Throughout history gold has been a highly-valued commodity. During the Gold Rush, many people left everything...homes. families, some devoting their entire lives to the pursuit of it. God is a treasure far more precious than all the wealth on Earth, but unlike gold, He is not hard to find. He truly is a God who shows Himself. His truths are richly woven into the fabric of all creation. Our greatest insight into the very heart and mind are the Scriptures, but to find the real treasure, we must dig deep into the remote recesses of the Rock himself. One thing you will most certainly discover is the deeper you dig, the deeper He gets. In all eternity we will never be able to plumb the depths of God. It is my hope that perhaps through my own search for that 'Treasure above all Treasures' you will find something which will have some meaning for you. R.Whelan

Sunday, October 18, 2015

TIME + MATTER + CHANCE or ONE SIMPLE, ELEGANT EQUATION TO EXPLAIN THEM ALL

I am fascinated by the universe, so quite naturally, I am drawn to anything concerning it. Unfortunately, most of the materials available for study seem to have been written by those whose sincere wish it is to deny the existence of God. Many of them believing that science and religion contradict one another. I do not share that opinion.

Stephen Hawking has said that a ‘cosmologist’s duty is to work out where the universe came from.’ As such it has been his quest to find, in his words, ‘one simple, elegant equation to explain everything.’ From the religious standpoint, Christian apologist, Ravi Zacharias says, 'At the heart of every religion is an uncompromising commitment to a particular way of defining who God is or is not and accordingly, of defining life's purpose.‘ In my opinion, science and religion are merely different sides of the same coin and are both, at their heart, the study of God. I see science as basically the study of the non-relational attributes of God and religion more as the study of the relational attributes of God.  When compared, it is stunning how many of the Laws of Nature mirror those attributes.

For instance, science says the Laws of Nature are universal, unchangeable, and powerful. Scientists say there was never a moment when those laws came into existence. For them to say otherwise would imply the laws are creations, thereby implying a creator. Instead, they insist the Laws of Nature are merely discoveries and that the laws ‘just are’, or as one of their proponents so aptly described their view, ‘it just is what it is’.  While he and others justify their beliefs by saying that they ‘just are’, they easily dismiss the right of those with religious faith the same prerogative.

Religion says that the Laws of Nature, the physical laws, were created by God. They also express some of the attributes of God. Like the Laws of Nature, God is universal (omnipresent, present everywhere at the same time), unchangeable (immutable, fixed), powerful (omnipotent). Religion goes further stating that God is also eternal (having no beginning or end), self-existent (existing independently of other beings or causes), sovereign (the supreme ruler), transcendent (beyond the range of normal human experience), and immanent (existing or operating within, permanently present and apparent throughout, sustaining, spread through and perceived in every part).

In my opinion, science itself appears to have become more of a religion than a study of facts. You will notice that Hawking often uses such phrases as, ‘if you accept as I do’, ‘I think’, ‘it’s my view’, or ‘for me this means’. Such phrases seem to indicate statements of belief more than statements of fact.

At any rate, in his so-called ‘cosmic cookbook’ Hawking says, ‘it’s not difficult to make a universe, you just need three ingredients: matter, energy and space.  He then goes on to say that since Einstein’s theory e=mc2 proves that mass and energy are basically the same thing, you really need only two ingredients, energy and space. Simple. 

I am no scientist and certainly no great thinker, but I still see at least three things that are necessary to create a universe. First, there must be the Laws of Nature as well as the space and mass (energy) for the Laws of Nature to act upon. That, of course, still begs answers to where energy and space came from and what could have caused the spontaneous appearance of a universe in the first place? Hawking takes care of the question of cause quite swiftly. There was none. According to him, we have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause. The universe simply created itself. 

‘The great mystery at the heart of the Big Bang,’ Hawking says, ‘is to explain how an entire fantastically enormous universe of space and energy can materialize out of nothing’ and that while ‘everyday experience teaches us that things don’t just materialize out of the blue’, energy and space spontaneously came into existence through one of the Laws of Nature called quantum mechanics.  He goes on to say that the universe was once smaller than a proton. ‘It was in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense, black hole’. Since according to quantum mechanics particles and protons can simply appear at random, vanish and then reappear somewhere else, it is entirely possible the universe ‘could have simply popped into existence and required nothing in terms of energy’ 

According to NASA, ‘a black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light cannot get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying’.  So, if a black hole is a formed from a collapsed star as scientists propose, where did the star that collapsed come from if there was no universe as yet?  What was the mass that created such a gravitational pull from inside that infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense, black hole? This feels to me like we going around in circles, arguing which came first the chicken or the egg.

