professor will hear his impassioned voice throughout his often-moving memoir, Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody.

Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding the book are uniquely sad. This is Cone's last work, and the reaction of Union students and alumni to his death in April from cancer at age 79 was uniformly one of disbelief: Cone's energy for teaching never flagged.

A formidable figure in life, Cone leaves a considerable legacy:
  • as a pioneering figure in the development of black theology;
  • as mentor to several generations of black theologians and preachers;
  • and as someone who worked across boundaries to find common cause with other liberation theologians, such as Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Fortunately, Cone received some much-deserved acclaim before his death. He was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was also honored with the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a deeply personal work exploring the history and legacy of lynching in America.

A prophet to the American church, Cone constantly reminded white Christians that racism was a sin — and that the theology he helped develop during 1960s and beyond was a needed corrective, even if few whites paid attention or heeded his message.

"God created Negroes black, which must be good," he writes about his initial work. "White people defamed blackness and that's evil. Jesus came to liberate blackness from whiteness."

Cone focuses his memoir on his theological journey, and Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody may be the best single introduction to Cone's theology. But personal observations make this last work engaging and poignant. Cone acknowledges shortcomings and fears, saying his journey was often lonely, particularly during his early career.

"I was on my own," he recalls. During that period there was, as yet, "no black theologian I could talk to about what I was trying to do." He writes that "a pit of loneliness" remained with him throughout his career.

A suggestion by mentor C. Eric Lincoln of Cone "jumping" from Adrian College in Michigan to Union Theological Seminary — the most prominent liberal Protestant seminary in the country, and the one-time academic base of such dominant figures as Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich — was almost too much to contemplate. "You must be crazy," Cone told Lincoln.

But in 1969, Cone made the jump, and Union became his home for nearly 50 years, though not without moments of pain and discordance. Especially early on, white colleagues remained skeptical of Cone's mission, suggesting that black theology was a momentary fad.

A Time magazine reporter asked Cone the "fad" question, and Cone recalls his response: 

"Black people are not a fad. We are not going anywhere, and no one can speak for us. That includes white theologians." Black theology, he told the reporter, "is nothing but black people speaking for themselves about God and the meaning of their struggle for dignity in the United States."

That struggle for dignity was no abstraction: In a telling but troubling anecdote, Cone recalls someone changing the sign on his office door at Union from "Dr. Cone" to "Dr. Coon."

Cone learned from his Union students. He welcomed the challenge from a gay white student who once told him, "Dr. Cone, you don't know a God damn thing about the gay experience!"

He also welcomed the challenge from black women who felt black theology, as well as white feminist theology, did not adequately speak to their lives. "I didn't have the experience of knowledge to really hear what I needed to hear," Cone acknowledges.

Even with the book's well-deserved focus on theology, there are times I wanted the memoir to have cast a slightly wider net. Barack Obama is mentioned only in passing, and it would have been interesting to hear Cone speak more about our first black president. (After Obama's re-election in 2012, I asked Cone if I could interview him for a reaction story about the prospects for Obama's second term. Cone politely turned me down, and didn't say why.) 


Still, the memoir contains many gems: Particularly fine is a chapter on James Baldwin that, achingly, might have been the basis for a separate book had Cone lived longer. Cone calls Baldwin "my most challenging and important interlocutor."

As it is, Cone wrote an acclaimed study of two other dominant figures in his life, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and he fashioned a memorable course at Union exploring the two men's lives and legacies. Later, Cone also taught a course on Baldwin.

Of Donald Trump, Cone says nothing. But then he didn't have to. "The cry of black blood that I heard in Detroit (1967) more than fifty years ago is still crying out all over America today," Cone writes in the book's conclusion. "White people didn't hear it then, and they still don't hear it today."

But Cone knew that, someday, white Americans had better hear it.

"There is no future for America without black people," Cone concludes, echoing Baldwin's warnings. "The identity of America and black America is inextricably bound together."

*Chris Herlinger, international correspondent for NCR's Global Sisters Report, was a student of James Cone while attending Union Theological Seminary from 1991 to 1993, earning a master's degree.

**This story appeared in the Nov 2-15, 2018 print issue under the headline: Cone's memoir recounts journey as pioneer in black theology.

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“Racism is a profound contradiction of the gospel. No one can be a representative of Jesus and treat others as subhuman. There can be no compromise on this point. Any theology that does not fight white supremacy with all its intellectual strength cancels its Christian identity” - Dr. James Cone



“There can be no Christian theology that is not identified unreservedly with those who are humiliated and abused. Theology ceases to be a theology of the gospel when it fails to arise out of the community of the oppressed." - James Cone

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


Amazon Link

"As Martin Luther King said, we must learn to live together as human beings, treating each other with dignity and respect, or we will perish together as fools. There is no other choice. I choose life."
James H. Cone is widely recognized as the founder of Black Liberation Theology-- a synthesis of the Gospel message embodied by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the spirit of Black pride embodied by Malcolm X. Prompted by the Detroit riots and the death of King, Cone, a young theology professor, was impelled to write his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, followed by A Black Theology of Liberation. With these works he established himself as one of the most prophetic and challenging voices of our time.
In this powerful and passionate memoir-- his final work-- Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those-- like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas in the era of lynching and Jim Crow-- who had no voice. Recounting lessons learned both from critics and students, and the ongoing challenge of his models King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, he describes his efforts to use theology as a tool in the struggle against oppression and for a better world.
* * * * * * * * * * * *


Amazon Link

The classic work of Black Theology—still relevant and challenging after 50 years—with a new introduction by Cornel West First published in 1969, Black Theology and Black Power provided the first systematic presentation of Black Theology, while also introducing the voice of an African American theologian who would shake the foundations of American theology. Relating the militant struggle for liberation with the gospel message of salvation, James Cone laid out the foundation for an interpretation of Christianity from the perspective of the oppressed that retains its urgency and challenge today.

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


Amazon Link

This groundbreaking and highly acclaimed work examines the two most influential African-American leaders of this century. While Martin Luther King, Jr., saw America as essentially a dream... as yet unfulfilled, Malcolm X viewed America as a realized nightmare. James Cone cuts through superficial assessments of King and Malcolm as polar opposites to reveal two men whose visions are complementary and moving toward convergence.

