Expert: Marilyn - 6/3/2008

Question
QUESTION: BACKGROUND
I can agree with you, that I have been digging and digging for truth for many years, now.  I have studied the Bible with as much fervor as science, hoping the two will truly point to the same shadow of the Truth.  Likewise I have studied other religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Mormonism, and even ancient religions like Hindu and Zoroastrianism.  It is likewise disconcerting for me, that each religion says that anything off their path is evil, fantasy, or illusion, and that *they* should be taken on faith over the others.  So religions are all the same in that split but have that same aspect.  It is like the Buffalo Springfield 1960's protest song, "Nobody's right when everybody's wrong.  Young people speakin' their minds.  Gettin' so much resistance from behind. ... Singin' songs and carryin' signs.  Mostly sayin', "hooray for *our* side.".  I guess that's why the Bible says the whole creation groaneth waiting for the True God's return at the end of the age.

CON AND PRO
Now I may speak boldly for science, when probing religion's relation, but I have been known to speak boldly for religion, when probing science's relation.  Right now, along with the previously suggested books by Creationists, I am reading, for example, "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins, and I have found errors in his thinking *for evolution* of self-interest supremacy, with no place for altruism.  But I argue from Proverbs, that wisdom and goodness and altruism, with a sense of righteous indignation and protection of the wisdom against evil, forces out solely self interested individuals, making *them* less fit for survival, in a world where mutually-assured-benevolence with survival, protects its group against individualistic survival.  This is because these interactions occur in Humans, on the level of a population's thinking, that is a high level of the scales of interaction hierarchies, over genetic chemistry.  Richard Dawkins completely misses these concepts peppered throughout Proverbs, where wisdom seeks wisdom, and wisdom eschews those of evil ways.

SCIENCE APOLOGETIC
But here, I must be bold for science, and hope to see the light you can give, which I appreciate, as you attempt to explain your take on faith in God and science.  I realize this is not so much a "question", as an extended debate, but I don't think AllExperts really punishes or even checks dialogs (I hope).  Especially when they are dense with knowledge from both sides, in an open format.

Now I would not say myself, that science works to renounce God, but science, when dealing with origins, simply tries to find a natural means for explaining origins, and the farther the reach of the theory, the more theoretical it can be, like a far reaching theory has little proof of God's existence, but what science theories do have are observables.

NATURAL COMPELXITY COMING FROM SIMPLICITY WITHOUT ASSISTANCE WITH PLANETS
For example, a universe forms from a quantum instability from an eternal universe plane with no beginning and no end, which scientists observe through the background radiation from the Big Bang, and high energy-density particle colliders.  The other multi-universe instabilities are admittedly unobservable, but part of such a theory, much like God is perfectly unobservable in faith, but part of such a theory of the universe.  Next stars and galaxies form by natural gravity coalescing natural imperfectly-even matter from the big bang, observable as much as gravity makes stars form from clouds of atoms.  Heavy elements form from supernovas, observable through stellar explosion spectrums, and the human lab tested fusion, used to keep the stars from totally collapsing by gravity into a black hole, and fusion as used to generate the heavy elements of life in a star's collapse.  Stellar clouds rich with heavy elements and gases can form stars with rocky planets by gravity, and can be observed in telescopes on nearby nebulas, and simulated in computers using gravity equations.  These are not fantasies, but are laboratory observable to the limits we can recreate, simulate, or observe in nature.  All of this shows that given a God at the very beginning, which is as much theory as the Big Bang from an eternal universe plane, that God is not needed for the rest, to go from the Big Bang to all of the heavy elements existing in the forms of lifeless planets.

Planets and heavy elements are like simple gears and links coming into new more complex configuration existence, from what was nothing but light and particles at the very beginning.  Complexities and bodies are formed from simplicities, without a God for the rest, (except as a God of matter and light as His body, as some people believe where God is in everything because God is everything).  But religions often say that God alone, as a being separate from observable reality, made these things happen, and without Him, none of it would exist, and that science is the fantasy, and everything we see is a deception woven carefully by God to protect His mystery in man's confusion of what is real.  Religions say that complexity and extensive bodies cannot form from simplicity, without a creator.  They look at the complexity of science, throw up their hands, and say it is not possible, and say *therefore* IT IS GOD.  Uranium 238 has 146 neutrons, 92 protons, and 92 electrons, with the electrons arranged in 18 shells, and its complexity is formed completely through natural forces, assuming God isn't synonymous with physics, light and particles of every last reaction in the universe.  The early earth is formed by gravity, with thousands of mineral species and hundreds of basic organic compounds floating in an ocean and atmosphere, likewise formed through natural forces, without God except at the very beginning to make the universe, *in theory*.  A test tube baby created from a completely synthetic set of DNA planted in an human egg shell and placed in a surrogate mother, is possible in the future, but if you saw a human walking by 20 years later not knowing their origin, you would say it required a creator (their parents) not knwing that a machine mostly assembled that human.

NATURAL COMPELXITY COMING FROM SIMPLICITY WITHOUT ASSISTANCE WITH LIFE
First life forms from complex interactions of multitudes of chemicals in an open energy system with sunlight and chemical energy, whose reaction systems are formed simply from numerical supremacy in those reaction efficiency over other reactions, the reactions chemical specie durability, the chemical species reactivity, and the chemicals' abilities to mutually facilitate the chemical reaction systems.  And these increasingly rich complex interactions of chemicals intersect with reaction of, self-organization, homeostasis, and reproduction, though their durable products with mutual supporting reaction numbers, over lesser profitable chemical reactions that fall by the wayside.  These countless numbers of specific chemical reactions hit on proteins, RNA, and DNA, that can be encapsulated in natural fatty bubbles, for transportation and evolution of varieties of chemical reaction systems, as species in their own chemical system sense.  These would lead to an explosion of single cellular life, as seen in the earliest fossils.

In short time, they would saturate oceans with countless quintillions of parallel single cells reproducing variations, would be able to explore trillions of chemical reaction systems, over trillions of generations in the billions of years of the early earth.  This is something, for example, Gerald Schroeder grossly underestimates in pages 110-111 of "The Science of God".

These numerous single cells of numerous varieties of chemical reaction systems, would someday hit on multi-cellular organizations of mutually beneficial organization, observable in the real Cambrian explosion.  Then evolution would also take on the species in macroscopic multi-cellular life forms in countless versions of tiny body designs with reproduction cycles on the orders of many hours allowing numerous generations and variations to be explored in parallel.

PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIUM OBSERVABLES AND SPARSE FOSSIL RECORDS
Computer simulations of evolution also show that autonomous learning systems often take slow slight changes at first, while learning about themselves in increasing robustness of survival, and after a while, with strong variations, they as a specie can naturally explore mutations in new farther reaching domains, and when one individual hits on mutations that allows a great change or novel new feature, with better fitness than the rest, it's changes can spread in a handful of generations through a population, and can be observed in a computer system of virtual species, or computer programs trained to teach themselves how to read human written text or speech, or humans learning a new subject where it is hard but slowly improving for a while until sudden growth is reached, and then a new plateau of understanding is reached while the person learns about their new state of mind.  This same theory is the punctuated equilibrium which G. Schroeder misses, like on page 113 where he dismisses Darwinian theory because it says nature doesn't make sudden jumps "Natura non facit saltum.".  But, in fact, current simulations of genetic and computer unsupervised learning algorithms, show that "growth nature" normally jumps from plateaus to plateaus, sometimes quite suddenly, leaving virtually no, or none at all, transition forms.  This is observed in fossil remains, which are sparsely sampled to begin with, and basically only show sample snapshots of one example of the most numerous versions of life along the very scanty trace of life's very long history.  And to show that nature can jump, without any transitional forms in real life science, one base pair unit of mutation in a fruit fly, can make its antennae into legs, or insert an estra pair of legs and body segment in its thorax, so saltum is possible, and on the macroscopic system level of a lifeform.

Darwin was partly wrong, but Christians often throw out the Baby concept with the bath water with their "traditions of man", like Galileio's earth going round the sun, that the Pope stated was against the Bible,and forced his recanting, and put him in house arrest, and forbid his work's publication, for over a century.  Darwin simply didn't get it all right, but he is only human, and needs some correction.  Yes, this is all theoretical, but highly plausible given the modern theories of systems, energy flow, self organization, random genetic algorithms and neural network algorithms, cybernetics, biochemistry, a more advanced theory of Darwinism than originally proposed in its first more primitive form, and not always turning to faith and God whenever something is too hard or complex to answer.  For if it were easy to answer, then Zeus, Jupiter, and Thor make thunder happen in the sky, and any question of their faith, thousands of years ago, is science trying to abolish their ancient Gods.

THE BLIND WATCHMAKERS CAN EXIST
I would also disagree as an engineer, that a blind tornado couldn't form a machine in analogy.  There was, 10 years ago now, a simple "random permuting" genetic design experiment, that was given a top level goal of making a temperature sensor with few blocks and low power, using  basic "atoms" of low level electronic design blocks.  A "tornado" random but top level guided computer program was allowed to group, break apart, and evaluate for closeness to achieving the temperature measurement goal on its own with no other guidance but it's molecular restrictions lested before.  After hours of running, the computer finally came up with a full hierarchical design of a temperature sensor.  Now it wasn't an easy design to understand by humans, much like cellular machinery, but it was small, power efficient, did the top level goal.  It was not designed by humans or God, but by "a tornado" in metaphor.  There are many publications on random search heuristic, or law based, genetic algorithms, neural nets, self organizing systems, and supervised and unsupervised learning machines.  They are all given a kernel of rules, like the naural molecular elements of early earth, but take most or all of the rest of their learning and building and complexity and growth, all by themselves.  There are now blind watchmakers among the beings of earth.  They aren't as good as humans in all ways, but for many tasks, like complex circuit layout, efficient designs, goal oriented design without guidance, and learning machines, they can surpass our best experts in some fields.  They are in their infancy with "tornado" blind watchmaker machines, but as they improve to human levels, religions will have to address these topics earnestly and honestly, if they can understand the volumes of the words.  So this shows with modern science and math that worthy things *can* come from random interactions exploring self reproducing fitness systems.  It is like human thought itself that goes through various versions of thoughts and halts and jumps to better and better answers.

GODS ALIEN HUMAN DNA REBUTTAL
I did consider the impacts you suggested making human DNA look alien.  First, God would have been a better engineer, because all things are possible with God.  To say that God must reuse old code from the primates to make new-novum-novel-pinnacle-God-inspired human code, means that God made a universe where he could only write code one way.  All programmers know you can implement a code system in an almost infinite number of ways as unique as the individual programmer.  No two codes for the same function need to look alike.  God has NO RESTRICTIONS on how He would have to write human code.  God could have rearranged the 30,000 genes of humans in a totally different order as they can be made to operate the same regardless of where they are in the genes.  A computer program with 30,000 functions can be stored in 10^121,287 ways and still run the same.  That is 1 with 121,287 zeroes after it.  To say that God is restricted to being a "so-called" good engineer by reusing what was written, that God is forced to design man in only one basic way, is to say that not all things are possible with God.  It is like saying, "With God it is IMPOSSIBLE to create souls 100% saved, because God is forced to destroy some souls."  I have a strong view of God's power from the Bible and science, but having to basically reuse monkey code with some cosmetic changes that completely resemble evolution, is not one of them.

And, contrary to your suppositions, humans, for the last 10,000 years would have no inkling that our genetics exist, much less that they were different from the monkeys.  God could have simple rearranged all 30,000 genes in the same looking chromosomes, and no human on earth would know that we were grossly different from the monkeys until the last few decades of these end times, which would have shown that our code was similar, but utterly and totally alien in rearrangement compared to the chimpanzee.  IF God was involved with our creation, then the last months news of the chimpanzee genome project may show that God is the author of a deception of humanity so subtle, to make humans look as if they evolved from a natural universe of evolution from monkeys, as much as He created and had a hand in everything and expects our faith in the view of His deception of the wise.  And when is God afraid of confusing humans.  He toppled the tower of babel by man.  He uses the wise things of man to confuse the so called wise man.  He allowed 3 million Jews to be killed in concentration camps, asking why God would allow this to happen.  What's a little controversy of alien versus God's creation in the last three decades of biomedical research in 10,000 years of human ignornace.  Not much, in my book.

