God, Cosmology and Nothingness - Theory and Theology In a Scientific Era

God, Cosmology and Nothingness - Theory and Theology in a Scientific Age

Copyright

God, Cosmology and Nothingness -

Theory and Theology in a Scientific Age

©2019 Garrison Clifford Gibson

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing: 2016

ISBN 978-1-365-53910-7

Publisher Garrison Clifford Gibson

[email protected]

Acknowledgments

Thanks are given for quotations from the K.J.V. in the public domain, from a public domain N.A.S.A. W.M.A.P. article and to the primary expositor of contemporary post-millennial eschatology, Kenneth Gentry, for a brief, fair-use quote on end times from his book; 'He Shall Have Dominion'. Quotations from great reformed theologians such as Baxter, Watson and Gill in the public domain are acknowledged.

Thanks to God

For providing Universe, life and grace

Hebrews 11:3:Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Titus 1:2:"In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began;"

John 14:1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.

Forward

Scientific theory has advanced divergent cosmology from that of Christian creation beliefs and cosmology since Darwin's publication of 'The Origin of the Species'. Advances in astronomy and physics have reinforced the divergence. I will examine select physical cosmology and theology parameters concerning creation, being and eschatology to make the point that there is reason to view the scientific material as supportive of convergence with Biblical parameters of God and His relation to the Universe.

God is not tricking the people of the world with the apparent structure of natural history. Theologians do not need to take a counter-thesis of denial approach to modern natural history. Instead they may find the fault is in themselves rather than in the stars or the Bible. 

Omniscience may be required for proper design of species evolution. If one configures an evolutionary system to generate a targeted product in a very complex ecosystem with innumerable variables, the likelihood of system errors deforming the system to bring system failure to evolve the desired product are great. Omniscience is required to design the evolving system such that it is pre-determined to create the proper product at the right moment.

One might regard the evolution of human life through heterosexual events as an archetypal example of creation through omniscient configuration of evolution. In my opinion, when mankind was created and God rested, the designed evolution era ceased and human intelligence became capable of deforming the functioning patterns through genetic redesign and sundry forms of sin for-itself and for-others.

Consider the paradigm that of all the proto-human species that existed the challenges of designing the ecosphere such that just one preferred species would emerge to dominate are incalculable except to omniscience. Democrats today believe that evolution has no design, or had none in the era in which God created the Universe from emergence in His will to the solar system and let it become peopled before bringing the era of Adamas and Edith to fruition, hence its o.k. to sin and miss the mark of evolving human function and conditional health (everyone is spiritual dead unless reborn with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ).

Belief in God and the truth of Biblical creation parameters are not logically antipathetic to evolution cosmology. Convergence of scientific and Biblical cosmology and eschatology parameters is warranted and supportable with scripture. Scientists don't study theology generally, and Christian fundamentalists still use an ancient Genesis hermeneutic consistent with science of the 10th century B.C.

A Crucible; Contrasting the Word of God with Empirical Observations

II Timothy-3: 6 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works."

Genesis  3:22 ¶ And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: 23 Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken."

Numerous verses of the Bible on what may be viewed as having cosmological relevance can be interpreted without logically, necessarily, standing in contradiction to contemporary empirical scientific insights and observations of ancient ideas regarding cosmology that have been associated with scriptural values. Some people sought to use the Bible as a scientific text for explaining otherwise unexplained cosmological phenomena.

Treating the Bible as a scientific text wasn't itself given as an instruction in the Bible.  Where the Bible does mention or refer to empirical structures it does so in ways such that the reference object paradigm may be visualized with numerous different paradigmata contingent upon the state of learning of the reader.

The way some traditionalists interpret select reference object paradigms in scripture may be more in conflict with Biblical meaning than select misinterpretations of contemporary science.

I am not preaching to the choir. I will examine the depth and limits of temporal human knowledge and show that it does not controvert nor transcend sacred scripture and the veracity of its physical paradigms. I write with the belief that any intelligent reader, even the lost, could agree that the observable Universe is God's creation, or the lesser proposition that nothing in the observable Universe precludes God's having created it.

