Creationism, Evolution and More

The concepts of creationism and evolution are terms that occur within larger contexts. We shall consider some of those contexts...

The Scope's trial brought a religion vs. government conflict to America in the 20th century; the contest between imperial government and imperial religion has existed since the beginning of Christianity; the crucifixion of our Lord was instigated by the Jewish religious leaders and implemented by Roman imperial power. Jesus Christ was a king but not of this world, Pontius Pilate the Prefect of Judea did not want to execute Jesus yet was levered in to the act by possible accusations of treason to Caesar.

Christians of centuries following the crucifixion were persecuted by government rule significantly. Later the church was taken over in the eastern Roman Empire by the Imperial Government. In the former decadent western empire following it's collapse the Christian Church Bishop of Rome began slowly to acquire more power not only over his peer Bishops in other regions of the trans- Mediterranean region but politically as well. Gregory would become one of the first Popes with significant power-yet the historical relationships between Popes, politics, imperial governments, foreign invaders of Italy with inimical, antipathetic beliefs such as the forces of Mohammedans was complex and substantially. In several nations such as Spain and France and Germany the bilateral relationships between what Emperors, Monarchs and Popes with sometimes two or even three Popes existing simultaneously) changed more often than the solstices and equinoxes seasonally.

Form ordinary citizens support of church positions sometimes coincided with their own political interests for liberation-and sometimes worked against them. The reformation signified by Martin Luther was somewhat conservative in some regards as he did not support a simultaneous political revolution-yet certainly other reformers did support political revolution. In some nations following the end of 'imperial' Catholic rule such as Holland the national church subsequently was comparatively weak and unable to restrain political ventures it opposed sometimes including military activity abroad or the reverse. In many regards the 'slide rule' for relationships between heretical opinions, Church relationships to citizens as political subjects and as second class Christians led by an upper class priesthood of small business family churchmen or hierarchical mass organizational imperial ecclesiastic structures was generally unobservable by ordinary, illiterate or semi-illiterate peasants, peons, comrades, clods and citizens of the respective political entities.

A transcending human characteristic existing in all eras is the Darwinian selection of the most greedy and power-hungry toward leadership of any significant organization capable of generating political, financial or other forms of wealth and power. For every Francis of Assisi their are followers that will transform such a Franciscan organization in to the animal party frat house for good times. For every good natured genius such as Albert Einstein there is waiting another would be Satin-on-a Political Pedestal happy to Napoleon himself along amidst the pathos and pervasive misery. Will state and church controversy every end on a specific, broad question such as Creationism vs. Evolution is the point of this essay topic; human understanding will never become perfect and omniscient while in the temporal form seeing through a glass darkly. Creationism might be thought of as a cosmological theory while evolution as a biological theory. One has many uncertainties and indeterminacy of meaning in each term (creation & evolution). Presently neither term is fully understood in either a realm of faith or in that of science for the complexities and depths of meaning and knowledge within each are vast and unfathomed.

Scientific American in March and April published two interesting articles on cosmology that would change the Universe-view that most people have if they read and thought about it.

An article considered Einstein'ss special theory of relativity and it's relationship to quantum mechanical non-local phenomena such as quantum entanglement and quantum superposition; how can relativity in normal Einsteinian geometric space be right if faster than light 'action at a distance' relationships between quantum particles exists? The answer obvious to most might be that either spatial dimension extensions including time are not what we think they are, perhaps being phenomenalties set to a scale of human cognitive recognition, or there may be shortcuts through extra dimensions that no one presently has fully mapped (such as M-Theory). Plainly there are other possibile explanations for how faster than light quantum entanglement and superpositions may exist.

One potential explanation is that the basic forces underpinning the structure of mass and energy in space-time are much more complex than was thought previously. The big bang theory nominally has some resemblance to the collision of particles made in particle accelerators-at a certain force the relationships of stable or long lived constructions break apart under impact and cascade a wealth of smaller components. We generally take it that this is an example of thermodynamic properties even with the stipulation that the physical process is theoretically isotropic and reversible-yet these are just paradigmiatic interpretations made of observable phenomena that are not in-themselves necessarily mutually exclusive and exhaustive analytically accurate limits or interpretations of the meaning of what is observed-there can be more to it than believed, such as a pervasive unknown force that is space itself that is at the minimal density level yielding virtual particles in large extension and an inflaton in small size-such may be what a membrane theory comprises primordially.

It seems possible that special relativity is an accurate protocol for a particular level of relationships in space-time that is not controverted by a potential encompassing substratum that functions at a different energy and mass structure inclusive of having a different relationship to space-time. This consideration allows a very simple union of areas of creative thought in physics and theology; the eternal realm of forms of Plato and Plotinus perhaps refined quite a bit as physics has refined the ideas of Parmenides and Democritus more than a little. In the monist thought of Parmenides we also discover a greater One that allows all of the manifold of pluralist appearances to exist; the generalities of the ancients encompassed some useful thought about the nature of reality being discovered only in the past century.

The second interesting article was on the subject of dark energy as a theory for the apparent acceleration of the expansion of space time; could anisotropy in the distribution of matter in the Universe be a better explanation for the appearance of an expansion of space-time?

If the Earth and Milky Way is in a special region of space-within a great void-either unique or just one of a minority component of vast voids in the Universe-it could be more than just another common speck in a isotropic Universe; this adds another point to the score of the weak anthropic principle vs secular, hedonist atheists that even Christian humanists could be happy with considering.

The Universe may have been created by sono-luminescence spoken in to the underlying 'membrane' of the pre-existent Universe or not. Time may be relative yet discrete and even recurrent. Eternity may contain all temporal series and like the extended realm of whole numbers in mind a contingent mind may journey along the course to discover the appearance of time, space and motion. God may have created all space-time only contingently even within his unchanging, omnipotent Being. Creationism and evolution are fun entry portals in to the consideration of incredible physical and theological questions.

One may consider the parameters of this apparent Universe, it's age based upon the distance that light has travelled at the edge of the observable Universe and an extrapolation of the time required for existing, evident physical processes and structures such as star and Galaxy formation to have occurred from known and hypothesized laws of physical change; one may set that paradigm in to a larger and more theoretical context of a Universe that could be just one piece of a larger and more complex structure, and that may be not of such a nature as what it appears to us through perception and reasoning, inference and logic, and correlate that with what is known theologically and through the Bible. We may disregard our trust in our own comfortable knowledge so far as possible while yet keeping that knowledge to use as a foundation for exploration and understanding of cosmology beyond what we presently know. In my opinion God permits the Universe to appear to exist for human life-it is necessary to be conservative in applying propositions and predicates that may be logically faulty. One should notassume that certain terms are free of the indeterminacy of translation-even the word 'beginning' may occur like a box amidst a succession of Chinese puzzle box like relations with meanings not even deictic placing.

A paradigm for the construction of a Universe of whatever scale and configuration within the context of an eternally existing God who actualized from eternity all possible things that are good is a helpful way to consider larger scale structural configurations of the Universe with uncertain physical delimitation.