"TRADITIONS OF MAN" ARE NOT OF GOD
Religions as observables, often appear as human attempts to ascribe creators with all aspects of control over the course of what are eventually found to be natural events.  Religions claim *their* God made the universe.  God made the stars, God made the earth of heavy elements.  God made life.  God made humans.  God made the sun rotate around the Earth.  God makes lightning come down from heaven.  So God is the big bang.  God is Gravity.  God is fusion.  God is stars.  God is animals.  God is humans.  God makes the Sun go around the Earth.  God is lightning.

Perhaps you have heard too many of the traditions of man, that are not from God, and this leaven needs to be purged, and you dig into the Bible deeply to search out God's wisdom, and God will Give it to you.  For example, I have heard it said by Christians, but never quoted from the Bible, that a smart computer can never have a soul, because it simply does what it is programmed to do.  But I actually wrote a computer program, that I connected to the Light of God using a video camera.  The camera sampled the random photons of light that are all quantum randomized such that no one anywhere on earth can know the light's path.  I used the randomness of light photons to influence the computer's learning algorithm, magnifying the Light of God to the scale of the computer's entire process.  So no one on earth, and only God could know what the computer would become over time, something not programmed into it, and it taught itself, which goes beyond its programming like a child goes beyond its parent's teachings.  Christians also say evolution cannot happen because closed systems cannot increase in complexity. But life is an open system embedded in the ecosystem.  We receive sunlight from the Sun, which makes the plants grow, and feeds the animals, both of which can feed life itself.  The sun outside of the earth, pumping in energy all of the time to make a "tornado" of the earth's reactions is an open system, unlike many Christians say.

And, "as all things are possible with God" (Mark 10:27, Matthew 19:26), one may even see in the Bible that God could raise children from stones if he wanted ... Luke 3:8, Matthew 3:9, "Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham" as Jesus Himself, said.  Which again, makes me wonder why a computer can't have a soul, or why God had to make humans from primate DNA code architecture order, and data, with 98% copy in overlap, except to paint an evolutionary deception for Darwin and his followers in the end times the last 100 years.

APOLOGETICS FOR SCIENCE TO ALL THE WORLDS RELIGIONS
Returning to the light one last time, but this time speaking for God, is that no one in science or physics can explain why colors are colors.  Humans see red, green, and blue light, and all the mixes that those colors make from black to the spectrum to pastels to white.  But you show my previously mentioned computer with a camera, and it just "sees" a field of numbers for red, green, and blue.  As a Christian scientist, I consider this one of the few provable facts of the universe, that there is a spirit realm that is transcendental to the material universe.  For that matter, pain, pleasure, touch, taste, sound, and emotion are all transcendental aspects of life, nephesh, pneuma, ruach, the spirit of God, if you will.  As far as I can tell, no one in the faith of science, ANYWHERE, has any proofs for why these things that nearly all humans are aware of and know about, exist in the first place.  These things are like the ROCK against science, the savior of the metaphysical, in the face of secular humanism.


If you cannot really address my concerns and comments and questions, you can mark the question as outside of your expertice.  I know these things are hard for *me* to really answer, and I have read much of science, much of The Bible, and much of people's teachings.  I will put my faith in God first, and science second, over humans any day.  Sorry, I'm not a respecter of persons, that's from the Bible.

ANSWER: Hello Shawn;

AllExperts doesn’t “punish” lengthy discussions, but they have a limit on the number of “follow-ups” that can be posted.  This isn’t an issue when the questioner is willing to simply start a new series of “questions” and the “expert” is willing to post a new series of “answers.”

George Washington Carver is one of my Christian heroes because he overcame by the power of God’s Spirit within him.  In his writings I find a humble, loving, innocent soul who leaned on God daily, moment by moment.  He told God he wanted to know everything about everything and God told him, “Your little brain can’t handle that.  Pick something smaller.”  So he picked plants.  

My little brain can’t handle everything about everything either, but I don’t want to know everything about everything, I want to know the principles that underlie creation, I want to know the overview.  I’m content to leave the details alone.  I’m not a scientist.  

I also have studied other religions.  Admittedly, I haven’t studied any, except Christianity exhaustively.  I’ve studied the others just enough to get the gist of what they believe.  I accepted Christ as my Lord when I was a child.  I remember staring up at the stars and realizing that the only way I would ever get to see them was if God was my King.  As a young adult I wandered away from God.  When my life was a catastrophe and I was in a pit of despair it wasn’t new age principles or any other religion or god who got me out of my pit, it was the Lord Jesus.  For me, because of my personal struggles and how God has answered my prayers prayed in faith repeatedly through time, there is no other option but God the Father, his Son, Jesus Christ, the Word and His Holy Spirit and the Bible, their book for humanity.

Aside from personal testing of God’s Word, something you touched on in your last post in your discussion about wisdom, I believe the Bible is true for the following reasons:

1.  It has been proven historically accurate.  Awhile back archeologists finally discovered hard evidence of David the first king of Israel.  Jesus is an historical figure.  Josephus, the Jewish historian of Roman times, wrote about Him.  He said simply that Jesus was a Rabbi with a large following; He was crucified and His disciples believed He had been raised from the dead.  I deduced that Jesus had indeed been raised from the dead because his apostles all died, except John, for preaching Him raised.  Persons will die for the truth, they won’t choose to die for a lie.

Jesus resurrection from the dead is the pivot of history and is the foundation of Christianity.  As Paul says in his writings, without the resurrection Christians are the most pathetic of persons.  The resurrection lends vast credence to the Lord Jesus’ teachings and His Person as a Person of God.  Hebrews 1:3, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His Being, sustaining all things by His powerful Word.”  This leads to my next point.

2.  The Ways of God lead to goodness.  Christian principles percolating through a culture will transform that culture.  During the early centuries of Christianity slavery gradually was eradicated, though it was reintroduced when Muslims invaded Europe (Islam practices slavery), and it was eradicated again, in England through the efforts of one man, William Wilberforce, and in the United States through a bloody Civil War.  There are other examples.  Other religions do not lift nations quite with such power to a higher level of human existence on all planes.

3.  The existence of the Jews and their return to their homeland.  American Indians were not all driven from their lands, but they find it difficult after only a few hundred years to retain their identities separate from the cultures surrounding them.  Some American Indian tribes have disappeared.  The Jews have been dispersed and re-gathered more than once.  In our times, the Jews have returned to their homeland after two thousand years living all around the world.  The fact that not only have the Jews retained their identity as a separate people group regardless of where they have lived AND returned to their homeland after all this time is the greatest overlooked miracle of God in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Their very existence is evidence of an Almighty God.