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books by james h. cone

  • Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968-1998 (1999, ISBN 0-8070-0950-4)

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James H. Cone

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James Hal Cone (August 5, 1938 – April 28, 2018) was an American theologian, best known for his advocacy of black theology and black liberation theology. His 1969 book Black Theology and Black Power provided a new way to comprehensively define the distinctiveness of theology in the black church.[15] His message was that Black Power, defined as black people asserting the humanity that white supremacy denied, was the gospel in America. Jesus came to liberate the oppressed, advocating the same thing as Black Power. He argued that white American churches preached a gospel based on white supremacy, antithetical to the gospel of Jesus. Cone's work was influential from the time of the book's publication, and his work remains influential today. His work has been both used and critiqued inside and outside the African-American theological community. He was the Charles Augustus Briggs Distinguished Professor of Systematic Theology at Union Theological Seminary until his death.[16]

Life and Career

Cone was born on August 5, 1938, in FordyceArkansas, and grew up in the racially segregated town of Bearden, Arkansas.[17] He and his family attended Macedonia African Methodist Episcopal Church. He attended Shorter College (1954–1956), a small AME Church junior college, before receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Philander Smith College in 1958, where he was mentored by James and Alice Boyack. In his 2018 memoir Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody, Cone wrote that they were the first whites he met who respected his humanity. Although he had decided against parish ministry, their advice led him to obtain a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary in 1961, and Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Northwestern University in 1963 and 1965, respectively. He was shocked to learn that most northern whites would not treat him with respect like the Boyacks. Yet he was excited to learn of unfamiliar theologians, controversies and biblical study methodologies. At the urging of and with support from the white theologian William Hordern at Garrett he applied and gained acceptance into the doctoral program in theology.
He taught theology and religion at Philander Smith College, Adrian College, and beginning in 1970 at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where he was awarded the distinguished Charles A. Briggs Chair in systematic theology in 1977. In 2018, he was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.[18]
Cone and his wife, Rose Hampton, married in 1958 and divorced in 1977. They had two sons, Micheal and Charles, and two daughters, Krystal and Robynn. In 1979, Cone married Sondra Gibson, who died in 1983. He died on April 28, 2018.[19][20][21]

Theology

Hermeneutics

Cone wrote, "Exodus, prophets and Jesus—these three—defined the meaning of liberation in black theology."[22][page needed] The hermeneutic, or interpretive lens, for James Cone's theology starts with the experience of African Americans, and the theological questions he brings from his own life. He incorporates the powerful role of the black church in his life, as well as racism experienced by African Americans. For Cone, the theologians he studied in graduate school did not provide meaningful answers to his questions. This disparity became more apparent when he was teaching theology at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. Cone writes, "What could Karl Barth possibly mean for black students who had come from the cotton fields of Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, seeking to change the structure of their lives in a society that had defined black as non-being?"[23]
Cone's theology also received significant inspiration from a frustration with the black struggle for civil rights; he felt that black Christians in North America should not follow the "white Church", on the grounds that it was a willing part of the system that had oppressed black people. Accordingly, his theology was heavily influenced by Malcolm X and the Black Power movement. Martin Luther King Jr. was also an important influence; Cone describes King as a liberation theologian before the phrase existed.[24] Cone wrote, "I was on a mission to transform self-loathing Negro Christians into black-loving revolutionary disciples of the Black Christ." Nevertheless, "The black church, despite its failures, gives black people a sense of worth."[25]

Methodology

His methodology for answering the questions raised by the African-American experience is a return to scripture, and particularly to the liberative elements such as the Exodus-Sinai tradition, prophets and the life and teaching of Jesus. However, scripture is not the only source that shapes his theology. In response to criticism from other black theologians (including his brother, Cecil), Cone began to make greater use of resources native to the African-American Christian community for his theological work, including slave spirituals, the blues, and the writings of prominent African-American thinkers such as David WalkerHenry McNeal Turner, and W. E. B. Du Bois. His theology developed further in response to critiques by black women, leading Cone to consider gender issues more prominently and foster the development of womanist theology, and also in dialogue with Marxist analysis and the sociology of knowledge.[26]

Contextual theology

Cone's thought, along with Paul Tillich, stresses the idea that theology is not universal, but tied to specific historical contexts; he thus critiques the Western tradition of abstract theologizing by examining its social context. Cone formulates a theology of liberation from within the context of the black experience of oppression, interpreting the central kernel of the Gospels as Jesus' identification with the poor and oppressed, the resurrection as the ultimate act of liberation.[27][page needed]
As part of his theological analysis, Cone argues for God's own identification with "blackness":
The black theologian must reject any conception of God which stifles black self-determination by picturing God as a God of all peoples. Either God is identified with the oppressed to the point that their experience becomes God's experience, or God is a God of racism. ... The blackness of God means that God has made the oppressed condition God's own condition. This is the essence of the biblical revelation. By electing Israelite slaves as the people of God and by becoming the Oppressed One in Jesus Christ, the human race is made to understand that God is known where human beings experience humiliation and suffering. ... Liberation is not an afterthought, but the very essence of divine activity.[28]
Despite his associations with the Black Power movement, however, Cone was not entirely focused on ethnicity: "Being black in America has little to do with skin color. Being black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are."[29]
In 1977, Cone wrote, with a still more universal vision:
I think the time has come for black theologians and black church people to move beyond a mere reaction to white racism in America and begin to extend our vision of a new socially constructed humanity in the whole inhabited world ... For humanity is whole, and cannot be isolated into racial and national groups.[30]
In his 1998 essay "White Theology Revisited", however, he retains his earlier strong critique of the white church and white man for ignoring or failing to address the problem of race.[31]

Early influences

Cone credits his parents as being his most important early influences.[22][page needed] His father had only a sixth-grade education but filed a lawsuit against the Bearden, Arkansas, school board despite threats on his life. White professors of religion and philosophy, James and Alice Boyack at Philander Smith College aided his belief in his own potential and deepened his interest in theodicy and black suffering. He found a mentor, advisor and influential teacher in Garrett scholar William E. Hordern. Professor Philip Watson motivated him to intensive remedial study of English composition. Classmate Lester B. Scherer was a great help in this. Scherer volunteered to edit manuscripts of Cone's early books while Cone's wife Rose typed them, yet Cone complained that neither understood him.[32] Cone wrote his doctoral thesis on Karl Barth. A 1965 breakfast meeting with Benjamin Mays, president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, convinced him that teaching and scholarship were his true calling. The sociologist C. Eric Lincoln found publishers for his early books (Black Theology and Black Power and A Black Theology of Liberation) which sought to deconstruct mainstream Protestant theologians such as Barth, Niebuhr and Tillich while seeking to draw on the figures of the black church such as Richard Allen (founder in 1816 of the AME Church), black abolitionists ministers Henry Highland Garnet, Daniel Payne, and Henry McNeil Turner ("God is a Negro") and Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, James Baldwin, and other figures of the black power and black arts movement.[22][page needed]

Criticism

Womanist critique

Womanist theologians, such as Delores Williams, have critiqued Cone for both male-centered language and for not including the experiences of black women in his sources. Williams, in 1993, acknowledged in a footnote in her book Sisters in the Wilderness, that Cone has modified exclusive language for the reprinting of his works and acknowledged the issues with the previous language. However, she argues that he still does not use the experiences of African-American women in his method, and therefore still needs to deal with the sexism of his work.[33]

