Sunday, January 13, 2013

Beginning in the Beginning

Something is eternal! This is a self-evident truth. Try to imagine the universe coming into existence without a cause. To believe that you would certainly deny all of science. Even secular science teaches without exception that everything and every event that we observe has a cause. Wait a minute; I miswrote. Secular science has accepted that the universe with all its complexity, sprung into existence without a cause anyone can discern. Whoops! One more thing. Secular science has no credible explanation for the cause of the origin of life. 

A thing came into existence at some point in time or it has always been here. Think about it. When I was in high school in the 60’s, we were taught that the universe(matter and space) was eternal; it had no beginning and will have no end. Now students are taught that the universe came into existence out of nothing and will end at some point. They are told that science has proven that the universe is expanding rapidly and had a beginning. The question is not “was there a beginning of the universe” but “how did the universe come into existence”. In this blog we will explore the evidence from true science. 

Many believers in the Bible say that we should not mix science and faith. True, the Bible is not a text book, but where it speaks about the earth and the universe, it is accurate. For example, science teaches that we live in a space, time and matter universe. You may ask what about energy; all energy comes from matter therefore they are the same. In first verse in the Bible, the writer described this scientific principal when he wrote “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” The beginning-Time. He created the heavens-Space and the Earth-matter. Genesis 1:1 described the scientific basis for our existence. 

Secular scientist have a story about how the first element was Hydrogen and all the other naturally occurring elements, 97 of them, were formed by fusion at very high temperatures. There is a serious problem with this story. All of the elements are made of sub-atomic particles such as protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks etcetera. We think we know that protons and neutrons are made of quarks, but no one seems to know what quarks are made of for that matter, where they came from. The chemical evolutionist has a major problem with the question “How did quarks evolve?” or “How did electrons evolve?”. When you go back to the beginning, evolutionary theory has no answers.  

It seems to me that we need to go where the evidence leads us. So the question remains, “What is eternal?”, matter or a Creator of matter.  Since secular science has decided that the universe had a beginning and that matter is not eternal, it seems logical that whoever created the matter is eternal.
When, As disclosed in the book, published in 1994 and the corresponding DVD, The Privileged Planet, it became obvious that the mathematical odds of life existing in the universe was so low that it was basically impossible, secular origin of life researchers were driven to a theory of an infinite number of parallel universes dubbed “The Multiverse”. This theory exists without a shred of scientific evidence therefore has become an article of “faith” by those scientist that believe that the admission that a Supreme Creator can possibly exist violates their “theology”. They certainly do not subscribe to Biblical theology but a theology nonetheless. 

To illustrate the lack of facts to support the “Multiverse” belief, Scientific American published an article about the concept. The article states:

        The notion of parallel universes leapt out of the pages of fiction into scientific journals in the 1990s. Many scientists claim that mega-millions of other universes, each with its own laws of physics, lie out there, beyond our visual horizon. They are collectively known as the multiverse.

The trouble is that no possible astronomical observations can ever see those other universes. The arguments are indirect at best. And even if the multiverse exists, it leaves the deep mysteries of nature unexplained.

The intro to the article also states, “Proof of parallel universes radically different from our own may still lie beyond the domain of science.” 

Back to the Privileged Planet. The authors have made a case that the mathematical odds for life existing, nether the less coming into being by pure chance, in our universe is somewhere between statistically negligible to downright impossible. Guillermo Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University, received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1993 from the University of Washington and Jay W. Richards is Vice President and Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He received his Ph.D. with honors in philosophy and theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. As they pen in  the aforementioned book:

Elsewhere you might learn that Earth and its local environment provide a delicate, and probably exceedingly rare, cradle for complex life. But there's another, even more startling, fact, described in The Privileged Planet: those same rare conditions that produce a habitable planet-that allow for the existence of complex observers like ourselves-also provide the best overall place for observing. What does this mean? At the least, it turns our view of the universe inside out. The universe is not "pointless" (Steven Weinberg), Earth merely "a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark," (Carl Sagan) and human existence "just a more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of accidents" (Steven Weinberg). On the contrary, the evidence we can uncover from our Earthly home points to a universe that is designed for life, and designed for discovery. 

By the way, the odds documented in the DVD of life existing in our universe is 1000 trillion to 1.

In conclusion, the beginning of time is well documented in Genesis 1, meanwhile science is still struggling with its version of the truth.  As we have stated previously, we will follow the evidence where it leads. The question that we ask in this particular blog is “What is supported by the facts that we know, a universe that sprung into existence by the power of an eternal God or by an eternal something that science has no clue about?” 

Please follow me in our journey to the truth.



5 comments:

  1. Hello Jerry,

    A couple of questions on these paragraphs if you don't mind.

    First, you state that "Now students are taught that the universe came into existence out of nothing". I'm not sure that's entirely accurate. It seems to me that the big bang theorists describe the Universe forming from an explosion of an incredibly dense, very small hunk of matter. If we could see back past t = 0, we might see that there was not matter at all, just energy. Anyway I don't think anyone claims that the Universe came into existence out of nothing.

    I realize that this just moves the question to "where did that dense matter come from" or "where did that energy come from", but I don't like to misstate the scientific argument.

    On a similar line, you state "The chemical evolutionist has a major problem with the question “How did quarks evolve?". I don't think there is such a thing as a chemical evolutionist. Transforming one type of atom to another using intense heat and pressure such as found in the core of a star is not evolution. Evolution is a biological process, not an atomic one.

    I agree that physicists have no explanation for where quarks, or for that matter "matter" came from. But they do have a pretty good explanation, verifiable by experiment, for the production of complex heavy elements by the fusion of simple elements.

    Please don't think I am arguing with you. I would just like to questing what I don't see as being consistent and have an honest discussion. I don't think science has all the answers, but I still struggle with the answers I find the the Bible as well.

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    1. Your comments are much appreciated. It is gratifying to know that someone is interested in what I write and cares enough to make a reasoned response. You write that the comment “Now students are taught that the universe came into existence out of nothing" is not entirely accurate; let me explain what I meant. Admittedly, the statement leaves out some logical steps but all the same in my opinion, it expresses a truism. You wrote “It seems to me that the big bang theorists describe the Universe forming from an explosion of an incredibly dense, very small hunk of matter. If we could see back past t = 0, we might see that there was not matter at all, just energy.” First of all energy and matter are interchangeable (E=Mc2). When you say that big bang theorist do not know where the matter and/or energy came from, it can be said it came out of nothing. I will admit that it could have been stated more clearly and I accept the constructive criticism.
      I refer to a chemical evolutionist is a scientist or some other learned person that believes that all chemicals “evolved” from hydrogen by fusion under great heat and pressure. The first definition of the word “evolution” in thefreedictionary.com is “A gradual process in which something changes into a different and usually more complex or better form.” The term evolution describes many things. Granted, I used poetic license. The point I attempted to make was that it is too simplistic to infer that a big bang happened and hydrogen sprang out. Hydrogen atoms are made of protons and electrons and protons according to quantum mechanics are made of quarks and so on. The mechanism of the evolution of these particles from something else is beyond mystifying. The idea that this all came out of “we have no idea” is a statement of faith, not science. A theology.
      Thank you again for your interest. Please continue to follow me as we both continue to go were the evidence takes us.

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