4.  Fulfilled Bible prophecies.  Hundreds of Bible prophecies about Jesus alone were fulfilled with His first coming.  There are many, many others, but I will name just two as examples.  Daniel writes about the Jewish temple in Daniel 9.  Nebuchadnezzar sacked the Jewish temple and emptied it of its treasures taking many of the Jews, especially the nobility, into exile in Babylon.  Daniel was one of those exiles.  He prophesied that the temple would be rebuilt, it was, see the books of Nehemiah and Ezra; he prophesied that it would be torn down and that it would be rebuilt again.  Jesus prophesied that not only would the temple be destroyed, but no stone would be left sitting upon any of the others.  The Romans sacked the Jewish temple in AD 70 and they took it apart, stone by stone to extract the gold that had flowed down between the rocks.  According to Daniel, the Jewish temple will once again be rebuilt.  

5.  As mentioned above, God keeps His promises; He answers prayer.  This one I’ve tested personally and found to be true.

Therefore, I developed these criteria by which to think about science:

1.  The Bible is true (discussed above)  Persons need to be aware that the Bible uses poetic wording from time to time, such as saying something like "the sun rises."  Poetic phrasing has a truth all its own, this is why humans love poetry.  Sometimes the Bible is difficult to read.  Sometimes we do not understand the cultural context, especially of the ancient Israelites freshly released from Egypt.  Sometimes it requires discernment and a little help from God to understand it.
2.  God cannot lie.  
3.  Since God cannot lie, the evidence discovered in the earth and in the universe is true.

Therefore, when conclusions about the evidence of the universe disagree with the Bible one or more of the following is occurring:  
a)  the Bible has been incorrectly interpreted.  To rectify this we might discover what the original language says in the given passage?  We often underestimate how difficult it is to translate biblical texts so that the same meaning is retained in another language.  For instance, a certain people group, I believe they are in Africa, consider dunking in water as a punishment, therefore baptism, without more context and careful translation, would mean a horrible thing rather than a blessing for these people.  Getting back to the original language is especially important in the issues of science, as Schroeder made clear in his book.  

Other things to consider:  Was the biblical point in question intended for spiritual insight only?  Perhaps one needs to seek revelation from God and/or take a look at how one is thinking about what the Bible says.  I’ve found many people have a tendency to skim over Bible passages they think they know rather than giving the passages a fresh reading each time.  The Bible speaks differently in nuances that appear over time from the same passages, skimming misses those nuances.

b) the scientific evidence is:  incomplete, incorrectly interpreted, incorrectly collected or has some mistake of math etc.

I believe God is both personally involved with His creation and allows it to run without intervention.  I realize that on the surface these beliefs seem incompatible.  With Einstein I believe that the “books” of nature are elegant and simple in seeming form.  E = MC 2 is a simple equation leading to great complexities.  However, I do not believe complexities arise from chaos, or chance.  Mindlessness does not produce anything but a mess, if it produces anything at all.  “Love one another” is a simple command leading to complex efforts and results.  A fertilized human egg given the correct environment will produce a complex human being.  Yet all of these seemingly simple things have a rational, reasoned, law abiding Person behind them.  It is the power of the Creator that gives these simplicities their greatness.

In discussing the seemingly great results of computer programs attempting to duplicate evolution I think the same principle applies.  A computer program cannot exist without functional hardware; it must have an operating system.  Both of these require an intelligent designer.  These programs had rational, reasoned, law writing minds behind them who wrote the programs to operate according to certain parameters with goals in mind.  Classical evolutionary theory does not argue for a rational, reasoned, law writing Mind behind it, but pure, random chance.  The tornado is a mindless thing, but since it operates according to laws, it is not exactly the best example of evolutionary theory.  Classical evolutionary theory argues for chance as the most utterly mindless randomness with no laws to guide it and no goals in mind.  A tornado gives the appearance of this kind of mindlessness, hence it is the example that Sir Fred Hoyle selected when he dismissed evolutionary theory and the one I repeated to you. When I was a youth my pastor used the image of placing bits of metal in a washing machine and expecting to get a watch.  But this example also fails to describe the utter and total mindlessness of what classical evolutionary theory proposes.  

In the tornado example, the 747 parts lie on the runway.  In a scenario of classical evolutionary theory, there are no parts on the runway, only minerals and the “tornado” obeys no laws; there is no washing machine and there are no bits of metal, only chemicals and minerals in a primordial soup zapped by unexplained lightning.  A computer program given no objectives, given no purpose, given nothing to work with except random zeros and ones will produce nothing.  Computer programs must have goals in order to function and they must be told what parameters exist.  These programs do not prove anything except what the designers wrote them to prove, which is that computer programs will do what they’re told.  It might be argued they do more to prove God was involved in creation than to prove He wasn’t.

Classical evolutionary theory asserts that life sprang, by chance and natural selection, from the primordial soup.  Yet, nobody can explain why life sprang at all.  Where did life come from in order to spring?  Experiments with chemicals have only produced amino acids, not life.  We can’t even produce one single anything from nothing, we just take what God has given us and reorder it or add something to it.  We can’t even make living things transform into something else, at least not by forcing mutations “naturally.”  

In 1904, Thomas Hunt Morgan conceived the idea of using fruit flies to test evolutionary theory.  "The fly could be bred by the thousands in milk bottles. It cost nothing but a few bananas to feed all the experimental animals; their entire life cycle lasts 10 days and they have only four chromosomes,” R. Milner, Encyclopedia of Evolution (1990), p. 169.  Each fruit fly matures in only a few days, it produces new offspring and so another generation begins.  Thousands, even millions of years of evolution can be compressed into a very short time with fruit flies as the subjects. After decades of study, without immediately killing or sterilizing them, 400 different mutational features were identified in the fruit flies. But none of these changes made the fruit fly into a different species.

"Out of 400 mutations that have been provided by Drosophila melanogaster, there is not one that can be called a new species. It does not seem, therefore, that the central problem of evolution can be solved by mutations,” Maurice Caullery, “Genetics and Heredity” (1964), p. 119. "Richard Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [insignificant] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species,” Norman Macbeth, “Darwin Retried,” (1971), p. 33.