Other scholarly critiques

Other critiques of Cone's theological positions have focused on the need to rely more heavily on sources reflecting black experience in general, on Cone's lack of emphasis on reconciliation within the context of liberation, and on his ideas of God and theodicy.[34] Charles H. Long and other founding members of the Society for the Study of Black Religion were critics of Cone's work. Long rejected black theology contending that theology was a western invention alien to black experience. Others objected to his endorsement of Black Power, lack of interest in reconciliation and concern with scoring academic points.[35]

Political commentary and controversy

Aspects of Cone's theology and words for some people have been the subject of controversy in the political context of the 2008 US presidential campaign as Jeremiah Wright, at that time pastor of then-candidate Barack Obama, noted that he had been inspired by Cone's theology.[36][better source needed]
Some scholars of black theology noted that controversial quotes by Wright may not necessarily represent black theology.[37] Cone responded to these alleged controversial comments by noting that he was generally writing about historic white churches and denominations that did nothing to oppose slavery and segregation rather than any white individual.[citation needed]
Hoover Institute fellow Stanley Kurtz, in a political commentary in National Review, wrote:
Cone defines it as "complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary." For Cone, the deeply racist structure of American society leaves blacks with no alternative but radical transformation or social withdrawal. So-called Christianity, as commonly practiced in the United States, is actually the racist Antichrist. "Theologically," Cone affirms, "Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man 'the devil.'" The false Christianity of the white-devil oppressor must be replaced by an authentic Christianity fully identified with the poor and oppressed.[38]

Educator

After receiving his doctorate, Cone taught theology and religion at Philander Smith College and Adrian College. At the urging of his mentor, C. Eric Lincoln, Union Theological Seminary in New York City hired him as assistant professor in 1969. He remained there until his death in 2018 rising to assume an endowed full professorship. Cone made significant contributions to theological education in America.[39] Prior to Cone's arrival in 1969, Union Theological Seminary had not accepted a black student into its doctoral program since its founding in 1836. During his career there, Cone supervised over 40 black doctoral students. These included Dwight Hopkins and some of the founders of womanist theology Delores WilliamsJacquelyn Grant, and Kelly Brown Douglas. He delivered countless lectures at other universities and conferences.

Works

See also

References

Footnotes

  1. ^ Kalu 2006.
  2. ^ Haney, Mark (May 3, 2018). "Former Adrian College Professor, Author Remembered"Lenconnect.com. Adrian, Michigan: GateHouse Media. Retrieved March 9, 2019.
  3. ^ Begg 2007, p. 323.
  4. ^ J. H. Cone 1965.
  5. ^ Roberts 2004, p. 424.
  6. ^ Pinn & Cannon 2014, p. 11.
  7. Jump up to:
    a b McAlister 2018, p. 125.
  8. ^ Begg 2007, pp. 319, 321.
  9. ^ "Dr. Cain Hope Felder". Washington: Destiny – Pride. July 2011. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  10. ^ Hendricks 2006, p. xi.
  11. ^ Moore 2013, p. 7.
  12. ^ Begg 2007, p. 321.
  13. ^ Steinfels, Peter (October 29, 1989). "Conference on Black Theology Unites Scholars and Pastors"The New York Times. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
  14. ^ Alberts, Hana R. (April 28, 2008). "Rev. Wright Reclaims the Spotlight"Forbes. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  15. ^ Wilmore 1999, p. 234.
  16. ^ "James H. Cone". New York: Union Theological Seminary. Archived from the original on September 30, 2011. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
  17. ^ Burgess & Brennan 2010, p. 38; Burrow 1993, p. 61.
  18. ^ "Dr. James H. Cone Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences"Sojourners. April 20, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  19. ^ "In Memoriam: Dr. James Hal Cone". New York: Union Theological Seminary. April 28, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  20. ^ Vultaggio, Maria (April 28, 2018). "Who Was James Come? Founder of Black Liberation Theology Dies"Newsweek. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  21. ^ "James H. Cone, Founder of Black Liberation Theology Dies at 79". NPR. April 28, 2018. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  22. Jump up to:
  23. ^ J. H. Cone 1997, p. 3.
  24. ^ Burrow 1994, pp. 13–16.
  25. ^ J. H. Cone 2018, p. 94.
  26. ^ Burrow 1994; cf. P. Williams 1996.
  27. ^ Antonio 1999.
  28. ^ J. H. Cone 2010, p. 67.
  29. ^ Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. p. 151. Cited in Schwarz 2005, p. 473.
  30. ^ Ferm, Deane William (May 9, 1979). "The Road Ahead in Theology – Revisited"The Christian Century. Chicago. p. 524. Retrieved March 10, 2019 – via Religion Online.
  31. ^ J. H. Cone 1999, pp. 130–137.
  32. ^ J. H. Cone 2018, p. 70.
  33. ^ D. S. Williams 1993, p. 269.
  34. ^ Singleton 2002, p. 92 (citing especially C. W. Cone 1975D. S. Williams 1993Roberts 1971Jones 1998).
  35. ^ J. H. Cone 2018, p. 86.
  36. ^ Video: Jeremiah Wright discusses his Cone inspiration and Black Liberation Theology on YouTube.
  37. ^ "Diversified religion: Barack Obama's former pastor's remarks spur consideration". Archived from the original on August 6, 2005. Retrieved July 4, 2009.
  38. ^ Kurtz, Stanley (May 19, 2008). "'Context,' You Say? A Guide to the Radical Theology of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright"National Review. Archived from the original on March 23, 2009. Retrieved March 10, 2019 – via MyWire.
  39. ^ J. H. Cone 2018, pp. 117–124.

