Envision

The free form litany below was compiled based on the verbs and the sequence of action found in Genesis Chapters One and Two.

I agree with the theory of theistic evolution:  the creation act once initiated by God set evolution into motion (without the need for fine tuning) over millions of years and right up to our present day.

 Here’s something you’ll get a big bang out of:  if you wonder whether there is a personal God, wonder no more.  God had (in our time frame) envisioned every boson in every hair of every head. You are a unique accumulation of God Particles held together by the Quantum Force of Love. Smashing.

*******

Envision

 

In the Beginning…

 

God said

  God saw

God separated

  God saw

God called

  God saw

God hovered

  God saw

God called

  God saw

God made

  God saw

God created

  God saw

God blessed

  God saw

God breathed

  God saw

God commanded

  God saw

God provided

  God saw

God finished.

  God saw

God rested

  God saw

God blessed.

  God and Man saw.

Not the End.

Small Moves of Faith, Giant Leaps For the Soul

*****

 The video clip above is from the movie CONTACT.  It depicts a scientist, Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, traveling through space and time. Leading up to this journey Ellie had been listening for many years for any space ‘noise’, ‘noise’ which would provide evidence of life (ETs) on another planet.   One day she finally hears a regular series of pulses coming from Vega the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. 

 After deciphering the signal – prime numbers – with the help of a ‘quack’ entrepreneur/scientist Ellie discovers that the aliens have offered our planet a means to visit them – blueprints for a space ship.

 In short, the US government, after debate about science and religion and some personal politics playing out provides the money and the manpower to build the gyroscope-looking launcher and the personnel capsule. I won’t give away anymore of the story.  As you will see, Ellie gets to make the uncertain voyage into space.

 Out in the universe Ellie appears to arrive on a distant planet. More likely, though, she has entered a parallel universe where everything around her, the space-time gelatin, is simulated to be a reminder of her home and her memories.  She is in a parallel home of sorts where there are recognizable connections with earth. In her conversation with the alien she is told that life is itself bearable with the contact and company of others. Though this wasn’t the point of Carl Sagan’s story these pastoral words are truly reminiscent of the words spoken in the garden of Eden:  “It is not good for man to live alone.”

 I have watched this movie several times over the course of ten years. It is not an A-list movie but it has held my interest because of its use of astronomy and astrophysics. Also, some of the visuals are stunning, as you will see in the above clip.  Beyond this I like the movie because it deals with a science vs. religion aspect.  Yet, the movie story line wanders around too much and the antagonists are Hollywood stereotypes. Hollywood’s storyline rubric seems to be to debase religion at all costs to increase secularism & atheism.

The most over the top Hollywood stereotypes are saved for the religious antagonists:  a long-haired fiery revival preacher who denounces any quest for knowledge beyond what is ‘religiously’ known, an uncaring, ineffectual Catholic priest who is dismissive of Ellie’s pain and tells her when she loses her father that, in effect, that “these things are hard to understand but they are God’s will” and a liberal “man-of-the cloth-without-the-cloth” woman baiter who is a mishmash with regard to the metaphysical but totally driven by what he feels physically for Ellie. The amalgam of ‘religious’ space ‘junk’ floating in this movie is all way too bad for a movie which could take us places, to deep and far away places not understood before.  Instead the depiction of religion is more of the Hollywood meme of discounting a belief in God for hard cold cinema science (and box-office cash).

 There are many, as I say, interesting themes and subjects broached.  Not the least of which, is making contact and a connection with another human being, someone beyond yourself – a problem for a broad spectrum of people, including scientists like Ellie.

 But there is more here. As a Christian I know that science and a belief in God are not at odds. They are completely compatible.  But, science could never prove God’s existence.  God is outside of our reality.  In fact, He is reality and we are the finely tuned creatures, if you will, which God has chosen to love. And, He made the first point of contact when He sent His Son Jesus into our world.

Science via empiricism and reason can only take you so far. One needs faith to see beyond what is revealed.  God is there and He is not silent. He is waiting to make contact with you. Small moves or any move towards God will yield a response from God. You must first believe that He exists.

BTW: I enjoy this type of science fiction: known science encountering what it doesn’t know and venturing forward.

I wish a Christian film producer would produce a quality science fiction film using the themes of science and faith, reason and risk, encounter between God and creatures. The screen play could take its lead from C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy : Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.

It’s A Nuclear Family Affair

The Big Bang or the time of the Great Annihilation, when Matter and Antimatter clashed and cosmic sparks went flying, the progeny of majorons provided the universe with an asymmetric mix of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos, more quarks than anti-quarks. And, that’s what Mattered the most.

It was in That Beginning that Time and his twin-brother Space were born. Since that day, they sprawl the universe with their feet up and their hands behind their head.  Under a contractual agreement, though, they will have to return – from whence they came.

 Time, the patient caregiver, the healer of all wounds, or, as has been seen, the brutal tormentor of the long-sufferer, always takes his time. He’s been known to say, “A day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.”

 Space, a distance runner, hopes to place in the next inter-galactic marathon.

 Space and Time or Space-Time as they are often called spend most of their time-space wrestling in gelatin with friends and neighbors. They tell me that this adds dimension to their lives. They listen to string-theory music while wrestling.

 Miss Universe, a stellar beauty, is curvy. The brothers also spend their time following her around.

 Speed-of-Light, the brothers’ close friend, always beats them to the remote whenever something special is broadcast.

 My family, the Atoms family, spends its time playing king-of-the-hill and marbles. We do like knock-knock jokes. Little Hydrogen gets pushed around a lot, though.

 The Nebulae Family members, known for their starry eyes, are nomadic. They spend their time gazing at Space-Time from a point of departure somewhere in the galaxy.

 The favorite saying of the Planet households is “What goes around comes around.” Their favorite hangout is the Milky Way.  They own several tanning salons.

 I guess that if Time were to be no more and if Space was pigeonholed and if Speed-of-light was somehow surpassed and if Family Nebulae no longer roamed and if the Planet households split up then, God knows, you and I are no longer relative.

© Jennifer A. Johnson, 2011, All Rights Reserved

H/T to italo calvino

 

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
   Tell me, if you understand.
 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
   Who stretched a measuring line across it?
 On what were its footings set,
   or who laid its cornerstone—
 while the morning stars sang together
   and all the angels shouted for joy? Job 38:4-7

 

*****

“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.

A neutrino walks into a bar.

–Joke circulating on the internet

Your Parallel Thoughts?

Last night there happened to be an interesting show on TV: The History Channel’s The Universe. I learned that parallel universes were categorized as Level 1, 2, 3 or 4. I am now beginning to see why I tend to multi-task while I overbook and then appear cross-eyed.

On the show, a physicist from nearby Fermi-Lab explained that since we live in parallel universes, things may be happening around us that we are unaware of, like dinosaurs walking through our living room while we watch the History Channel (If I were married, I could use that line somehow!). Or, in another parallel universe, the Cubs would win a World Series (That must be a level five universe!). These things would be perfectly para-normal!  I suppose that in another universe I could be from Mars and not from Venus. That’s a significant para-digm shift!!

During the show it was proposed that the basic composition of things was not tiny points or dots of matter but more in the nature of strings and membranes, much like the human brain.

This got me thinking: what if I exist only in God’s mind, only in God’s imagination?