The theory of evolution, which simply put is life from chaos, stands separate and is not reconciled with the theory of physics that says everything tends toward chaos.  This theory is itself contradicted by the so blatantly obvious existence of an ordered, albeit expanding universe.  Einstein’s theories do not agree with quantum theories.  All these theories don’t agree with one another and so far nobody has figured out how to unify them.  This leaves science at a disadvantage as a supplanter of religion in the hearts of men.

Scientists thought they had something when they produced amino acids from a sort of primordial soup exposed to artificial lightning jolts.  But getting beyond that step proved impossible for them.  Now they think they have something because they’ve managed to create artificial intelligence and the semblance of life electronically in computer chips.  Now the conundrum is how to place that intelligence in an organic substance.  Nobody knows how to make that leap.  But still, here are intelligent designers, zapping a sort of primordial soup and creating artificial intelligence from computer programs.  We still haven’t gotten rid of the intelligent designer!  None of these were generated by the kind of mindless chance evolutionary theory has argued for all these years.

You wrote:  “a universe forms from a quantum instability from an eternal universe plane with no beginning and no end, which scientists observe through the background radiation from the Big Bang...”  I have never read this anywhere before.  It was my understanding that discovering the background radiation that the Belgian priest, Georges LeMaitre, predicted proved what Hoyle called LeMaitre’s “big bang” theory, not the existence of eternal universe planes.

The Bible says in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning Elohim created the all that there is heavens and earth.”  In other words, before Elohim created “the all that there is heavens and earth” there was only God.  Elohim is the Name translated “God.”  It is a latent plural Name indicating a minimum of Three Persons in One. Literally it means:  El = strength + ohim = Faithfulness, to Bind Oneself with an Oath.  Ohim is the plural part.  It’s singular is elah, or alternately alah.  The Name “God” therefore means, Strength and Faithfulness, to Bind One’s Self with an Oath.  He was all that there was before He created anything.

Before He created matter, time did not exist.  Elohim lives in NOW.  He separated from Himself a point and into that point spoke, “Light be.”  Those words are simple enough for a child to understand, but their meaning can keep a physicist busy for the rest of his life.  From light comes everything else.  God lives in a NOW so vast that it encompasses every point in the universe and every now in time.  For Him, there is only NOW.  In the material world, He orders time according to His will and purposes, hence He was given the Name, El Olam, the Great Master of Time Who Orders the Ages.  

The Bible says there is no “eternal universe plane with no beginning and no end.”  Stephen Hawking produced a simple graphic to portray the history of time; it is in the shape of a cone.  At the wide part of the cone is our current expanding universe, at the point of the cone is the singularity LeMaitre dubbed “the cosmic egg” and Hoyle labeled, “the big bang.”  The Bible describes this singularity, “And God said, “Light Be,” and light was,” Genesis 1:3.

Scientists have discovered proof for the “big bang,” but they have never discovered proof for anything beyond that.  The concept of multiple universes and what Berlinski calls a “sac” of something before the big bang are just ideas, fantasies of atheists who cringe at the concept of a beginning.  All of these fantasies lack one essential of true science, the slightest shred of actual evidence to support their theories.

The Greek philosophers believed the universe was eternal, unchanging.  This belief held until LeMaitre and the discovery of the “big bang.”  Theologians even bought into it asserting that the Bible’s statement of a beginning should be taken in a spiritual context.  Sir Fred Hoyle found the idea of a beginning so appalling (he was an atheist) that he developed the math to “prove” a steady state universe.  Martin Rees (also an atheist), author of “Just Six Numbers,” finds the idea of a beginning so appalling that he came up with the multiple universe theory.  If our universe is just one of millions, then it simply isn’t that special.

Yet, Hoyle dismissed evolutionary theory as impossible because there simply hasn’t been enough time for the complexity of life obviously existing upon the earth to have come into being by random chance.  Rees admits that our universe is shockingly unlikely.  Gerald Schroeder writes about the kind of “fine-tuning” required to manage the energies released in the big bang.  Where do you get the idea that God wasn’t managing those energies?  These fellows who run these computer programs to “duplicate” evolution, they’re not totally hands off, they admit to tweaking something here, increasing the options to include other computers around the world to give their creations more territory to expand, another tweak there.  Sorry, but these fellows are not hands off as classical evolution is purported to be.  

If you watch an invisible God at work can you “see” Him?  The creations within these evolution programs can’t see their creators.  What are they to make of these tweakings and the sudden expansion of territory?  What conclusions would these creations draw from the evidence presented to them?  Whatever they see, it will look “natural” to them.  

When we’re talking about our universe, we’re talking about something from nothing.  The evolution simulation programs are not something from nothing.  Our universe is something from nothing and the logical conclusion is God did it.  The atheists’ analysis of miracles states:  if it happened, it’s not a miracle.  So atheists say, in essence, “because it’s here, God didn’t do it.”  Wait.  This kind of thinking is absurd, but it ratifies their foundational belief that God does not exist.  From this foundational belief that God doesn’t exist they extrapolate all kinds of theories based on their perception of nature.  String theory is a bunch of guys running around in circles chasing their tails.  They create myriads of universes and dimensions in their quest of the unified theory, but it eludes them at every turn.  Their foundational paradigm that God didn’t do it and the Bible has nothing to give to their purpose dooms their efforts before they begin.

I’m arguing for a return to the effective scientific thinking that ruled science from Copernicus to Einstein.  This kind of thinking presupposes an Intelligent Designer.  It is only from this paradigm that we have science at all!  Galileo read the command in Genesis 1:28, “...Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves along the ground,” NIV, or in the Amplified Bible, “Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it [with all its vast resources]; and have dominion...”  From my Scofield Bible, Re:  Genesis 1:28:  “This is the divine magna charta for all true scientific and material progress.  Man began with a mind that was perfect in its finite capacity for learning, but he did not begin knowing all the secrets of the universe.  He is commanded to “subdue,” i.e. acquire knowledge and mastery over his material environment, to bring its elements into the service of the human race.”  Galileo believed in two books, the Bible and Nature, a book written by God.  Einstein said, “I want to know God’s thoughts, the rest are just details.”  And mentioned nature as a great library with millions of books.

