Evidence from the Size of the Universe

We’ve already discussed the vastness of the universe earlier in this chapter. We noted that the most distant galaxies are over 10 billion light years away, indicating that the light left these galaxies over 10 billion years ago in order to reach us today. The straightforward interpretation of these data is that the universe must be at least 10 billion years old.

While some people have argued that perhaps these galaxies aren’t really that far away, all of the methods used to measure distance agree that galaxies are billions, not thousands, of light years away. Others have argued that perhaps the light moved much faster when it first left these galaxies, so that it could reach us in much less time than 10 billion years. But this idea conflicts with other data that we have. As described in Chapter 3, ample evidence supports the idea that physical processes such as quantum mechanics and electromagnetism function the same way in distant galaxies as they do on earth. Those physical processes depend on the speed of light and would look very different if the speed of light had changed. Instead, they look the same in distant galaxies as they do on earth, indicating that the speed of light has been constant over the history of the universe.

Evidence from the Moon and Planets

Studies of the Moon and planets also give evidence for great age. Geologists can use some of the same methods to measure the age of rocks on the Moon, Venus, and Mars as they use on Earth. That’s because the asteroid collisions, volcanoes, and erosion they observe on Earth also occur on the Moon and planets. Photos taken by spacecraft while orbiting Mars show channels and gullies on the planet’s surface. Similar channels on Earth are usually made by flowing water. Yet there is no liquid water on the surface of Mars right now.

What does this have to do with age? It is evidence that Mars was much different in the past than it is today. The atmosphere used to be much thicker and warmer, similar to Earth’s, but now it is much colder and thinner. This dramatic change in planet-wide climate took millions or billions of years. Thus the rocks testify that the planet Mars must be at least this old.

Evidence from the Orbits of Asteroids

The orbits of asteroids also show evidence of a long history. When an asteroid is discovered, its path through the sky shows its orbit around the Sun. Once astronomers know the orbit of an asteroid they can calculate its orbit in the past and into the future to see whether it will hit the earth. By calculating the orbits backward, astronomers have found several asteroids that converged at the same location several million years ago. Apparently two larger asteroids collided at this spot and shattered into the smaller asteroids we see today. If God had created asteroids just a few thousand years ago, why would he have put them in orbits that suggest a collision several million years ago? The evidence clearly points to a long history for asteroids.

Evidence from Meteorites

Radiometric dating is used to study rocks on Earth as well as rocks from elsewhere in the solar system. Studies have been done on the rocks that astronauts brought back from the Moon and on asteroids that have fallen to Earth. As with Earth rocks, scientists use multiple radioactive isotopes to cross-check age measurements. At least three different isotopes have been used to measure the age of Moon rocks, and at least five different radioactive isotopes have been used to measure the age of meteorites. The results all agree: the oldest Moon rocks and asteroids are 4.6 billion years old. This is our best measure of the age of the solar system as a whole. The universe itself must be at least this old.

Evidence from Star Clusters

Another important measure of age in the universe comes from star clusters. Because all stars in a star cluster form in the same nebula at about the same time, they all have about the same “birthday.” But they don’t all have the same lifespan. High-mass stars burn bright and fast like a “flash in the pan,” while low-mass stars burn slowly and steadily. Consider how this will look in a star cluster. A cluster starts with many stars with the same birthday but of all different masses. Over time the high-mass stars die off first, leaving behind the low-mass stars. This means that if many high-mass stars are present, the cluster must be young because they haven’t burned out yet. If most of the stars are low-mass, the cluster must be old. Careful studies of star clusters show that some clusters are younger and some are older, with the oldest ones having an age of about 12 billion years.

Multiple Lines of Evidence

The most distant galaxies, the planets and asteroids of our own solar system, and the oldest star clusters all are several billion years old. Astronomers have many different methods for measuring the age of various objects, and they all support ages of billions of years, not thousands. Even if the assumptions of one or two methods were faulty, it is highly unlikely that all of the methods would be affected. Like the geologists in the 1700s, astronomers today have found multiple lines of evidence against a young earth and young universe.

It may seem as though we are once again describing a conflict between science and theology. Scientific results that indicate great age do conflict with the Young-Earth Interpretation of Genesis 1 discussed in chapter 5. But remember that in chapters 5 and 6 we presented many other interpretations of Genesis 1; several of these are not in conflict with the great age found in the book of nature. In chapter 6 we also explained why we believe that the best biblical scholarship, quite independent of modern science, indicates that Genesis 1 was never meant to convey scientific information to the original audience. Its intent for the first listeners, and for us, is to teach the who and why of creation, not the how and when. Taken in this context, there is no conflict between Genesis 1 and the astronomical evidence for great age.

For background on related topics (like the reliability of historical science and interpretations of Genesis), see previous excerpts from this series.

Excerpt from Chapter 7 of Origins: Christian Perspectives on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design (Grand Rapids, MI: Faith Alive Christian Resources), 2011. Reprinted with permission. To purchase a copy of the book or e-book, call 1-800-333-8300 or visit www.faithaliveresources.org.

Want a free copy of Origins?  For a limited time, donations of $50 or more will receive a  copy of the book! Plus, from now through April, your gift will be doubled thanks to a matching grant from a generous donor. You can learn more here.

As is the case in many fields, astronomers are trying to settle questions that the general public thinks little about, often because laypeople are still coming to grips with much more basic questions such as Did the universe appear—poof—all at once or did it evolve into its present state?

These are questions where science crosses into—and sometimes crosses swords with—religion. For many who take an anti-evolutionary stand as a matter of spiritual principle, the word evolution should not be applied to anything having to do with creation, cosmic or otherwise. Yet, if an evolving universe implies a beginning (and it does, for relativistic reasons), science has taken a tremendous leap toward rapprochement with Christian faith on the matter of creation. Traveling backward in time with their shrinking subject, cosmologists can only watch the cosmos disappear at the beginning, pointing to a universe that came out of nothing—a universe that wasn’t there.

No one need ask: “Were you there?” Chuck Steidel has tapped into nature’s own motion picture of past events, now showing in the present. Anyone who cares to view it can now see for himself what was and wasn’t there, at various stages of the deep past.

While other astronomers at first assumed that larger telescopes would be necessary before finding truly primeval galaxies, Steidel began finding dozens of them—and today, thousands of them. His method, called ultraviolet dropout, is based on the fact that intergalactic hydrogen gas absorbs the ultraviolet light of the most distant galaxies, causing them to disappear when seen through an ultraviolet filter. Steidel identified early galaxies that are present in pictures of the cosmos when viewed through red and green filters, but that aren’t there when viewed through an ultraviolet filter.

Visual evidence for a universe that isn’t there starts with the observation of galaxies that aren’t there.

“The way that people have looked for these in the past tended to be looking for particular, spectacular fireworks of stars going off all at once,” Steidel told me. He was only 32—a young-looking 32—and could have passed more easily as a student than as a professor as he talked with me in his Caltech office, surrounded by Hubble Deep Sky images. “So they were looking for relatively rare events, using narrow-band filters tuned to find an emission line that comes from hydrogen atoms. And you have to have the filter exactly tuned to that wavelength to see it.”

“And I’ve heard it’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” I offered.

“It’s much more difficult.”

“So rather than try to find something that stands out you’re trying to find something that drops out?”

“That’s correct. It’s a very simple technique, where we take pictures through different filters, very deep images of the sky with CCD detectors, and we take three filters, and we look for objects that are present through two of those filters, and they completely disappear in the third. And the reason they disappear is because they’re at a high redshift.”

The high redshift denotes greater distances—and earlier periods, because of the time required for light to reach us from those greater distances. These young galaxies contain young, hot stars, emitting strongly in the ultraviolet. However, ultraviolet radiation from the most distant galaxies is absorbed by a greater amount of intervening hydrogen gas along the way. Today, Steidel uses the 200-inch Hale Telescope at California’s Palomar Observatory to find these primeval galaxies with his ultraviolet dropout technique, then flies to the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii to measure their redshift, which corresponds to their distance and time period.

And what do these galaxies look like?

“We actually think we’re seeing the central bulge regions of galaxies forming,” said Steidel, “that is, the round part in the middle of a spiral or an elliptical galaxy, where you expect all of the star formation to be happening in a relatively small region. And those parts of galaxies we see today are also the parts that we think are the oldest stars in those galaxies.”

“And you’re saying that modern galaxies have the oldest stars in the bulges, is that right?”

“That’s right …. It’s still somewhat controversial. But there isn’t any doubt that we’re finding a number of things that match fairly closely to the number that you would expect to find if you were looking at the progenitors of the present-day, bright galaxies.”

Steidel’s galaxy surveys have shown that galaxies were already arranged in clusters at that early time. But the individual, primeval galaxies lacked the characteristics of today’s spirals and ellipticals. More recently, Steidel has focused on a slightly later period, from about 10 to 12 billion years ago, when star formation appears to peak. If seeing is believing, then, as Steidel says, the universe “has absolutely changed with time.” His methods have helped astronomers identify populations of galaxies at various stages, where their differences from one to another are unmistakable.

In the years ahead, telescopes beyond our obfuscating atmosphere, like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (collecting six times as much light as the Hubble), may begin to give us glimpses of the “Dark Ages,” when the first galaxies began to form. As our improving technologies bring us closer to the beginning, they will lead people to ponder, once again, what happened before that. 

In my interviews with researchers, I usually bring up such crossover questions when the scientists or their studies naturally suggest them. But I worried that I’d crossed over too clumsily into this territory with Steidel when I asked him what he thought about a universe that appeared to come into being out of nothing.

He hesitated and said, “What happened before, you know, it’s …” and his voice trailed off. 

Finally I suggested: “Something must have happened before.”

“I think about that extremely rarely.”

Shoot, I’d gone too far, I thought.

But then he added: “On the other hand, I do have a very wide appreciation for whatever put things there—because it’s just the greatest thing to go out on the catwalk around the dome, in the middle of the night, and just look up there, or look at a picture of the Hubble Deep Field, and see all the things that are out there, and—you know— it’s a beautiful universe out there.”

Indeed, come to think of it, the way it all came together may be an even more impressive fact to ponder than the fact that at one time, that is, before time, the universe wasn’t there.

The script was written by biology student Joy Walters, with help from BioLogos president Darrel Falk.

It’s true that physics sounds scary to many people, and it can indeed be a difficult topic to learn. Yet I’ve always loved physics (my degrees are in physics rather than astronomy), because of the way that mathematical equations can describe and predict so much of what we see in the world around us. One reason I got into astrophysics is because the universe contains so many bizarre situations that we can’t reproduce on earth, like ultracold, or extremely high density, or extremely high magnetic fields. It’s a fun challenge to figure out which physical process will be the most important when the situation is so dissimilar to everyday experience. But if the word “physics” makes you shrink in distaste or fear, don’t worry. For the rest of this article, we’ll focus on a more friendly topic: astronomy.

In the last decade or two, our knowledge of the universe has grown dramatically as many new telescopes and spacecraft have come online. In this essay, I’ve selected some of my favorite recent astronomy photographs to share with you. As a professional astronomer and a Christian, I feel God has called me to share these wonders with the Church. Many times, these new discoveries are presented without any mention of God, and sometimes in a context of overt atheism. I want to share these things with you in a Christian context, with God as their creator.

The Milky Way

Have you ever seen the Milky Way? If you live in a rural area, you may have seen it many times. If not, it may have been a dramatic surprise when you first saw it while camping or traveling. On a clear night out in the country, the sky is strewn with brilliant stars—many more stars than you can see under city lights.The faintest stars form a creamy, smoky band from horizon to horizon. Our galaxy contains billions of stars, and thousands of those stars are visible to the naked eye. The stars appear in a band across the sky because we are viewing our galaxy edge-on, like looking at the edge of a dinner plate.

When David looked up at the night sky over Israel thousands of years ago, he may have seen the Milky Way, or a comet, or simply the brilliance of the full moon. Whatever the sky looked like that night, it inspired him to sing:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. (Ps. 19:1-4a)

The heavens are displaying the glory of God for all people to hear, proclaiming their message to people of every language, tribe, and nation. Just about anyone who looks up at the night sky feels a sense of wonder. Yet as Christians, we feel more than a vague sense of awe; we know the Creator of the heavens personally, as our own loving Father.

The heavens declare more than God’s glory. The universe is God’s revelation of himself to us, and teaches us about his character. As the Belgic Confession says about “The Means by Which We Know God,”

We know him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own. (Article 2)

The natural world teaches us about God’s glory, power, divinity, faithfulness, extravagance, immensity, love, and other attributes. God’s special revelation in scripture is our primary place to learn of God’s character (Ps. 19 goes on to talk about special revelation in vs. 7), but the natural world can bring the message to our senses in a powerful way beyond mere words on a page. The Holy Spirit can use the natural world to get the message past our hardened or weary hearts. Nature illustrates these attributes in ways that enlarge our imaginations to appreciate afresh the glory of God.

The Sun

The Solar Dynamics Observatory was launched into space in 2010, the latest of several spacecraft to photograph the sun in detail. In Figure 2, the upper photo shows the face of the sun with a sprinkling of sunspots. The sun is powered by nuclear fusion reactions deep in its core which heat the hydrogen and helium gas till it glows. A sunspot is a place on the sun’s surface where the gasses are a bit cooler than the surrounding area, so that it glows less brightly and appears dark.