Bibliography

Antonio, Edward (1999). "Black Theology". In Rowland, Christopher (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Liberation Theology (1st ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. pp. 63–88. ISBN 978-0-521-46707-0.
Begg, Rashid (2007). "American and South African Socio-Historical Liberation Theology Reciprocative Influences". Scriptura96: 316–325. hdl:10520/EJC100852ISSN 2305-445X.
Burgess, Marjorie; Brennan, Carol (2010). "James H. Cone". In Jacques, Derek; Jorgensen, Janice; Kepos, Paula (eds.). Contemporary Black Biography82. Detroit, Michigan: Gale. pp. 38–41. ISBN 978-1-4144-4603-5ISSN 1058-1316.
Burrow, Rufus, Jr. (1993). "James H. Cone: Father of Contemporary Black Theology"Asbury Theological Journal48 (2): 59–76. ISSN 2375-5814. Retrieved March 9, 2019.
 ———  (1994). James H. Cone and Black Liberation Theology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company.
Cone, Cecil Wayne (1975). Identity Crisis in Black Theology. Nashville, Tennessee: AMEC.
Cone, James H. (1965). The Doctrine of Man in the Theology of Karl Barth (PhD thesis). Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University. OCLC 25946351.
 ———  (1997). God of the Oppressed. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.
 ———  (1999). Risks of Faith: The Emergence of a Black Theology of Liberation, 1968–1998. Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-0950-5. Retrieved March 10, 2019.
 ———  (2010). A Black Theology of Liberation (40th anniversary ed.). Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-1-60833-036-2.
 ———  (2018). Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody: The Making of a Black Theologian. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. ISBN 978-1-62698-302-1.
Hendricks, Obery M., Jr. (2006). The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of the Teachings of Jesus and How They Have Been Corrupted. New York: Three Leaves Press. ISBN 978-0-385-51665-5.
Jones, William R. (1998). Is God a White Racist? A Preamble to Black Theology(2nd ed.). Boston: Beacon Press. ISBN 978-0-8070-1033-4.
Kalu, O. U. (2006). "James Cone's Legacy in Africa: Confession as Political Praxis in the Kairos Document". Verbum et Ecclesia27 (2): 576–595. doi:10.4102/ve.v27i2.165hdl:2263/2603ISSN 1609-9982.
McAlister, Melani (2018). The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021342-8.
Moore, Basil (2013). "Towards a Black Theology" (1971) and "Learning from Black Theology" (2011) (PDF). Charles Strong Memorial Trust. ISBN 978-0-9804379-4-2. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
Pinn, Anthony B.Cannon, Katie G. (2014). "Introduction". In Pinn, Anthony B.Cannon, Katie G. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of African American Theology. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–11. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199755653.013.0035ISBN 978-0-19-975565-3.
Roberts, J. Deotis (1971). Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
 ———  (2004). "Black Theology". In Hillerbrand, Hans J. (ed.). The Encyclopedia of Protestantism1. New York: Routledge. pp. 422–425. ISBN 978-0-203-48431-9. Retrieved March 11, 2019.
Schwarz, Hans (2005). Theology in a Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Singleton, Harry H., III (2002). Black Theology and Ideology: Deideological Dimensions in the Theology of James H. Cone. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-5106-3.
Williams, Delores S. (1993). Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenge of Womanist God Talk. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.
Williams, Preston (1996). "Review of James H. Cone and Black Liberation Theology, by Rufus Burrow Jr". The Journal of Religion76 (1): 137–138. doi:10.1086/489766ISSN 1549-6538JSTOR 1204316.
Wilmore, Gayraud S. (1999). "Black Theology at the Turn of the Century: Some Unmet Needs and Challenges". In Hopkins, Dwight N. (ed.). Black Faith and Public Talk: Critical Essays on James H. Cone's Black Theology and Black Power. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books.

Thursday, June 25, 2020

A Short Primer to the Origins of the Universe


Evolution - The Fairy Tale of Science: Why Every Christian Should ...
An illustration of my early Christian faith

Introduction

For many Christians, the world of evolutionary cosmology can be a very strange thing. Being taught at an early age that God created the world in seven days the discoveries of science can be an intimidating thing to one's childhood faith.

I was one of those Sunday School children. However, my one-room school education actually had prepared me to think on my own so that in the public schools and university systems I could readily grasp what the fields of astrophysics, physical sciences, and mathematics were teaching. I even took the odd evolutionary class or two but quickly dropped out as my faith was in serious conflict with evolutionary science back then. I did, however, take an early Semitic / Hebrew history coarse which I saw through thanks to my professor George Medenhall).

And so, here I was, a young adult having transferred from a major university after 3 years to attend a private Christian college and later, seminary, holding two worlds in my brain. One Christian, and the other not Christian. By the way, I no longer use the word secular as I know now that it applies equally to both the Christian and non-Christian even though Christians don't think it applies to them. But it does: Hence Trumpian Christianity and its like.

My dilemma was to merge the two worlds of faith and science in a way which might stay faithful to God and to the bible. A fidelity of sorts to an ancient faith. It began early after finishing graduate school and in the first few years of married life. I felt then, as I do now, that something valuable was missing in my education.

I knew this from wilderness camping in many, if not most, of the American National Parks and Canadian Provincial Parks where ranger-led tours across mountain tops, canyon bottoms, and even under the earth, explained a different part of earth's geologic, biologic, and anthropological history to me through park signs, park literature, lecturers, the occasional camper, and the hard evidence lying everywhere in front of my eyes.

As example, when driving west from St. Louis for the next 130 miles have you ever noticed how the land drops and drops and drops away? I did. I was paying attention as a little kid looking out the car window as dad drove west. I noticed it again the several times I drove my young family west to camp its parks. The point? You're driving into an ancient sea bed starting 30 miles west of the shorelines along the Mississippi River going down, down, down, and down, into the antidiluvian sea bottoms which spanned most of the interior of the United States. Next time you drive through that area take a look... :)

Fossils tell about earth's history (teach)

Prehistoric Michigan covered by ancient seas, tropical jungles ...

ancient inland sea - Bing Images | Ancient, History, Kansas

Map of the day | occasional links & commentary

And so, I self-taught myself even as I did in my little one-room country school where I was teaching the older kids beginning in third grade. I read books, articles, asked questions, pondered life from all its angles, read the bible, read more books, and finally decided after too many belated years that my Christian faith could adopt and rearrange its beliefs. However, what I incredulously discovered when I did this was how little resources my Christian schools and churches provided aside from the Christian literature on the subject. Which thereby explains the large void in my life.

My watershed moment began when I toured Alberta, Canada's, Royal Tyrrell Dinosaur Museum. Not that there weren't other museums and parklands that equally showed the earth's fossilized remains to me - but it was here, in this museum, with its acre of real constructed bones out in the open, walking under and around them with my young family, that the evidence somehow piled into my head and congealed in my mind and heart. And it wasn't threatening. It was actually like a large chunk of a big missing puzzle which had too easily fallen into place.

From then on I knew I needed to redesign my faith. Knowing God created the heavens and the world was the easy part. I never doubted that and still don't. And yet the task I had set before me turned out a lot easier and more sublime than I had ever thought. It was simply recognizing that God created through process and not magically or instantaneously.

Hence, I adopted a theistically-based evolutionary schemata with all the bells and whistles which science provided. Along with all of science's doubts, affirmations, queries and its questions. I accepted ALL of it and chose the harder paths of chaos, randomness, and even the position of the weak anthropic principle over the strong. Though a Christian might properly chose the strong position I had determined the Sovereign God I was writing about had placed NO conditions on the universe (this is where arminianism comes in over calvinism; see the topic list to the right).

With the weak anthropic principle, Creation became what it became with no pre-determination by God, else it wouldn't exhibit the likeness of God's image of freewill agency. But we also know as Christians that the game was rigged in that God gave Himself, His image, to the cosmos. Creation will therefore always yearn towards divine life quite naturally whether we call it evolution or not. And so this is where a different sort of cosmological and evolutionary teleology comes in, one that is process driven and yearning towards the idea of wholeness, unity, redemption, and fellowship. 

After these many journeys and years I started working out a website which might provide solid theological studies with the specific details as to why I chose the route which I have chosen. I've intentionally focused this site on expanding my Christian boundaries beyond my literate, fundamental, and later, conservative evangelical, past. Once the religious boundaries were erased I could more easily see God and His world, His people, and His ways again. My religious blinders had gotten in the way of my spiritual seeing, much like a horse pulling a buggy down a determined road instead of running free over a never ending field in all directions.