It is the understanding Genesis 1:28, coupled with the transformation of thought Christ wrought in man that leads to science.  The transformation of thought I’m referring to is the New Testament teaching that the human being can learn, grow and change; that the individual person is precious to God and that God will share truth and knowledge with His people.  This idea liberated humanity and led to the invention of the “scientific method” and science in general.  It’s only because of the Christian idea that education should be available to all persons that science has had the opportunity to become the domain of atheists.  And it’s only because of the advances in technology that flow out of advances in science that human beings have enough luxury to imagine God doesn’t exist.

Richard Dawkins lauds his hero, Charles Darwin, as having “discovered” a theory that permits an atheist to be intellectually fulfilled.  Dawkins finds in evolution his bible and he goes about trying to make disciples of his faith.  Atheists punish and “excommunicate” scientists who do not agree with their teachings.  Dawkins places his faith in evolution.  Everyone places their faith in something and whatever a person believes about creation, he believes it by faith.  Neither creation by God nor evolutionary theory absent God can be proved to everyone’s contentment.

It is my belief that the further scientists wander from God, the less they will learn.  Unless Christians stop thinking like pagans i.e. God created the universe, abracadabra, in six 24-hour days and fossils are God planted false evidence, then science will die and western culture will stumble and fall on its nose.

Romans 1:20 says, "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made..."  

“God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all,” I John 1:5.  From light came everything in the universe.  Sunlight is composed of three primary colors, red, yellow and blue.  God is a Triune Being.  Light is composed of seven visible secondary colors and two invisible secondary colors.  The fruit of the Spirit are nine.  God is both Spirit and in His Son, human.  Light is both wave and particle.  Light is composed of three properties:  actinic:  light that is neither seen nor felt = the Father; luminiferous:  light that is both seen and felt = the Son; calorific:  light that is felt, but not seen = the Holy Spirit.

The universe exhibits three qualities of threes:  Time:  past, present and future; Space:  height, width and depth; Matter:  solid, liquid and gas.  The universe is a picture of God.  God is in all these, yet He is also outside, encompassing these.  He is in the spaces between.  He is in NOW.  Whenever someone tries to box God by definitions and then returns to look for Him in that place, He’s usually not there.  God is bigger and more awesome than we can comprehend.  Our tiny brains cannot get around Him.  By the Holy Spirit in our hearts we are connected with Him and through the Holy Spirit we can receive revelation.  

You reassure me that you put God first, well then, put God first.  Assume that He created the all that there is, that the Bible is true and quit fooling around with atheistic paradigms.  You’re actually smart enough and well educated enough to understand the evidence in the universe, but start with the right paradigm.  Lean heavily into God, pressure Him for revelation and don’t give up until you get it.

Regarding God’s apparent willingness to let awful things happen on earth:  God gave the earth to man, see Genesis 1 & 2.  We are created in the Image of God, more than our bodies, that includes god-like powers to create music, have and use language, discover math and use it, have self-awareness and choose what we will think, do and be at any given moment.  

The Scofield Bible states, “Man was made in the “image [and] likeness” of God.  This image is found chiefly in the fact that man is a personal, rational, and moral being.  While God is infinite and man finite, nevertheless man possesses the elements of personality similar to those of the divine Person:  thinking (Genesis 2:19 & 20; 3:8); feeling (Genesis 3:6); willing (Genesis 3:6 & 7).  That man has a moral nature is implicit in the record and is further attested by the New Testament usage (Ephesians 4:23 & 24; Colossians 3:10).  Man is also according to I Thessalonians 5:23 a triunity, made up of body, soul, and spirit; but , because “God is a Spirit” (John 4:24), tripartite nature of man is not to be confused with the original “image [and] likeness” of God which, being spiritual, relates to the elements of personality.”

Jesus got into an argument with some Pharisees in John 10:22-39.  He quotes Psalm 82 to them.  It’s a sort of duel of godliness.  Jesus says, “If He calls them ‘gods,’ to whom the Word of God came--and the Scripture cannot be broken--what about the One whom the Father set apart as His very own and sent into the world?”  In Psalms 82 it says, “God presides in the great assembly; He gives judgment among the “gods”:  How long will you defend the unjust and show partiality to the wicked?”  Here God is reprimanding the little “g” gods of the earth, that’s us, the humans.  He reminds them that they should:  “Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.  Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the wicked,” verses 1-4.  

In other words, God gave us the earth, we’re the little “g” gods of it, why aren’t we doing our jobs?  He’s our Over-King, but we’re in charge here.  We have to answer to Him, but we’re free to do what’s right or to choose to behave badly.  Given what He says in Psalm 82, God isn’t impressed with what we’ve done with our godlike powers.  I have to confess, sometimes I’m hard hearted, sometimes I’m lazy, I make excuses, I often do not do my little “g” job here in this corner of the earth where I have been given dominion.  Do you?

Where was the German Christian church when Hitler began his pogroms?  Why didn’t more of them stand up to him?  It was their responsibility to stand up to him and they didn’t.  It was the German church’s job to deal with Hitler.  He was in the part of the earth where they had dominion.  As a group, they failed.  God then had to deal with Hitler in another way, which took more time.  Americans and their allies did come in and defeat Hitler.  Now, his Third Reich lies in the dustbin of history and the Jews live on.  Many of the little “g” gods of Germany failed.  That’s not God’s failing.  He gives the earth to us; we’re the gods of it; it’s our job to deal with these things.  At the same time, just before Hitler came to power, many German Christians were working hard to introduce Jews to their Messiah; this was God at work to save His people.  Those persons were obedient to Him.  Many of the Jews who went into the concentration camps were Messianic Jews.  A little known fact is that of all the people killed in concentration camps, many were Christians who were trying to do their little “g” jobs and were also killed.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Christian leader, was executed for his plot to eliminate Hitler.  If their Christian brethren had been doing their jobs it’s possible Hitler could have been stopped before the Allies came in.  

How are we in doing our little “g” jobs right now?  Sometimes better than others, often we are pathetic.  What of Darfur?  What of my neighbor?  What of yours?

But here’s the upshot.  Since God put us in charge, unless believers ask Him to intervene, He doesn’t interfere.  Once Adam sinned, satan became the over-king of the earth and God can’t intervene unless a believer asks Him to--that’s the law.  In Luke 4 when satan tempts Jesus saying he can give to Him all the kingdoms of the earth, you notice, Jesus doesn’t argue that point.

