The Unknown Genesis

The Hubble Telescope is getting its upgrade! I couldn’t be more delighted over anything NASA has done. I am far more enamored of the Hubble than the “Space Station”, which I find interesting but mostly an expensive and distracting waste of resources – resources that could have been better spent on real and significant science projects and space exploration.

The Hubble is a gift that just keeps on giving. There’s hardly a soul alive who hasn’t enjoyed, marveled, and been deeply encouraged by its testimony to the awesomeness of God’s whole creation. Christians are not alone in believing that the universe, with its billions of galaxies, with their billions of suns, and their billions of planets, (and tell me why not “billions of other forms of life” – which obviously delight God, if we are to take earth’s as an example) are too perfectly … well, perfectly made to not be the product and artistry of a supremely intelligent design. We Christians just have a name and a 3500 year-old description of the Designer and essentially how He went about it (read my book!).

The Hubble has probably done more to expand all our understanding and appreciation of the WHOLE creation, and more to bring scientists – especially those in physics, astronomy, and cosmology – to a believe in God, and more to open our eyes and minds to the glory of it all, and more to fuel our scientific knowledge and understanding, than any other scientific device or tool.

Much of the new vision, perspectives, and knowledge the Hubble has brought has reached straight into our common understandings of Scriptures. The description of the creation in Genesis 1 & 2 notwithstanding (read my book!), we’ve all had to revise our interpretations and understanding of many things. Who hasn’t gained a far better, and probably far “bigger” and more picturesque sense of “the heavens”? The earth? The stars? The moon? The sun? The place earth actually occupies in relationship to the sun and moon and stars? The “lights” that are for the telling of dates and times? The size and nature of the realm in which God, the angels, and our own resurrected selves might have to spend our eternity in? Time? “The light”? To point out a few.

There are some deeper things in our theology and understanding of God which Hubble has also opened to us (“since what may be known about God is plain to them, for God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made…”, Romans 1:19,20 NIV). For instance:

I wrote an article on “Like Luther”, another blog, that gives a quick explanation how the theories of Relativity and of Quantum Physics, which the Hubble has been of great benefit in developing and validating, that show us exactly how the doctrines of God’s absolute sovereignty and our free will can not only coexist, but may show us just how God works.

The Hubble has also shown us that not only is the universe actually expanding, from what we can see, but gives me a clear and confident understanding of the several scriptures telling us that God, in the beginning, “stretched forth the universe”. In fact, it answers for me what the Big Bang most probably was! And, I have come to a theory of (and will soon write extensively about) just what the mysterious “dark energy” is, that so puzzles scientists, and what the so-long-debated future of the universe is.

These are just a few of the things that make me love (LOVE!) the Hubble. I am so thankful NASA put the current upgrade back in the program, and only pray that God enables and protects those astronauts who have undertaken such a risky endeavor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Bible & Science, Just Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.