Lately, I've been working on how panentheism (vs. theism) and process theology (vs. Western philosophical logic) might project across the evolutionary sciences in a holistic overlay of cosmological metaphysics and ontology. With these latter overlays I have found the type of theological and philosophical approaches which best integrates science with faith, and faith with science. My last several articles this week and last are a small nod to how this might be done. I would also suggest to my non-Christian friends and readers to take these in. If a system works, it must work for all spectrums of humanity and not just mine own.

And so, my gift to you is the resources within Relevancy22 in hopes of shortening your spiritual journeys. And yes, I do provide solutions (my generation grew up that way) but I also try to leave every avenue open to further inspection and introspection. This is the gift of postmodernism and of post-Christianity. Thus I freely use and cite other voices than my own. In essence, I have tried to create a wikipedia of theology as respecting as many topics as I've had time to think about, learn, or am passionate about. It is also meant to propel readers outwards into the larger world of academia and spirituality.

Today I here leave this short premier to the origins of the universe. Any thoughts or insights I might have may be found in the science index or in the topics found on the right hand column of the website proper. For Google+ users that website link is at the bottom of the webpage: "view web version."

Peace,

R.E. Slater
June 25, 2020


Pin on ourano>oneiro '' i '' - heaven is greater than any dream ...

A dynamic, graphic presentation of latest theory about how the universe, space, time, energy and matter evolved from the Big Bang. Learn some of the mystery about how it grew from the size of an atom to encompass everything in existence today.





The chronology of the universe describes the history and future of the universe according to Big Bang cosmology. The earliest stages of the universe's existence are estimated as taking place 13.8 billion years ago, with an uncertainty of around 21 million years at the 68% confidence level.

For the purposes of this summary, it is convenient to divide the chronology of the universe since it originated, into five parts. It is generally considered meaningless or unclear whether time existed before this chronology:


1 - The very early universe

The first picosecond (10−12) of cosmic time. It includes the Planck epoch, during which currently understood laws of physics may not apply; the emergence in stages of the four known fundamental interactions or forces—first gravitation, and later the strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and electromagnetic force interactions; the expansion of space itself; and, the supercooling of the still immensely hot universe due to cosmic inflation, which is believed to have been triggered by the separation of the nuclear strong and electroweak interaction.

Tiny ripples, or differences, in the universe at this stage are believed to be the basis of large-scale structures that formed much later. Different stages of the very early universe are understood to different extents. The earlier parts are beyond the grasp of practical experiments in particle physics but can be explored through other means.

Scientific American link

2 - The early universe

Lasting around 370,000 years. Initially, various kinds of subatomic particles are formed in stages. These particles include almost equal amounts of matter and antimatter, so most of it quickly annihilates, leaving a small excess of matter in the universe.

At about one second, neutrinos decouple; these neutrinos form the cosmic neutrino background (CνB). If primordial black holes exist, they are also formed at about one second of cosmic time. Composite subatomic particles emerge—including protons and neutrons—and from about 2 minutes, conditions are suitable for nucleosynthesis: around 25% of the protons and all the neutrons fuse into heavier elements, initially deuterium which itself quickly fuses into mainly helium-4.

By 20 minutes, the universe is no longer hot enough for nuclear fusion, but far too hot for neutral atoms to exist or photons to travel far. It is therefore an opaque plasma. At around 47,000 years,[2] as the universe cools, its behaviour begins to be dominated by matter rather than radiation. At about 100,000 years, helium hydride is the first molecule. (Much later, hydrogen and helium hydride react to form molecular hydrogen, the fuel needed for the first stars.)

At about 370,000 years,[3] the universe finally becomes cool enough for neutral atoms to form ("recombination"), and as a result it also became transparent for the first time. The newly formed atoms—mainly hydrogen and helium with traces of lithium—quickly reach their lowest energy state (ground state) by releasing photons ("photon decoupling"), and these photons can still be detected today as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This is currently the oldest observation we have of the universe.


3 - The Dark Ages and large-scale structure emergence

From 370,000 years until about 1 billion years. After recombination and decoupling, the universe was transparent but the clouds of hydrogen only collapsed very slowly to form stars and galaxies, so there were no new sources of light. The only photons (electromagnetic radiation, or "light") in the universe were those released during decoupling (visible today as the cosmic microwave background) and 21 cm radio emissions occasionally emitted by hydrogen atoms. The decoupled photons would have filled the universe with a brilliant pale orange glow at first, gradually redshifting to non-visible wavelengths after about 3 million years, leaving it without visible light. This period is known as the cosmic Dark Ages.

Between about 10 and 17 million years the universe's average temperature was suitable for liquid water 273–373 K (0–100 °C) and there has been speculation whether rocky planets or indeed life could have arisen briefly, since statistically a tiny part of the universe could have had different conditions from the rest as a result of a very unlikely statistical fluctuation, and gained warmth from the universe as a whole.[4]

At some point around 200 to 500 million years, the earliest generations of stars and galaxies form (exact timings are still being researched), and early large structures gradually emerge, drawn to the foam-like dark matter filaments which have already begun to draw together throughout the universe. The earliest generations of stars have not yet been observed astronomically. They may have been huge (100-300 solar masses) and non-metallic, with very short lifetimes compared to most stars we see today, so they commonly finish burning their hydrogen fuel and explode as highly energetic pair-instability supernovae after mere millions of years.[5] Other theories suggest that they may have included small stars, some perhaps still burning today. In either case, these early generations of supernovae created most of the everyday elements we see around us today, and seeded the universe with them.

Galaxy clusters and superclusters emerge over time. At some point, high energy photons from the earliest stars, dwarf galaxies and perhaps quasars leads to a period of reionization that commences gradually between about 250-500 million years, is complete by about 700-900 million years, and diminishes by about 1 billion years (exact timings still being researched). The universe gradually transitioned into the universe we see around us today, and the Dark Ages only fully came to an end at about 1 billion years.

4 - The universe as it appears today

From 1 billion years, and for about 12.8 billion years, the universe has looked much as it does today. It will continue to appear very similar for many billions of years into the future. The thin disk of our galaxy began to form at about 5 billion years (8.8 Gya),[6] and our Solar System formed at about 9.2 billion years (4.6 Gya), with the earliest traces of life on Earth emerging by about 10.3 billion years (3.5 Gya).

From about 9.8 billion years of cosmic time,[7] the slowing expansion of space gradually begins to accelerate under the influence of dark energy, which may be a scalar field throughout our universe. The present-day universe is understood quite well, but beyond about 100 billion years of cosmic time (about 86 billion years in the future), uncertainties in current knowledge mean that we are less sure which path our universe will take.

5 - The far future and ultimate fate

At some time the Stelliferous Era will end as stars are no longer being born, and the expansion of the universe will mean that the observable universe becomes limited to local galaxies. There are various scenarios for the far future and ultimate fate of the universe. More exact knowledge of our current universe will allow these to be better understood.