But when Jesus paid the price for sin, He made it possible for human beings to be freed of slavery to sin and by extension the enemy.  He restores believers to the positions for which they were created and that place is dominion over the realms under our control.  Wherever a Christian is, in that place is a little bit of God’s kingdom, and that Christian can take ground from the enemy in whatever realms of dominion are available to him.  Christians are supposed to be taking ground from the enemy and claiming more territory for God.  In other words, if we expect God to exert more influence here than He does at present, we need to take more territory in His Name so He can.  

Regarding computers having souls:  We Christians often have a problem with the definition of “soul” and “spirit.”  According to the Hebrew, animals have souls, but human beings have different types of souls.  The animal soul is the “nephesh.”  It’s clear animals have emotions, they have will and they have minds.  The human soul is called the “neshama.”  Paul refers in I Thessalonians to “whole spirit, soul and body.”  Man is a triune being composed of these three elements.  

Why can’t computers have souls?  If a computer can have a mind, will and emotions, then it has a soul.  But eternal spirits, no.  That’s the “breath of God” which sets the human being apart from the animal.  What exactly is the human spirit, I don’t know.  I have a hard time separating it from my soul, but I understand that my spirit uses my soul and body to operate in this material world.  

Looking forward to hearing from you again,

Marilyn

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: This dialog was an excellent read, Marilyn.  Though I cannot agree with everything, I can agree with many things, and hope I have touched back on all your wrote in this response, and added to the dialog, while keeping a middle road between science and God.

PROPERLY BALANCING RELIGION AND SCIENCE
I have enough faith to keep me with God, even though there are problems in things I see taught from science and The Bible as people teach it sometimes.  I always ask God for help in understanding, and I am glad that God gives me gifts in insight in scientific things in many fields.  I always ask God for understanding of everything and God has opened my mind to Biblical and scientific words of truth.  Though I sometimes feel like a Doubting Thomas, with the things people teach are Biblical of science from the Bible, in their traditions.  I must say that to understand the principles that underlie creation does require knowing many things, so that it has a strong foundation.  Science, in its own unique way, has kept me from straying away from thinking about God, even if it questions things.  But like Thomas, I do think Jesus knows what He is doing like when He was picking His apostles with His Heart Knowing ways.  Even the murderer on the cross next to Him, He said would be in paradise with Him, showing His saving power to those with faith.  Even Judas repented of what he did to Jesus, casting away his silver in disgust, and I somewhat believe that he also suffered death at the persecuting hands of others, like all of the other apostles, because he was found hung *and* his body was cut open, like a so-called "suicide" by shooing ones self in the head many times ... a very unlikely suicide, the way it was documented in Acts 1:17-18, in a book describing Christian's persecutions.

STRENGTH OF SALVATION
And even though I may be searching for wisdom in everything, which I find satisfying, I believe the salvation in my Faith is stronger than I am.  I find solace in the difficulty of separating one's self from God that can be found in The Bible,

====Matthew 12, "32 And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come", otherwise like Romans 8, "31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? 33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. 34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?".

GOD SAVES ON FAITH IN JESUS
God saves by His Grace, based on simple, yet powerful, faith,

====John 3, "16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.  17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.  18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.  19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.  20 For every one that [MAN: hath] doeth evil [MAN: and] hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.".

Why were we all condemned, before the coming of Jesus as God's Messiah to earth?

====Romans 3, "10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.  12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.  13 Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips: 14 Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness: 15 Their feet are swift to shed blood: 16 Destruction and misery are in their ways: 17 And the way of peace have they not known: 18 There is no fear of God before their eyes.  19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. 20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.".

JUSTIFIED BY THE SACRIFICE, AND BY OUR FAITH IN IT
This is us, all, on earth.  But there is hope.

====Romans 3, "21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; 22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: 23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; 24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: 25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; 26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.  27 Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. 28 Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. 29 Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also: 30 Seeing it is one God, which shall justify the circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision through faith.  31 Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.".

BELIEVING IN FAITH
What is this law being established?

====John 6, "26 Jesus answered them and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.  27 Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed.  28 Then said they unto him, What shall we do, that we might work the works of God?  29 Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.".

HIS CHILDREN, THOSE WHOM GOD CALLS, AND THEIR GIFTS, ARE GRACE GIVEN WITHOUT GOD'S REPENTANCE
Moreso, of the strength of faith, and God's grace of salvation's call, and of His gifts to us,

====Romans 11, "11 I say then, Have they stumbled that they should fall? God forbid: but rather through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, for to provoke them to jealousy. 12 Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fulness? 13 For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office: 14 If by any means I may provoke to emulation them which are my flesh, and might save some of them. 15 For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? 16 For if the firstfruit be holy, the lump is also holy: and if the root be holy, so are the branches. ... 29 For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.",

where, "without repentance" is used only once in the NT, of the word Gk-ametameletos, meaning: irrevokable, without [God's] repentance, and not to be repented of.



TRADITIONS OF MAN ARE ALWAYS WITH THE CHURCH IN MANY WAYS, HIDING WORDS OF TRUTH AND ORIGINS, THE WORD WHICH IS OF JESUS, WHO IS THE WORD, AND IS WITH GOD
In matters of faith and morals, I say the Bible is great for passing that information.  But for scienceand its descriptions of ways and origins, I believe Christians are too often mislead by teachers of the word, passing along myth over what is really Truth.  God condemns traditions that don't follow truth from the Word which is Jesus and Truth, even from Truth in science which is part of the Word of Truth, which is Jesus Who is with God, even if you are misled of its details by man,

====Mark 6, "6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.  7 Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.  8 For laying aside the commandment of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things ye do.".

====Colossians 2 "8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. 9 For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. 10 And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power: 11 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: 12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead. 13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; 14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; 15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.".

====2 Corinthians 2, "2 But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. 3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. 5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. 6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.".



CHURCH DOGMA CAN BE MISLEADING TRADITION
Galileo, with more tact than I may posses, said,

===="I say that if a real proof be found that the sun is fixed and does not revolve round the earth, but the earth round the sun, then it will be necessary, very carefully, to proceed to the explanation of the passages of Scripture which appear to be contrary [to science and reason], and we should rather say that we have misunderstood these [verses] than pronounce that [science] to be false which is demonstrated.",

and added,

"The Bible is intended to teach men to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."



