The earth is fixed in place?

Some quotations from the Bible:

1 Chronicles 16:30 Tremble before him, all the earth. The world also is established that it can’t be moved.

 

Psalm 93:1 Yahweh reigns! He is clothed with majesty! Yahweh is armed with strength. The world also is established. It can’t be moved.

 

Psalm 96:10a Say among the nations, “Yahweh reigns.” The world is also established. It can’t be moved.

Psalm 104:5 He laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be moved forever. (World English Bible, public domain)

The Bible seems to say, in at least these four places, that the earth can’t be moved. But it does move! It goes around the sun, and the sun, itself, is in motion through space.  And it rotates. What’s going on? Is the Bible in error? No. The Bible was mostly written according to the culture and world view of the times. If the writers had said something like “The world is traveling in a stable elliptical orbit, and has done so for many years, and will continue to do so,” the readers or listeners, to say nothing of the human author(s), would not have understood what was said, and might well have thought that the speaker or writer was insane. Like most of the Bible, these passages used the worldview of the current speakers, writers, readers and hearers. 

None of these four scriptures were statements about the principles of astronomy. All of them were statements about God's glory and power.

Thanks for reading.

Could God have used physical processes and other agencies in Creation?

I recently received this comment on a post in my blog:

Evolustion [sic] supports God created physic laws. Physic laws caused all the living things to come into existence. It turned up that physic laws were the creators since they were those that caused all living things to be created.

Evolution supports that God created physic laws to cause space and time to work together in order to create this universe. God only guided space and time to cause the universe to be in existence. Who were the creators? Space and time were the creators. But not God since He was just the helper to ensure the space and time to work towards the formation of this universe.

I have quoted the comment exactly, so as not to alter the thought of the commenter. Previous communication from the commenter indicates that English is not his first language. I've tried to understand what the commenter wants to know, and will respond accordingly.

What he seems to be disturbed about is the idea that God allowed the physical properties of the universe to carry out some creation processes. I hope I have that right.

I have several comments:

1) I believe that the commenter really means naturalism, not evolution. Evolution, properly, relates to changes in living things. There are no evolutionary explanations, in the sense of Darwinian natural selection, for the origin of the universe, or of the heavenly bodies as they now are, because natural selection is biological, and those phenomena are not. Naturalism, by definition, rejects the very existence of a supernatural God, in the origin of life, and the origin of the universe.

2) I suppose that the commenter didn't mean that first sentence, or didn't mean it as it reads. Naturalists don't believe that God created physical laws.

3) Even for a naturalist, there is no good explanation for the existence of space and time, or for the existence or properties of the four forces of nature, although explanations have been sought for a century or so. A supernaturalist, and I am one such, simply believes that God created space, time, and the four forces, and other properties and constants relating to the universe. A naturalist, of course, does not consider that to be a good explanation. Note Hebrews 11:3 "By faith, we understand that the universe has been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen has not been made out of things which are visible." (World English Bible, public domain. All scripture quotations are from that version.)

4) Just because a naturalist claims that space and time brought about the present universe naturally doesn't mean that they did. It also doesn't rule out the possibility that God could have used space and time.

5) We aren't capable of understanding how God created, except very superficially. If, for example, we believe that light came about instantaneously because God spoke, what words and language did He use? Did He speak aloud? Was "God" God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, or all of them? Was anyone listening? Was light created from something else, or did it just appear? Did it appear throughout the entire universe at the same time? We don't know the answer to these questions, and many others, and aren't going to. If we understood these things fully, we would, in effect, be gods, and we aren't.

6) I fail to see how a God who is capable of planning for "space and time" (and whatever else) so that they worked together to bring about the universe as it is now, if that is what happened, diminishes the divinity of God in any way. I don't see how such events would make God into "just a helper." If anything, such planning and creation shows the intelligence and wisdom of the Creator.

7) Consider the deliverance from Egypt. In Exodus 4, and elsewhere, a rod is mentioned as an agent used by Moses and Aaron in performing miracles. (Most or all scriptural references to this rod may be found here.) But was the rod the miracle worker, and God "just a helper?" Hardly. Psalm 78 recaps the story of the deliverance of the Israelites, in a fair amount of detail. The rod is not so much as mentioned. (Neither is Moses!) The rod was not the miracle worker. But God is mentioned, over and over, and He is the one who got the glory from the deliverance from Egypt. God prepared a rod which could be used by Moses and Aaron to carry out His will, but that only shows God's greatness, rather than diminishing it. If space and time worked to carry out God's will, that only shows God's creative ability.

Thanks for reading.

Methodological Naturalism and Robert Boyle - does God create a vacuum, or is it a natural phenomenon?

Naturalism is, more or less, the idea that there is no supernatural, or, if there is, it doesn't do anything. It's what most people are upset about if they are upset about evolution.