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WMAP Big Bang Inflation

WMAP is a spacecraft which measures differences in the temperature of the Big Bang's remnant radiant heat - the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation - across the full sky. The WMAP mission succeeds the COBE space mission and was launched 2001 and retrieved 2009. In 2012, the Nine-year WMAP data and related images were released and the study found that "95-percent" of the early universe is composed of dark matter and energy, the curvature of space is less than 0.4 percent of "flat" and the universe emerged from the cosmic Dark Ages "about 400 million years" after the Big Bang.

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Cosmic Microwave Background

The cosmic microwave background (CMB, CMBR), in Big Bang cosmology, is electromagnetic radiation as a remnant from an early stage of the universe, also known as "relic radiation". The CMB is faint cosmic background radiation filling all space. It is an important source of data on the early universe because it is the oldest electromagnetic radiation in the universe, dating to the epoch of recombination. With a traditional optical telescope, the space between stars and galaxies (the background) is completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope shows a faint background noise, or glow, almost isotropic, that is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson[1][2] was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s, and earned the discoverers the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics.

CMB is landmark evidence of the Big Bang origin of the universe. When the universe was young, before the formation of stars and planets, it was denser, much hotter, and filled with a uniform glow from a white-hot fog of hydrogen plasma. As the universe expanded, both the plasma and the radiation filling it grew cooler. When the universe cooled enough, protons and electrons combined to form neutral hydrogen atoms. Unlike the uncombined protons and electrons, these newly conceived atoms could not scatter the thermal radiation by Thomson scattering, and so the universe became transparent instead of being an opaque fog.[3] Cosmologists refer to the time period when neutral atoms first formed as the recombination epoch, and the event shortly afterwards when photons started to travel freely through space rather than constantly being scattered by electrons and protons in plasma is referred to as photon decoupling. The photons that existed at the time of photon decoupling have been propagating ever since, though growing fainter and less energetic, since the expansion of space causes their wavelength to increase over time (and wavelength is inversely proportional to energy according to Planck's relation). This is the source of the alternative term relic radiation. The surface of last scattering refers to the set of points in space at the right distance from us so that we are now receiving photons originally emitted from those points at the time of photon decoupling.



Cosmic Background Explorer logo.jpg


Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE)

Examining small areas of the Cosmic Microwave Backgroun (CMB), very small fluctuations are seen. Though these fluctuations are only at the part-per-million level, they are enough to produce variations in density, and thus determine where matter is more likely to coalesce due to gravity, eventually producing larger and larger lumps of matter. NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite first discovered these slight variations by in 1992. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) provided much greater detail.

The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE /ˈkoʊbi/), also referred to as Explorer 66, was a satellite dedicated to cosmology, which operated from 1989 to 1993. Its goals were to investigate the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) of the universe and provide measurements that would help shape our understanding of the cosmos.

COBE's measurements provided two key pieces of evidence that supported the Big Bang theory of the universe: that the CMB has a near-perfect black-body spectrum, and that it has very faint anisotropies. Two of COBE's principal investigators, George Smoot and John Mather, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for their work on the project. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE-project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science".[5]

COBE was followed by two more advanced spacecraft: the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe operated from 2001-2010 and the Planck spacecraft from 2009–2013.


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



The Cosmic Dawn

Witnessing the birth of stars would require a telescope larger in diameter than many cities. Say hello to ALMA. Located on a plateu in the Atacama desert of Peru, ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array) When completed next year there will be one large and a smaller array with a total of 80 gigantic antennas each weighing a hundred tons that need to swivel together on command and point at the same target in the sky within a second and a half of one another. To merge their signals coherently, a massive supercomputer had to be installed on-site that was capable of adjusting, to within the width of a human hair. When all of the antennas come on line later this year, ALMA will penetrate the curtains of dust and gas that shroud galaxies, swirl around stars, and stretch through the expanses of interstellar space and conjure even finer details for graphic renderings of cosmic inflation after the big bang.

The Cosmic Dawn Center 

The Cosmic Dawn Center is an Astronomy/Cosmology research center, founded as a collaboration between the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and DTU Space of the Danish Technical University (DTU). The center is led by center director and NBI Professor Sune Toft and center co-director Thomas Greve, Professor at DTU and UCL.[1] The main objective of the center is to investigate the period known as the Cosmic Dawn (the transition period following the Cosmic Dark Ages[2]), i.e. the reionization of the Universe and the formation of the first galaxies, through observations as well as through theory and simulations.[3][4][5] The Cosmic Dawn Center also runs two summer programs for mainly U.S. undergraduates, the DAWN-IRES program, funded by National Science Foundation,[6] and a SURF (Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship).[7] program for California Institute of Technology students[8]

The Earth: One Strange Rock




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A Short History of the Universe
NatGeo, New Eyes on the Universe, January 1994

Although the Hubble garners the most attention, another orbiting observatory has sent back pehaps the most profound data. A satellite called COBE, or the Cosmic Background Explorer, has strongly supported the theory that the universe began expanding in a great explosion nicknamed the big bang.

Cosmologists speculate that before the big bang all of space - the totality of our universe - was an extremely concentrated speck far smaller than an atom. Perhaps our universe was but one part of a foam of tiny black holes, some of which occasionally exploded. No one knows - and we may never know. If our current understanding of physics is correct, all history of that initial, infinitesimal slice of time is irretrievably lost. And our knowledge of the events that followed soon after depends on the insight of theorists, on mathematics, and on experiments using high-energy particle accelerators. While still a speck, cosmologists calculate, the universe would have had a temperature of a million trillion trillion degrees. Ordinary matter did no exist under those conditions. Our familiar laws of physics did not apply.

As that speck expanded, it cooled, and the components of the universe we know began to emerge. By the time the universe was one second old, protons, neutrons, and electrons - the building blocks of atoms - had come into being. So had photons. But the stew of matter and energy was so concentrated that photons could not move about within it. Not until the universe was 300,000 years old did light break away from matter and begin to travel freely through our expanded speck of space. The moment of light's emancipation left a faint haze of photons - an afterglow of the big bang. Called cosmic background radiation, it permeates the universe. The haze is extremely cold now, 2.7 Kelvins, or minus 455 degrees F. First detected in 1964, its structure is being revealed by extremely sensitive microwave detectors, like those carried into orbit by COBE in 1989. COBE had a major question to resolve: Why are we here? "matter isn't distributed evenly in the universe today," explains John Mater, COBE chief scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "It's clumped into stars and galaxies and planets like earth." Gravity formed those structures, but there must have been an initial uneveness for it to act on. We should see that in the afterglow of the big bang. Before COBE we couldn't. "Our earth-based detectors were getting more and more sensitive," says Mather, "but we just kept seeing the same thing - smooth, homogeneous radiation all across the sky."

