Creation theories

arcura asked this question on 12/17/2000:

Please contemplate the following. Then answer these two questions.

Form a Chrisitna point of view, what seems to be wrong with the following statement?

What seem to be right with it?

A Secular View of Creation.

Before the beginning was the void, and the void was no thing. There was no thing visible or invisible. So therefore in the beginning there was nothing, except for that which could not be detected as seen or not seen. Then an influence changed the nothing into something and the universe was born beginning with an explosion so vast as to be indescribable and has been inadequately named "The Big Bang."

Peace and kindness,

arcura

Greetings:

Contemplating your question I found it difficult to answer. Your question blends material that seem difficult to harmonize. The concept "contradictio in adjectis" means that you join two things that are not "joinable".

The "Big Bang" theories never suppose, "the void, and the void was no thing". They suppose there ever was a mass of energy that by implosion and explosion (Big Bang) is at the root of the universe. There was never a real beginning. Now if the philosophers tell the nuclear scientists that no beginning impossible because it creates infinity of time and space they retort that according to scientific knowledge energy is finite. You have the perfect "circulus vitiosus"; there is no end and no beginning.

The concepts "the void", "the beginning" and "no thing" are from the Bible and the secular viewpoint would consider them at best a myth.

I don't think it helps to join myth and scientific theories. It's an other thing to try to explain tenets of faith according to the scientific knowledge. It's an interesting exercise. But you have to respect the autonomy of both.

Better than tottering speculation is prayer for wisdom.

I suggest we read Wisdom of Salomon's whole chapter 9:

""O God of my ancestors and Lord of mercy,

who have made all things by your word,

2 and by your wisdom have formed humankind

to have dominion over the creatures you have made,

3 and rule the world in holiness and righteousness,

and pronounce judgment in uprightness of soul,

4 give me the wisdom that sits by your throne,

and do not reject me from among your servants."

The New Revised Standard Version, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers) 1989."

A modern Midrash:

"At one of those official banquets Albert Einstein and the Cardinal of Munich sat together at a table. The great mathematician teased the Cardinal: "What would your Eminence do if we could prove through mathematics that God doesn't exist?" The cleric answered with equanimity: "We would wait patiently until the scientist found the their error of calculation!"

vale

mscperu