For many, faith in God and the Lord Jesus Christ have been shaken by scientific development, technology and theory. So much so that government seems to encourage 'change' to move beyond Christian thought. In this thesis I will show that contemporary science, cosmology and evolution have not controverted the truth of the Holy Bible. Conversely modern physics and quantum cosmology theory provide advanced theoretical points of support for theological opinion concerning the nature of God and the reality of His method for reconciliation of the elect unto His will. Christology of John and the Logos exemplify the Universal and transcending ideas of the Apostles about Jesus Christ and God that may be juxtaposed with pre-Big Bang cosmological speculation about a timeless state before time and light were issued[1] in an expanding Universe that grew like a great tree with many branches for all manner of things to live in.[2]

The Lord Jesus Christ did not necessarily mean everything he said literally. That is he spoke in parables and used figures of speech. Consider not only lilies, regard the use of the word mountain in Mark 11:23 where it may be taken to be metaphor 23 For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Mountains may be regarded as large spiritual issues the Christian is challenged to overcome. Rather than taking the meaning of mountain literally, as if Mt. Everest could to be cast into the Indian ocean, it may be interpreted as descriptive of social and spiritual challenges from small to the largest often within the Christian.

That criterion is interesting to the philosophical that are interested in epistemology-the theory of knowledge. That field advanced quite a lot in the 20th century. Empiricism was surpassed by Quine[3], Strawson and various analytic philosophers, yet existentialism and the problem of self-verifying knowledge that is expressed in the problem of solipsism persisted, and had a counterpart in the division of knowledge into categories of internal and external, or intentional and existential, that hadn't been addressed sharply enough by empiricism. The origins of the epistemological criterion was in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason[4].

Jesus Christ said in effect that epistemological and content of consciousness issues of whatever size may be overcome with faith. As the Christian is joined to the primary monistic field or kingdom of God through the grace of the Lord Jesus, it follows that subjective spiritual or psychological problems are eclipsed, as well as the power or significance of temporal problematic material objects, with faith in the primary monistic field Creator. The contingent field problems fade away, or are perhaps, vacated.

Christians may interpret cosmological end times events from different perspectives depending upon what sort of hermeneutic they use. Pre-tribulationists[5] may interpret John's Revelation symbolism differently that post-tribulationists. One can in turn interpret symbolism of the Revelation differently even within a pre-trib hermeneutic. J. Vernon McGee commented in a radio lecture that this is the age of the church of Smyrna when he was commenting on the Revelation. Post-tribulationists aka post-millennialists would find that off nearly two thousand years more or less if taken literally.  Yet McGee may have meant that people of the day behave like the people of the church of Smyrna. In that case the description is appropriate diagnostically for today as well as in John's day.

In this thesis I consider Biblical meanings for eschatology from pre-trib and post-trib paradigms and extrapolate even farther within those traditions in addition to considering what end times referent terms mean within a scientific point of view.

Darwinism[6] lies in opposition to a veritable pre-Newtonian science paradigm used by Christian fundamentalists for interpreting the book of Genesis. Biology isn’t physics of course, and creation content of Genesis is not limited to biology. It is useful to say that words are representational and that actual historical physical cosmology and its mechanics were different from the words describing the creative acts of Genesis. The words are abstract and can be interpreted with the understanding of idiots or geniuses in their own way.

It is difficult for a human being to imagine a God so great as to understand every thought of every human being alive and to pre-know the location of every quantum particle, its destiny and purpose in accomplishing the providence of God amidst all of the force fields that will ever be. It is challenging to understand how such a God who has always existed; before any Universe existed, can care about the lives of the people he has allowed to exist in His creation, yet he does.

The Lord Jesus Christ appeared as a human in order to bring the elect unto eternal life with God. The Lord atoned for humanity's condition of sin; pervasive and original, that made all human works unacceptable, and paid the debt of sin for those of faith. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice unto God, given by God. It is difficult to understand how God cared so much for humanity as to sacrifice His Son, except to know that is what love is.

There is room for speculating about how cosmological mechanics creating the Universe actualized in-themselves rather than as images inferred from verbal descriptions in Genesis.  Consider that if a teenager provided a few hundred words about how a trip to Africa was, for example, it might be difficult to actually get an accurate idea of what the teenager experienced such that one could paint a picture of it with as much accuracy at least as photographs would have provided.

Was the Biblical flood local in Mesopotamia or did it cover the whole Earth? Did Earth not just mean 'land' or dirt in the ancient past? Does a flood story of water covering the land require interpretation to mean that the entire planet was covered under flood water? Would anyone reading Genesis in Solomon's court have given a thought about a round planet being covered with water? Would the flood story have meant that to Solomon?

Scientific theories are less than concise, exhaustive, infallible records of the history and future of reality. Theories change with seasons of new understanding and are descriptions of the way physical forces are happening now, and of ways they may have happened in