The lower photo in Figure 2 was taken the same day, but in X-ray light. X-rays are invisible to our eyes, but you have experienced them at the dentist’s office. There, the X-rays are produced by a machine, travel through the mouth, and are detected by film to reveal an image of your teeth. In this image, X-rays are produced by the sun, travel to the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and are detected by a camera to show an image of the sun. In X-rays, the sunspots are the brightest part of the image, not the faintest. If you look at the sunspot on the left edge, you can see bands of particles rising out of the sunspot in a looping path above the sun’s surface and falling back down on it. As the particles follow lines of magnetic field, they emit X-rays. The loops you see are not small—they are about the size of planet Earth! Because of modern spacecraft, telescopes, and cameras, we can see so much more in the heavens than what is visible to the naked eye. Thus, we are seeing more of what the heavens have to declare about God. In Psalm 19, David goes on to describe the sun:

In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun. It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is deprived of its warmth. (vs. 4b-6)

If David had lived today, maybe he would have written about other properties of the sun, like the power of God as seen in nuclear reactions and looping magnetic fields. As it is, he makes two important points. One is the universal warmth of the sun, by which God provides for all life on earth. The other is the faithful path of the sun, day after day, unchanging year after year. In the book of Jeremiah, God promises his people that he will not break his covenant with them, any more than he would break his covenant with day and night and the fixed laws of heaven and earth (33:19-26). The sun is a persistent reminder, woven into our lives, of God’s faithfulness to his promises.

As Christians and geologists, we frequently encounter people with stories of storm tossed and shipwrecked faith that started when they began to wrestle with apparent conflicts between science and the Bible. The stories have a common thread. The Bible, they were told, clearly teaches the earth was created a few thousand years ago with life forms fashioned more or less as we find them today. Because the earth is very young, the incredibly complex sequence of rock, sediment, and fossils found on our planet must have been deposited in a very short period of time. Noah’s Flood, as the only plausible causal agent, was obviously a global and violent event. Theories of an ancient earth and adaptation of life forms, they were further informed, have been constructed on flimsy evidence created by atheistic scientists searching for ways to expunge God from modern culture. But as these sojourners began to explore and understand the actual evidence for an ancient earth, they found themselves increasingly convinced of its legitimacy, and thereby increasingly questioning the veracity of their faith – many to the point of relegating Christ to just another wishful myth.

It is our conviction that these stories of strained or lost faith derive not from an inherent unwillingness to trust the Bible, but rather from misguided teaching on the message of Scripture. Those insisting the earth is young are not simply putting their faith in God’s Word, they are putting their faith in their own particular interpretation of that Word. As such, an entirely unnecessary stumbling block to faith is created, where faith in Christ first requires rejection of sound science.

As we have prayed and studied this subject, we have felt God’s call to speak out against this misplaced stumbling block. We are sensitive, however, to the fact that when scientists speak on issues of faith, there is a natural suspicion that science will be regarded as the ultimate arbiter of truth, and Scripture will have to yield whenever conflict arises. It is thus important for us to state here that both of us ascribe to the authority and inspiration of Scripture, the reality and necessity of Christ’s death and resurrection, the existence of genuine miraculous events, and the truthfulness of the Biblical historical narratives. In our understanding, science will never trump Scripture, but by virtue of science being a study of God’s natural creation, it may occasionally assist in our understanding of God’s written Word. Where this has occurred historically and has been accepted by the Church, the invariable result has been the abandonment of an interpretation of some secondary importance, without any change in our understanding of the intended central message.

This phenomenon is illustrated well by the 17th century clash between Galileo’s claims that the earth revolves around the sun, and the multiple passages in Scripture that appear to clearly present a static earth as the physical center of God’s natural creation. The Bible tells us repeatedly that the earth is fixed upon its foundations (Ps 93:1, 104:5) and the sun rises and sets (Eccl 1:5, Ps 19:6). Within the context of the historical narratives (which we are not accustomed to interpreting in any figurative manner) we read statements about “the sun rising over the land” (Gen 19:23), and a miraculous event during a famous battle where “the sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down a full day” (Josh 10:13). Likewise in the Levitical law, we find commands to complete the Passover sacrifice “when the sun goes down” (Deut 16:6).

God’s people had interpreted these verses for thousands of years to be authoritative statements about both spiritual and physical realms, and 17th century believers understandably struggled with allowing science to alter traditional interpretations. If God says the sun rises and the sun sets, how could it be otherwise?

Fast forward a few centuries, and we are now somehow quite content to have allowed science to alter our thinking on these verses, without abandoning notions of inerrancy or inspiration. The reason is simply because it was eventually recognized that the primary message of these verses was never on the nature of nature, but on the nature of man and his experience with his environment and his God. Solomon and Joshua accurately recorded their experience from an earthly perspective (sun rising and setting), and David praised God for holding the earth fixedly in His hand (Ps 93:1, 104:5), without requiring a meaning of fixity in space. The central message of these verses was apparent to readers before and after Galileo. Only a secondary interpretation, likely never intended by the writers, was cast off after scientific advances.

So what is the issue regarding Noah’s Flood? The modern debate centers around two questions. Was it truly global in extent, and can the Flood account for the earth’s complex geologic record? To address the first, it is worth being reminded of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome where he makes a statement that “your faith is being proclaimed throughout the whole world” (Rom 1:8). Entire people groups existed at this time in China, Australia, and North and South America who knew nothing of the church in Rome. Though using wording that literally means the entire world population, Paul is clearly referring to the world known to him and his readers at the time.¹ Paul speaks truthfully from his experience. Allowing for the possibility that Noah’s Flood encompassed all of known humanity without necessarily covering the entire planet is thus consistent with how other passages in Scripture are interpreted by Christians who believe the Bible is authoritative and trustworthy.

Our primary interest in this blog series is the second question, the widely promulgated notion that the Flood can account for the earth’s complex geology, and that all genuine Christians should accept this viewpoint.

Notes

1. Many Biblical scholars define a literal interpretation as one that takes into account the literary genre, figures of speech, context, and author/audience perspective in deriving the intended meaning. By this definition, poetry and allegory are literally interpreted as figurative. In this blog and in our article, our use of literal conforms to its more common definition where a literal interpretation is one that adheres to the precise definition of words without figurative meaning and without requiring additional context to understand.

(Click image for full resolution)

In a Nutshell

In Detail

Introduction

Astronomers and geologists have determined that the universe and Earth are billions of years old. This conclusion is not based on just one measurement or one calculation, but on many types of evidence. Here we will describe just two types of evidence for an old Earth and two types of evidence for an old universe; more types can be found under Further Reading. These methods are largely independent of each other, based on separate observations and arguments, yet all point to a history much longer than 10,000 years. As Christians, we believe that God created the world and that the world declares his glory, so we can’t ignore what nature is telling us about its history.

Age of the Earth from seasonal rings and layers

If you’ve ever seen a horizontal slice of a tree trunk, you’ve seen how a tree forms a new growth ring each year. In years of drought, the tree grows less quickly so the ring is narrower; in good growing seasons the ring is thicker. A tree’s age can be found by simply counting its rings. By comparing the pattern of thick and thin rings to weather records, scientists can verify that the method is accurate. This method can even be used on dead trees that fell in a forest long ago. For example, the last 200 rings in the dead tree might match up with 200 rings early in the life of the living tree, so the two trees together can count back many years. In this way, multiple trees can be used to build a master chronology for a forested region. European oak trees have been used to build a 12,000-year chronology.¹

The annual ice layers in glaciers provide a similar method that goes back much further in history. Each year, snowfall varies throughout the seasons and an annual layer is formed. Like the tree rings, this method can be verified by comparison to historical records for weather, as well as to records of volcanic eruptions around the globe that left thin dust layers on the glaciers. Scientists have drilled ice cores deep into glaciers and found ice that is 123,000 years old in Greenland² and 740,000 years old in Antarctica.³ These annual layers go back much farther than the 10,000 years advocated by the young earth creationists. The Earth must be at least 740,000 years old.

How can an old Earth be reconciled with Genesis? See Scripture Interpretation

Age of the Earth and solar system from radiometric dating

In your high school science classroom, you may have seen a large poster of the periodic table hanging on the wall. The periodic table shows the types of atoms that make up the world around us. An element in the periodic table can come in different flavors called isotopes. Some isotopes are unstable, and over time these isotopes “decay” into isotopes of other elements. For example, Potassium-40 is unstable and decays into Argon-40. As time passes, a rock will have more and more Argon-40 and less and less Potassium-40. Radiometric dating is possible because this decay occurs at a known rate, called the “half-life” of the radioactive element. The half-life is the time that it takes for half the radioactive sample to change from one element into the other.

Some isotopes have short half-lives of minutes or years, but Potassium-40 has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Radiometric dating requires that one understand the initial ratio of the two elements in a given sample by some means. In this case, Argon-40 is a gas that easily bubbles out and escapes when it is produced in molten rock. Once the rock hardens, however, all the Argon-40 is trapped in the sample, giving us an accurate record of how much Potassium-40 has decayed since that time. So, if we find a rock with equal parts Potassium-40 and Argon-40, we know that half the Potassium-40 has decayed into Argon-40, and that the rock hardened 1.3 billion years ago.⁴

It’s hard to find rocks on the surface of the Earth that have not been altered over time. Most old rocks have been eroded by wind and water or submerged by continental plates. The oldest reliably dated rock formation is in Greenland, where several different isotopes were used to find an age of 3.6 billion years.⁵ Scientists also recently dated zircon grains (which resist erosion) in Western Australia to 4.4 billion years old.⁶ To find older rocks that haven’t been eroded, we need to look beyond Earth. Meteorites are rocks from the solar system that have fallen to Earth recently and haven’t suffered much erosion. Their pristine interiors give an age that dates back to their formation at the beginning of the solar system. Nearly all meteorites have the same radiometric age, 4.56 billion years old.⁷ Thus, the solar system, including the Earth, is about 4,560,000,000 years old.

PLEASE READ THE REST OF THE ANSWER HERE.

Notes

1. Davis A. Young, ”How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods – Part One: Relative Dating, Absolute Dating, and Non-radiometric Dating” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol 58 No 4 (2006), p. 264. (PDF)
2. Roger C. Weins, "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective", The American Scientific Affiliation (2002). See also North Greenland Ice Core Project Members, “High-resolution Record of Northern Hemisphere Climate Extending into the Last Interglacial Period,” Nature 431 (2004): 147–151, which reports ages back to 123,000 years. (web article)
3. EPICA Community Members, “Eight Glacial Cycles from an Antarctic Ice Core,” Nature 429 (2004): 623–628.
4. Young earth creationists reject radiometric dating methods, including claims that decay rates are not constant. For a critical review, see Randall Isaac “Assessing the RATE Project”, Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, vol 59, no 2, June 2007, p.143-146. (PDF)
5. See Wiens and references therein. (web article)
6. Wilde et al. “Evidence from detrital zircons for the existence of continental crust and oceans on the earth 4.4 Gyr ago,” Nature (2001) 409, 175-178.
7. See Davis A Young, ”How Old Is It? How Do We Know? A Review of Dating Methods—Part Two: Radiometric Dating: Mineral, Isochron and Concordia Methods” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, Vol 59, No 1 (2007) and references therein (PDF)
]]> Sat, 14 Jul 12 05:02:55 -0700 http://biologos.org/blog/what-is-the-higgs-boson?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/what-is-the-higgs-boson?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication At a press conference on July 4, 2012, and with 99.99994% confidence (5 sigma), CERN announced the discovery of a particle consistent with that of a Higgs boson (a.k.a. “the God particle”). This is very exciting for elementary particle physicists. But what is the Higgs particle, and what is its meaning? At a press conference on July 4, 2012, and with 99.99994% confidence (5 sigma), CERN announced the discovery of a particle consistent with that of a Higgs boson (a.k.a. “the God particle”). This is very exciting for elementary particle physicists. It is also getting the attention of press and general public. But what is the Higgs particle, and what is its meaning?

It has been widely reported that the moniker “God particle” was not its originator’s first choice. Still, Leon Lederman, director emeritus of Fermilab and Nobel laureate for neutrino research, did accept the nickname “God particle” because the particle is “so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive.” “God particle” was quickly accepted by the press and general public because it seemed an appropriate title for a particle theorized to give mass to all elementary matter particles and the force carrying W and Z bosons. Serving this mass-giving function since near the beginning of the universe, a Higgs field (more fundamental than the actual Higgs boson ) must necessarily exist everywhere in the universe and be unchanging. With an omnipresent and immutable field, analogies between the Higgs boson and God naturally developed within the press and the public—“God particle” became deeply rooted. Relatedly, the Higgs boson become an excellent source for theological analogies. (See for example this article.)

Nevertheless, as physicists seek to emphasize, neither the Higgs boson particle nor its field have religious properties. Thus, elementary particle physicists are not fond of the “God particle” appellation. In the opinion of Oliver Buchmueller, of CERN’s CMS group, calling the Higgs boson the “God particle is completely inappropriate. It’s not doing justice to the Higgs and what we think its role in the universe is. It has nothing to do with God“. As Pippa Wells, another CERN scientist expressed, “Calling [it] the God particle … confuses people about what we are trying to do at CERN”. (Source: Reuters)

One alternate name for the Higgs particle that is used within the physics community is the “BEH” particle. “BEH” stands for Brout–Englert–Higgs, three of the six authors of 1964 papers that first proposed a mechanism for giving mass to elementary particles. In addition to Peter Higgs, the five other authors are Robert Brout and Francois Englert, and Tom Kibble, C.R. Hagen, and Gerald Guralnik. The process for giving mass to particles is thus sometimes referred to not just as the Higgs mechanism, but as the Brout–Englert–Higgs–Hagen–Guralnik–Kibble (BEHHGK) mechanism. (Saying all six names a couple of times makes it obvious why we most often only call it the Higgs.)



