#65 – Origin and evolution of … the universe

.

.

.

Dr. Robert Mann (PhD, Astronomy and Physics; U. Waterloo) shares with us his understanding of what evolved out of the “cosmic egg” that we’ve been talking about over the past couple of weeks … our universe. He has spent his career working on quantum physics and gravity and how they create Black Holes, and his lifetime as a Christian gives him a unique perspective on this.

We pursued several threads that pull together scientific and theological ideas:

(1) Christians in general over the past century have been quite resistant to Big Bang cosmology and committed to a Young Earth view of Creation, but over the past few decades many have warmed up to a very long view about the universe (although many of these are still quite “young Earth” when it comes to humans). Did they just get tired of resisting? Or finally become convinced by the data? Or did they change their view on the Bible (and Genesis) as a science book? Or all of the above?

(2) Where did all the stuff (energy and matter) in the universe come from? Should theists have cognitive dissonance when embracing Big Bang cosmology while at the same time trying to accept the version we find in Genesis chapter one? On the other hand, should non-theists feel a similar cognitive dissonance when accepting the idea that all the energy and matter which make up the universe has always existed (that’s a whole lot of something from nothing), or that it just popped into existence all by itself without something putting it there?

(3) cosmologists and quantum physicists are quite convinced that there are more dimensions to our existence than the three describing space (up/down; forward/back; left/right) and time … even as many as ten! Using “Flatland” as an analogy, we discuss how those extra dimensions make it perfectly reasonable to accept the idea that there is a Higher Being who can be/do things that are completely unexplainable to us more dimensionally-limited beings.

(4) the Fine Tuning of cosmological constants raises very interesting and compelling arguments for the existence of a Cosmic Designer.

As always, tell us what you think …

.

Learn more about Dr. Robert Mann.

To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher.

Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive