M.D. Rawlings
Classical Liberal
Christopher A. Ferrara
REMNANT COLUMNIST, New Jersey
Excerpt:
CF: Let’s talk about evolutionary cosmology. In the book you talk about how at first the Big Bang was greeted with great enthusiasm by the scientific community, until they figured out—just a moment!—this means the universe began, which suggests causation for the universe. What happened with that?
DB: They got rid of that real quick. God forbid there should be a beginning to the universe as Genesis might suggest…. You know, the first generation of cosmologists who looked at this sort of said: My God, we’ve seen this story before in Bible class when we were six. How very odd that we should be seeing it all over again.
Of course, the smarter cosmologists figured that’s just not going to do. Where would we cosmologists be if we had to cede authority to someone else?... So they immediately enlisted the philosophers, and told them: “We’ve got a job for you philosophers…. Let’s show how a universe finite in temporal extent did not really have a beginning.” At least two dozen philosophers who have been working just on that say it’s not a particularly challenging Jesuitical problem for anybody who has a minimum degree of mathematics, because it’s always possible to say: beginning, beginning, what does that mean? Is this space open? Is this space closed? Maybe there’s a finite and temporal extent as far as we can see, but if we get into it, it converges, and the convergences—all sorts of elaborate and logical postures and hypotheses are offered. And by now the subject is so thickly covered in a cloud of confusion that it resembles me during allergy season.
LINK
REMNANT COLUMNIST, New Jersey
Excerpt:
The Problems with Evolutionary Cosmology
CF: Let’s talk about evolutionary cosmology. In the book you talk about how at first the Big Bang was greeted with great enthusiasm by the scientific community, until they figured out—just a moment!—this means the universe began, which suggests causation for the universe. What happened with that?
DB: They got rid of that real quick. God forbid there should be a beginning to the universe as Genesis might suggest…. You know, the first generation of cosmologists who looked at this sort of said: My God, we’ve seen this story before in Bible class when we were six. How very odd that we should be seeing it all over again.
Of course, the smarter cosmologists figured that’s just not going to do. Where would we cosmologists be if we had to cede authority to someone else?... So they immediately enlisted the philosophers, and told them: “We’ve got a job for you philosophers…. Let’s show how a universe finite in temporal extent did not really have a beginning.” At least two dozen philosophers who have been working just on that say it’s not a particularly challenging Jesuitical problem for anybody who has a minimum degree of mathematics, because it’s always possible to say: beginning, beginning, what does that mean? Is this space open? Is this space closed? Maybe there’s a finite and temporal extent as far as we can see, but if we get into it, it converges, and the convergences—all sorts of elaborate and logical postures and hypotheses are offered. And by now the subject is so thickly covered in a cloud of confusion that it resembles me during allergy season.
LINK