Methodological naturalism is, more or less, the idea that we shouldn't look for supernatural explanations for ordinary events, including long-term events, or a long series of events. Some scientists who practice methodological naturalism are atheists. Some are not, claiming that God has created the universe such that certain processes occur without any further intervention being necessary. (I'll not discuss miracles, except to say that, by definition, they require supernatural intervention, and are mostly, or entirely, one-of-a-kind events.)

If there's a way to experimentally differentiate between natural causes and supernatural causes for, say, ice melting, I don't know what it is. It's always possible to claim that God was specifically at work in such a process, hence it was not natural, or not only natural.

Intelligent Design is the idea that, more or less, natural selection can't have been responsible for the development of living things, and the various processes within them, because natural selection is not capable of creating such processes or organisms by selection of random events. There are people who believe in Intelligent Design who believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, and people who agree about Intelligent Design who believe that the earth is much older than that. (Intelligent Design is also a political movement, attempting to have ideas about God's creative power included in public school science classes. Not everyone who believes in Intelligent Design wants to do that.)

Michael Behe is the most prominent scientist claiming that God has acted many times, so as to produce intricate systems in living things. Most, or all, of Behe's examples of irreducible complexity have been refuted, as scientists have shown that his examples have a chain of natural selection events which could have produced them. This doesn't mean that Behe is entirely wrong, but the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design is slim, at best, according to Behe, himself.

Lest there be any doubt, I believe in a God who designed the universe, and either acts in many small ways, in nature, all the time, or made nature the way it is, so that change and complex phenomena could be possible. I also believe that the scientific evidence to prove, or disprove, God's activity is lacking, and that either conclusion requires faith. See Hebrews 11:3.
A recent post by the BioLogos Forum indicates that the question of whether a Christian scientist can be a methodological naturalist is pretty old. Robert Boyle -- the one Boyle's Law is named for -- died in 1691. The post, which is quite readable, and by a historian of science, indicates that Boyle believed that a vacuum could occur naturally, without supernatural intervention, but a contemporary begged to differ. Boyle was not only an important scientist, but definitely a Christian.

Read the post. Thanks for reading this!

Prayers in the Bible: Paul in Colossians 1

Colossians 1:3 We give thanks to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, 1:4 having heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which you have toward all the saints, 1:5 because of the hope which is laid up for you in the heavens, of which you heard before in the word of the truth of the Good News, 1:6 which has come to you; even as it is in all the world and is bearing fruit and growing, as it does in you also, since the day you heard and knew the grace of God in truth; 1:7 even as you learned of Epaphras our beloved fellow servant, who is a faithful servant of Christ on our behalf, 1:8 who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. 1:9 For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 1:10 that you may walk worthily of the Lord, to please him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; 1:11 strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy; (WEB)

This is another in a series on prayers in the Bible. The last such is here.

In this prayer, by Paul, he is praying that the Colossian Christians will be filled with a knowledge of God's will, and strengthened with "all power." What a reservoir! What a resource!

Thanks for reading. May I, and you, be strengthened with all power, and filled with a knowledge of God's will.

God's complexity

Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (All scripture quotations are from the ESV, which allows such use, if properly credited.)

I have recently posted on simplicity, and also on childlikeness, and children, in the Bible.

Let me now muse about the opposite idea -- complexity. We don't have to understand a lot to have our sins forgiven, and become a believer. It's simple. But, for those who are capable of such things, there are more complex matters to consider. God is complex, complicated, and detailed.

There are things that only mature Christians can know.
Hebrews indicates this:
Hebrews 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. This implies that there are stages in Christian knowledge, and presumably thinking on a more complex level is possible.

We must be careful here. In the first place, mature Christians should not look down on new Christians, or be proud. The admonition here is to Christians who should have been more mature than they were, apparently not new Christians.
Second, we must not succumb to the temptation of thinking that we need some sort of special knowledge for our salvation. We don't. We just need to accept Christ's sacrifice for our sins, and live with Him as Lord of our lives. A child, or a person who is intellectually challenged, can be a Christian just as I can be, and for the same reasons.

There are deep things for a mature Christian to learn, about herself, about the Bible, about God. That's part of God's complexity.

Another part of God's complexity is His amazing creation.
Zophar challenged Job, in Job 11:7 “Can you find out the deep things of God?

Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?

There's more about this subject in Job. Beginning with Job 38, God asks Job to explain the phenomena of nature. This goes on, until, Job confesses his profound ignorance
Job 42:2 “I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 ‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Job didn't know very much about how nature works. He didn't understand the weather, astronomy, or animal diversity and behavior. We don't, either.

Let me deal only with astronomy here.

The ancients could see stars. They didn't understand the nature of what they were seeing, or comprehend the vastness of space. We now believe that some of the "stars" we see are actually galaxies -- vast collections of stars, so far away that they look like stars to us. We now understand that some other stars, probably a lot of them, have their own planets. (For a graphic portrayal of the vastness of space, see this video, a little over four minutes in length.)

