Creation And Cosmos

Few of us can venture outside on a clear, dark night and not pause for a silent, reflective look at the stars. For countless centuries people have felt a sense of wonder about the heavens. How did our universe come into being? Has it always been here? Is our existence due to random chance or supernatural design? Is God "out there"? If so, what is He like? Traditionally, the church has answered such questions with Scripture, while science has contributed theories and formulas of its own. Torn between a deep respect for church doctrines and an intellectual need for answers that support what their senses are telling them, many Christians have avoided such discussions altogether. Actually, the two sides are no longer that far apart. In The Creator and the Cosmos, astrophysicist Dr. Hugh Ross explains how recent scientific measurements of the universe have clearly pointed to the existence of God. Whether you're looking for scientific support for your faith or new reasons to believe, The Creator and the Cosmos will enable you to see the Creator for yourself.

Theologian Harry Lee Poe and chemist Jimmy H. Davis argue that God's interaction with our world is a possibility affirmed equally by the Bible and the contemporary scientific record. Rather than confirming that the cosmos is closed to the actions of the divine, advancing scientific knowledge seems to indicate that the nature of the universe is actually open to the unique type of divine activity portrayed in the Bible.

This volume contains essays by some of the leading scholars in the study of the Jewish religious ideas in the Second Temple period, that led up to the development of early forms of Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity. Close attention is paid to the cosmological ideas to be found in the Ancient Near East and in the Hebrew Bible and to the manner in which the translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek reflected the creativity with which Judaism engaged Hellenistic ideas about the cosmos and the creation. The concepts of heaven and divine power, human mortality, the forces of nature, combat myths, and the philosophy of wisdom, as they occur in 2 Maccabees, Ben Sira, Wisdom of Solomon and Tobit, are carefully analysed and compared with Greek and Roman world-views. There are also critical examinations of Dead Sea scroll texts, early Jewish prayers and Hebrew liturgical poetry and how they these adopt, adapt and alter earlier ideas. The editors have included appreciations of two major figures who played important roles in the study of the Second Temple period and in the history and development of the ISDCL, namely, Otto Kaiser and Alexander Di Lella, who died recently and are greatly missed by those in the field.

There are many questions that intelligent people have about the Bible, science and evolution theory. Finding intelligent answers is difficult. The problem is that specialization is required in the sciences, in philosophy and theology, so people tend to pick one and disregard the others. There aren't so many people that consider all three fields with much depth of understanding. I made a try at that and wrote a book that is free to download. It is not only difficult to understand all three fields, it is difficult to select what should be written about, and difficult to write well. I didn't by any means cover everything; there is lots to cover.

The need to position Christianity in relation to other religions, most notably Judaism and Islam, has brought about a renewed interest in the theme of creation, which has been off the theological agenda for much of the 20th century. Environmentalists, biologists, feminists and process theologians have all registered concerns, from their different perspectives, about the way in which the traditional doctrine of creation characterizes the relationship between the cosmos and its creator. Furthermore, the hoilism of the New Age and its resonance with eastern patterns of thought seems to offer something radically different from the Judaeo-Christian understanding of the creation. It is in the light of these concerns that the author argues for the doctrine of creation as a distictively Christian article of faith. By recognizing at the the same time that criticisms which have been made of its traditional formulations must be properly acknowledged and accommodated, the author is able to use the best insights from secular disciples to construct a theology of creation which is responsible.

Paul LaViolette reveals astonishing parallels between cutting edge scientific thought and early creation myths, and how these myths encode a theory of cosmology in which matter is continually growing from seeds of order that emerge spontaneously from chaos. Exposing the contradictions of the Big Bang theory, LaViolette leads us beyond the restrictive metaphors of modern science and into a new science for the 21st century.