If COBE saw from space only smooth radiation, then the entire big bang scenario would be threatened. A mild panic set in when the first data came back. Thje radiation still looked homogeneous. Then over months, as more data were processed, huge patches emerged in which the temperature of the background photons varied by a few hundred-thousandths of a degree. Not much, but enough to silence those who were ready to re-write the physics of the early universe. The COBE results have raised some new questions about details of the big bang scenario, but most theorists believe the satellite has buttressed it at its weakest link. Many now regard the question of the mysterious "dark matter" as the most burning issue in astrophysics.

Here again, a new international orbiting X-ray observatory named ROSAT, or Roentgen Satellite, for the German physicist who discovered X rays, has found new evidence for the existence of dark matter. Examining three galaxies known as the NGC 2300 Group, ROSAT detected a huge cloud of plasma, or ionized gas, glowing in X rays around the group. "That cloud," explains astronomer David Burstein of Arizona State University, "is much too immense for the group to gravitationally hold onto - unless the group has 15 to 25 more mass than we can see."


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




Cosmic Inflation (Cosmology)


Cosmologists have shown that it's theoretically possible for a contracting universe to bounce and expand. The new work resuscitates an old idea that directly challenges the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins - standard stuff of textbooks and television shows that enjoys strong support among today's cosmologists. In the most popular modern version of the theory, the Big Bang began with an episode called "cosmic inflation" - a burst of exponential expansion during which an infinitesimal speck of space-time ballooned into a smooth, flat, macroscopic cosmos, which expanded more gently thereafter. But as an origin story, inflation is lacking; it raises questions about what preceded it and where that initial, inflaton-laden speck came from. In the past few years, a growing number of cosmologists have cautiously revisited the alternative. They say the Big Bang might instead have been a Big Bounce. Some cosmologists favor a picture in which the universe expands and contracts cyclically like a lung, bouncing each time it shrinks to a certain size, while others propose that the cosmos only bounced once - that it had been contracting, before the bounce, since the infinite past, and that it will expand forever after. In either model, time continues into the past and future without end.

Cosmic Inflation after the Big Bang


In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch lasted from 10−36 seconds after the conjectured Big Bang singularity to some time between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the singularity. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. The acceleration of this expansion due to dark energy began after the universe was already over 9 billion years old (~4 billion years ago).[1]

Inflation theory was developed in the late 1970s and early 80s, with notable contributions by several theoretical physicists, including Alexei Starobinsky at Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics, Alan Guth at Cornell University, and Andrei Linde at Lebedev Physical Institute. Alexei Starobinsky, Alan Guth, and Andrei Linde won the 2014 Kavli Prize "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation."[2] It was developed further in the early 1980s. It explains the origin of the large-scale structure of the cosmos. Quantum fluctuations in the microscopic inflationary region, magnified to cosmic size, become the seeds for the growth of structure in the Universe (see galaxy formation and evolution and structure formation).[3] Many physicists also believe that inflation explains why the universe appears to be the same in all directions (isotropic), why the cosmic microwave background radiation is distributed evenly, why the universe is flat, and why no magnetic monopoles have been observed.

The detailed particle physics mechanism responsible for inflation is unknown. The basic inflationary paradigm is accepted by most physicists, as a number of inflation model predictions have been confirmed by observation;[4] however, a substantial minority of scientists dissent from this position.[5][6][7] The hypothetical field thought to be responsible for inflation is called the inflaton.[8]

In 2002, three of the original architects of the theory were recognized for their major contributions; physicists Alan Guth of M.I.T., Andrei Linde of Stanford, and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton shared the prestigious Dirac Prize "for development of the concept of inflation in cosmology".[9] In 2012, Alan Guth and Andrei Linde were awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for their invention and development of inflationary cosmology.[10]


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Detailed Big Bang Inflation Timeline

Once upon a timeless, most cosmologists believe, all that is our universe was incredibly small and dense. Neither space nor time as we know then existed.

(1) Nothing is known of this earliest instant. Scientists use the term big bang to describe this moment of creation. Somehow the universe - all matter, energy, space, and time exploded from the original singularity.

(2) Because time did not yet exist, there is no way to measure this event, but scientists have agreed to start the universal clock at Planck time - a moment defined as 10-43 second, which is a decimal point followed by 42 zeroes and a 1. Named for the father of quantum physics, Planck time is the point at which the universe begins to differentiate.

(3) Gravity becomes a separate force, tearing away from the other still unified basic forces of nature.

(4) Separation of the strong force (10-36 second). Although atoms do not yet exist, the force that will hold their nuclei together becomes an individual entity.

(5) Inflation (10-36 to 10-32 second). Triggered by separation of the strong force, the universe expands more in this instant than it has in the roughly 15 billion years since.

(6) Quarks and antiquarks (10-32 to 10-5 second). As inflation ends, the still expanding universe now teems with quarks and antiquarks the smallest known constituents of matter along with electrons (L in the illustration) and exotic particles (W and Z). Quarks and antiquarks annihilate each other upon contact. But a surplus of quarks one per billion pairs survives. This surplus of quarks will ultimately combine to form matter. At 10-12 second the final two forces split off.

(7) Electromagnetism - the attraction of negatively and positively charged particles is carried by photons, the basic units of electromagnetic energy.

(8) The weak force controls certain forms of radioactive decay.

(9) Quark confinement (10-5 second). As the universe cools to one trillion K, trios of quarks form protons and neutrons.

(10) Nucleosynthesis (less than one second to three minutes). Cooling continues. Protons and neutrons bind to form the nuclei of soon-to-be-formed atoms.

(11) Energy domination (10-32 second to 3,000 years). Because of high temperatures, radiant energy generates most of the gravity in the universe during this period.

(12) Matter domination (3,000 years onward). With cooling, matter becomes the primary source of gravity. Matter begins to clump and form structures. In theory, particles of so-called dark matter (depicted as gray bubbles) would have come into existence by this time. They may account for as much as 99 percent of all matter.

(13) Decoupling (300,000 years). Continued expansion and cooling allow matter and electromagnetic energy to go their separate ways. Nuclei capture electrons to form complete atoms of hydrogen, helium, and lithium. The universe becomes transparent: Radiant energy, or photons, travels freely. These photons now exist throughout the universe as microwave radiation. They reveal ripple-like concentrations of primordial matter - seeds for the structure of the universe that arose during the era of inflation.

(14) The ripples are shown in a 1992 COBE satellite image.

(15) Galaxy formation (200 million years onward). Matter continues to clump in the areas of concentration and over eons is condensed by gravity.

(16) This gives rise to quasars pictured in a radio image emitting bursts of energy.

(17) Quasars emitting galaxies.

(18-19) Continued expansion of the universe. Galaxies cluster in an overall structure of sheets separated by huge voids containing relatively few galaxies.