We now believe that our sun, and other stars, are visible, not because they are burning, but because they are giant thermonuclear reactors, giving off tremendous amounts of energy -- so much so that, even though we are over 90,000,000 miles from the sun, we receive enough energy to keep us warm and lighted, and to fuel photosynthesis. Our own sun loses over 4 billion kilograms of mass each second, converted to energy by its fusion reactions.

There are galaxies very far away, and, as far as we can tell, the size of the universe is vast beyond all comprehension, and it may be infinite in size.

We believe that there are black holes, objects so dense that their gravity bends space so that light from these objects cannot escape.

I have previously mused about the possibility of intelligent life on other worlds, and its theological implications.

With all of this size, the possibility of other planets, some with their own life forms, surely there are many phenomena, perhaps even types of astronomical objects, that we have never yet encountered, and can't even imagine. The universe is exceedingly complex.

Weather, and the states of matter, or the diversity of the animals on the earth, and their behavior, are equally complex, and, in their own way, incomprehensible.

Job 5:8 “As for me, I would seek God,

and to God would I commit my cause,

9 who does great things and unsearchable,

marvelous things without number:

Thank God for His marvelous creation!

Remembering what God has done!

Psalm 77:11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
yes, I will remember your wonders of old.
12 I will ponder all your work,
and meditate on your mighty deeds.
13 Your way, O God, is holy.
What god is great like our God?
14 You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples.
15 You with your arm redeemed your people,
the children of Jacob and Joseph. (ESV)

God can, even when we doubt

Numbers 11:18 And say to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves for tomorrow, and you shall eat meat, for you have wept in the hearing of the Lord, saying, “Who will give us meat to eat? For it was better for us in Egypt.” Therefore the Lord will give you meat, and you shall eat. 19 You shall not eat just one day, or two days, or five days, or ten days, or twenty days, 20 but a whole month, until it comes out at your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you, because you have rejected the Lord who is among you and have wept before him, saying, “Why did we come out of Egypt?”’” 21 But Moses said, “The people among whom I am number six hundred thousand on foot, and you have said, ‘I will give them meat, that they may eat a whole month!’ 22 Shall flocks and herds be slaughtered for them, and be enough for them? Or shall all the fish of the sea be gathered together for them, and be enough for them?” 23 And the Lord said to Moses, “Is the Lord's hand shortened? Now you shall see whether my word will come true for you or not.” (ESV)

Is scientific knowledge reliable? What does science tell us about God?

The simple answer to the first question is "usually." The hard part, of course, is to know when it is and when it isn't. Unfortunately, we humans lack the omniscience that would let us know which of the findings of science are reliable, and which aren't.

God has revealed Himself to us in several ways. Some of these are:
the Bible
our consciences
the wisdom of godly people
the guidance of the Holy Spirit
the evidence of nature, and especially
Himself, Jesus Christ, the God/man

The bible is clear that God does reveal Himself through the evidence of nature. In other words, through the observations of science. Here are two passages that say that:
Psalm 19:1. The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
2. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge.
3. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard.

and

Romans 1:20. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:

(Both of these are KJV, as it is public domain)

So, God can be seen in nature, according to both the Old and the New Testaments.

What does science tell us about God? (In other words, what do we learn about God from observing nature?) Here's a list. It's not complete, and it's tentative:
1) It tells us that God is immense, and extremely powerful.
The sheer size of the universe tells us that.
So does the activity of the sun. It converts about 4 million metric tons of mass into energy per second.
We don't know yet whether there is life on other planets. If there isn't, and the entire universe has only one planet with living things, that doesn't mean that the rest of the universe is, somehow, a waste. God's resources weren't diminished by creating the universe, however and whenever that may have happened.
(We don't know how large the universe is. It may be infinite, or it may merely be very large.)

2) It tells us that God is a God of order and regularity.
Actually, scientific observations, or, for that matter, casual observations, wouldn't be of much use without this regularity. Consider, for example, the periodic table. For another, consider the orbits of the various bodies in the solar system. For yet another, consider yourself. You probably have a few trillion cells. Each of them is descended from a single cell. With few exceptions, all of our cells have the same DNA as the first one.

3) It tells us that God is a God of infinite creative ability.
Estimates of the number of species now alive, or that have ever been alive, are only estimates. Best estimates of the number of species currently in existence on earth are between one and two million. Adding in species which have become extinct, and species yet to be discovered, the number may be as much as ten times that large, or even larger.
As Psalm 104:24 puts it: O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.
Apparently, God loves variety.

Science doesn't tell us, but the bible does--the same God, capable of infinite creation, and limitless in power, is concerned about single individual humans, and even birds. (John 3:16, John 4:3-26; Luke 12:6)

Added January 27, 2012: For a more complete treatment of the ways God reveals Himself to us, see here. This post was updated a little on  February 23, 2016. The second part of the title was added at that time. Thanks for reading!