Science Topics #5

Summary.
Hungry for more.
Frames of Reference.
Trust me – I’m a scientist

Summary

Recall how I mentioned the Lake of Fire and our Sun as a Red Giant. Things in the natural reflect things in the eternal (Romans 1:20). So God built images into Genesis, Revelation and indeed throughout the Bible to keep reminding us that it is Him. Of course these images read as plain simple text because for the last 4 millennia such detail was only going to confuse the issue. Our technical insight is simply revealing God’s fore-knowledge and wisdom in more detail.

Hungry for more

If you are hungry for more technical details, chapter 5 of “Refuting Compromise” by Jonathan Sarfati, Ph.D., is a beautiful fusion of technical and godly insight that goes far beyond what I offer.

Frames of Reference

In Jonathan’s book I read a brief section on frames of reference that I will extend a little. Someone complained that the Bible referred to the “sun moving across the sky”, but that is wrong because the sun does not move – it’s the earth that rotates. Of course the same person would routinely refer to a beautiful sunrise or sunset as such. From an observer on earth it’s quite reasonable to describe the sun as moving. An observer on the moon would see the earth rotating from his perspective. An observer outside the solar system would see the earth’s rotation around the sun as the major motion. An observer outside this galaxy would see the sun’s rotation around the centre of the galaxy as the primary motion. Finally an observer outside the universe or at least in a distant galaxy would see the apparent expansion of the galaxies as the dominate feature.

A mathematical translation can be defined to map any observation in one of these frames to any other frame. So all observers can describe their observations and can be truthfully translated to any other frame. They are all equivalent. Some of the more distant and faster moving frames will have translations that involve relativistic calculations where time and length can vary. I like to simply say that time is somewhat elastic.

So, can we accept a little elasticity in God’s description of time? Well, that’s not the main issue here. All these frames of reference have observers whose perspective and values are different. But when God communicates with man, we are not looking at a different physical frame of reference. God is communicating with all races of man over thousands of years. Many cultures have a different world view, paradigm of existence, value system, or frame-work and yet God desires that all can understand and know Him. It is the common man’s world view that is the frame of reference that God is translating His word into, so that all may know Him.

It is the ultimate pride and vanity of post 20th Century Western culture to criticize the Word of God on some perceived technical correctness. I can see why God says in Proverbs, not to argue with a scoffer. Whatever precious insights about God that I might share with them will simply be trampled on. But for those who believe, I hope you will not let this vanity deceive you.

Trust me – I’m a scientist

I don’t think most scientists set out to lie. But if you don’t acknowledge God then you are deceived about the fundamentals. This is not a personal attack, just some perspective.

There’s talk about building an even better space telescope to find out answers to questions that the Hubble telescope has revealed. If you want to put your faith in something, then think about the following...

• They pointed Hubble at a really distant “black” piece of sky expecting to see light arriving from close to the beginning of the universe. They were surprised to see mature galaxies – the exact opposite of what they expected.
• Then they looked again and found super black holes at the centre of these galaxies. This was the exact opposite of what they expected. I presume this is because black holes were associated with mature stars collapsing later in the life cycle of the galaxy.
• So I heard one scientist wondering if the black holes, previously thought to be cosmic vacuum cleaners could actually be associated with the birth of stars or galaxies – the exact opposite of what all the maths has been saying.
• They measured the rate of expansion of the universe. They expected it to be decelerating but it was accelerating – the exact opposite.
• There is some interesting data about the quantisation of background radiation and red shifts. This is simply explained if we can accept that our galaxy is close to the centre of the universe. But “popular” science currently insists that our part of the universe is no different to any other – the opposite of what this data suggests.

The reality is that scientists are not answering questions as much as finding out how much more there is to know. Or said another way, they are not building a more complete picture as much as finding out how incomplete their picture is.

You don’t have to study the latest scientific research to know this. This is not anti-science Christian propaganda. The scientists themselves are saying this. Scientists are not trying to lie or hide anything, in fact, they are excited. You get it on television science programs and even the newspaper. But it never comes with a retraction or apology...

“Sorry, we thought we had it all figured out and you don’t need God any more, but we were totally wrong. Sorry that some of you turned away from your faith only to suffer eternal torment. But don’t worry, we will dream up something else soon.”

It comes down to this – I build my house on the rock, not on shifting sand.

Some sceptics think that god or gods were created by man to explain what they could not understand, and now man’s understanding of the universe has cut away all need for God. I can understand why they think this but it’s more a presumption than a researched philosophy and it’s totally wrong in the context of the Christian and Jewish faiths. These were born out of a very real God declaring that I am God – it’s real and personal and interactive, and by the way it’s beyond your understanding, but don’t worry, I’m in control.