Hawking also states that at the exact moment of the Big Bang, both positive and negative energy and space came into existence. Since positive and negative in the universe always adds up to zero, he says, there is no god.  He goes on to say that the role played by time at the beginning of the universe is the final key to removing the need for a grand designer. Since, in theory, time cannot exist in a black hole, time couldn’t have begun until the moment of the Big Bang. So there could have been no time for a cause, or a creator, to have existed in. Religion disputes that argument saying that God is eternal and exists outside of time. It says that the universe did have a cause. That God created all things, both visible and invisible, including the Laws of Nature. God spoke and everything, energy and space, protons and particles, positive and negative energy all came into existence in that moment. 

Hawking’s conclusion is that ‘all this just happened unbidden and controlled by laws that we cannot understand and analyze. We have discovered how the Laws of Nature acting on the mass and energy of the universe started a process that would eventually produce us, sitting here on our planet pretty pleased with ourselves for having worked it all out.’ He goes on to say, ‘We are each free to believe what we want, but it’s my view, no one created the universe, and no one directs our fate. This leads me to a profound realization there is probably no heaven and no afterlife either.’ 

Are we really the products of time plus matter plus chance? I have a few questions of my own for the scientific community. Is it possible that in your search to disprove God’s existence, you are actually in essence really looking for him? What is it that makes you so afraid to consider the concept that God exists? Are you mad at God because your life isn’t what you wanted it to be? Did He do something you don’t like? Or, is it the fear that if you admit that someone created you then you must necessarily accept his authority over you? Just what is it, in the face of so much evidence that points to a grand design and therefore a Grand Designer, that makes you so willingly choose to ignore, or attempt to explain Him away?*

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I can suppose. My answer to Hawking’s quest to find that ‘one simple, elegant equation that explains everything in the universe’ however is a simple one - God. Pure, elegant and simple. Then again, maybe not so simple after all, for we shall never be able to plumb the depths of God. – Copyright © 2015 Rachel Whelan

*Comment by Harvard University geneticist Richard C. Lewontin in a 1997 debate, in reference to defending Darwinism:  “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our prior adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Sunday, June 7, 2015

ROAD OUT AHEAD

Early one morning, a little over a year ago there was a tremendously destructive earthquake. Luckily the loss of life was minimal, especially when you consider the amount of devastation that occurred. Untold millions of dollars worth of property was demolished.  Some of the damage was readily evident, while some was not. There was structural damage that could not be seen so easily with the naked eye. 

Other cars sped across it just like any other morning.  All of them totally unaware of the chance they were taking because of the structural damage that had been done to the bridge by the tremendous shaking of it’s foundation early that morning.  Just as the young man reached the other side, he happened to look into his rear-view mirror, where only seconds ago there had been a string of traffic behind him. To his shock and horror, he quickly came to the realization that the bridge had collapsed, sending the cars behind him plunging into the waters below.  
 
Dazed and shaken, he thought of the cars that were still coming towards the bridge. There was no way for them to see what awaited them just over the rise in the road.  He knew that he had to do something, so he stopped the car and ran towards the oncoming traffic, waving his arms, motioning for them to stop.  Most of them must have thought he was some kind of wild man, or just some kind of nut, if they noticed at all.  They all had their minds on their own concerns.  At any rate, they didn’t stop. They continued on to their own peril.
 
After what happened with the Heaven’s Gate, Halle-Bopp Comet incident, I felt much the same remorse I’m sure that young man must have felt.  The foundations of our world are being shaken daily. The extent of the damage done to our society may not seem to be readily discernible to most, but the damage is there, just the same. 
 
There are people who pass by us every day going on with their lives unaware of what lies just ahead, just beyond their range of vision.  All the while going headlong down a dangerous path.
 
There are a lot of voices out there telling us that we shouldn’t get involved.  After all, everyone has a right to live their own life.  What right have we to impose our morality on someone else?  What right do we have to say that our God is the only way to salvation?  How can we say that Jesus is the only way to establish a relationship with God? 
 
I don’t know about rights.  I only know the road is out ahead of them and if they keep going the way they’re going . . . if someone doesn’t warn them, they will find out much too late to stop and turn around.  They will plunge headlong into the bottomless pit that lies just beyond that rise in the road.   It’s not a matter of challenging someone’s lifestyle for the sake of offense.  It’s not about making them feel bad about the
choices they have made.  It’s not about scaring them.  It’s about warning them what lies ahead. 
 
It’s true, just like that young man, we won’t be able to save them all.  Some of them will dismiss us as nuts. Some of them may even be afraid of us and of what we profess, but some of them will stop.  Some of them will listen. Some of them will turn around.
Copyright © 1996 Rae Holbrook