Faith Well Grounded

I'm truly amazed at some of the brilliant people this world produces. Seriously. Pick up any science mag out there and just think about some of the stuff you'll read. It's enough to make me thankful that I'm not quite that smart, because I prefer to actually use my brain with a bit of reason in the mix.

I'm a creationist. There, I admit it. And as a Christian theist, I have developed an immunity to to the slurs and smirks from the naturalist camp. I've learned to accept the "escapism" label with grace and dignity. I'm fully aware of the "opiate for the masses" brush that religion is painted with. But the more I think about what atheists believe, I have to wonder just who the escapists are (actually, that is putting it too gently. I am fully convinced who the escapists are). While the atheists out there are convinced that Christians have a huge imaginary friend to (mis)place comfort in, Christians have actually come to grips with a God that deserves our honor, demands an unselfish life, and is the basis against which we judge our actions. He is anything but some purple-dinosuar-equivalent for the faint of heart. He is our Creator and Savior, to whom we have the ultimate of responsibilities. Who is the escapist, but those who shirk this responsibility? But now I'm on a tangent...

Some of our most brilliant scientists have spent decades trying to create scientific models to prove that the Universe started from nothing-- that it literally just popped up from a state of nothingness. There is a great need to show that the Universe is not an effect, that it had no cause, because a cause threatens any sense of naturalistic philosophy. It just smacks of God, because anything that had a beginning must have a sufficient cause. So in the atheist's mind, the Universe could not have had a beginning. It must be either infinite or have created itself (which is impossible, by the way, since it would have had to have existed before it existed. Just think about that for a moment).

Pretty much everything we can see of the Universe points to a beginning. The laws of thermodynamics indicate that the Universe is winding down. If we reverse this we see that it was wound up. There is latent radiation everywhere, left over from the sudden start of the Universe. We observe the Universe as expanding, so if we travel back through time, it contracts to its beginning. There are too many indications of the beginning to list, but you get the idea. Thus, we are left with a beginning, and the need for a sufficient cause for that beginning.

So enters the Universe Ex Nihilo. The Steady State Theory was developed to give us a Universe from nothing. It just popped up, something from nothing. Apparently, at points in space called "itrons", hydrogen just springs up from nothing, and displaces the matter that was already there, and makes the Universe expand. Now, you don't really need masters-level logic classes to reason the problems with this. If there was ever complete "nothingness" there would always be nothing. If there was only nothing to cause something, then that something would still be nothing. That's a by-product of the laws of cause and effect. We also have the principle of conservation of matter, which states that matter and energy can never be created nor destroyed.

The Inflationary Universe Theory is another stab at the subject from reputable scientists. It seeks to establish that the Universe just popped up from nothing as a bubble of highly curved space-time-- fully uncaused and from nowhere/nothing. But a closer look shows that this "nothing" from which it comes is "virtual quanta seething in a false vacuum". That is something, my friendly scientist-guys. Those have energy and properties. They are not nothing. Anything with properties attached is something, even if it is hard to imagine and explain.

I'm pretty sure that the Steady State Theory, the Inflationary Universe Theory, (and its revisions that followed) have all been pretty much discarded. But that isn't the point. My point is, who are truly the escapists? Who is it that ignores reason, logic and established scientific law to escape the implications of what science and reason really tell us? Even Stephen Hawking, who forced the scientific community to admit the beginning in the first place, is now developing a model for an infinite Universe. I haven't the time nor inclination right now to attack the science of this (it appears the scientific community is busy enough doing that), but I will attack the logic. If the Universe is infinite, and is going through cycles of expansion and contraction, where is this infinite Universe expanding to? It's infinite, thus it would have no boundaries. That's like trying to put another book on the end of an infinite bookshelf. Maybe these atheistic endeavors are like that too. Maybe an answer without God is like the leprechaun's gold at the end of the rainbow. Now who has the imaginary friend?

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