You’re a rabbit hunter, eh? 
1 Like
EU is new to me. And quoting from the Book of Revelation is like Muslims providing “scientific prophesy” from the Qur’an.
I suggest both are bad theology, and bad exegesis.
I did a quick Google search. There are plenty of articles from scientists and others who find EU suspect… My cursory “research” agrees with the skeptics. Biologos to me is Conservative
Bible Believers with an interest in science who continue to believe the Bible is “God’s Word to Man” rather than “Man’s Words about their chosen God”. But Baby Steps are better than continuing to crawl. Best regards. Really. 
Why choose to limit that to either/or? Is the both/and possibility being excluded?
And treating “the Bible” as though it is a homogenous, undifferentiated, uniform lump of some sort misses the subtlety. “God’s Word to Man” is Jesus Christ, perhaps most closely represented in the gospel accounts. “Man’s words about [the Judeao-Christian] God” seems a reasonable approach to, say, Lamentations and Psalms.
It’s more subtle that a lumped “the Bible”, isn’t it? And more subtle that “either/or”, isn’t it?
1 Like
Duality is a tricky business. And culture-tradition is a strong motivator for maintaining the accepted and enforced status quo. Yeshua of Narareth had much to say about that if the Gospel accounts are to be accepted as accurate representations of his words and actions. And the Religio-Politicos of his day grew weary and threatened by him in short order. He was dispatched to the grave. The resurrection…as Saul wrote is the centrality of what became identified as the “Christian” message. The Jewish sect went global. New branding and appropriation resulted. It continues to do so.
“Both-And” was part of my theological curriculum at my Southern Baptist seminary in California in 1979-82. But not when it came to Church Growrh. Rick Warren was 3 a few classes ahead of me and applying his take on Both-And in Southern California. It proved to be lucrative and Homogeneous.
The take-over of the denomination by the “Conservative Resurgence” Tribe of the SBC was push back to Both-And and put an end to it and fueled the Religious Right and The “Pathway to the GOP/Reagan and the Neo-Liberal DNC” was opened.
But that is all far a field to this EU thread . But related. Science deniers of a different sort. I now view the Bible collection of approved texts of the 4th century CE as important sign posts in the ongoing development of World Religious understandings. Authoritative in that sense. But not the sole supreme source.
If scientific discovery can-will-must be amended why not religion as well?
1 Like
There are also 100 times the number of ideas that were once considered fringe, are still considered fringe, and have been falsified by mountains of evidence. Science is all about challenging theories and hypotheses, but it is also about throwing out theories and ideas that don’t work.
Advances are made by finding new paradigms that better explain the data. Science isn’t about being an iconoclast. It’s about constructing a better theory.
8 Likes
Familiar with it. MDiv 1979-82. Thanks
1 Like
Well, did GPS get invented and commercially profitable as soon as the theory of relativity was defined? This EU theory is in the very early stages of development as near as I can tell, and they certainly don’t say they have a whole cosmology figured out.
I understand how the Theory of Relativity is practical and has commercial value. I enjoy using GPS to guide travel as much as you. That will continue to be useful. But can we build a cosmology on it? It doesn’t seem so when you read about all the problems with black holes and dark matter, comets that are not icy surfaces, etc. The beginnings of the universe - or whether stars are powered by electric plasma currents may not have commercial value except to sell re-written text books some day. Commercial value doesn’t seem like it should make the EU discoveries irrelevant.
More important to me is whether it’s relevant to scripture - especially Matt 24:29, Mark 13:24-25, Luke 21:25, Rev 6:13, Rev 8:12, Rev 12:4, Rev 6:14, and Rev 22:1-5.
I could send you links to more information the EU has about these things, but I’m not the person to defend these ideas. I’m simply pointing out how extremely difficult it is for the beginnings of a new - perhaps better - idea that is taking root. And I think your reply here proves that.
Thunderbolts.info has information on the problems of black holes, problems in understanding stars and nuclear fusion, and the imaging and data from probes and telescopes is starting to reveal more. There’s no way I can relay here all that I’ve read and listened to. I understand the natural tendency is to get quick answers, but understanding the EU ideas takes time and effort. I’m not trying to win an argument here. I would rather challenge people to be careful in accepting “current sciences” of cosmology and evolution, and rule out the possibility of better explanations to the problems that exist.
That is not a valid analogy. The theory of relativity was not ‘defined’ – it was proposed and then demonstrated to be accurate long before it was used in GPS. EU has not been likewise demonstrated.
And legitimate data.
I don’t think anything like that has been demonstrated. No one is questioning that EU is ‘different’, but that is not an argument for its validity.
I’m interested in eschatology, too, but vague analogies do not make EU relevant to scripture.
Okay, I’ll use the term proposed. The EU concepts are proposed, and the “products” will follow. And, as I read it, they are using the data from probes and telescopes to demonstrate the concepts are valid. For example they predicted what would be found on a comet - a rocky surface and not ice particles that tear off and create the comet tails.
Stuart Talbott: Undeniable Evidence for Electric Comets | Thunderbolts
Yes, I know this is a video - and not a peer reviewed paper, but does it demonstrate a bit of legitimacy of the EU concepts? There is data behind the EU concepts. I’m just not the person to present it with any clarity.
Sorry.
