A Creation Fairytale

Is Everything We Know About The Universe Wrong? (click image to be taken to iPlayer)

You don’t like the existing descriptions of how the universe came to be. It’s time to write a new one.

It looks like the universe is expanding, so clearly there’s no other possible explanation than that it used to all be compressed into a very small space, before it exploded.

Cool, so the universe started with a big bang, that explains everything.

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Hang on, all normal explosions lead to random lumpy debris that’s really hot in some places, but cooler in others. How do we explain why our universe is really smooth and all the same temperature? I guess we could say it started off expanding slowly, so it got smoothed out while it was still small, then it suddenly inflated really quickly for some reason to get to the sort of size it is now. No idea how or why that would’ve happened, but it means we can stick to the big bang story, so we’ll go with it.

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Those galaxies don’t look right. The stars at the edge should be moving slower than the ones in the middle, like the planets in our solar system, but they’re going the same speed. How can we fix that? I’ve got an idea. How about if there was a load of extra mass that we can’t see? If there was enough of the stuff, the physics would work. How much do we need? 5 times as much of this dark stuff as the matter we can see?! That seems like we’re relying pretty heavily on something we invented without being able to detect it, but it’s the simplest explanation I can think of, it’ll have to do.

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Um, guys… why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?

Could there be a load of energy we can’t see, too? Yeah, call it dark energy and we won’t have to prove it exists by detecting it or anything silly like that; people will just have to accept it ‘cos we’re the clever people and we can’t come up with anything better.

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Dark flow? Mate, is it just me, or is the whole idea that the present can tell us everything we need to know about the past becoming less and less convincing?

And, fun as it might be to have a go at those religious nuts who use a scientifically unobservable God to explain where we came from; taking an honest look at what us scientists are putting our faith in, it’s not really any more sensible. And if we judge a theory’s success by how well it resists people trying to rip it apart, those guys have a bit of a head start.

Like that whole Jesus rising from the dead thing, it’s actually surprisingly well supported by historical evidence. Is there really a scientific reason we can say for certain that miracles like that could never happen? I mean the whole point of a miracle is that it’s not a normal event, so we probably shouldn’t expect to be able to apply the normal rules of science. And if he actually rose from the dead, he probably deserves to be listened to…

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So God wants everyone to be perfect like him, I guess that’s fair enough, but no one lives up to that, do they? What are we supposed to do?

Nothing? Just trust that God took the punishment I deserve on himself? That’s too easy, I want to earn my forgiveness…

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Ok yeah, that’s not gonna work…

So it’s really all been done for me? That’s actually unbelievably awesome.

History of the Bible?

I was looking forward to this series on Channel 4, but it makes a shockingly bad start.

Apparently to have ever begun believing in only one God, the Jews must have stopped believing in more than one, never to return.

This is despite the Bible being full of accounts of the Jews turning away from faith in the one true God, to worship the idols of other nations over and over again. Archaeological evidence of idol worship since the time of Moses doesn’t even come close to proving that the monotheistic creation account wasn’t written until much later.

I agree to some extent with John Polkinghorne, and the conclusion that the Bible is not a science text book; Genesis 1 alone isn’t what convinces me that the theory of evolution is wrong, but I’m with Greg Haslam in that my faith in God is rooted in real events.

Christianity’s Civil War

I just watched Ann Widdecombe’s episode on the Reformation from the Channel 4 series Christianity: A History.

She has an interesting perspective on the whole thing having been brought up in the Church of England but converted to Catholicism about 15 years ago.

In case anyone reading this has no idea what the reformation was, basically a 16th Century German monk called Martin Luther realised that a lot of what the Catholic Church practiced contradicted the Bible. One of the main corrupt practices was the sale of indulgences; these allowed people to buy forgiveness from the Pope so they could go to heaven. Luther posted 95 theses on the door of a church, and worked on translating the Bible into German to allow many more people to read it, rather than just priests and scholars, so everyone could see that the way to salvation was by faith, not works.

Widdecombe acknowledged that the church needed reforming, but wasn’t happy with the chaos that followed, and I have to say, watching this gave me some sympathy for those who argue that religion causes a lot more problems than it solves.

If people believe they are doing God’s will, it turns out they are capable of doing some horrible things, and the Catholics weren’t going to give up their power over the population of Europe without a fight. A five day massacre of protestants in Paris turned the Seine red with blood. And while I don’t remember anything being mentioned that was on the same scale aimed at Catholics, protestants can’t claim to be completely innocent. The attitude towards Catholics can be seen in the tradition that continues in the town of Lewes every Fireworks Night (one of the five best places to see fireworks – alongside the mighty Broughton Gifford – as chosen by The Times) where they blow up an effegy of the Pope. Now I’d say I’m as anti-Pope as your average Bible-believer, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the correct Christian response to people who don’t agree with you.

They say God works in mysterious ways. ‘They’ didn’t get that from the Bible, it’s from a hymn by William Cowper, but it seems proven true in the way the reformation came to England. Henry VIII was named a Defender of the Faith by Pope Leo X after writing a book defending Catholicism. The trouble was he wanted a male heir, and his first wife Catherine of Aragon wasn’t producing one, so he wanted to divorce her. The Pope (quite rightly in this instance) wasn’t happy with this idea, so Henry decided to put himself in charge of the church in England instead. So Catholicism was booted out and Reformed teaching was able to infiltrate Britain thanks to the lust and greed of one of its kings.

Widdecombe explains that she left the Church of England because it had abandoned it’s roots and seemed immersed in liberalism and political correctness. Ok so far, but why become a Catholic? I don’t reckon there’s any perfect church out there, but why not at least look for a church that bases its teaching on God’s Word rather than the Pope’s?

EDIT: I don’t mean to criticise everyone in the Church of England or all Roman Catholics. If people believe in Jesus Christ as their Saviour, Lord and God, and seek in their thoughts and actions to be ruled by the teaching of the Bible, then they’re my brothers and sisters.