May 3, 2022

WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST:

How Black Holes Radiate God's Glory: Q&A with Reasons to Believe astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink on collapsing stars, quantum gravity, why physics isn't finished, and what that tells us about our creator. (INTERVIEW BY DANIEL SILLIMAN, APRIL 29, 2022, Christianity Today)

According to Reasons to Believe astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink, the new research raises new questions, showing us that "the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn." CT asked him why physics isn't finished and what that can teach Christians who, like the psalmist, "consider your heavens, the work of your fingers" (Ps. 8:3).

What do black holes tell us about God?

It's not like, "Black holes, therefore God." But the theory of the universe that we have--the theory that said black holes should exist before anyone knew to even think about them--is predicated on the idea that our universe ought to be understandable. It ought to be coherent. It ought to be the same out in the distant reaches of the universe as it is here.

That points to the Creator. That tells us something about the Creator.

Look at how we get to black holes in the first place. Albert Einstein, back in 1915, recognized that as you move through the universe, from big stuff to small stuff and very fast stuff to very slow stuff, the laws of physics seemed to change. The way electromagnetism behaved was different from the way gravity behaved, and Einstein looked at that and said that doesn't make sense. The laws of physics ought to be the same no matter how you look at them.

It was that philosophical idea that led him to develop his general theory of relativity. And if general relativity is right, then there should be these things called black holes.

The insight or genius of general relatively is that space and time, instead of being abstractions or kind of empty spaces, are now understood as these dynamic quantities. As energy moves through space and time, it actually warps space and time, and they could become so warped that they would rupture. If you get a star that's massive enough, the gravitational pull is so strong that it collapses on itself and that's a black hole. So people started thinking about black holes theoretically and eventually found evidence. We even found that in the center of our galaxy there is this massive black hole.

The connection here is that when we look at creation, we expect to see an orderly, coherent creation. For Einstein, it is a philosophical idea that ultimately derives from the notion that there is a unified order. And that's what you would expect if there is a God who created it.

All of Science proceeds from that one core belief, that Creation is comprehensible to Man. No one doubts the Homocentric Universe.

Posted by at May 3, 2022 8:32 AM

  

« EDUCATION IS TOO IMPORTANT TO BE LEFT TO PARENTS: | Main | THERE IS NO AFGHANISTAN: »