Church Voices

I am not a scientist and can hardly be called a reasonably informed layman in science. Nevertheless, I have gathered from my reading that the three fields of cosmogony, abiogenesis, and paleobiology have reached somewhat of a consensus in the past 50 years or so. For the sake of a brief point, consider them each in turn.

Cosmogony is a branch in cosmology which focuses specifically on questions regarding the origin of the universe. According to Stephen Hawking, “almost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.” What has been empirically confirmed has recently been mathematically corroborated by a prominent team of astrophysicists who proved that any universe whose empirical description involves expansion “must face the problem of a cosmic beginning.” Oxford Philosopher Anthony Kenny is not dull to the implications. He observes that “a proponent of the big bang theory, at least if he is an atheist, must believe that the universe came from nothing and by nothing.” Indeed, this is precisely what philosopher Quentin Smith does believe, contending that “the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing”. The other option, which Smith also has at one point advocated, is that the universe is self-caused.

Abiogenesis is the study of the origin of life from non-life. The past 50 years have decisively dashed any hope the Miller experiment may have elicited in 1952. Most now believe that earth’s early atmosphere was a composition of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, which has been experimentally unfavorable for even the development of the molecular building blocks for life. This, too, has been mathematically buttressed. An academic symposium entitled “Mathematical Challenges to the neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution” was called in 1962 to discuss what appeared to be insurmountable probabilistic difficulties facing origin of life scenarios (the problem has since only intensified). Australian molecular biologist and physician Michael Denton refers to issues in abiogenesis as “the great cosmogonic myth” of our time. Francis Crick says an honest man must state that “the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle”. Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe also plugged the numbers and found them disparaging, resulting in their propagation of exogenesis, the view that life must have transferred from somewhere else in the universe. Crick soon followed suit with his directed panspermia, where the earth was seeded with primitive life forms by some extraterrestrial civilization.

Paleobilogy is a sub-discipline in paleontology that studies the fossil record of biological organisms. In Darwin’s day, the assumption was that such research would uncover multitudes of transitional fossils linking species to other species. But as the discipline has matured that assumption has not. Geology professor David Raup comments: “We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil records has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.” Instead, what scientists are finding is very densely populated regions of fossils of fully matured species that are not preceded by earlier ones. Stephen Jay Gould therefore proposed the now celebrated punctuated equilibrium, the view that instead of being produced by a gradual transitions, new species suddenly explode onto the seen at once.

Now let’s step back and assess the situation. According to science, after the universe either spontaneously popped into existence uncaused out of nothing or gave birth to itself, extraterrestrials seeded earth with primitive life forms which thereafter at various times in the course of history abruptly explode de novo entire species at once.

I submit that this is not science, but naturalism in a state of crisis.

I recently listened to the episode of Steve Brown Etc that included an interview with the authors of the book Why We’re Not Emergent (By Two Guys Who Should Be).

Please note, this is not a book review, I have not yet read the book, but plan to at some point, this is instead a comment about the interview itself.

What I came away with in this interview is that these two guys, contrary to their book’s title, shouldn’t be emergent/emerging/post-evangelical, or anything other than a couple of guys who are Baby Boomer style, American Protestants in the Reformed tradition. They’re plenty happy and content with the culture, and theology of the tradition they grew up in. Which is fine. I’m happy for them and hope they continue to serve and bless their brothers, sisters and neighbors in their church and community.

But the reality is that there’s a large group of people who find the culture and theology of boomer style churches unsatisfactory to the point that its nearly incoherent (also, its another post for another day, but emerging/emergent churches/individuals are often hard to get a grasp on because its a group of disparate people who have in common very little other than the incoherency of boomer churches).

Though I haven’t read the book yet, I don’t have high hopes for it based on this interview because the authors come off as not understanding how their particular tradition has failed many, many people, especially when they seem to think what they’re writing about is a generation gap.

On a side note, Steve Brown’s program is excellent, even when you might disagree with him.

I’m a big fan of the Office, but I noticed something… interesting. That something was that the only character on the show who self-identifies as a Christian is Angela. And she has a very specific character who has very specific traits and ways of communicating and relating. While this character is over the top because the office is an absurdist comedy, this character is also believable enough that the viewers and the producer find her to be a fine stand-in for evangelicals. Recently I put together an episode of the Justice and Mercy podcast that based on her character and thought I’d go ahead and post it here.

Download it here or listen to it below.

So this new book came out called Pagan Christianity and its getting some people upset. So here’s a podcast where Tim Reed podcasts from his basement in Owosso and Brant answers his phone somewhere in Florida and we talk about it.

Podcasting somewhere deep in the bowels of Owosso Church of Christ, Tim Reed, Chris Lyons and Christian Penrod discuss the role of certainty in Christianity.

Tim Reed of Owosso Church of Christ interviews Noel Heikkinen of Riverview Church about the way his church works.. Check it out.

Download it here.

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We’re back, for the second week in a row with a podcast. This podcast went long so we’ll be breaking it up into three different parts.

Download it here.

Listen to it here:

Here’s the post we’re discussing.

In the conversation we bring up when Jesus says, “Upon this rock I will build my church and not even the gates of hell will overcome it”. The deal here is that in an ancient attack defenders hide behind the gate, which means the church will be pounding on the gates of hell as the aggressors. The question we raise is how do we become the aggressor? If you want to comment (and your comment will probably be read on our next podcast) write tim@churchvoices.com.

We’ll be back with the second installment of our discussion on Wednesday.

Owosso Noise returns after a long hiatus, err… no sabbatical. Whatever.

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