The Creation of the World: The Crossroads Between Theology and Science (4 of 5)

...continued from part three.

Moreover, the truth is that the idea of creation from nothing had begun to gain ground in the mind of the scientific community, a concept that was clearly closer to a religious approach to things[18]. Already a great figure in science in the 20th century, the physicist and philosopher of science, Sir Arthur Eddington (1882-1944), using a logic dependent probably on Occam’s Razor[19], declared that the difficulties presented by a beginning (of the universe), are so insurmountable that they can be avoided only if we invoke a supernatural cause[20].

The Creation of the World: The Crossroads Between Theology and Science (3 of 5)

...continued from part two.

Beyond the checking of prevailing theories, which is inherent in the research process[11], and the required investigation of all alternative proposals, which will provide the answers sought for, it’s difficult to avoid the observation that one point which encourages the need for a recourse to forms which by-pass the established cosmological model of the Big Bang, has to do precisely with its close relationship with the religious version of the creation of the world. Indeed, acceptance of the beginning of the universe from a particular time is more in tune with the Biblical (if not other) narratives concerning the beginning of the world through divine will and intervention.

Our Universe Contains 10 Times More Galaxies Than We Thought

Timothy Revell

October 13, 2016

New Scientist

Space used to be surprisingly crowded. The observable universe contains a whopping two trillion galaxies, making it 10 times as packed as we previously thought.

Since the Hubble Space Telescope started observing the deep sky, we’ve used its images to estimate that the universe we can see contains around 100 billion galaxies. But now, a team of astronomers led by Christopher Conselice at the University of Nottingham has generated 3D images of deep space by combining images from telescopes around the world, including Hubble.

If the Earth Stopped Spinning

St. Gregory of Nyssa on the Beginning of Creation

By St. Gregory of Nyssa

(On the Making of Man, Chs. 23-24)

XXIII. That he who confesses the beginning of the world's existence must necessarily also agree as to its end.

1. But if some one, beholding the present course of the world, by which intervals of time are marked, going on in a certain order, should say that it is not possible that the predicted stoppage of these moving things should take place, such a man clearly also does not believe that in the beginning the heaven and the earth were made by God; for he who admits a beginning of motion surely does not doubt as to its also having an end; and he who does not allow its end, does not admit its beginning either; but as it is by believing that we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, as the apostle says, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear , we must use the same faith as to the word of God when He foretells the necessary stoppage of existing things.

A First Sighting of the Earliest Stars of Creation

An artist’s impression of CR7, a very distant galaxy three times brighter than any other known galaxy from this period.

From Cosmos Magazine (July 6, 2015):

The Universe began with a brilliant flash but soon descended into darkness – until finally, a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars flickered into life.

Astronomers believe they have now glimpsed some survivors from this pioneering generation of stars. These ancient ancestors of modern stars were monsters, hundreds of times more massive than our Sun and millions of times as luminous. Their short, intense lives ended in giant supernova explosions that enriched the cosmos with the first elements that were heavier than helium such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen – the stuff of planets and ultimately of life.

Cosmologists Forced to “In the Beginning”

The late astronomer Robert Jastrow detailed in his 1978 book God and the Astronomers how cosmologists were repulsed by the idea the universe had a beginning. He found it quizzical that they would have such an emotional reaction. They all realized that a beginning out of nothing was implausible without a Creator. Since then, various models allowing for an eternal universe brought secular cosmologists relief from their emotional pains. It now appears that relief was premature.

Saint Porphyrios and Apollo 13

Below is a brief translation summary of a lecture circulating in Greek in the video by Metropolitan Athanasios of Limassol about Saint Porphyrios of Kavsokalyva and how he helped to save the crew of the Apollo 13 lunar mission. It is not a word for word translation, just a basic one. Unfortunately many details are left out, but the Metropolitan passed on this information because he believed it to be a miracle of God through the Elder.

The Horror of Nature at the Death of Christ

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

"The earth quaked, rocks were split" (Matthew 27:51).

O, what a terrible reproach against mankind! Even dead nature recognized Him Whom men were unable to recognize. All mute things trembled and began to protest, each in its own way and in its own language. The mute earth quakes - that is its language. The stones split apart - that is their language. The sun withholds its light - that is its language. All of creation in its own way protested. For all of creation is submissive to Him, as it was to Adam at one time in Paradise, because all of creation recognizes Him as it did Adam in Paradise.

How is it that irrational creation knew Him and was obedient to Him, we do not know. It is some kind of inner instinct of irrational creation, which came to them from the Word of God, by which they were created. That instinct of irrational creation is more valuable than the mind of man when darkened by sin. Of all the things which are in existence, nothing is more blind than the mind of man when darkened by sin. Not only does he not see what was created to be seen, rather, he sees that which is contrary to being, contrary to God, and contrary to the truth. These are the degrees of the blindness; beneath blindness; these are numbers below zero. This is man of lower creation. For when the priests of God in Jerusalem did not recognize their God, the storms and winds recognized Him; vegetation and animals recognized Him; the seas, the rivers, the earth, the stones, the stars, the sun and even the demons recognized Him. O what kind of shame it is for mankind!