1 Like
Is the “belief” in gravity, real science? Should I believe in gravity and gravity waves which is “necessary” to understand other concepts like the general theory of relativity and what happened in the first moments of the Big Bang. Although there is “usefulness” in what we know about some of this, isn’t it a fact that “science” is still trying to prove these? It seems like the jury is still out with GW and the LIGO findings. 1.1 billion spent in the U.S. and more elsewhere has produced results that are debated. The investment in proving concepts is enormous, so there is a tendency to do what happened with the LIGO discovery in 2015 when they published a great “finding” and claimed they detected a GW event from a black hole merger that happened 130 million years ago. That event was vetoed with “high confidence” within 18 seconds of it being uploaded to the GraceDB database. This whole LIGO claim has all the earmarks of another Joseph Webber scenario, only the detectors now cost hundreds of millions of dollars to “test” their claims. The testing will continue for years, perhaps decades, until “proven better”, or it may be scrapped and replaced with a better understanding.
Meanwhile, should we change our interpretations of the Bible to match this current GW science. Should we trust the findings of the LIGO lab? Should we continue to believe it will confirm more and more about the Big Bang “idea”? Or should we continue to believe the Bible as believers have done for centuries? Can science afford to adjust the gravity based cosmology if gravity waves can’t be sufficiently proven? Probably not, because there are too many grants and investments at stake. The narrative will live on. Yes, I know, I shouldn’t use the term narrative, but common folks like me see it that way because we have to simplify complex science to place belief in it over belief in the Bible. Most people simplify it even more by believing whatever science puts out there in the headlines. That seems to have been even more dangerous to the faith in a Creator God for millions of people.
No, I prefer reading about science that confirms what the Bible says about creation and the world wide flood. EU science does reinforce what the Bible says more. I have more peace with the EU concepts than our current science ideas of cosmology and evolution. No worries, I’ll fade away from the BioLogos forum as it does not seem to question “accepted science” as much as I do.
Real science gets questioned plenty … which is why it is as strong as it is, and your failure to question EU, but to instead just accept it as something that confirms weird and also unsupportable stuff that you also think about scripture - that explains why EU is and will remain in the state it is in. When you decide to ignore reality, reality is still there for everybody else to see just the same. We think that the Bible is concerned with truth, and will remain committed to those pursuits.
6 Likes
Belief in gravity is pretty much universal. Do you mean believe (in whatever sense) in General Relativity?
You should understand the fact that General Relativity provides a very good model for gravity, one that has made and been validated by numerous, precise numerical predictions. Any proposed theory of gravity that would replace GR (and proposing such theories is an active area of physics research) has, at a minimum, to make the same numerical predictions. If GR predictions about gravitational waves turn out to be correct, great. If not, also great – time for a new theory. Some expensive tests of theories support them (e.g. finding the Higgs), some don’t (e.g. not finding proton decay).
So, what precise numerical predictions does EU make that differ from standard theories?
My interpretation of the Bible will not change in the slightest if GR turns out to be wrong.
You aren’t a scientist, are you? When theories fail, they’re discarded.
4 Likes
I don’t accept EU as a cosmology that has all the answers needed to be right. I have interest in it because it shows a path to a cosmology that seems to be more aligned with the Bible. And it’s a path, not a conclusion. There is a lot to the EU concepts that few people have taken the time to review. For example, the idea that electrical scaring from interplanetary events is more likely to have created many geological features on our planet and other objects in space. Those concepts come from understanding more about the electrical activity in space and between object in space - and the tie to ancient mythology and symbols. All that makes more sense (to me) and confirms the probability of the Genesis accounts than gravity based cosmology and evolution (chance life to humans). I could go on and on, but the bottom line is BioLogos is committed to gravity cosmology and evolution. My challenge to anyone is simply consider other options fairly and not jump to conclusions lumping everyone else into “flat earth” believers. I’m not offended by that. I know how difficult it is to be challenged, and how difficult being considerate is. I pray that I have not offended anyone either.
Say rather that Biologos is committed to following evidence wherever it leads. And it currently overwhelmingly leads to these very things you’ve rejected. If evidence ever started leading elsewhere, and started predicting past and future stuff better than current theories do, only then would you see the large ship slowly begin to turn. But turn, it does if evidence leads in other directions. So regarding EU, ‘wait and see’ might not be a bad attitude to have. But until that time when any such new evidence is produced, it’s unreasonable to expect everyone else to abandon successful (indeed as yet unrivaled) theories that have explained so much.
4 Likes
No, I am certainly not a scientist. I do understand that GR provides us with useful tools and enables us to make predictions. Where I become a skeptic is that It’s also needed to explain the Big Bang - which is necessary to explain the whole of current cosmology. And that is closely linked to the ideas of chance-life- to-human-evolution. And that to me is hard to correlate with the Bible. A “god” striking the match of the Big Bang does not fit (for me) with the Genesis accounts or the rest of the Bible. The ability to have a personal relationship with the universe/human life Creator God is what I believe the Bible intends to lead us to. As you can tell, I don’t believe the Bible is the “words of man about God”. I believe it’s inspired and accurate words from God because of the tremendous amount of fulfilled prophecy and my personal experience. For me, it’s faith in that over “trust” in science. I believe some science is leading people away from the personal God I experience day to day. If your personal experience with God brings you peace, joy and love, and hope for eternal life because of Jesus, then we share the same faith. Both of us are probably chasing some rabbits trying to figure the material world out, but this personal God experience is what we were created for and more important (to me). I am so awed by the beauty and complexity of material world we live in and the display of the universe above. That inspires me to worship this Creator God of the Bible.