COSMOS

 

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" - Genesis 1:1 

“We are made of star stuff" – Carl Sagan 

Without a doubt, we are all mesmerized by beauty, be it art, poetry, nature or whatever the eye of the beholder, the universe is one such beauty and is truly amazing. We know that the universe is vast and living things are complex, but it is by understanding the laws of nature that we truly understand the magical universe we live in. The magnitude of creation is breathtaking and hence our humility and belief in an invisible hand, the creator. We now go on a journey to the cosmos and all you will need is your imagination to understand this incredible universe. Humans may be tiny beings, but we stand tall, shoulder to shoulder with the monstrous and celestial objects of the universe and why not? After all we were conceived in the stars, we are made of star stuff as Carl Sagan famously remarked. Scientists have been able to derive the laws of the universe just by using their imagination and built incredible equipment to validate their understanding of these laws. The three basic questions that humanity has been asking throughout the ages are:  

Where did we come from? 

Why are we here?  

Now that we are here, where do we go from here?  

And these questions have shaped our beliefs which has led to the basal paradigms of animism (balance of material and spiritual realm), polytheism (belief in many Gods), monotheism (belief in one God) and the present day of scientific materialism. Each of these paradigms have been shaped by a belief in the environment and in God. With knowledge we have evolved from each paradigm, however with knowledge comes power and with power comes ego and man has moved on that path of ego, disregarding the values of the word of God and blindsided by knowledge. The present-day paradigm of materialism too will end someday, and a new one will begin but will this end in revelation, or will it end in destruction is what time will tell. Science is the quest to understand creation while religion is about understanding the philosophy behind creation. While science tries to answer the first question, religions search for answers to the next two questions. As humans we have watched and learnt, and everything we are today we have learnt from the universe. Science tests its theories in the universe, it is however not the same with religion, theories and beliefs are borrowed by observing the universe just like science, but religion is a theology, a belief in an omnipotent, omnipresent and an omniscient God. The universe is beautifully balanced, push nature the wrong way and it will unleash a fury to get back to equilibrium, similarly most religions preach about living a balanced life. Going beyond a moral life is the spiritual life, Jesus did not perform miracles because he wanted to have a following or to impress the crowd, this was his way of life. Miracles defy science and scientists have said that miracles go against the very nature of science, meaning did nature bend back laws of science to allow for these miracles? Scientists believe that creation was a random act of nature, that a probability existed, and nature took that chance to create the universe and life. If the birth and existence of something as complex as the universe and life can be explained through probability, then what about the humble placebo effect which has performed unimaginable and unexplained miracles in medical science? and if this is not the work of God then how do you explain these miracles?  

About 13.8 billion years ago the universe started with the Big Bang, approximately 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun's gravitational pull caused two particles to coalesce and they grew bigger through countless collisions leading to the formation of Earth. The story of Earth does not end here like the billions of planets that exist in our universe, Earth was a minuscule planet in one corner of the Milky Way galaxy, but this would turn into a special planet, a planet in the Goldilocks zone, a blue planet like no other in the universe. It was not an easy journey for planet Earth, Earth had to endure fire and ice and a fight to death with planet Theia which was hypothesized to be in the same orbit as Earth. About 2 billion years back Earth was filled with microbes, bacteria with hardly enough oxygen to support life. A day on earth would have been around 6 hours, however a celestial body named Theia collided with the early Earth (prevailing theory), and the debris from this impact coalesced to form the Moon. Tidal friction and interaction with the moon slowed down Earth’s rotation to the present 24 hours and when bacteria were exposed to this continuous light, they generated more oxygen which made it conducive for plant and animal life. 

The process of creation would never be different from what we have observed today. It is not like God waved a wand and created the universe in 6 days and rested on the 7th day. Creation is evolution, continually mutating to adapt to the environment. The objective of the book of Genesis was not on the science of creation but on how we should transform into a better being, about how we would use our consciousness for living a morally good life and setting up a belief system. Genesis is an interpretation of the creator and his creation, interpretation is not an escape word but progressive thinking, an acceptance that with knowledge we need to realign our thinking. Science is progress because scientists have built upon the theories of other scientists. Scientists have continually realigned to newer thinking, newer theories and this is the reason we have progressed phenomenally. Religion must realign and rethink progress, they are too much in the safe harbor of the known, practicing rituals which is simply lip service to God. Religion must keep pace with science step for step otherwise entropy will rule the world and ultimately bring ruin to our beautiful blue planet. Today we are no longer a heart people, we are a mind people; we have learned to question everything and instead of faith and trust we use logic and reasoning, and the church must align to this new strength. 

While religion had a head start with the book of Genesis, scientists have been intrigued by superstitions and beliefs and the book of Genesis has been a hunting ground for scientists. Scientists have been looking back in time through cosmic imprints to understand the birth of the universe. However, starting at the middle of creation and going back to derive creation has been like the crabs which lived at the deep end of a pond, these crabs define all the rules governing the pond until one day the water recedes completely and the crabs are amazed to see an entire new world and they start a whole new theory on creation. This is not to discredit scientists but to state that creation is vast, it is complex and to challenge the existence of God without getting to the roots of creation is widening the chasm between religion and science. That said, scientists have done remarkable work in understanding the universe, when the first humans evolved, there were no libraries or books, our entire learning has been from the universe and Leon Lederman says this beautifully; If the universe is the answer, what is the question?   

Like the tower of Babel, perhaps when we understood the laws of the cosmos or when we first cracked the DNA code, we thought we had built the tower to heaven and we were Gods, but nature has this habit of throwing a spoke in the wheel every time we hit a high thus keeping us on a perpetual hunt. Religion and science drive us, we need the mystery, and it is this challenge of the unknown which invokes the ancestral hunter in us, some hunt the creator and some hunt creation.