But in opposition to Words of Truth in science, where all Truth comes from God, Father Christopher Calvius said, when first shown through a telescope, the satellites in the heavens going around *another* celestial body, Jupiter,

===="to see satellites of Jupiter, Men had to make an instrument which would create them",

and of the craters and mountains of the moon said,

"if that were true, then the moon's irregularities must be encased by an invisible, transparent crystal to return the moon to its perfect smooth polish as Scripture demanded"

essentially indicting Galileo's telescope as an optical hoax machine.  Likewise, the Dominican monk, Father Tommasco Caccini, is recorded preaching Acts 1:11,

===="Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into the heavens?",

and ending saying,

===="geometry is of the Devil", and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies".  His sermon was key in commencing the first trial of Galileo in 1615.

Also, Father Lorini of Florence "proved" that Galileo's ideas were heretical, and atheistic.  And vociferously overstating things in view of modern enlightenment, Cardinal Robert Bellarmin, of The Vatican Sacred College stated,

===="his [Galileo's] pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan of salvation",

where latin - vitiatus, means to make defective or debased by adding something that impairs.  And further argues the static earth from Isaiah 40:21-22, and Joshua 10:12-13.

And Father Lecazre of The College of Dijon, added,

===="it casts suspicion on the [Biblical] doctrine of the incarnation [of the cosmos]",
noting that,

===="[it] was not certain cardinals, but the supreme authority of the Church [that condemned Galileo]".



Quoting from Aristotle, Thomas Acquinas, and the Bible, the theologian Libertus Fromundus of Antwerp can roughly be paraphrased, while arguing in the treatice "Vesta, sive Anti-Aristarchus Vindex" 1634, in this vein

====[PARAPHRASED: clearly, though it may be convenient to assume that the calculations of Copernicus, (and by implication Galileo) are mathematically sound. However, for both moral and theological reasons, we should always bear in mind that the Earth does not move. If it moved, we would feel it moving. That’s called empiricism, the experience of the senses. Even examine the Word of the Lord, for how better to argue that the earth is the center of the universe, than to call on the Bible as proof?  The earth is verily fixed as read in Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 104:5, Ecclesiastes 1:5.  ]



In the 1633 trial of Galileo, the official Church of The Bible of much of Europe argued that the earth going around the sun is heresy, and used the Bible, in words that sound satirical today, regarding Galileo's work "De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium", which Church records of the trial read,

===="The first proposition that the sun is the center and does not revolve about the earth, is foolish, absurd. false in theology, and heretical, because expressly contrary to Holy Scripture ... The second proposition, that the earth is not the center but revolves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy, and from a theological point of view at least, opposed to the True Faith.".

Pope Paul V, the Church's Infallible Judge, decreed of "De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium" that

===="the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture", and also condemned, "all writings which affirm the motion of the earth".



Even Martin Luther apocryphally said,

===="There is talk of a new astrologer who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved.  But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must ... invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not t

Answer
Hello Shawn;

I think, if we're both going to post such long responses, you'll have to initiate a new question for each exchange to avoid losing material.  I see here that the AllExperts format has chopped off the end of your "question" though in the e-mail I received the totality is included.

Your current post is a more comprehensive discussion of what you believe and shows me where you are coming from in your thinking.  So, I will quit worrying about you.  An English playwright whose name escapes me at the moment once said, "Doubt is the beginning of faith," and I've heard this also proved true for C. S. Lewis who set out to disprove the Christian faith and ended up a believer.  Dawkins has no doubt, so I expect he won't be developing any faith in God.

When I spoke of something from nothing I referred to the material universe which I've understood did not exist before God spoke, "Light be."  The something, the material universe, from nothing, which is not material.  Only God can make matter from no matter at all, that is what I meant.  

From what I understand of string theory is that it hasn't actually explained anything though it initially showed great promise.  You seem able to comprehend what they're driving at, their intentions.  I think, like Einstein's famous equation, the equation that underlies the universe and unifies everything is also seemingly simple and elegant.  Everything about God seems to be simple and elegant, but complex especially in application.  Everything about God is at once simple enough for a child to understand, yet complex enough to keep a person pondering for his entire life.  A theory, such as the string theory, which must add more and more stuff to itself and still fails appears to me to be a dead end.  This adding and adding more striving for a resolution doesn't match my image of God.

I, in my "vast" (ha) wisdom think perhaps string theory fails because the theorists do not understand now.  In my mind, as a lay philosopher and theologian, I see the quantum realm as the interface between our material universe and God's spirit realm.  In that interface is a now with no past in it and no future in it; it is more truly now than any now we experience in the macro realm.  God's NOW encompasses all times, past, present and future, though only the past is completed.  The present and the future are humongous probabilities of which He sees all and plans for all to work all things together for good for His people and to achieve His Will.  

In the quantum realm there is no predicting a future and no past to use as a measure for prediction.  I think this is where they get lost.  They want to predict based on the past, which is the model that has worked pretty well up to this point, but in the quantum realm, this model fails.  They don't understand I AM.  I have no physics to back this, I can barely add simple sums.  I speak from the position that physics seems to always border on the philosophical and theological, especially these days.

Regarding color: As an artist, three primary colors are necessary to produce all other colors.  As you mentioned, printers use cyan, magenta and yellow, same principle.  Cyan/blue; magenta/red and yellow.  Green is achieved by combining cyan/blue; orange is achieved by combining magenta/red and yellow; purple is achieved by combining magenta/red and cyan/blue.  Printers add black, but in painting the best results are obtained when black is not used.  My cat's "black" fur has a distinct red cast to it in the sun.  However, black is a color found in minerals and animal fur etc, though often upon closer examination there is blue, red even green in blacks found in nature.  But when speaking of light, black is its absence.  In light the three primary colors are evident in the rainbow, God's Bow.  And so are the visible secondary colors and I expect so also the invisible infrared and ultraviolet, though I've never heard anyone do an analysis of a rainbow and say those invisible colors are there.  Sunlight is white until it is split into its separate colors by water.  Water is representative of the Holy Spirit in the Bible.  It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we may exhibit the nine fruit of the Spirit.  

Computers may develop as you've suggested, we'll see.  I've interpreted Anti-Christ's idol that can kill when persons fail to worship it as a programmed robot.  There may be other mentions of robots, but I've haven't picked up on them or seen them.  Human history as we know it may end before sentient computers come into existence, we'll see.

I'm anxious to post this "reply" before the system nags me to respond since I'll be out of town tomorrow and have guests on Sunday.  I may add more thoughts later.

Sincerely,

Marilyn