But issues of naming aside, what is the Higgs and why is it so elusive? According to the Standard Model, the particles that compose matter (the quarks and leptons) are in a category called spin-1/2 particles. The force carrying particles (the photon, the W's, the Z, and the gluons) are spin-1 particles. What the physicists above proposed was the existence of a type of spinless, or spin-0 particle. Not only does the Higgs boson form its own class of particles, it also gives mass to itself and to all the other particles that have mass: to all of the leptons and quarks, and to the W's and Z bosons, but not photons or gluons. This set of relationships is shown in the image below, indicated by the lines connecting the Higgs to these other particles. There are no lines directly connecting the Higgs boson to photons and gluons because the Higgs boson does not interact with these force carrying particles and, thus, photons and gluons remain massless.



But the story of the Higgs particle actually begins with the associated Higgs field, an invisible field (something like a generalization of an electric field) that has a non-zero, constant value everywhere throughout the universe. This Higgs field continuously interacts with all matter particles and the W and Z force carrying particles. Matter and massive force particles are slowed down as they move through the Higgs field, just as are balls rolling through thick mud. The Higgs field is sometimes described as a “cosmic molasses”. Different particles interact with the Higgs field to varying degrees—those interacting more, are slowed down more, those interacting less are slowed down less. Slowing down more equates to acquiring more mass. If not for the Higgs field, all particles would be massless, zipping through the universe at the speed of light. The universe would be without structure—no galaxies, no plants, no life. Without the Higgs field, not even atoms could have formed.

It should be noted, however, that the majority of the mass of protons and neutrons (and thus of atomic mass) does not come from interaction with the Higgs field. Each proton and neutron is composed of three quarks, which do receive their mass from their interaction with the Higgs field. However, the masses of protons and neutrons are much greater than the sum of their constituent quarks and are a result of the additional mass contribution from the binding energies of the “trapped” quarks.

It was theoretically possible for elementary particles to have mass without needing to acquire it through interaction with a Higgs-like field. However, as the standard model of elementary particles developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, elementary particle theorists realized that if particles had their own innate mass, rather than acquiring it, many beautiful symmetries of particle interaction equations would be broken. To keep the beauty and symmetry in the theory was the essential reason the BEHHGK mechanism was developed, which immediately led to the prediction of Higgs bosons.

When there is enough external energy in a given volume, the Higgs field also produces Higgs bosons. But the Higgs bosons are very unstable and quickly decay. This is the process that enabled the discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN. At CERN, protons are accelerated to high energies via electric fields and directed in circular paths via magnetic fields. The protons then collide and release large amounts of energy. When sufficient energy is released in a collision, the Higgs field can use this energy to produce Higgs bosons. The Higgs bosons quickly decay leaving evidence of their existence through particular combinations of leftover particles that they have decayed into. Among those predicted by the mathematics of the Standard model are the muons and electrons identified by the CERN experimenters. The image at the top shows the identities and paths of particles produced in one of the CERN proton-proton collisions whose results fit with what would be expected from the decay of a Higgs boson.



For a proton-proton collision at the CERN LHC, the above diagrams show both the dominant modes for creation of a Higgs with a mass around 125 GeV, and the two dominant decay channels (modes). The creation mechanism (shown schematically in the left half of each diagram above) involves virtual gluons, the carriers of the strong nuclear force (represented by squiggly purple lines) from the protons. The gluons fuse into a virtual top quark loop (medium blue triangle), which then emits a Higgs boson (squiggly yellow line). The top quark couples more strongly to the Higgs than any of the five other quarks, so the top quark contributes the dominant loop.

The Higgs boson then dominantly decays into either (i) 2 gamma ray photons (the squiggly green lines) via another intermediate virtual top quark loop or a virtual W gauge particle loop (dark blue triangle), or (ii) two Z0 gauge particles (squiggly dark blue lines), which each then decay into a lepton (specifically an electron or a muon)/anti-lepton pair (light blue lines).

The likely discovery of the Higgs boson, and its implied existence of the associated Higgs field, is an amazing success for CERN. Past research and experience at Fermilab and by elementary particle physicists throughout the world also contributed to the discovery. The Higgs boson was the remaining particle in the Standard Model of Particle Physics to be found. With it, the Standard Model is in some sense complete. (Nevertheless, many questions about the Standard Model still remain—many inspired once again by beauty and symmetry. In particular, several numeric values associated with particle masses and interactions could only be experimentally measured, as with the Higgs, and not predicted from the Standard Model.)

With the apparent success of these experiments and seeming confirmation that the physical universe is, indeed, reflected by the complex and beautiful mathematics of the Standard Model, the international physics community is eager to keep delving deeper into the structure of creation. In addition to trying to verify that the 125 GeV particle is, indeed, the Higgs spinless particle and not some more exotic, new particle, CERN physicists are simultaneously seeking to discover an entire new class of particles, resulting from a theorized symmetry called supersymmetry. Discovery of the associated particles, if they exist, will likely take a few more years. For these discoveries we can only wait in anticipation.





Updated July 12, 2012.

]]> Wed, 11 Jul 12 11:58:56 -0700 Gerald Cleaver http://biologos.org/blog/naming-the-god-particle?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/naming-the-god-particle?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication The discovery of the Higgs boson would certainly be a breakthrough for particle physics and cosmology, but would such a finding also radically redefine theology’s understanding of God or challenge the existence of such a deity? Is there actually any theological or religious significance in Higgs physics at all? The image above describes an "event" (proton-proton collision) recorded in 2012 with the CMS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider. According to CERN, "the event shows characteristics expected from the decay of the SM Higgs boson to a pair of Z bosons, one of which subsequently decays to a pair of electrons (green lines and green towers) and the other Z decays to a pair of muons (red lines). The event could also be due to known standard model background processes. ATLAS Experiment © 2012 CERN

Judging from the flurry of headlines over the past week, one might be tempted to think that proof positive of God’s existence (or lack thereof) had just appeared out of a 27-km-tunnel buried beneath the Swiss-French border. This frenzy of news headlines and blog titles hailed the recent news that CERN’s Large Hadron Collider has discovered a brand new particle of a mass of 125-126 GeV, which is assumed to be the Higgs boson, or the so-called “God particle.” The discovery of the Higgs boson would certainly be a breakthrough for particle physics and cosmology, but would such a finding also radically redefine theology’s understanding of God or challenge the existence of such a deity? Is there actually any theological or religious significance in Higgs physics at all?

The short answer is “no,” which becomes apparent when one considers the widely-reported story of how it got named. In 1993, Nobel Laureate physicist Leon Lederman, along with science writer Dick Teresi, wrote a book detailing the history of particle physics starting with Pre-Socratic Greek philosophy Democritus and culminating with the hunt for the Higgs boson. Until this latest discovery, the Higgs boson was the elusive final missing piece of the puzzle known as the Standard Model—a collection of the fundamental particles that constitute our universe and the complex and mathematically-sophisticated relationships between them. Considering how incredibly difficult finding the Higgs boson was proving to be, Lederman wanted to name the book after that “goddamn particle,” according to some of his collaborators. His editor, however, would not allow it and so the name was shortened to “The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question?” And thus ‘the God particle’ was born, carrying with it more than enough social baggage for such a miniscule particle.



Particle physicist Dr. Zosia Krusberg (at right) is visiting assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Vassar College and thinks “the term ‘god particle’ is unfortunate. The Higgs boson is no more (or less) divine or spiritually significant than any other elementary particle within the standard model of particle physics.” It may be fundamental to explaining one of the most basic characteristics of the universe—namely the existence of matter and mass in addition to energy—but “it is no more (or less) important than any other physics principle underlying the Standard Model.”

Last week’s discovery was monumental in that it may have finally provided experimental evidence for the Higgs Mechanism and defined the specific energy of the resulting Higgs boson, but even this “breakthrough” for particle physics leaves many scientific questions unresolved. Finding the Higgs boson completes the Standard Model, but it does not do away with many other questions and shortcomings of the current state of particle physics, such as the constituent particles of dark matter, a quantum theory of gravity, and other “mathematically subtle problems.” Not to mention that there is still significant work to be done to determine the exact nature of this newly-found particle. According to Dr. Krusberg, this particle might behave just as the Standard Model predicts or it could instead be “a Higgs-like particle that will serve as a gateway into explorations of physics beyond the Standard Model." Krusberg continued, “And I guarantee that it is this latter scenario that most of us are hoping for: physicists love nothing more than discovering the shortcomings of their theories, since this is the first step toward more fundamental theories with even more predictive power!”

No, finding the Higgs boson does not answer all the questions of particle physics, much less lend insight into the existence (or not) of God. For that reason, Dr. Krusberg (like most physicists) bemoans the term ‘God particle’ and insists, “There really is nothing either literally or metaphorically god-like about the Higgs boson.” Indeed, one writer for the British journal The Guardian reached such a point of frustration about the name that he ran a competition for alternatives. The winner was “the champagne flute boson,” ostensibly because the bottom of a champagne bottle is an excellent and oft-used demonstration of the energy potential of the Higgs Mechanism. Or then again, perhaps it is simply because physicists thought that finally finding this shy particle would call for some of the bubbly.

On the other hand, some science writers and scientists can appreciate the ‘educational benefits’ of such a mysterious and controversial name because it attracts the attention of the general public and puts a relatable face on an extremely esoteric physics concept. Krusberg herself admits that “People are naturally drawn to the mysterious and the controversial, providing educators with great teaching opportunities.” But she worries about the larger social implications involved in “mixing the vernacular of physics and spirituality,” not least because such uncritical mixing can lead the non-scientific community to draw conclusions about the authority and reach of science that are not justified.

Understanding that the Higgs boson is not the literal stuff of God and that it does not prove or disprove God’s existence (as the name seems to suggest) extinguishes the fire under any sort of religious outcry. But this does not mean that its discovery is irrelevant to the discussion of science and faith, nor to the Christian community as a whole. As Dr. Krusberg remarks, “The recent discovery of [this] new boson at the LHC perfectly embodies the scientific process at its best (and thereby illustrates to the public why and how science works).” Scientific exploration of nature is not a fool-proof endeavor; healthy skepticism and accountability to a wide community of other researchers are absolutely critical to its success. But such evidence of the power and finesse of well-executed science as we saw last week is a testament to our ability to explore and understand the ‘how’ of the universe. God has equipped humanity with the desire, the intellectual abilities, and the collective will to recognize and explore the cosmic order and beauty of his creation. God has made our home knowable, and has given us the tools and capacities by which to know it.



At left, Cern researchers present their findings to a few hundred of their colleagues in Melbourne, Australia. Image © 2012 CERN

It is valuable, then, for the Christian community to understand and appreciate how science works, in part to recognize that there are many instances in which science and the church work in tandem in order to better understand and better serve the world. But I think there is something else we can draw from the story of the Higgs boson, too. The nickname ‘the God particle’ has touched nerves in religious communities because it implies that science has the ability to prove or disprove divine existence by physical means. Even though the physics community is by no means claiming insight into the divine, it is sometimes assumed by the religious community that scientists view their work as chipping away at God’s existence when they begin to understand something that was previously unknown, or known only “by faith” in esoteric theories and models.

And yet, regardless of motives or metaphysical interpretations, perhaps physicists' search for the Higgs boson is in fact an apt picture of our own search for God. How many times have we stared up at the starry ceiling in times of crisis and prayed fervently for some kind of sign from God to assure us of his presence? And how many times has that much-desired evidence appeared only in retrospect, when we look back to see God’s hand faithfully and elegantly working in ways inscrutable at the time? It took a community of physicists to discern the presence of the Higgs boson. But even so, they could only do so after the fact from the cascade of particle decays it sparked; they could not observe the particle itself directly. In a similar way, though we often do not see the working of God directly, “in the moment,” we still trust in his presence and providence, often depending on friends, family and the community of the church to help us see his hand in hindsight.

So while the discovery of the Higgs boson does not itself explain God, we rejoice at the subtle yet striking new insight we have into God’s creative genius via the Higgs boson and at the way God gives evidence of his faithfulness in the ordered creation itself. Perhaps, however, the greatest insight we can glean from this breakthrough is an analogy for the way God calls us to seek him and find him together, in the community of those who follow his son.

Tomorrow, Baylor University physicist Gerald Cleaver answers the question, "What is the Higgs boson?"



]]> Tue, 10 Jul 12 09:02:29 -0700 Faith Tucker http://biologos.org/blog/the-transit-of-venus?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/the-transit-of-venus?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Today we have a chance to witness a special moment in history as Venus transits across the disk of the Sun for people across the world to see. Not only is this process of discovery exciting for natural science, but it has profound theological ramifications as well. Today we have a chance to witness a special moment in history as Venus transits across the disk of the Sun for people across the world to see. This rare astronomical occurrence may have been witnessed by Montezuma in 1520, was first predicted by Johannes Kepler in 1631, launched Captain James Cook’s expedition around the world in 1768, helped us determine the Earth's distance from the Sun in the 1882, and will not occur again until 2117.

The astronomy community is particularly interested in this event because exoplanets throughout the Milky Way galaxy regularly transit their parent stars in just the same way. This local example will allow astronomers to test and refine techniques used to determine the composition of these exoplanets' atmospheres, providing insight into whether these distant planets could possibly harbor life.

As Venus begins to cross in front of the disk of the Sun, Venus's atmosphere will refract the Sun's light, illuminating the backlit portion of the planet's atmosphere. Telescopes on the ground and in orbit will be trained on this thin arc of atmosphere lit up by the Sun. Astronomers will use spectrometers to break the light up into its constituent colors, from which they can determine the chemical composition of our over-heated sister planet's atmosphere. Once perfected, this same technique can be used to examine the atmospheres of planets far beyond our own solar system, offering us one of our best clues as to the habitability of these distant worlds.

