COSMOLOGY

         ROSE TURUKA                                                  

 LIFE IN THE EYES OF MANY

                   Life is full of mysteries that we try to unfold every single day. For different people, life is in different perspectives and how we view them determines what we believe in. We have those who do not believe in God, and try to prove it through their discoveries that the world is the way it is because if the different features it has allowed them to make something new every day and that our objective is to find them. While there are others who come with the question, how did those features come to be? Did they just happen to appear there for the world to be put together? That is when the conflicts arise between those who believe in the power higher than us and those who don’t.

         

Had our human mistakes (sin) had not affected science; we could have used our knowledge to learn more about God, the creator of all creations. With that knowledge, we would have made discoveries as we have done now but we would have honored God’s name instead of ours as we do now. Our discoveries are full of faults and mistakes that are not easy to correct and for some, we have no idea how to correct them. Had the fall not happened, we would have been able to perfect it.  Also had Adam and Eve hadn't eaten the fruit, we could have been able to understand science completely without any barriers, without any problems since we would not even know what sin is. Seeing science as a whole, would allow us to puzzle all the pieces that we are missing into one, since we are not focusing on only the specific things we want to know rather everything that is concerned with the subject we want to figure out. “Christ is the one through whom all things find their meaning and reason for existence”, Christ does know all the answers to our question and had the fall not happen we would have some knowledge to that meaning. Our struggle trying to find the use and the existence of science has its success yet there is always something incomplete in our discoveries that we cannot put the pieces quite together.

      

Since the fall, people were doing what God wanted them to do and that was to find things. Through experiments, they were determined to prove to people that the earth was not flat; therefore they put two sticks at different places at the same time to find they do not have the same shade. Plotemy is geocentric, the idea that the earth is at the center. Copernicus is heliocentric and when he came into the picture, he placed the sun at the center of the earth.  He was working within the church, and when the church found out about this, he was dismissed. Kepler introduced the ellipse for the orbits of the planets. His model raised questions, for day and night to fall there must be rotation. Why didn’t it fall? Galileo dared to publish the Copernicus but the Vatican took action. They locked him up in a house where he would spend the rest of his life. Galileo realized, the reason people were not aware of the earth’s rotation was because we were moving with it. He destroyed the cosmology idea of the church in two ways; there are no perfect spheres in which the church believed in though the planets are wonderers and therefore are not perfect also not everything revolved around us. Then came Isaac Newton, he incorporated a mirror in a telescope, doubling its power. He describes the orbit of the man around the earth and applied that to the planets, he ended up denying the force of gravity.

          

Through the fall, the relationship between the church and science has vastly grown apart in a fast pace and a large scale. In Christianity, our beliefs are on God, the creator of heaven and earth, though in science Darwinism is taking the place of Christianity. The theory by Charles Darwin of biological evolution stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase the individual’s ability to compete, survive and reproduce.  We concentrate more on figuring the mysteries of our lives not realizing where it takes us, how far we pull ourselves from God; we end up being to be the victims of knowledge of which we work so hard to master. We get so tangled on the tyranny of science that it masters us and manipulates us.

         

Darwin came to an understanding that individuals are slightly different than one another. Those differences gave them advantages in staying alive long enough to successfully reproduce that on their traits more frequently to the next generations. Subsequently their traits become more common and the population evolves. He called this “descent with modification”.  Darwin's theory of natural selection was the first rigorous theory to suggest, with evidence, that the various forms of life on Earth today could all, in principle, be traced back to a common ancestor. It was controversial because it obviously directly contradicts the bible, which says that God made all life, yet Darwin seemed to be against that statement.  One of Einstein’s teachings was that “Time cannot exist in the absence of matter and space”. This statement is controversial with Christians because he was excluding the work of the creator. God himself made the matter and the space to exist, he is the creator of all things, and with his power he could make anything happen. He could make time exist in the absence of matter and space and we would still be trying to figure out how not understanding that our minds are far too small to know or even learn about the power he holds. He can make all things happen, all questions have answers.

         

 Hawking proved that the surface area of the event horizon could only increase not decrease, and that when two black holes merged the surface area of the new hole was larger than the sum of the two original. He believed there will be exploration of outer space plane that could fly faster than the speed of light. One day of exploration in space equal to one year on Earth. The hawking’s statement remains controversial, he basically said heaven and life after death is a lie bouquet from people who actually fear death because the reference of science have, in fact the brain will stop working when it is dead. He says, “For me the brain is like a computer that will cease when the components are damaged. There is no heaven or life after death for computers that are damaged”. This strengthens the theory that the universe was created without the intervention of God. Since the existence of the universe already exists and can run by itself.
        

 One of the professors called Jonathan Wells in the movie expelled says, “Minor changes within species happen but Darwin did not write a book called how existing species change over time, he wrote a book called THE ORIGINS OF SPECIES. He purported to say how the same process leads to new species actually all species but the evidence to that claim is totally lacking”. Darwinism strictly defines after the origin of life and deals with living things, not the beginning of life. There is no evidence for that.  Richard Dawking later on the movie contributes his thoughts by saying, “He speaks of the withdrawal of faith saying that there is a connection between a society that has at least a minimal commitment to certain kinds of transcendental values, and what human beings permit themselves to do one to the other. An example of Hitler, he says the connection between Hitler and Darwinism is a difficult connection because they were separated by many years, one English, one German. None the less if you open mind comp and read it, especially in German it corresponds between Nazi’s ideas and Darwin’s ideas corresponding through the page. Darwinism is not a sufficient condition for a phenomenal Nazism but it definitely a necessary one.”  Meyers says, “As the religion slowly fades away, science replaces it more”. If we eradicate it, religion will become a side dish rather than the main dish. Through that, the world would have lost its meaning; we can only know so little of the world, and when we put religion second, we will become more lost on who we are and what the world is.

     

 In the process of integration, we often fail to see the creation as a whole and begin to focus closely on one specific field of science. This kind of reductionism is unbiblical because it glorifies and idolizes one aspect of God’s creation rather than seeing the creation as unified, God- glorifying whole. Laplace, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, all these were scientists who studied a particular field of study that they were good at and were successful at it but they could never get the full picture of how the world worked together as a whole therefore bringing up mistakes, and inefficient work in the study since they were not able to figure out the missing parts they seemed to have been missing in their studies. It all scientists were to work together on creation as a whole, there would be less problems in proving the thesis. And instead of fixing them, they would be using that time to learn more and putting more pieces together.

      

“What is science?” Dr. Adams begins, and continues to explain that there is no answer to this question, that is there is no one answer which everyone will agree on. The person’s beliefs on what is important to science will determine how he answers this question. My answer to this question from a Christian perspective is going to be very different from that of a Darwinian, who will answer you on their perspective, making both of our answers vastly differently. It doesn’t not mean we are wrong, yet we are not totally right. The Differences between Science and religion may be due to the fact that our view on those two matters are opposite causing a disagreement in our thoughts and thus not being able to work together. If we all could work in agreement of our beliefs and faith, the statement in question would not be a problem today and there would not be any difficulty in associating science and religion.

           

The book called “ORIGINS” by Deborah B. Haarsma and Loren D. Haarsma, has a different worldview on the matter of church and science. They say, “The fact that science actually works, lends support to these beliefs, but the beliefs themselves come from outside of science, perhaps from culture, or religion, or simply the scientist’s personal choice”. Through the proofs of how science works, (for every discovery made was proved in order to be accepted) it actually backs up the beliefs, the beliefs themselves are not made by science, science just steps in and proves them. These beliefs are from different perspectives and different views of different people; Dr. Adams says that there is no clear answer to it for we all have different beliefs on this matter. Hey also add, “relativism says that in terms of morality and religion, each person can believe whatever he or she wants because  there is no absolute truth about such questions and no way to decide between different beliefs”. Exactly what Dr, Adam was referring to, that we cannot answer questions precisely because we are not on the same page. And those differences we have do cause the difference we have in science and religion.

           

 It is so important for a Christian to want to bring restoration in the science area of our culture because the biblical view of the world and life within it is to be taught and applied to lessons in all subjects. Students are to be taught to think in a particular way with the mind of Christ. It is not simply an add-on; it is the way reformed Christian schools do business. When students are taught in the mind of Christ, they think with the mind of Christ allowing them to see with the mind of Christ. The discoveries we make in the world, the glory will go back to the almighty creator and since we operate with his mind, we are able to agree that everything we find, here on earth is created by him. With that restoration, the conflicts between science and church would not be intense as they were and as they are progressing to become.

            

 For science to be brought back to the way that God had intended, we have to understand a few things. The bible does not directly talk about every culture reality you encounter every day; but the biblical worldview certainly can be applied to every single letter of your life and every corner of the classroom. We have to change the way we learn, let all the teaching be taught not just in any perspective but in God’s perspective. When we tie in everything we learn everyday with a biblical view, we get a good foundation of how Christianity and the church may come in contact and will be able to handle it in such a manner that we do not lose the biblical foundation we had started with.

         

 Schumann also says, “When your hearts want what God wants, you do not just add prayer and Bible study to your life, although you will do that. You suddenly see everything with Kingdom-of –God glasses, and your whole vision for life is radically altered”. When we have the biblical foundation in us we tend to view differently than we do if we have none, we see everything through God’s eyes allowing us to discover more and present that information appropriately with care, allowing a better relationship between the church and science. This could bring back science to be what God really wanted it to be.

          

The differences between church and science has been increasing greatly, the fact that scientists do not believe that there is a higher power than atoms, nuclear matter, and so much more they have grown to know arises differences with the church who believe that God has the highest power. Scientist present fact on the table showing proof of what they claim is the world and how it all came to be. Christians have miracles and faith not the physical proof for God’s existence allowing the scientist to believe that God does not exist. For God to be able to reveal more to us, we ought to understand that in spite of our differences, God does want us to make the discoveries we make but what matters more, is how we use the glory of the discoveries we make. Do we do this in his name or do we do this for the sake of our names to become greater?