Dr Paul Allen

In a recent letter to the editor in the local newspaper, an author complained that the “big bang hypothesis” was being taught in public schools. He said that we need a better hypothesis. His answer: teach “Creationism!” What this well-meaning Christian does not seem to understand is that the Big Bang model is actually evidence for a supernatural Creator. The eminent cosmologist, Alexander Vilenkin, made it clear: “With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape: they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” This raises questions science cannot resolve alone. Science is the study of nature, and yet with the Big Bang, we have scientific evidence for the beginning of nature itself. It is intuitively obvious and constantly confirmed that everything that begins to exist has a cause. According to Big Bang cosmology, the space-time universe (all nature) had an ultimate beginning. The question is r

English: The exterior of the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Reading Ted Cabal’s book leans toward an old-earth view, but that’s not the point of his book. His point is that the rhetoric we use to defend our view matters. For example, we should not call the age of the earth a “ gospel issue .” Cabal argues calmly, thoughtfully, and charitably. He explains that professing evangelicals engage evolution today in four different ways (and a popular group is associated with each): young earth creationism ( Answers in Genesis ) old earth creationism ( Reasons to Believe ) evolutionary creationism ( BioLogos ) anti-evolution without theology ( Intelligent Design , e.g.,  Discovery Institute ) A forthcoming debate-book  for Zondervan’s Counterpoints series features these four views: Young Earth Creationism : Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis) Old Earth (Progressive) Creationism: Hugh Ross (Reasons to Believe) Evolutionary Creation: De

The first sentence of sacred Scripture sets forth the affirmation upon which everything else is established: “ In the beginning , God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Three fundamental points are affirmed in that first sentence of Scripture:  (1) there was a beginning;  (2) there is a God; and,  (3) there is a creation.  One would think that if the first point can be established firmly, the other two would follow by logical necessity. In other words, if there was indeed a beginning to the universe, then there must be something or someone responsible for that beginning; and if there was a beginning, there must be some kind of creation. For the most part, although not universally, those who adopt secularism acknowledge that the universe had a beginning in time. Advocates of the big bang theory , for example, say that fifteen to eighteen billion years ago, the universe began as a result of a gigantic explosion.  However, if the universe exploded into being, wh

“All scientists —including agnostics and atheists—believe in God. They have to in order to do their work.” The dependable regularities and constants we observe in nature are the basis for all scientific inquiry and progress. Whatever their philosophical theory of these regularities might be, all scientists in practice depend on these laws to be a reliable guide to the external world . These natural laws or regularities are simply the providential speech of God upholding the world. Our beliefs about natural law are eerily similar to classical divine attributes . We assign to natural laws such properties as omnipresence (operating in all places), eternity (at all times), immutability (constant effects), immateriality (seen only in its effects), omnipotence (incapable of being broken), transcendence (applies generally), immanence (applies particularly), incomprehensibility (mystery as to why such laws work), goodness (natural laws are reliable), rectitude (consequences for breakin

Power, basically, is neutral. It simply means the ability to do things. Power is needed if you are going to do anything good, as well as if it is used for evil. Power is the capacity to accomplish goals, or to influence the outcome of events and processes. That is why, when you find that you are unable do either of these things (accomplish your goals or influence events), you feel literally “power-less.” Power, then, is effective action, making a difference, influencing events, changing the way things are or will be. It is not surprising, then, that the Spirit of God in the Old Testament is commonly linked with power, for the biblical God is nothing if not effective in action and in bringing about change! Indeed, when the Israelites spoke of the Spirit of Yahweh, it was often simply a way of saying that God himself was exercising his power on the earth, either directly or, more commonly, through human agents. The Spirit of God is God’s power at work—either in direct action or in