Not only is this process of discovery exciting for natural science, but it has profound theological ramifications as well. Surely a God capable of orchestrating both the majestic swirls of a spiral galaxy and the intricate language of DNA could bring forth life where and when He chooses, but only now are we on the verge of being able to answer the age-old question: “Did God confine His creative life-giving actions to our own planet, or does His abundant fertility extent far beyond our limited experience?”

In 1882, William Harkness, the Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, was one of two astronomers to determine from the transit of Venus the distance from Earth to the Sun. Just as previous viewers could never have imagined calibrating the scale of the solar system from such an event, Harkness could not predict its importance in 2004 and 2012 (the most recent Venus transits). As we look to the future, we can hardly imagine what new frontiers the next Venus transit of 2117 will find us exploring.

"We are now on the eve of the second transit of a pair, after which there will be no other till the twenty-first century of our era has dawned upon the earth, and the June flowers are blooming in 2004. . . . What will be the state of science when the next transit season arrives God only knows. Not even our children's children will live to take part in the astronomy of that day. As for ourselves, we have to do with the present ..." ~William Harkness, the Director of the U.S. Naval Observatory, quoted in 1882 (source: NASA.gov)




The image above shows Venus on the eastern limb of the Sun during the 2004 transit. As described in Tucker's essay, the faint ring around the planet comes from the scattering of light through its atmosphere, which allows some sunlight to show around the edge of the otherwise dark planetary disk. The faint glow on the disk is an effect of the TRACE telescope through which the image was captured. For more on the historical significance of the transits of Venus (including the voyage of Captain James Cook), see this article from NASA, which also includes links to several live webcasts of today's transit.


]]> Tue, 05 Jun 12 11:47:56 -0700 Faith Tucker http://biologos.org/blog/the-wonder-of-the-universe-the-wonder-of-water?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/the-wonder-of-the-universe-the-wonder-of-water?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication The water that we take for granted was forged in the nuclear furnace of a star that exploded in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy billions of years ago. The Wonder of Water

Large stars near the end of their lives regularly explode. With the force of a billion atomic bombs they strew their contents over unimaginably vast regions of space. It is, of course, a once in a lifetime event for the star—a literal “going out with a bang.” And even though recorded history is just a few thousand years long—and stars live for billions of years—we have some examples of such explosions that were noted by careful observers.

In A.D. 1054 what is now the Crab Nebula exploded in a flash of light bright enough to be seen in daylight for weeks. Astronomers in Korea, China, Japan, North America and the Middle East all recorded the supernova, as it is now called, although Europeans did not. It seems that Europeans, convinced that the heavens were perfect and unchanging, managed to delude themselves into not seeing this new star, which must surely have been quite visible.

The great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe witnessed another supernova in 1572. Like his predecessors, he could not believe that such a dramatic change in the heavens was possible, but, apparently unlike his predecessors, he had enough confidence in his observations to know that he was seeing something remarkable. Brahe’s protégé, Johannes Kepler, witnessed another supernova in 1604, and then there were no more visible from earth until 1987, when a star exploded in a nearby galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.

A supernova explosion fills a massive region of space with the elements created inside the star; the powerful explosion, though, follows known laws of physics as it distributes its contents about the universe. A vast cloud of chemically enriched material, trillions of miles in diameter, results from the event—an event absolutely critical for enabling life.

The grand cloud that results from the supernova resembles the original cloud out of which the star formed in the first place, with one important difference—it contains a substantial roster of different materials, and not just hydrogen and helium. This time around gravity has more to work with, beginning again to gather the material in the huge cloud back into balls. The largest chunk at the center becomes another star—one that starts out with heavier elements, in addition to hydrogen. It is the ultimate recycling project, but, unlike recycling on earth, the atoms getting recycled remain in mint condition, no matter how many times they are used.

Some of the smaller balls end up orbiting about the second-generation star. These smaller balls contain many different atoms, and some of them have a curious molecular combination of hydrogen and oxygen. In most parts of the universe these molecules are in the form of a solid. In the others they are a gas. But on balls that are exactly the right distance from the central star, the molecules are liquid, an all-purpose, seemingly magical liquid called water.

Water is found in several places in our solar system. Hydrogen is, of course, the most common element in the universe, and while oxygen is far less common it is readily available to combine with hydrogen and form water. Water in the form of ice is a major component in comets and can be found in trace quantities in the atmosphere of Venus, under the surface of Mars and possibly even on some of Jupiter’s moons.

(We have to keep in mind, however, that more than 99 percent of the mass of the solar system is in the sun, so the distribution of elements elsewhere is almost irrelevant from the perspective of the solar system as a whole. The earth has a lot of water, but the earth is a tiny, insignificant speck compared to the sun. And because the water tends to cover so much of the surface, it is easy to overestimate the total amount. Astronomers are not sure exactly where the water on the earth came from. Constructing the early history of our solar system is an enormous challenge.)

From a purely scientific point of view, water is a molecule like any other—and there are lots of molecules. The laws of physics and chemistry describe its behavior, and there are no deep mysteries embedded in its familiar structure. But the laws of physics and chemistry conspire to make water unusual in ways that are critically important for life. Most peculiarly, water expands rather than contracts when it freezes. This makes ice lighter than water, so it floats. Floating ice insulates the water beneath it from the cold temperatures of winter. Absent this layer of insulation, bodies of water all over the earth would freeze solid. If ice were heavier than water, the layer of ice that formed on the top would sink to the bottom and another layer would freeze on top and sink until the entire body of water was a solid piece of ice. This would kill almost every life form in the water.

Water is also an effective solvent. Waste products from our bodies dissolve readily in water and can then easily be expelled. But wait—as they say on television—there is more. Water is also a remarkable coolant capable of absorbing heat and carrying it away from our bodies in the form of sweat. And water stores heat in our bodies, helping keep us warm in cold weather. Magical.

The creation story in Genesis records that God gathered the waters. In the King James Version that I read as a child it says, “God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.” In ways that the original readers of Genesis could never have imagined, the gathering of the waters was a cosmic process that took billions of years and involved all the laws of physics and chemistry. The water that we take for granted that covers so much of our planet and makes up so much of our bodies was forged in the nuclear furnace of a star that exploded in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy billions of years ago.

That water now cycles endlessly through the life process here on earth—cooling, cleansing and nurturing us. It irrigates our crops, nourishes our livestock, cleans our clothes and gets turned into snow at ski resorts. In those parts of the world where it is plentiful, clean and fresh, we take it for granted and play with it. In Quebec City they construct a hotel out of ice every winter to attract tourists and invite hardy souls to hold their weddings there, wearing parkas and snow boots. We think nothing of using thousand of gallons so our lawns will be green rather than brown in the heat of summer. Water is like air—plentiful and useful.

In parts of the world where fresh water is rare, its value is more apparent. There is a school in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where children used to walk a quarter mile during their breaks to get a drink of water. I used to walk to the hallway to get a drink when I was in school. World Vision, one of many organizations helping with water problems around the world, installed a well near the school that the children now use to get water. On school days a group of laughing, happy children can be seen working the oversized pump that takes several of them to manage. The water that emerges from its modest faucet is welcomed in ways that few North Americans can appreciate.

For those schoolchildren, the water is simply a welcome part of their diet and lifestyle now. Some of the children that stay in school and go on to university will eventually discover that the precious fluid—summoned from beneath the earth by a few children cranking on a lever—was created billions of years ago, deep in the heart of a star, via processes of unimaginable subtlety. Those that have learned to worship God will no doubt marvel and give thanks.

Water exists because the universe has a set of laws that guide its steady development from the big bang into the present. If we suppose that water and the life it enables are of no consequence, then we can dismiss these laws as irrelevant. On the other hand, if we believe that God is the creator of life and that life has a purpose, then these laws take on a new character. If God is the Creator, then these laws exist because God created them. And these laws work because God upholds them from moment to moment. Viewed by these lights, the origin of water and life are creation events, intentionally enabled by the Creator of the universe.


]]> Sat, 05 May 12 05:30:09 -0700 Karl Giberson http://biologos.org/blog/series/universe-and-multiverse?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/series/universe-and-multiverse?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Baylor University Physicist Gerald Cleaver describes the changing state of our understanding of the cosmos and suggests ways that Christians can make theological sense of a theoretical Multiverse. Called to Christ and to Science

By the time I was ten years old, I was already determined to follow a career in physics and cosmology, both because of the wonder I felt for the natural world and as a means to better resolve serious questions that were developing within me regarding the relationship between biblical interpretation and scientific discovery. The prior year I had read and studied scripture in its entirety for the first time, rather than just the piece-meal sections covered in my Sunday school classes. Whenever I look back at that year in my life, I am always glad I chose to study the New Testament before the Old Testament, rather than vice versa. From the New Testament study, I found salvation and accepted Christ into my life. But my examination of the Old Testament that followed raised serious questions for me, particularly regarding Genesis. Even as a ten-year-old, I could see the apparent conflict between Genesis and what I had already learned about the history of the universe, of earth, and of life on earth as reported by science. From science I felt amazement and wonder toward God as Creator and strongly desired to learn more about the physical laws set up by God that sustained the universe. In contrast, both of the Genesis stories of creation seemed simplistic and hollow.

As I continued to study, I came to believe that divine inspiration of scripture does not exempt scripture from portraying human authors’ limited (in particular, finite) understandings of the physical world.

Since Genesis 1 and 2 were written in a pre-scientific age, we should expect a non-scientific description of the creation process. Divine inspiration allowed the language of the time to express eternal truths regarding some aspects of God’s nature as Creator. Using stock images from the culture, the opening chapters of Genesis describe God as the ultimate Creator of all things and in charge of all things. These chapters should not be misinterpreted as scientific treatises describing the actual physics processes by which God creates all things.

From further study I came to understand that for almost two thousand years, many others far more knowledgeable than I had wrestled with the same issues. I was thrilled to learn that the early church fathers had developed a procedure for dealing with disagreement between scripture and scientific understanding. In 1657, the famous scientist, mathematician, and devoted Christian, Blaise Pascal, summarized the procedure of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in his Provincial Letters:

When we meet with a passage even in the Scripture, the literal meaning of which, at first sight, appears contrary to what the senses or reason are certainly persuaded of, we must not attempt to reject their testimony in this case, and yield them up to the authority of that apparent sense of the Scripture, but we must interpret the Scripture, and seek out therein another sense agreeable to that sensible truth.... And as Scripture may be interpreted in different ways, whereas the testimony of the senses is uniform, we must in these matters adopt as the true interpretation of Scripture that view which corresponds with the faithful report of the senses.

An opposite mode of treatment, so far from procuring respect to the Scripture, would only expose it to the contempt of infidels; because, as St. Augustine says, “when they found that we believed, on the authority of Scripture, in things which they assuredly knew to be false, they would laugh at our credulity with regard to its more recondite truths, such as the resurrection of the dead and eternal life.” “And by this means,” adds St. Thomas, “we would render our religion contemptible in their eyes, and shut up its entrance into their minds.

During my teenage years, my conviction that science could be used to inform scripture and clarify our understanding and interpretation of it continued to solidify. I agreed with Galileo that, “the Bible tells us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” Further, since God is the creator of all things, the physical and the spiritual, I came to understand that science as the study of the physical and theology as the study of the spiritual must be mutually consistent when both are properly understood. Inconsistency could only be the result of human misunderstanding of one or both arenas of knowledge.

(Some might correctly point out that science is not always as clear-cut as reason plus the report of the senses. That is, at times science also involves debates between competing interpretations, especially on the cutting edge of research. Nevertheless, ongoing scientific investigations gradually winnow away many or most proposed scientific descriptions of a given physical process, leaving only one or a few as the viable candidates. Scientific theories are formed by the general consensus of the scientific community based on overwhelming supporting physical evidence.)

In high school, I faced a serious medical problem, eventually identified as a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, in part due to a positive change in the tumor. In thankful response to God, I decided to pursue a career in church ministry. I determined a primary goal of my ministry would be to help the members of my future congregations develop mutually consistent and mutually supportive understandings of scripture and of science. I chose to attend Valparaiso University in Indiana, where I could, in addition to being a pre-seminary student, also double major in physics and mathematics to increase my scientific knowledge. Over the course of my four years at Valparaiso, I realized that my calling wasn’t for a church ministry, but one aspect of it would be to minister to Christians as a professional scientist, demonstrating by example that faith and science need not be at odds.

Thus, by way of a curved path, I did indeed follow the vocation I had initially chosen twelve years earlier. I decided once again to pursue the path that made my heart sing: studying the underlying laws and forces of the physical universe. As I was deciding which Ph.D. programs in elementary particle physics and cosmology to apply to, I became aware of a new, quickly developing subfield of particle physics called string theory that offered the possibility of unifying all of the known forces and matter in the universe into a single theory. I am now a successful scientist in this area, publishing discoveries that add to our understanding of particle physics and the universe.

In the next installment, Gerald Cleaver offers his advice to fellow Christians on how to seek after a consistent Christian worldview in which scientific and theological understandings of the universe are viewed as mutually supportive and complementary.

]]> Mon, 23 Apr 12 05:00:13 -0700 Gerald Cleaver http://biologos.org/blog/creation-cosmology-and-the-insights-of-thomas-aquinas?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/creation-cosmology-and-the-insights-of-thomas-aquinas?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Developments in cosmology are often used to argue that contemporary science has eliminated the need to appeal to a creator to explain the origin and development of the universe. Developments in cosmology are often used to argue that contemporary science has eliminated the need to appeal to a creator to explain the origin and development of the universe. Recent books by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow [The Grand Design (2010)] and Lawrence Krauss [A Universe From Nothing. Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (2012)] illustrate well the theme that the origin of the universe, indeed the very ancient philosophical question of why there is something rather than nothing, now falls within the explanatory grasp of cosmology and quantum physics. Hawking and Mlodinow deny the intelligibility of a "beginning" to the universe, since time itself has emerged in the very early universe. Embracing a version of the multiverse hypothesis, they conclude: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God . . . to set the Universe going."¹ Famously, they remark that "philosophy is dead,"² and when interviewed by Larry King on CNN, Hawking opined that "theology is irrelevant."³

For Lawrence Krauss, the sense of "nothing" employed by those who speak of creation out-of-nothing can now be adequately explained in terms of contemporary physics. As a result, he thinks that the question, why there is something rather than nothing "is really a scientific question, not a religious or philosophical question."⁴ No divine cause is necessary.

Claims by authors like Hawking and Krauss about the explanatory reach of science are ostensibly made on the basis of developments in science, but they are really metaphysical judgments, frequently advanced without a sound philosophical foundation. If there is a metaphysical assumption lurking behind this view, it is that the mere existence of things needs no explanation.

Whether we speak of explanations of the Big Bang itself (such as quantum tunnelling from nothing) or of some version of a multiverse hypothesis, or of self-organizing principles in biological change (including, at times, appeals to randomness and chance as ultimate explanations), the conclusion which seems inescapable to many is that there is no need to appeal to a creator, that is, to any cause which is outside the natural order. Nature is self-sufficient, not only with respect to the effects which it produces, but in that it somehow generates its very own existence. Thus, the traditional notion of God's creative act disappears; it becomes a mere artefact from a less enlightened age.

The use of insights from cosmology to deny the need for a creator are, at times, countered by scholars who use traditional Big Bang cosmology in support of the doctrine of creation. William Lane Craig is perhaps the most famous proponent of such a view. But we can add the recent work of Robert Spitzer who, in New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, claims that modern physics shows us that the past time of the universe is finite. The general argument is that an initial "singularity" [the Big Bang], outside the categories of space and time, points to a supernatural cause of the beginning of the universe.⁵ Even Pope Pius XII once remarked (in 1951) that this cosmology offered support for what the opening of Genesis revealed. If the universe has such a beginning, it must be created.⁶

Thus, we have some cosmologists who deny the intelligibility of the very notion of a beginning and others who argue for variations of an eternal universe. Since there is no real beginning to the universe, there is no need to speak of a creator. On the other hand, we have others who say that science affirms an absolute beginning to the universe, which serves as a warrant for the doctrine of creation. Despite fundamental differences as to what contemporary cosmology tells us (beginning or no beginning), all these views tend to identify what it means for the universe to be created with its having a temporal beginning. This emphasis on beginnings leads to confusion about creation.

In order to disentangle much of the confusion evident in contemporary discussions about creation and cosmology, it is useful to reprise the clear distinctions Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) draws between creation and the natural sciences. For Thomas, creation is a topic for metaphysics and theology. The doctrine of creation affirms that all that is, in whatever way or ways it is, depends upon God as cause. The natural sciences have as their subject the world of changing things: from subatomic particles to acorns to galaxies. Whenever there is a change there must be something that changes. Whether these changes are biological or cosmological, without beginning or end, or temporally finite, they remain processes. Creation, on the other hand, is the radical causing of the whole existence of whatever exists. Creation is not a change. To cause completely something to exist is not to produce a change in something, is not to work on or with some existing material. When God's creative act is said to be "out of nothing," what is meant is that God does not use anything in creating all that is: it does not mean that there is a change from "nothing" to "something."

Cosmology and all the other natural sciences offer accounts of change; they do not address the metaphysical and theological questions of creation; they do not speak to why there is something rather than nothing. It is a mistake to use arguments in the natural sciences to deny creation. Similarly, it is a mistake to use arguments in cosmology to seek to confirm the doctrine of creation.

Thomas does think that reason alone can lead us to a recognition that all that is is caused by God, but the path to such a conclusion is in metaphysics, not in the natural sciences. Arguments for God as Creator are different from arguments in natural philosophy for God as the source of order and intelligibility in the universe. Explanations of order and design in nature are different from accounts of why there is something rather than nothing.

Creation is not primarily some distant event; rather, it is the on-going complete causing of the existence of all that is. At this very moment, were God not causing all that is to exist, there would be nothing at all. Creation concerns first of all the origin (source of being) of the universe, not its temporal beginning. Thomas thought that, in principle, reason alone cannot conclude definitively as to whether or not the universe had a beginning. He did believe, as a matter of faith (confirmed by the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215), that the universe had a temporal beginning, but for him there is no contradiction in the notion of an eternal, created universe: for were the universe to be without a beginning it still would have an origin, it still would be created, it still would depend upon God for its very existence. Whether the universe is eternal or temporally finite concerns the kind of universe God creates. The fundamental sense of what it means for the world to depend upon God as its cause ought to be distinguished from whether or not what God causes has a beginning. Otherwise, we might be led into the error of thinking that to deny a beginning is to deny that dependence upon God.

It was the genius of Thomas Aquinas to distinguish between creation understood philosophically, with no reference to temporality, and creation understood theologically, which included, among other things, the recognition that the universe does have an absolute temporal beginning.

God’s creative power is exercised throughout the entire course of cosmic history, in whatever ways that history has unfolded. God creates a universe in which things have their own causal agency, their own true self-sufficiency—a nature that is susceptible to scientific analysis. No explanation of cosmological processes, nor biological change for that matter, regardless of how radically random or contingent such an explanation claims to be, challenges the metaphysical account of creation, that is, of the dependence of the existence of all things upon God as cause.

Notes

1. Hawking, S. & Mlodinow, L. The Grand Design, New York: Bantam Books (2010): p. 180.
2. ibid., p. 5.
3. This was Hawking’s answer to a query about theology in a television interview in the United States [The Larry King Show on CNN], 10 September 2010.
4. Krauss, Lawrence. A Universe From Nothing. Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing, New York: Free Press (2012):
5. Spitzer, R.J. New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans (2010), esp. chap. 5, pp. 177-215.
6. Pope Pius XII, Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, 22 November 1951.

]]> Tue, 21 Feb 12 04:00:39 -0800 Dr. William E. Carroll http://biologos.org/blog/series/he-who-has-ears?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/series/he-who-has-ears?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Scholar and musician Jeff Warren addresses the questions of how music is meaningful, and where that meaning resides, by looking at the popular ideas that musical meaning is entirely subjective to the listener and that the meaning of music can be universal. He also explores the recent trend of attempting to explain music via neuroscience. Finally, he looks into the reasons why music continues to play such a critical role in the worshiping life of the Church. A few months ago a couple of Jehovah’s witnesses came to my door. Upon learning of my profession, they pulled out one of their recent magazines with the cover article “Music: How does it affect you?” This is a question that has been asked for a long time, going back at least to the disagreements between Plato and Aristotle about how different musical scales affect moral development, and forward to the current lineup of ‘Baby Mozart’ edu-toys and the ongoing “worship wars” over what kind of music is best suited to be played in our churches. As with arguments in the past, our contemporary discussions about how music affects people reveal underlying assumptions about the function and meaning of music that are ultimately tied to ideas about artistic creation; and varying perspectives on the source of artistic creation eventually take us back to a discussion of our ideas about God’s creation—the natural world and its inbuilt systems, including evolution—and God’s creativity, something we reflect in community as part of the imago dei, not least through music.

Humanity is marked by the biological capacity for musicality. Every known culture has something like music. Understanding how we experience and create music in the present gives us clues to why and how music emerged as one of the defining features of human culture (and, therefore, of humanness itself) in the past. But thinking carefully about music and evolution can also help us reassess how we use music now: in the wider culture, collectively as the church, and even within our own homes. In a nutshell, then, this essay will examine how views on evolution impact how one assesses music’s effects and meaning. In many cases, problematic views about evolution and artistic creativity result in problematic views about music, but my argument is that an appropriate evolutionary view of music—one that looks at how music becomes meaningful within social relationships—is a view that actually enriches our appreciation of this most human endeavor, rather than trivializing it. In this first part I explore common discourses about the meaning of music and their relationship to ideas of creation. In part two next week, I suggest that understanding the role that music played in our biocultural evolution helps correct some of the myths that have made their way into popular discourse, especially with the growing popularity of trying to understand music via neuroscience.

Let’s begin by looking at a couple of popular ways of answering the question, “Where does musical meaning come from?” beginning with the idea that “music is in the ear of the beholder.” One thing that is clear from years of teaching classes of first-year university students is that they are musical relativists. They have ‘their’ music that they enjoy and even use to demark their identities, but are perfectly willing to allow others to like other music. After all, music is all about enjoyment, right? Historically, this cultural trope developed out of the post-Kantian argument of musical autonomy, the often-fashionable argument that music’s meaning is strictly musical and does not relate to other parts of the world. It is also reflected in Steven Pinker’s argument that music is ‘auditory cheesecake’. For Pinker, music used to be useful for things like attracting mates, but now we have evolved out of needing music: it’s not necessary, but is a nice extra. I might like cheesecake, but you might prefer ice cream. Either way, it won’t change the survival of the species, so we can enjoy what we like. This argument may have a harder time standing up when music is used as a means of torture at Guantanamo Bay, but it remains popular none-the-less. Like many ideas of creation and the arts, the idea of music as primarily pleasure (determined by individual taste) is a post-Enlightenment development.

This musical relativism takes a slightly more exacting form in another popular idea, that meaning is embedded within the ‘music itself’ not in the taste of the listener. This view of meaning is the starting point of Plato and Aristotle’s disagreement about the effect of certain modes, the disagreements in the early church about the usage of certain musical instruments, and the arguments of the detrimental moral impact of certain forms of popular music (which, by the way, is an argument not just limited to the 20th or now 21st centuries). It is also the foundation of the statement from one of my former conductors that if we played well enough, we would summon up the ‘spirit of Haydn’. In other words, ‘proper’ participation can reveal the meaning of the work—be that the composer’s meaning or another idealized meaning.

Musical autonomy in this case refers to the view that music stands apart and has no relations or meaning outside of itself. Many philosophers and musicologists rely on this view in an unreflective way, represented by Peter Kivy’s statement that music “is a quasi-syntactical structure of sound understandable solely in musical terms and having no semantic or representational content, no meaning, and making no reference to anything beyond itself”¹. For Kivy, the heart of the autonomy argument is that music is completely self-contained. Such a view is possible because of the historical development of ‘absolute music’, referring to music without a text or narrative, typified by the development of the symphonic form in the late 18th century. It is no accident that between 1750-1850, the form of the symphony developed, Kant theorized the idea of genius, and Schopenhauer claimed music to be “pure will.” In the 19th century, music came to be considered the highest of the arts, and even at the turn of the 20th century Kandinsky claimed that all art should try to achieve the autonomy and abstraction of music.

The idea of musical meaning somehow residing within the musical work is based on an assumption that the more one can isolate and analyze something, the more can be known about it. We can certainly learn much about a rock or plant by isolating it and putting it under a microscope, and those who take music to be autonomous believe that music can also be known most thoroughly by placing it ‘under the microscope’ through close analysis of a score or recording, or through close listening. It is through such pseudo-scientific analytical acts that knowledge about music is thought to be accessed. This is also the guiding ideology of ‘music appreciation.’ But while much can be gained by close examination of rocks or music, much more can be gained by studying how a rock or (especially) music is used by people—a central point to which we will return.

It is more than a little ironic, then, that a further example of the belief in an intrinsic musical meaning is the argument that music is ‘universal’; that is, that at least some music can cross cultural barriers and mean the same thing to all people. Often this view assumes a primacy of the Western canon, as it is believed that Mozart has a universal meaning but Chinese qin (zither) music does not. In a globalized world where many cultures listen to and value Mozart, people who do not share a common language or view of the world may find Mozart a common point of contact. But finding Mozart a point of contact is not caused by the music having a universal meaning. Rather, it is an example of the way music can become a shared space where people enter into a relationship via art. The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (a project of Daniel Barenboim and the late Edward Said) is an example of music being a common ground where people from different views of the world can connect, not an example of universalized meanings of music.

Indeed, there are many situations when music’s meanings are not shared, showing that meaning is most definitely not universal. Martin Lodge recounts the encounter of Dutch explorers and the Maori people of New Zealand in 1642. When the parties got close enough to see (and hear) each other, each group signalled with trumpets. The Dutch, thinking they were successful in making contact, sent a boat of unarmed sailors to shore. The boat was met by Maori warriors who killed more than half of the sailors. This misunderstanding was caused by not sharing a musical meaning: “The Maori trumpeting in this case was the music of war, an invitation to fight. On the other hand the Dutch trumpets played a variety of tunes intended to be welcoming.”² Musical meanings are often shared, but are not universal or ‘in the music’.

As we have begun to see, considering music as culturally embedded lets us recognize something quite different from the arguments that musical meaning is either subjective or encoded within the music itself. Music does allow for subjective response, but not truly autonomous response—our experience of music occurs within the bounds of cultural norms. Since music’s significance cannot be abstracted from it’s embeddedness within social relationships, an attention to culture and human intentionality (not just a reductionist sense of biology) must inform the ways that music is studied, whether in contemporary culture, in neuroscience, and with reference to human evolution. Unfortunately even many Christian views of music have relied upon some of these problematic views of musical meaning, aligning ideas like individual artistic genius and the “meaning in the music” concept with theologies of creation ex nihilo. As Bruce Ellis Benson discusses in an essay in the journal Verge (and in a shortened version here at BioLogos), this combination or paralleling of genius and ex nihilo creation complicates the church’s understanding not only of music, but also about the Creator God, downplaying the essential element of community and interpersonal relationship inherent to both.

Next week, we’ll look at a similar tendency to abstract and quantify the way music makes meaning in the burgeoning field of neuroscience (from the “Mozart Effect” to fMRI scans), and return to the way that thinking about music within the evolution of human culture might give us a deeper appreciation of music—even of worship—within the church. In the meantime, here are some questions to consider:

How do my own assumptions of the way music is meaningful affect the ways I conceive of and use music?

Are there negative consequences stemming from these assumptions?

How have problematic views of musical meaning affected the use of music as personal identity? Or in the church? Or in the media? Or in popularized science?

Notes

1. Kivy, Peter (1990) Music Alone (Cornell University Press: Ithica, NY): p. 202.

2. Lodge, Martin (2009) 'Music Historiography in New Zealand' in ed. Zdravko Blazekovic, Music's Intellectual History (RILM: New York): p. 627.

]]> Sun, 22 Jan 12 04:00:50 -0800 Jeff R. Warren http://biologos.org/blog/jesus-history-and-mount-darwin-an-academic-excursion-part-6?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/jesus-history-and-mount-darwin-an-academic-excursion-part-6?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication “Nature is messy,” a geologist tells writer John McPhee, “Don’t expect it to be uniform or consistent.” McPhee’s books on geology tend to emphasize the humbling effect of the real earth on the overly-intellectual geologists who want to over-simplify it. In part five, Kennedy explored the "provability" of Darwin's theory and looked at two types of thinkers: Totalizers and Tentative Investigators. Socrates and Plato, he said, were "Totatlizers"; Aristotle was a "Tentative Investigator." Today Kennedy expresses his respect for Aristotle's approach as he reflects on the messiness of the natural world and the inability of scientific models to fully reflect it.

Aristotle’s Pocketknife

Aristotle is most often presented in textbooks as a systematic thinker; however, if you read his books, you will realize that he was a Tentative Investigator, a tinkerer. Even his books on methods of logical thinking come together as a sort of Swiss Army knife approach to being an intellectual. Back when I was a college student, I read two books that impressed me with the importance of Aristotle: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), a travel-thinking book, and Saint Thomas Aquinas: “The Dumb Ox” (1933) by G. K. Chesterton. The tinkering, earthy, humanistic Aristotle is a theme in both. Over the decades since then I have increasingly found wisdom in Aristotle’s methods. G. K. Chesterton wrote that Aristotelian thinking “might be a humbler or homelier thing than the Platonic mind; that is why it was Christian.” He noted that when following in the steps of Aristotle one walked a “lower road,” one humbled in the manner of God “when he worked in the workshop of Joseph.”

For Aristotle natural history and ancient history required different fold-out tools from his pocketknife. Natural history depended upon observation and use of various types of categorizing and generalization. Natural history could be done by oneself alone. Ancient history, on the other hand, required a courtroom approach, the evidence, analysis, and judgment all being aspects of a social art. Human history was political for Aristotle.

Orienteering

The four of us, sweating as we hiked upward through switchbacks, decided to take a rest. On a big rock, I laid out the map, compass, and altimeter/barometer and pointed to Mount Darwin in the distance. Dave looked at the map and compass and corrected me.

“No. That rise in the ridge next to it is Darwin.”

I, being his former professor, corrected his error. I checked the map’s compass variation and adjusted it again to magnetic north. I showed him, based on our elevation, where we were on the trail. If we were there on the map, then the real Darwin was at this angle from us.

Dave, a veteran of the first Gulf War whose Navy job was in the high-tech bowels of the aircraft carrier Constellation, was not impressed. “No. That one is Darwin.”

“No,” I replied. “Look at the way that rock points up. That is the pinnacle of Darwin.”

“No. A little to the left is Darwin.”

He wouldn’t back down. This was mountain orienteering. I think I should have some authority here. As for Dave, yes, he had lots of training and experience with maps and instruments; however, it was my compass! We agreed to disagree. I gathered the tools of my leadership, and humped my pack onto my back.

Nature is Messy

“Nature is messy,” a geologist tells writer John McPhee, “Don’t expect it to be uniform or consistent.” McPhee’s books on geology tend to emphasize the humbling effect of the real earth on the overly-intellectual geologists who want to over-simplify it. In Rising from the Plains (1986), McPhee rambles through Wyoming with an aging U.S. Geological Survey geologist who heaps disdain on “Megathinkers” who don’t get dirty working in the field. Field geologists have to be more humble and face every day the quirky and irregular aspects of places like Wyoming. The government, however, is downsizing the regional offices. “The name of the game now is ‘modelling,’ on office computers at the national office.” He describes modelers as working in a “black box” where the earth becomes an abstraction and the awkward individual facts evident in the field get smoothed over.

Maps are models. Every map or globe is an abstraction making trade-offs with reality. Modeling was one of the tools of natural science in the Aristotelian pocketknife. Generalizations that smooth over the particularities can be very useful. Maps are generalizations. Maps are abstractions. Reality is so messy that it is oftentimes more useful to not look too closely. Step back from the messiness and a person can often find abstractions more useful than reality.

Hiking up the switchbacks leading to Mount Darwin we shared the trail with several people that I noted were carrying GPS units. At the technology counter at backpacking stores I have heard people fall into raptures of amazement that the little screen shows their position exactly on the earth. Trouble is: a GPS unit actually calculates its position by triangulation with satellites, and then correlates that position to a map in its memory—not to the actual earth.

To get really picky, the GPS unit does not work directly with the actual shape of the earth. The actual earth is slightly flattened. GPS uses an ideal sphere as a model upon which it imposes circular latitude and longitude lines. When a handheld GPS calculates its position by latitude and longitude—which is its best work—it is not calculating its place actually on earth. It is calculating its place on a sphere that is a close representation of a non-spherical earth. This is one of the reasons a GPS will always be slightly imprecise. As with most things, the further we dig, the more squishy our knowledge.

The earth is elastic in erratic ways. Not only is the earth’s shape and distribution of its mass not stable, the earth also wobbles, causing the north and south poles to wobble. The poles don’t wander too far, but with poles whose positions aren’t stable. We can’t know our precise latitude on maps because latitude is an angle measured from wobbling north and south poles. The problem affects astronomers and such things as the target systems inside intercontinental ballistic missiles. Today there is an International Terrestrial Reference Frame that uses computer models to quantitatively estimate polar motion and its effects. It is very accurate; however, we still can only estimate the future latitude of a point on earth and any statement of position is accurate only within a range of unknowing.

Magnetic north is also problematic. When hiking in the back country, the first thing to do with a map is to use a compass and the information about magnetic variation on the map to orient magnetic north to true north. Good maps tell you the average magnetic variation for a general region for the publication year of that map. Extremely good maps such as nautical charts from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tell you the yearly rate of variation change and have lots of information about areas of magnetic disturbance where your compass will not work. All these maps go bad after a few years. There is a short window of accuracy to maps and their magnetic predictions. Magnetic north wanders erratically. Every day it wanders over a region of about 85 km. Year to year, it heads in a generally northwest direction. Also, the intensity of its force is diminishing. There is a possibility that it might flip-flop soon, as it has done erratically in the past, thus causing all compass needles to go through a period of pointing nowhere and eventually pointing south instead of north.

A GPS is not dangerous to use. It is only dangerous to be overconfident about what it tells you. For Dave and me, with our maps and compass laid out on a rock, the weaknesses of our information are not a problem. Navigating in the High Sierra is pretty simple. The deep assumptions and problems submerged in my map won’t affect us. On the other hand, knowledge of its deep assumptions and instabilities can encourage a little humility and care along the way.

Much that goes on in universities is like what goes on inside a GPS unit. We find it useful to create models, and then study the models as reality. However, all members of universities should strive to be wise about keeping the “useful” separate from the “true.” At universities, we are supposed to try and hold to them both. We get into trouble when we assume that they are identical or only care about one or the other.

Mount Mendel

After trekking up a bunch of switchbacks, we reached Blue Lake at 10,400 feet. We were through the steepest part of our day’s hike and were seeing an increasing amount of snow and ice. I kept an eye on the barometer, looking for trends that would show a change in the weather. We had a high-pressure air mass over us the whole weekend, keeping bad weather away and blue skies above, but I watched barometric pressure anyway as we were going up. We were climbing late in the season, and big mountains can create their own weather. If the barometric pressure started dropping faster than it should with the higher altitude, we would be looking at rain or snow. Though Blue Lake was pleasantly surrounded by trees, we were headed up above tree-line where we could see only chunks of rock.

Up close, the High Sierra ridges are not pretty. The High Sierra is being violently pushed up as California, geologically, keeps jamming itself into Nevada. Approaching from the west, it is easier to see that Mount Darwin and Mount Mendel are really just two high spots on a long sharp ridge. Approaching from the east, we won’t see Mount Mendel (13,710΄) until we are on the ridge leading to Darwin’s summit.

Theodore Solomons, when naming the Evolution Group in 1895, did not name Mount Mendel. At that time, Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) was unknown to all but a tiny few scientists. He is considered the father of genetics, the field that, more than any other, has partnered up with Darwinism in mutual confirmation and explanation. The peak’s name was proposed by the Sierra Club in 1942. The peak had not been named earlier because many thought the peak was already named after Alfred Russell Wallace. But Wallace had another peak. Even the 1912 and 1918 USGS maps misnamed the peak. So when the confusion was worked out, there was an unnamed summit next to Mount Darwin. With genetics growing and elementary textbooks praising Mendel as a model scientist his was the perfect name for the mountain.

Beginning around 1900 scientists began to realize that Mendel offered a controlled, experimental method to get at what Darwin only observed in the wild. Mendel found a multi-generational, mathematically understandable pattern in peas that enhanced the conviction that there was a physical mechanism in living things acting as a shuffler of traits. Mendel’s experiments did not prove randomness, but they did show that a variation and selection process was happening with mathematical consistency. Mendel’s work showed that it might be possible to use his patterns of hybrid peas to make models of evolution, especially models that, sidestepping any messiness, could reach deep beyond ancient history back into the natural history of human beings.

Dave and I wanted to get over to the top of Mount Mendel when we reached the top of Darwin, but it seemed unlikely that we would have time on this trip. Standing on the summit of both Mount Darwin and Mount Mendel would be a thrill, but we did not have unlimited time and Steven was walking slower than I expected.

]]> Mon, 26 Dec 11 04:00:14 -0800 Rick Kennedy http://biologos.org/blog/the-miracle-of-light?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/the-miracle-of-light?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Scientists refer to the year 1905 as Albert Einstein's "annus mirabilis"—his year of miracles. While working as a patent clerk, Einstein spent his free time debating physics and working on theories that would end up altering the way we think of the world “The Miracle of Light”

by Jill Carattini

Scientists refer to the year 1905 as Albert Einstein's "annus mirabilis"—his year of miracles. While working as a patent clerk, Einstein spent his free time debating physics and working on theories that would end up altering the way we think of the world. All within a few months, he completed a series of papers, the least of which included his theory of special relativity and the renowned equation E=mc². Yet among these better-known contributions was also his most revolutionary contribution. Over a hundred years ago, Einstein submitted a paper that directly challenged the orthodoxy of physics. The paper described his radical insight into the nature of light as a particle.

In 1905, all physicists explained light in the same way. Whether the flame of a candle or the glow of the sun, light was known to be a wave. It was a time-honored, unquestionable fact. For over a century, scientists had grown in their certainty of this, citing experiments that made certain the wave nature of light, while overlooking some of its stranger behaviors. For example, when light strikes certain metals, an electron is lost in the process; but if light were only an electromagnetic wave, this would be impossible. Albert Einstein would not overlook these peculiarities, proposing that light was not only a wave, but consisted of localized particles.

Einstein knew that his theory was radical, even mentioning to friends that the subject matter of his March paper was "very revolutionary." Yet perhaps the most helpful aspect of his theory was the unassuming attitude with which he presented his far-reaching thoughts. He seemed to recognize that there was an unfathomable quality within the dual nature of light, and that understanding light at all was a lofty feat. "What I see in nature," he once noted, "is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility."

Science has of course had many advances since Einstein, though with these advances we seem to have misplaced our acceptance of the unfathomable. Anything unknown often seems just a matter of time until it is understood and explainable. And yet, most of us still experience moments of awe where we are suddenly comfortable again with mystery, or awed even that we should discover this thing in the first place. It seems obvious at these moments that the mind is more than a flux of explainable atoms, if for no other reason than that it recognizes in awe and beauty that there is more to see and know.

One of the things about Christianity that I admire most is its comfort with mystery even in knowing. "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?'"

The Christian story is about a God who goes out of his way to know and to be known, to offer us his name, to call us by name, to show us he is worth knowing and loving. Jesus came near so that God would be fathomable. And yet how unfathomable is a God who comes near? There is so much to life and mystery that is unplumbed by our own minds, even as it is held in our minds and in minds long before our own. Why do we have these minds? Why this instinct to search and know? How is it that we should know God by name, or know the voice of the Son? And how shall we respond to the kind of God who invites a love of knowing him: "This is what the LORD says, he who made the earth, the LORD who formed it and established it—the LORD is his name: 'Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know'" (Jeremiah 33:2-3).

In 1905, Einstein's departure from the established beliefs about light so disturbed the scientific community that his particle theory of light was not accepted for two decades. His theory was and remains a revolutionary concept. The idea of light being both a wave and a particle is still a strange mystery to grasp. Even so, it is incredible that we should know light enough to marvel at it. And it is altogether unfathomable that the light of all people has come near enough to be known.

First published October 24, 2011 as “The Miracle of Light,” Slice of Infinity 2577. Used by permission of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM).

]]> Sun, 04 Dec 11 01:00:55 -0800 Jill Carattini http://biologos.org/blog/sites-and-sounds?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/sites-and-sounds?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication What should not be lost here is that even the most ornate and exquisite window is more than something to be looked at, wherein the light coming from behind and through the glass illuminates the story told there on the surface. Echo, 2009. Plywood Rose Window after South Rose Window from St. Denis Cathedral, France; Television and Television static caused by Cosmic Background Radiation left over from the Big Bang. 11×11 inches. Collection of the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. ©Adam Belt, 2009.

It is often our default position to look at anything identified as a work of art in terms of mimesis, or imitation of something else pre-existing in the world. Beginning with Plato, the history of art as a concept in the West has largely dealt with this primary function of representing (that is, re-presenting) things that are judged by direct observation or by philosophical speculation to be “objectively real.” An artwork’s success, though, is more than a matter of how accurately and fully it re-creates the material truth of what is being represented, for as a distinctively human activity, representation is as much about the meaning of things as it is their outward appearances—about the subjective component of how we engage with the material world more than merely what it looks like. This view of the role of art—as concrete engagement with the boundary between the objective and subjective aspects of reality—has been at the forefront of art practice in the Modern and now Postmodern periods, and is at the center of the work of artist Adam Belt, whose installation work Echo, 2009 is pictured above.

Both art and science depend on mimesis (how we represent what we find “out there”), but also on a more narrative element using the tools of seeing and hearing to bring the objective and subjective together—to experience, not just describe, meaning. In a recent set of pieces shown together as Sites and Sounds, Belt makes the case for this commonality between the central tension of art and the practice of science, made all the more clear when we remember that science in the West emerged out of a Christian milieu, undergirded by Biblical and creedal affirmations that the material world is not only meaningful, but that its meanings are accessible to reason and exploration, pointing always towards the character of the creator God

Some of Belt’s pieces are literally “re-presentations” of views of the cosmos provided by high-profile scientific instruments (the Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field Survey, or a Mars rover’s image of an extraterrestrial sunset), the making of which were more meditative and contemplative efforts than technical feats. Other pieces take the instruments themselves as their subjects: Through the Looking Glass, 2011 and Mirror, 2009, take their forms from the mirrors of the James Webb and Keck telescopes, and A Gentle Whisper, 2009 is a scale model, of sorts, of the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico. Each of those instruments is a medium through which we perceive primordial light. And then there is his Meteorite Rosary, 2011, another meditative, devotional object that is also marked as an instrument or tool of knowledge akin to the astronomical platforms by being displayed under glass on a pedestal. In each case, Belt is implicitly identifying (and, as an artist, identifying with) practices by which we carefully and reverently learn to listen and look for meaning in the cosmos at scales that are nearly beyond our ability to comprehend, but that can speak to us as individuals in the human community, nevertheless.

Amidst these works, Echo is particularly effective in bringing together these two modes of discovery and contemplation (science and religion), and these two scales of existence (cosmic and personal) by literally framing the cosmic background radiation in a form that is appropriately mathematical, but also deeply spiritual—alluding both to the Church’s narratives of creation and to her community practices of worship. The cosmic “first light” appears as static on a small television screen set behind the gallery wall and viewed through a cut out in the pattern of a rose window from the Cathedral of St. Denis outside Paris—one of two windows in the sacred space that represent the narratives of Christian beginnings: the Creation and the Genealogy of Christ. As Belt wrote in a blog on the piece,

I had wanted to make use of television static for some time as I am fascinated by the fact that something so mundane as television “snow” comes from the birth of the universe, as we currently understand the Big Bang. The rosette pattern, however, was a later decision . . . I began to look for geometric and fractal patterns that may allude to an underlying organizational structure while possibly giving some illusion of volume.

Researching the thinking behind and construction techniques used for such Gothic windows, Belt found the shape an appropriate answer to the problem of contextualizing the CBR. But what brought the piece to completion for the artist was the connection, through the particular liturgical context of this rose window, to the Biblical account of creation. Though the religious content of this piece can be missed or misconstrued, Belt does not seem to be suggesting that the scientific account replaces the Biblical one, but rather that they are somehow analogous and complementary, not principally in their mimetic content (what they show us explicitly about origins), but in the way they shape our response to the cosmos and its Creator. The point—the truth—is not in the window itself, but in the light that passes through it and onto us, by which we see, and by which we are seen.

To push this distinction between the “window as ends” and the “window as means” a bit further, consider that in a very laudatory review of his work when Belt was recently awarded the San Diego Art Prize, fellow art professor and critic Sally Yard wrote that he “deployed the static or ‘snow’ of television screens to illuminate a miniature wooden replica of the tracery of the rose window. . . .” as an example of how “Belt’s most recent work ponders perception within the frame of scientific revelation.” But the light from the television screen does not actually illuminate the tracery itself so much as pass through the tracery to illuminate the viewer and viewers standing in the space of the gallery. If the cosmic background radiation is an example of light discovered by scientific inquiry, Echo filters it through a symbol of the narrative that culminates in Christ. In other words, Belt’s work more accurately could be said to ‘ponder scientific revelation through the frame of spiritual perception,’ that frame being referenced but not exhausted by the St. Denis window’s tracery.

What should not be lost here is that even the most ornate and exquisite window is more than something to be looked at, wherein the light coming from behind and through the glass illuminates the story told there on the surface. Photographic images of such windows reinforce the idea that they are self-contained narratives, but in situ they still retain their function as holes in the façade, portals, spaces for the transmission of light from outside into another space, and onto those inside. It is also important to remember that the space that is illuminated by such windows, though allowing private meditation, was primarily the place where individual Christians came together to hear, ponder and proclaim the Glory of the Lord as the Body of Christ.

Similarly (though very different in scale and in a radically changed cultural context) Echo exists in physical space such that, were someone standing in front of it, he or she would not just see the shape or the light, but be bathed in the soft blueish glow. (See installation image, below.) The purpose is not just to see the installation as an object, or even a narrative of scientific discovery, but partake of the artist’s own sense of wonder and awe at the scale of energies expressed in the remnant “snow,” an echo of the primordial beginning of the material cosmos still accessible to us if we have but ears to hear and eyes to see. By bringing together the technologies, the narrative tools of different eras, Belt is not giving us competing “pictures” of how the creation really happened, but a space in which to contemplate the possibility that it is the same light passing through both windows, ultimately illuminating us, rather than the space itself.

Taken together with the other pieces in Sites and Sounds, Belt’s Echo is not about the task of representation or description (the idea of mimesis with which we began) but is akin to a liturgical act: embodying his own experience of reverence for and curiosity about the processes of creation, but also inviting viewers into an ongoing engagement with a profoundly physical world in which the presence of meaning is central. In fact, the conflation of the grand scale of the St. Denis windows and that of Belt’s small 11” x 11” work paradoxically personalizes and makes intimate the most vast and incomprehensible forces in the universe—and in this way can be thought of as incarnational, reflecting the coming and presence of the very Creator among His creation.

Finally, we should not miss the point that, while light is a recurrent theme and medium in Belt’s work, the pieces are also manifestations of his desire to listen for rather than just see (much less “capture”) the truth and mystery of the universe. In giving this piece the title he does, Belt invokes a the familiar image of the cosmic background radiation as an almost-imperceptible “echo” of the initial moments of creation, while also positing that a scientific account of the material beginnings of the universe is an echo of the narrative we have in Scripture. In both cases, the echo is not a wholly different thing, or a parallel event from that initial “sound,” but a responsive trace of the creative event reflected by, back and through the other. In Christian terms, both scripture and the cosmos are means by which God communicates His agency and His love to the human community, with the Church’s unique call being to proclaim that His Word is also the Light of the world. Prodded by Adam Belt’s example of being fully present to the Maker and what has been made, may we not be content to stand back and look at the light or listen to the sounds of his revelation from a distance, but choose to be bathed in both, reflecting and transmitting God’s love for the cosmos and mankind.



Installation view of Echo, 2009.

Adam Belt works with physical manifestations of the unseen including the inherent properties of materials such as salt, ice and concrete, our interaction with the landscape and our wonder of the cosmos. Belt received his BFA from the University of San Diego and completed his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2001 and is now working as an artist and a professor in San Diego. His work is included in many local collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and the La Jolla Athenaeum Music and Arts Library. Adam has been published in Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology magazine. His work has been reviewed in The San Diego Union Tribune, Art Week, Riviera and various other publications. A slideshow of Adam at work and additional excerpts from an interview done in conjunction with the San Diego Art Prize may be see here.

]]> Sun, 30 Oct 11 02:17:48 -0700 Mark Sprinkle http://biologos.org/blog/midwest-meander?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/midwest-meander?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication As believers, we are not called upon to shore up the walls, rebuild the defensive levee, and channel the river into something manageable, but to understand the ultimate direction of the watercourse and cast ourselves into it. Midwest Meander, 2005. Monoprints on various fabrics, collaged and fused, 40” x 40” ©Holly Smith, 2005.

In the essay on educator and textile artist Holly Smith’s Haircap Gregarious that inaugurated the BioLogos worship project, I suggested that the way her work brings together such disparate creative and expressive techniques as painting, printing, cutting, drawing, fusing and stitching fabric is analogous to the way the Creator God is intimately engaged with His creation, impressing His characteristics and qualities upon the physical world, but also being pierced and broken in relationship with it. The same is true of this second work of Smith’s, but the geographic imagery she uses in Midwest Meander (2005) can also remind us of the complex way God’s agency appears to us through the Scriptures and the life of the Church, on one hand, and in the natural processes He has ordained and established in the material world, on the other. While in both areas we can painstakingly tease apart many layers of meaning to answer questions of origins, in so doing we risk losing the more important emphasis on purpose.

As an interpretation of the farmland of the upper Midwest as seen from the “bird’s eye view” of a window seat on an airplane, Midwest Meander reflects the give and take between underlying geology, cultural artifacts (such as grid-like property boundaries), and practices literally “on the ground” that give us the distinctive look of this agricultural landscape. Smith’s image/object is built upon a bedrock piece of fabric, upon which are placed many smaller segments of cloth, painted and printed with semi-linear but not rigid patterns of lines and swirls that resemble the furrow lines of plowed and planted fields and circular irrigation patterns. Smith’s work “references the patchwork quality of landscapes by finding the lines, patterns and color fields in aerial photography and translating them into a textile medium,”¹ but her work is not strictly representational—that is, she is not trying just to re-create the scene from her window. Rather, for Smith, “looking at land and water from an airborne vantage point feels like reading a good poem,” and her own process is a series of creative decisions made in response both to what she saw from above and what she knew from having lived upon a similar landscape, herself.

This aspect of interpretive agency is especially true of what Smith called the “arresting line that cuts through Midwest Meander [and] became a repeated and emphasized element in subsequent pieces.” She continued, “This flowing line would be my last addition to the construction of each piece in this series, although it was a design decision I would weigh throughout the entire process.” In other words, the dark, flowing river shape was intended from the beginning of Smith’s work, and fulfilled the creative purpose she set out for it, but the specific way it relates to the other patterns and shapes on the surface that we see now includes moments of adjustment to those smaller parts (see the boundary between river and the white and grey “field” section in the upper center), as well as superimposition over them (such as the way the river cuts across the smaller swirl patterns). Smith’s process of depicting the river and its directional purpose echoed the natural river’s own negotiated and winding path through the land.

Especially when we think about their geology—the way they cut through the layers of earth and rock through which they run, but also deposit new layers and leave positive evidence of their presence in the past—rivers like the one Smith gives us in Midwest Meander can be symbols for the activity of God in the natural world, but even more, offer a commentary on the way His people tend to desire a clear and unambiguous sense of what He has done and is doing, especially focusing on what He has done and is doing for us. By going to where a river flows we may, indeed, see its current power and action, but also peer deep into history in the ancient layers it erodes and exposes, and in the pieces it has transported from distant lands. We may see the way it can carve through the hardest stone, flow along seams, find and reveal weaknesses in the underlying strata, but also build up new land along its banks and even miles into the sea—lands which we are quick to claim and put to our own productive use.

But from the vantage point Smith gives us, we can also see how the river’s path may include wide turns and deflections, responses not only to harder sections of the underlying earth, but also to sediments laid down by the very same river in earlier ages. From the airplane window we see ox-bows, old sections of the flow now stranded as lakes, and even the vestiges of former curves long since filled and turned to the human purposes of agriculture and habitation. Rivers are not content to stay in the same course, or even to remain within their banks, but shift and flow out, constantly asserting their ability and right to reclaim and rebuild the land through and over which they flow. Though we desire to impose our own convenient boundaries on the banks, divide the fertile lands into a patchwork and orderly rows, we do well to remember that the valley land is defined by the river, rather than the river being confined by the land.

What, then, does Smith’s way of laying the river on the land in her work, inspired by the way a natural river makes and remakes the land through which it flows tell us about the way God reveals Himself in nature and in history? It may be simply this: that the how is not nearly so important as the why. Though revelation of activity in the past (whether in Scripture or nature) is, indeed, a gift, the purpose of that gift is to help us appreciate and participate in the current flow, not dwell more securely on long-accustomed banks. As believers, we are not called upon to shore up the walls, rebuild the defensive levee, and channel the river into something manageable, but to understand the ultimate direction of the watercourse and cast ourselves into it, even when it seems to turn back upon itself or explore new channels.

If we can share Smith’s sense of seeing the dynamic, circuitous, but far-from-random path of water towards the sea as both responsive and beautiful—a way of thinking that she attributes to her reading of Wendell Berry’s poetry as much as to her reading of the landscape of Iowa—we will find a better balance between looking into God’s past and the desire to see into our future. Perhaps then we can realize that God’s work in us is precisely like the river’s work on its banks—scouring away some things in order to build us up in others, but always for the sake of His plans and not ours. Smith’s own description of Midwest Meander ends with the concluding lines of Berry’s poem “Letter,” capturing this sense of release, of submission and hope, and it seems fitting to follow her lead and ends ours with them as well:

“Now in the long curve of a journey
I spin a single strand, carried away
by what must bring me home.”²

Holly Smith grew up in Waterloo and Cedar Falls, Iowa, graduating with a degree in Applied Art, Graphic Design from Iowa State University in Ames. Following six years as a designer for NavPress in Colorado Springs, she lived in Ireland for seven years, during which time becoming a mother shifted her focus towards guiding her own and others’ children toward creative expression. Returning to the U.S., she earned certification in art education and a Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, and now teaches elementary-age children at Richmond’s Collegiate School, where she is herself inspired and challenged by her students’ creative abandon, willingness to try new things and sense of wonder. Smith has illustrated a children’s book, Matisse and the Boy Who Loved to Draw, but is also being continually drawn back to her work in textile art by its possibilities for the manipulation of color, stitching, texture and line.

Notes

1. All citations from Smith’s essay “Places on Earth,” submitted as part of the degree of Master of Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. December, 2009.
2. Berry, Wendell. The Wheel. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1982.

]]> Sun, 02 Oct 11 05:00:06 -0700 Mark Sprinkle http://biologos.org/blog/gods-use-of-time?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/gods-use-of-time?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication I find that when many Christians think about the way God created our universe, they often bring a static expectation similar to what we bring to an ordinary statue. It’s as if we assume the physical realm were merely a rigid three-dimensional sculpture, immovable with time. I can still recall the first time I encountered a man performing as a living statue. His costume, body paint, and utter stillness made him very convincing. I also recall the eerie feeling I experienced upon first seeing him move. Ordinary statues are, of course, static, but if you hang around a living statue long enough you’re bound to see it move, if only to blink its eyes. I find that when many Christians think about the way God created our universe, our planet, and the forms of life that dwell on it, they often bring a static expectation similar to what we bring to an ordinary statue. It’s as if we assume the physical realm were merely a rigid three-dimensional sculpture, immovable with time.

But since time exists, change and development are possible. The sciences have acquired the tools to “look back” in time and explore our universe’s rich history, so we know that the universe and the life in it do indeed evolve. Through these observations in the natural realm, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that God typically prefers to do His work gradually rather than instantaneously. In what follows, I’d like to briefly explore some of the ways that our universe has been and is evolving over long periods of time and attempt to show that the concept of a God who makes use of long timescales ought to be familiar to us from the story of redemption in scripture. And like observing a living statue, by staring long enough (in this case millions and billions of years) we are able to see a world that is moving and changing, which hopefully deepens our appreciation for the wonder of God’s dynamic creative acts.

God’s use of time in the physical realm

The sense of enjoyment that comes from studying the dynamically evolving universe that God has created is similar to that of a gardener when he or she watches a seed grow into a mature plant. And when considering the history of the cosmos, the analogy of a seed in a garden is an apt one, with each branch of science reinforcing and corroborating the story that is told.

From physics we learn that all the matter and energy that now exists in our universe originated in a hot, dense state (something akin to a primordial seed) which burst forth and has been expanding and cooling ever since. Myriads of stars have gone through the process of forming, burning, and dying, with many exploding in what's called a supernova. These long stellar life cycles have been going on for billions of years and are responsible for "cooking up" and dispersing all the atomic elements necessary for forming planets like Earth and creatures like us.

Once our planet formed, we know from geology and its theory of plate tectonics that the earth's crust has been in a constant (but very slow) process of moving and changing, shifting even the continents around over many millions of years and forming majestic mountains, islands, and other geological features. The picture becomes even more fascinating when biology enters the landscape, describing how life has slowly developed, also over many millions of years, beginning from the simplest of organisms and progressing all the way to beings like us, of such complexity that we are able to reflect on and enjoy the entire display.

But how do we know all this, since our short lives don’t allow us to see these long drawn out processes in action? I see these same sciences as a great gift from God that allow us to explore beyond the bounds of our own time. For instance, when astrophysicists look up into the night sky, they see light that has taken millions or even billions of years to reach us, meaning that they are literally looking at what our universe looked like in the distant past. Geologists look back in time by studying layers of rock, sediment, or ice. They have even found evidence that the earth's magnetic field has flipped many times over the course of the Earth's history so that even the direction our trusty compasses point isn’t constant! Biologists have the fossil record and genetics as a means of exploring the rich and fascinating history of life, teaching us about the ancestors of modern humans as well as exotic creatures such as dinosaurs. All around us the physical world is shifting, changing, and unfolding in an extraordinary way, teaching us that God, the ultimate Gardener, is pleased to watch his creation grow and mature gradually.

God's use of time in redemption up to Jesus

A good number of Christians find the idea of God using long maturation times in creation threatening to their understanding of scripture. But what we learn about God from scripture is not inconsistent with a God who works over long timescales. We see this if we look at the grand meta-narrative of the entire Bible, of which I’ll cover a few highlights to demonstrate my point.

After humans made a mess of their intended role in the created order, God desired to restore it and put it right. And like what we learn from the sciences about the evolution of the universe, He decided to take his time about it. God began his redeeming work with a promise to use Abraham's family to be a blessing to the entire world (Gen. 12:1). This was a promise that was ultimately fulfilled in Jesus nearly two millennia later. Now if God had been in a hurry, he might simply have allowed Sarah to conceive by the Holy Spirit and bring forth Jesus directly. But instead, he decided to take the scenic route, working through Abraham’s seed, including Jacob, Moses, David, and others until the time was right for Jesus.

As time went on and God’s people developed into a nation, David rose to the throne and God made another promise -- that of perpetual kingship to David’s line (2 Sam 7:13). This was another opportune time for Jesus to be born, take the throne, and fulfill the promise. But again we find God taking his time, allowing the kingdom to be divided and eventually conquered, and God’s people sent into a long exile, until the time was right for Jesus, nearly a millennium after David.

God's use of time in redemption after Jesus

The Christian faith holds that in the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) God sent Jesus as the individual in whom all the promises of God ultimately converged. Just as God's physical creation developed slowly and eventually brought forth our earth and life and humanity, so God's purposes slowly unfold and culminate in Jesus, the descendant of Abraham and David who becomes the blessing to the world.

But here again is another case that demonstrates the point I’m attempting to make. Even the blessing that Jesus comes to announce and inaugurate develops slowly and dynamically – God, the Gardener, continues to slowly cultivate. Jesus himself teaches us to expect this to be the case in parables about the kingdom such as that of the mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32). Thus, the world isn’t automatically cured of its ills after Jesus’ resurrection. Both then and now, evil, sin, and injustice still exist and there is much that remains to be redeemed. The church is called to continue living in this meta-narrative until we reach the second climax: when Jesus reappears and ushers in the fullness of the new heavens and new earth.

A similar point can be made about God’s redemptive work in the lives of individual Christians as well. God forms each of his children over time through our relationships, our experiences, the trials we encounter, and the service we render. “I am the vine, you are the branches”, says Jesus in John 15:5. God is “growing us” as individuals and as every Christian knows from experience, the maturing process often seems very long indeed.

In conclusion, this brief survey has shown a consistent picture of how God works in his creation. In the cosmos, in the evolution of life, in the redemption of the world, and in the redemption of individuals, God sees fit to use long timescales for accomplishing his purposes. Moreover, with the similarities between what we learn of God from nature and from scripture, Christians needn’t react defensively to what science tells us about the history of the cosmos. Instead, we can indulge in the opportunity to marvel at the ever continuing work of God the Gardener, both in His dynamic creation and His dynamic acts of redemption.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ToniVC.

]]> Fri, 19 Aug 11 05:00:43 -0700 Matthew Blackston http://biologos.org/blog/the-fullness-of-time?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication http://biologos.org/blog/the-fullness-of-time?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication Naming Jesus as both the Alpha and Omega is not just to say he was “there” at the beginning and has now run on ahead to the end, but to say that He subsumes both, because past and future are known relative to Him in communion with the Father and Spirit. Picture credit: John C. Taylor

This week I’d like to highlight a more well-known work of art, craft, and technology as we consider the qualities of time from a point of view that is both distinctively Christian and that keeps in mind some of the images and analogies for contemporary conceptions of the universe that we’ve been exploring. The image above is a side view of the rippled disk of gold-plated stainless steel that forms the center and visual heart of the “Chronophage,” John C. Taylor’s extraordinary clock for Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University.

This first Chronophage clock was unveiled and introduced to the world with remarks on the mystery of time by physicist Stephen Hawking on September 19, 2008, and Taylor’s own sense of mortality and the relentlessness of time’s passing away is its central message. The meaning of the clock is clear enough from the form and actions of the wonderfully horrible locust-like creature that sits atop the clock and is the literalization and externalization of the “grasshopper escapement” that makes it run. Its legs march forward, inexorably pulling the round disk of time along, while its fanged mouth snaps shut once each minute to mark another chunk of time gobbled up and gone. As if the implications weren’t clear enough, the hourly “chime” is a sound like that of a chain rattling into a coffin, and the Chronophage’s spined tail quivers as if to say “here, O death, is thy sting.”

While a second major theme of the work is the subjectivity of time as we experience it, and another post could be devoted to the way Taylor freely mixes the “relativism” (and therefore, he seems to say, the untrustworthiness) of human subjectivity with the very different “relativistic” qualities of time as it connects with matter and energy, here the emphasis will be on the irony of having this machine for symbolically devouring time bear the name of Christ (the Corpus Christi Clock), considering how radically different the understanding of time that it emphasizes is from the way time is understood with regard to the identity and work of Jesus. Yet as the image above suggests, the form of the clock itself offers (perhaps inadvertently) an alternative or counterweight to the view of time we get if we look only at the creature than sits atop it.

Taylor has identified his own fascination with Einstein’s theories of space/time as an inspiration for the clock, stating the central disk of the clock represents the flow of time outward from the Big Bang, which is its center. This is provocative imagery, for it presents a picture of time more akin to an everywhere-expanding universe than a finite and incrementally-measured line. Malcom Guite considered the Chronophage and suggested that the way God continues to “pour out” time as a gift is one alternative to the view of time being ever consumed, and that fluid metaphor is highly appropriate to the form of the clock’s pool-like face, complete with the suspended rebounding droplet.

While that image gives a more hopeful and renewal-focused perspective on the narrative, directional sense of time, it also comports beautifully with another element of a Christian sense of the cosmos, which is that time (unlike space) has a definite center from which this eternal filling occurs, not just a beginning and an end. In other words, naming Jesus as both the Alpha and Omega is not just to say he was “there” at the beginning and has now run on ahead to the end, but to say that He subsumes both, because past and future are known relative to Him in communion with the Father and Spirit. While we affirm that Jesus entered the narrative flow of history two millennia ago “in the fullness of time,” (Galatians 4:4) we must also affirm that it is He who was then and is yet doing the filling, the completing, the ordering of time—of bringing it to its ultimate “fullness.” (Ephesians 1:10)

But what help is this dual sense of the “fullness of time”—with Christ as the center of time, not just its beginning and the end—in our discussions of science and faith, or in our approaches to complicated Scriptural texts? Does this help us in any way in dealing with the first chapters of Genesis, for example, or with the fifth chapter of Romans? First and perhaps most simply, it may help us recognize that contemporary science does, indeed, provide new ways of thinking about the world that enrich historical understandings of God’s cosmos, rather than providing proofs of His existence or handiwork within it. But this space/time analogy for the centrality of Christ may, indeed, help us wrestle with scripture better, too.

It is nothing new, for instance, to mark the similarities between the books of Revelation and the creation account in Genesis: both are prophetic revelations of events that the human author/recorder did not directly see or experience, rather than eye-witness accounts. Leaving aside the well-trod area of literary genre studies other than to note that in such prophetic visions the symbolic and reportorial elements are almost inextricably intertwined, what is most interesting about this symmetry between the beginning and end of the Bible in this context is that it reminds us that Christ is the very emanating center of time, not just the middle of time.

Thinking about time as fundamentally Christ-centered rather than strictly unidirectional—as constantly infilling and renewing rather than being constantly devoured and lost—may be a useful complement to the Evangelical recovery of the narrative quality of the Gospel. For while a version of the story of God’s relationship with mankind that stresses the Creation-Fall-Redemption-Renewal sequence is useful to remind us of many of the verities of orthodox Christian faith (including the real and lasting ramifications of our decisions and actions in earthly time), it also makes it easy to think of Jesus merely as an “if a, then b” solution to the problem of human sin and the brokenness of the world, as opposed to also being the pre-and always-existing summation of the goodness, power, and mystery of the Triune God intersecting with the material cosmos of which we are a part.

With the ever-creeping Chronophage, John C. Taylor has given us a remarkable gift towards humilty—a reminder that it is good and right to contemplate the limits of our earthly, material existence. But Taylor has also given us an intimation of renewal in the still, golden center of his Corpus Christi Clock—an equally-powerful (and more beautiful) reminder that eternity is an inestimable gift, freely given, but paid for by the very Body of Christ.



]]> Sun, 07 Aug 11 05:00:31 -0700 Mark Sprinkle