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Magnetic Fields around the singularity of a Black Hole

Big Bang Gravitational Waves

Big Bang's "Smoking Gun" Observations confirm "inflation" of early universe to cosmological sizes in early instant by Dan Vergano National Geographic Magazine, March 17, 2014. Astronomers find surprisingly strong gravitational waves rippled through the fiery aftermath of the Big Bang, confirming that the cosmos grew to a stunningly vast size in its very first instant. The finding means that in little more than a century, humanity has figured out not only the age of the universe - it was born about 13.82 billion years ago in the Big Bang but also how its birth unfolded. Gravity waves are distortions in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. The gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, but they are so weak that scientists expect to detect only those created during colossal cosmic events, such as black hole mergers like the one shown above. LIGO is a detector designed to spot the elusive waves.


Additional References



From the Big Bang to Black Holes and Gravitational Waves
by Kip Thorne, March 11, 2016



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Large Scale Cosmic Structures







Large Scale Cosmic Web held in place by Dark Matter and Dark Energy


Cosmic Supercluster Map


Cosmologists have now concluded... that all the stars and galaxies they see in the sky make up only 5 percent of the observable universe. The invisible majority consists of 27 percent dark matter and 68 percent dark energy. Both of them are mysteries. When quantum theorists try to calculate how much energy resides in, say a quant of seemingly empty space, they get a big number. But astronomers calculating the same quantity from their dark energy observations get a small number. The difference between the two numbers is staggering: it's ten to the 121st power, a one followed by 121 zeroes, an amount far exceeding the number of stars in the observable universe or grains of sand on the planet. That's the largest disparity between theory and observation in the entire history of science. Clearly something fundamentally important about space - and therefore about everything, since galaxies, stars, planets, and people are made mostly of space - remains to be learned.








 Dark Matter

Dark matter is something unknown thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe and about a quarter of its total mass–energy density or about 2.241×10−27 kg/m3. Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained by accepted theories of gravity unless more matter is present than can be seen. For this reason, most experts think that dark matter is abundant in the universe and that it has had a strong influence on its structure and evolution. Dark matter is called dark because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it doesn't absorb, reflect or emit electromagnetic radiation, and is therefore difficult to detect.[1]

Primary evidence for dark matter comes from calculations showing that many galaxies would fly apart, or that they would not have formed or would not move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter.[2] Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing[3] and in the cosmic microwave background, along with astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, the formation and evolution of galaxies, mass location during galactic collisions,[4] and the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. In the standard Lambda-CDM model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the universe contains 5% ordinary matter and energy, 27% dark matter and 68% of a form of energy known as dark energy.[5][6][7][8] Thus, dark matter constitutes 85%[a] of total mass, while dark energy plus dark matter constitute 95% of total mass–energy content.[9][10][11][12]


Because dark matter has not yet been observed directly, if it exists, it must barely interact with ordinary baryonic matter and radiation, except through gravity. Most dark matter is thought to be non-baryonic in nature; it may be composed of some as-yet undiscovered subatomic particles.[b] The primary candidate for dark matter is some new kind of elementary particle that has not yet been discovered, in particular, weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs).[13] Many experiments to directly detect and study dark matter particles are being actively undertaken, but none have yet succeeded.[14] Dark matter is classified as "cold", "warm", or "hot" according to its velocity (more precisely, its free streaming length). Current models favor a cold dark matter scenario, in which structures emerge by gradual accumulation of particles.

Although the existence of dark matter is generally accepted by the scientific community, some astrophysicists, intrigued by certain observations which do not fit some dark matter theories, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. These models attempt to account for all observations without invoking supplemental non-baryonic matter.[15]


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Illustration of Dark Energy

Dark Energy

In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from supernovae measurements, which showed that the universe does not expand at a constant rate; rather, the expansion of the universe is accelerating.[1][2] Understanding the evolution of the universe requires knowledge of the starting conditions and what it consists of. Prior to these observations, the only forms of matter-energy known to exist were ordinary matter, dark matter, and radiation. Measurements of the cosmic microwave background suggest the universe began in a hot Big Bang, from which general relativity explains its evolution and the subsequent large scale motion. Without introducing a new form of energy, there was no way to explain how an accelerating universe could be measured. Since the 1990s, dark energy has been the most accepted premise to account for the accelerated expansion. As of 2020, there are active areas of cosmology research aimed at understanding the fundamental nature of dark energy: is it a feature of measurement errors, or do modifications to general relativity need to be made?[3]

Assuming that the concordance model of cosmology is correct, the best current measurements indicate that dark energy contributes 68% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe. The mass–energy of dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contributes 27% and 5%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons contribute a very small amount.[4][5][6][7] The density of dark energy is very low (~ 7 × 10−30 g/cm3), much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the mass–energy of the universe because it is uniform across space.[8][9][10]

Two proposed forms of dark energy are the cosmological constant,[11][12] representing a constant energy density filling space homogeneously, and scalar fields such as quintessence or moduli, dynamic quantities whose energy density can vary in time and space. Contributions from scalar fields that are constant in space are usually also included in the cosmological constant. The cosmological constant can be formulated to be equivalent to the zero-point radiation of space i.e. the vacuum energy.[13] Scalar fields that change in space can be difficult to distinguish from a cosmological constant because the change may be extremely slow.

Due to the toy model nature of concordance cosmology, some experts believe[14] that a more accurate general relativistic treatment of the structures that exist on all scales[15] in the real Universe may do away with the need to invoke dark energy. Inhomogeneous cosmologies, which attempt to account for the backreaction of structure formation on the metric, generally do not acknowledge any dark energy contribution to the energy density of the Universe.


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Dark Futures

References









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How It All Works
Quantum Physics

The Standard Model

The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (the electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions, and not including the gravitational force) in the universe, as well as classifying all known elementary particles. It was developed in stages throughout the latter half of the 20th century, through the work of many scientists around the world,[1] with the current formulation being finalized in the mid-1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, confirmation of the top quark (1995), the tau neutrino (2000), and the Higgs boson (2012) have added further credence to the Standard Model. In addition, the Standard Model has predicted various properties of weak neutral currents and the W and Z bosons with great accuracy.

Although the Standard Model is believed to be theoretically self-consistent[2] and has demonstrated huge successes in providing experimental predictions, it leaves some phenomena unexplained and falls short of being a complete theory of fundamental interactions. It does not fully explain baryon asymmetry, incorporate the full theory of gravitation[3] as described by general relativity, or account for the accelerating expansion of the Universe as possibly described by dark energy. The model does not contain any viable dark matter particle that possesses all of the required properties deduced from observational cosmology. It also does not incorporate neutrino oscillations and their non-zero masses.

The development of the Standard Model was driven by theoretical and experimental particle physicists alike. For theorists, the Standard Model is a paradigm of a quantum field theory, which exhibits a wide range of phenomena including spontaneous symmetry breaking, anomalies and non-perturbative behavior. It is used as a basis for building more exotic models that incorporate hypothetical particles, extra dimensions, and elaborate symmetries (such as supersymmetry) in an attempt to explain experimental results at variance with the Standard Model, such as the existence of dark matter and neutrino oscillations.

References