Cosmological Contingency and Logical Necessity: G. Florovsky and T. Torrance

This lecture was delivered in April 2011 at the Orthodox Theology and the Sciences Conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria.

By Matthew Baker
Fordham University, New York, USA

After long neglect, Fr Georges Florovsky is now finally again being talked about. Over the past two years, conferences have been held in five countries, a society has been established at Princeton, and articles are appearing in various journals – all dealing with Florovsky's thought and influence.

Some of this talk is highly critical. Some argue that Florovsky's neo-patristic hermeneutic must be, not extended, but transcended, left behind, if Orthodoxy is to rise to the needed engagement with modern culture. Given the crucial place of the sciences in the birth of the “modern,” it is interesting, to say the least, how little engagement with scientific thought one finds among these critics.

In contrast to these critics, the work of Alexei Nesteruk has recently shown us how contemporary physics and Orthodox theology in a distinctly Florovskian vein may be brought into deep and fruitful interaction. But there is another figure upon whose crucial contributions Nesteruk explicitly builds, who has also not yet received the interest deserved from the Orthodox. Of all 20th century theologians, T.F. Torrance's offering to theology-science dialogue is the most estimable, and informed by a profound engagement with the Greek Fathers. In a certain sense, the two approaches of Torrance and Florovsky are joined in Nesteruk's attempted neo-patristic synthesis of theology and physics.

This exchange is not one Nesteruk inaugurated. After meeting, probably at the first WCC assembly in Amsterdam, 1948, Florovsky and Torrance corresponded occasionally into the 70's. Torrance's published works also contain positive remarks on aspects of Florovsky's thought.

In the context of theology-science dialogue, however, it is on the theme of the contingency of creation that Torrance most frequently repairs to Florovsky for insight. In what follows, then, we will consider Florovsky and Torrance's contributions to our understanding of created contingency in theology and science, and then conclude by asking what, if anything, the respective approaches of these two theologians have to offer to one another as well as to the wider enterprise of Church theology.

Stephen Hawking’s Creation Confusion

William Carroll

September 8, 2010

Public Discourse

Scientists have begun to doubt whether there was a “Big Bang.” But in claiming that this disproves the existence of a Creator, they confuse temporal beginnings with origins.

“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.” Such is the affirmation of Stephen Hawking found in his newly released book, The Grand Design. It is not unusual to hear a distinguished scientist make the claim that the universe and everything about it is, at least in principle, exhaustively explicable in terms of contemporary science. In his famous book, A Brief History of Time (1988), Hawking did admit that perhaps a god was needed to choose the basic laws of physics and that, accordingly, if a grand unified theory of scientific explanation were at hand we would come to know “the mind of God.” Now Hawking thinks that, more broadly, we can do away with an appeal to a creator, at least as he understands what ‘to create’ means. Citing a version of contemporary string theory, known as “M-theory,” Hawking tells us that the “creation” of a great many universes out of nothing “does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god.” Rather, these multiple universes “arise naturally from physical law.” Ultimate questions about the nature of existence which have intrigued philosophers for millennia are, so he claims, now the province of science, and “philosophy is dead.”

"Theory of Everything" Shows Stephen Hawking to be God-Haunted

As we come to the close of 2014, two of the most buzzed about movies currently out in theaters are about two scientists (Alan Turing and Stephen Hawking) who are united in brilliance and suffered in different ways in their lives, though they commonly suffered from atheism. At Real Clear Religion, Father Robert Barron writes very insightfully about the Hawking film, The Theory of Everything, which he calls "God-haunted," as was, seemingly, the relationship between Hawking and his wife Jane:

In one of the opening scenes, the young Hawking meets Jane, his future wife, in a bar and tells her that he is a cosmologist. "What's cosmology?" she asks, and he responds, "Religion for intelligent atheists." "What do cosmologists worship?" she persists. And he replies, "A single unifying equation that explains everything in the universe." Later on, Stephen brings Jane to his family's home for dinner and she challenges him, "You've never said why you don't believe in God." He says, "A physicist can't allow his calculations to be muddled by belief in a supernatural creator," to which she deliciously responds, "Sounds less of an argument against God than against physicists."

Fr. Job Talats: "In Space You Can See the Grace of God"

His Holiness Patriarch Kyrill is shown around the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre and the cockpit of a spacecraft. "Space flights are in accordance with divine will, to the extent that they provide man with the opportunity to improve himself," he had stated in November.