The metric expansion of space. The inflationary epoch is the expansion of the metric tensor at left. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) This is a challenging day to be a journalist on the science beat, if the goal is to avoid ultimate questions . I am happy to report that  The Washington Post  — to my surprise, quite frankly — didn’t try to avoid the obvious. Here’s the  top of its story  on the Big Bang update that is making global headlines: In the beginning, the universe got very big very fast, transforming itself in a fraction of an instant from something almost infinitesimally small to something imponderably vast, a cosmos so huge that no one will ever be able to see it all. This is the premise of an idea called cosmic inflation — a powerful twist on the big-bang theory — and Monday it received a major boost from an experiment at the South Pole called BICEP2. A team of astronomers led by John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced that it had d

English: Moses Pleading with Israel, as in Deuteronomy 6:1-15, illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "For our God is a consuming fire." ( Hebrews 12:29 ) Fire was considered by certain of the ancient pantheistic philosophers to have been the primeval element out of which all things had evolved, and this same myth is promulgated today by evolutionary cosmogonists in the form of their " Big Bang " theory. The fact is, however, that fire is a creation of God used both actually and symbolically as God's vehicle of judgment on sin. It is significant that both the first and last references to fire in the Bible mention both fire and brimstone , used in flaming judgment on human rebellion against God. First, "the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven" ( Genesis 19:24 ). And finally, "the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abom

English: An image of Psalm 23 (King James' Version), frontispiece to the 1880 omnibus printing of The Sunday at Home. Scanned at 800 dpi. Français : Illustration du Psaume 23 (version autorisée par le roi Jacques), en frontispice de l'édition omnibus du Sunday at home. Version numérisée à 800 dpi. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) "By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth . . . . For he spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast." ( Psalm 33:6 , 9 ) Many is the modern-day evangelical who has attempted to harmonize the plain sense of the Scriptures with big bang cosmogony, concepts of stellar evolution , and a uniformitarian framework for earth history . This exercise seldom results in a tempering of secular thought, but rather in a compromising reinterpretation of Scripture, making it say something it clearly does not say. The Bible says that "the worlds were framed by the word of God , so t

AUSTRALIAN researchers believe they may be on the brink of rewriting the history of the universe. A paper being published in a US physics journal suggests it may be possible to view "cracks" in the universe that would support the theory of "quantum graphity", considered to be the holy grail of physics. The team of researchers from the University of Melbourne and RMIT say that instead of thinking of the start of the universe as being a big bang, we should imagine it as a cooling of water into ice."Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," Melbourne University theoretical physics researcher James Quach said."Then as the universe cools, it ` crystalises '."The reason we use the water analogy is water is without form."In the beginning there wasn't even space, space did not exist because there was no form." Their research rests on a school of thought that has emerged recently to suggest space is made of indivisibl

Image via Wikipedia Michael Gerson gives the most lucid explanation I have found for what the Higgs boson--a.k.a. the “God particle”--is. He also explores the implications of the strange fact that mathematics, which is a function of the human mind, can actually predict what things exist in the external world: Modern physics can explain just about everything, except why anything has mass. The Standard Model of physics, which emerged four decades ago, employs an elegant mathematical formula to account for most of the elemental forces in the universe. It correctly predicted the discovery of various leptons and quarks in the laboratory. But the equation doesn’t explain gravity. So the Standard Model requires the existence of some other force that seized the massless particles produced by the Big Bang and sucked them into physicality. The detection of Higgs bosons would confirm this theory — which is why scientists are smashing protons into one another in a 17-mile round particl

Image via Wikipedia So what exactly did happen a billionth of a second after the Big Bang ? That’s the question particle physicists from around the world are trying to answer via a little science experiment using the Large Hadron Collider ( LHC ). This week, researchers  reported  that they are one step closer to verifying the existence of the elusive Higgs Boson (a.k.a. the “ God particle”). If they find it, it will be one of the biggest scientific discoveries in 50 years. “Our whole picture of how matter exists within the universe depends on the existence of the Higgs Boson,” said project physicist Dr. Robert Orr. And it seems we’ll spare no expense or effort to prove it’s there. Budget? $10 billion. The plan? Fly protons around a 17-mile-long ring at 11,000-revolutions-per-second (99.99991% of the speed of light) and then smash them together. The purpose behind it all? To try to understand how ma Image via Wikipedia tter and mass came to be! To try to understand how  we  came to