Monday, March 16, 2015

Creation Creates a Problem




Wisconsin Governor and likely 2016 Republican Presidential contender, Scott Walker, is no rocket scientist.  In fact, his lack of a four-year degree has caused some on the left to question his credentials to be President at all.  Walker was recently in England on a trade mission hoping to burnish his foreign policy bona fides.  While there, a member of the British press asked him, “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it? Do you accept it?” Walker seemingly stumbled, "For me, I am going to punt on that one…I'm here to talk about trade, not to pontificate about evolution."  Recognizing that answer might indicate indecisiveness, his team later released a statement saying he believes, “faith and science are compatible.” 

Unlike Walker, Dr. Robert Jastrow was a rocket scientist.  Jastrow earned a PhD in theoretical physics and joined NASA when it was formed in 1958. He was the first Lunar Exploration Committee chairman and the Chief of its Theoretical Division. He was later the founding director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies until he retired in 1981.  After NASA, he became a Professor of Earth Sciences at Dartmouth College, the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of the George C. Marshall Institute, and Director Emeritus of Mount Wilson Observatory and Hale Solar Laboratory

Jastrow’s view on understanding creation is, "the curtain drawn over the mystery of creation will never be raised by human efforts, at least in the foreseeable future."   Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know…” 

How do we deal with the “known unknowns?”   Typically, we develop theories to explain them:  Creation – The Big Bang Theory; Man – The Theory of Evolution; Summer and Winter – Climate Change.  But theories are just that, theories.  Jastrow theorized that science can’t explain the universe without the supernatural.

Like Washington, Jastrow unifies God and the astronomical in his book, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe by explaining, “The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy…For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."


The “mountain of ignorance" may not be the end of the bad dream for those that deny the Creator.  The book that Jastrow claimed got the creation account right, thousands of years before the astronomer, also declares that, “every knee will bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” 


For those that deny the Creator, that confession could create quite a problem.

5 comments:

R said...

Excellent post, Colonel.

Here is something I saw the other day ... a five minute video on this very subject... also very good.

For those who have not watched it, do so:

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/grace_notes/parameters.php

Stewart said...

It's too bad Scott Walker couldn't have responded thus: "Am I comfortable with the idea of evolution? Yes, of course, as comfortable as I am with any scientific theory. Do I believe in it, and do I accept it? As in, do I have faith in it and do I accept it as my personal redeemer and savior? No, of course not. It's just a scientific theory, it is not God. Next question?"

Manu said...

"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

-Voltaire

Human beings cannot detach themselves form the universe and know it objectively. They view from within, attempting to extrapolate what it looks like from without.

We once believed all things to be due to the agency of the supernatural. There was a God for rivers, a God for war, a God for farming and a God for sex. Whatever the activity, there was an agency behind it. Ancient philosophers gradually came to explain the existence of these things in non-supernatural ways and so over time less and less was ascribed to the divine.

Christianity merged Greek philosophy with Jewish monotheism and outsourced this, as it were, to one distant and all-powerful creative agency. St. Thomas called this agency the "First Mover." Now, St. Thomas failed in his proof of God, for such proof would require one, again, to be detached from the universe. This is impossible for a human. Nonetheless, St. Thomas may have been more correct than he knew. His notions are entirely consistent with physics as we understand it today.

Science, today, has just become another buzzword. To most people the workings of the natural world are just as mystical and difficult to understand as they were for the wogs who prayed to river Gods. Your average man cannot explain Newtonian Mechanics much less Quantum Mechanics. He could not follow the intricacies of Climate Change data. But he trusts the priests, which we call "scientists" today, to interpret the signs and tell him these things. For them, you might as well be a sorceror throwing runes in the air.

Pop Culture tells us that Atheism is good and rational. All the scientists are doing it now, they say. And so people follow them into folly.

Disbelief in God is actually highly irrational. One could defend Agnosticism through rational argument. "I don't know" is a valid answer to metaphysical questions. You could also defend personal knowledge of God rationally, i.e. you believe that God spoke to you or did a thing for you. You can't prove this to another, of course, but for you the argument is still rational. Many come to faith feeling as if God touched them in some way.

To say God most definitely does not exist is claiming knowledge that is impossible for any human to possess. You cannot exit the universe and see it objectively. It is the height of folly, the celebration of ignorance.

But this is par for the course for the modern scientific priesthood. Science, remember, is not coextensive with rationality or logic. It is merely a method of experimentation and observation (one among many). It can explain a great many things within our universe, but it cannot comment on existence itself.

For that only philosophy, metaphysics, and religion will do. Even then, the answer will not be known for certainty until such time as you meet your maker.

In simpler terms, there will never be a time in human history in which an outside agency will not be necessary to explain existence. As Voltaire tells us, even assuming God did not exist, it would be intellectually necessary for us to invent him in order to comprehend our own existence.

https://thecoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
https://thecoloneloftruth.blogspot.com/ said...

R - appreciate your comments, Saw the video at the link you provided - it was great thanks!

Dystopic -Thanks for your post. Absolutely brilliant breakdown. I loved the way you spelled it out. The point about science nailed it.
The fact that charlatans like Al Gore can make millions pedaling snake oil is proof.

Thanks fellas - Blessings to you both.