The confessor of the cosmonauts at the Yuri Gagarin Training Centre near Moscow speaks of God and of Creation with his flock, even when it is in orbit around the Earth.

January 30, 2011

To Vima

"Did you see God when you went up there?" This question - often sarcastically posed, sometimes with sincerity, and for others quite naggingly - is repeatedly asked of the members of space missions after their return to Earth. American astronauts had given a reply to that question - and their words were stamped in history - that... they had seen His footprints. Russian cosmonauts on the contrary would not tolerate or make any such quips on matters like these. In the atheist Soviet Union where religion was "the opium of the people", God didn't exist. Until the 1980's. Today, in Vladimir Putin's Russia, conditions are different. Russian cosmonauts admit they have their own confessor, with whom they communicate at any given moment, even when they are in space, just before embarking on their space walk.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on the Compatibility of Science and Faith

In 2010 Cafebabel interviewed Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on various contemporary topics (see here). Below is a question with the answer of His All Holiness having to do with the compatibility of science and faith:

Finally, are science and faith incompatible or simply have other recipients and content? Recently, Stephen Hawking has caused a stir with his statements that the universe could exist without the Creator. Do you regard such statements as meaningful? What is the answer of the Church?

Patristic Cosmology and Scientific Cosmology

By Vladimir Lossky

The cosmology of the Greek Fathers is necessarily expressed in terms of the conception of the universe which prevailed in their own age; a fact which takes nothing whatever away from the properly theological basis of their commentaries upon the Biblical narrative of the creation. The theology of the Orthodox Church, constantly soteriological in its emphasis, has never entered into alliance with philosophy in any attempt at a doctrinal synthesis: despite all its richness, the religious thought of the East has never had a scholasticism. If it does contain certain elements of Christian gnosis, as in the writings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus, or in the Physical and Theological Chapters of St. Gregory Palamas, the speculation is always dominated by the central idea of union with God and never acquires the character of a system. Having no philosophical preferences, the Church always freely makes use of philosophy and the sciences for apologetic purposes, but she never has any cause to defend these relative and changing truths as she defends the unchangeable truth of her doctrines. This is why ancient or more modern cosmological theories cannot affect in any way the more fundamental truth which is revealed to the Church: 'the truth of Holy Scripture is far deeper than the limits of our understanding', as Philaret of Moscow says.1 In the face of the vision of the universe which the human race has gained since the period of the renaissance, in which the earth is represented as an atom lost in infinite space amid innumerable other worlds, there is no need for theology to change anything whatever in the narrative of Genesis; any more than it is its business to be concerned over the question of the salvation of the inhabitants of Mars. Revelation remains for theology essentially geocentric, for it is addressed to men and confers upon them the truth as it is relative to their salvation under the conditions which belong to the reality of life on earth. The Fathers saw in the parable of the Good Shepherd, coming down to seek one erring sheep from the mountains where he has left the remaining ninety-nine of his flock, an allusion to the smallness of the fallen world compared with the cosmos as a whole, and with the angelic aeons in particular.2

Orthodoxy and Modern Cosmology

The following is taken from "Orthodoxy and Modern Life: An Interview With Metropolitan Nicholas of Mesogaia".

Orthodoxy and Modern Cosmology

N.K. There is another topic within this dialect of scientific developments and it concerns a possible connection between the Orthodox view of Cosmology and contemporary Physics. Would you like to say something?

Galileo and Medieval Science: The True Story (video)

Read also: The Galileo Affair and “Life/Consciousness” as the true "Center of the Universe"

Robert Jastrow on Where Science Ends and Theology Begins

Robert Jastrow (September 7, 1925 – February 8, 2008) was an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a leading NASA scientist, populist author and futurist.

His expressed views on creation were that although he was an "agnostic, and not a believer", it seems to him that "the curtain drawn over the mystery of creation will never be raised by human efforts, at least in the foreseeable future" due to "the circumstances of the big bang - the fiery holocaust that destroyed the record of the past".

In an interview with Christianity Today, Jastrow said "Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover. That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact."

Robert Jastrow

God and the Astronomers

Chapter 6

The Religion of Science

Fr. John Romanides on the Creation of the World and Man (2 of 6)

...continued from part one.

E) Recording the Experience of Revelation

- "Revelational experience is formulated in created words and concepts. The God-seeing Prophets, Apostles and Fathers use the perceptions of the people of their era in order to put their experience into words. Their basic teaching is that God created the world and He directs it, but the formulation of the experience in words comes from the knowledge of the period. The teaching is a matter of theology, the wording is a matter of communication. The cosmology of the Old Testament, as regards expression and formulation, is influenced by the Babylonian cosmology of that age. We stress this to avoid any confusion between the theology of the God-seeing saints and the scientific language of each era." (Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos)