Why is the Sky Blue?

 
Why is the sky blue? It’s a simple question, but it has messed me up for years. I have heard so many explanations; light passing through water molecules, light reflecting off of nitrogen or oxygen or something. I have finally found out the correct explanation, and I now realize that I was approaching the question from the wrong angle. I had always assumed that it was a particular particle in the atmosphere that caused the effect. Instead, blue sky is caused by the frequency of the blue part of the spectrum of light. The resonance frequency of blue light causes the light waves to deflect off of everything in the atmosphere; oxygen, nitrogen, dust, pollution, and scatters the light waves in every direction causing the blue sky effect. And so it was the direction of my thinking that caused me to look at this problem in the wrong way. Instead of coming at the problem by looking at particles, I needed to look at the frequency of light waves.
 
In the same way, many people are not looking at the assumed problems between science and religion from the correct direction. Most of us assume that science and religion can come together with some kind of shared experience. In the world of science, shared experience is through experimentation that can be duplicated by other scientists. Several friends are going to help me make a telescope mirror. If I don’t mess things up, the mirror should turn out the same as the mirrors that they have made. Thus science is experiential; we can all experience the same things. If the formula or experiment works once, then anyone can repeat it and it should work every time.
 
Religion is experiential as well, but in a completely different way. Jesus said; “The Kingdom of God is within you” Luke 17:21. People of faith experience God’s presence. God talks with me and I talk to Him. There is no other way to explain it. And therefore, experiencing God in a real and personal way is at the core of religion. People of faith can verbally share their experiences with God, but no one can duplicate an individual’s personal spiritual relationship. There are no formulas or experiments that can be performed over and over. And so though both science and religion are experiential, they are profoundly different.
 
Scientists and religionists are trying to understand one another through dialogue. But most of the current dialogue approaches the subject from the wrong direction. Too often religionists are trying to create a proof of religious experience. They try to create an argument or some kind of model that will sway the audience to their side. Since there are no experiments or formulas that can be repeated by others, these attempts to prove religious experience fail. Scientists also fail to win over the religious audience. That is because they argue for proof through shared experience, like experiments. But no one can experience God in the unique and personal way that each person of faith does. I know that God is with me right now. I can’t prove it, but I don’t have to.
 
Both sides of the debate need to approach science and religion from the correct angles. Science is based upon shared experience. Religion is based upon personal experience. It’s as simple as understanding why the sky is blue.
 
God bless you,
 
Pastor Bill

If Not for Earthquakes, We Wouldn’t Be Here

In this writing I hope that I can give a reasonable answer to the eternal question; why does God cause disasters? A recent article found in Christian Chronicle quotes people asking this question in Japan while cleaning up after the earthquake and tsunami. Lots of theologians have attempted to answer this question, but there is also a geological answer that you may not be aware of. If not for earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis, life on Earth wouldn’t exist. Let me explain.

Earth is located at just the right distance from the Sun to sustain life. Venus is a little too close and so the surface is too hot. Mars is also within the habitable zone and could have abundant life on it as well, but doesn’t. Why not? The answer has to do with Earth’s molten core and the lack of one on Mars.

Earth’s core is mostly iron, and is heated through pressure and radioactivity. We have lots of uranium inside our world, and that keeps the core of our planet good and hot. The heat and pressure causes the molten iron to move around a lot, called convection. When molecules get hot they expand and move away from each other. That movement of massive amounts of metal causes several beneficial occurrences. First, early planetary volcanism filled our atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Being a greenhouse gas it warmed up our world and laid the foundation for plant life to use the carbon as food and spew out the oxygen as a byproduct. We in turn, benefit from the spewed out oxygen. The second outcome of a molten metallic core is our magnetic field. The earth is surrounded by a very large and powerful magnetic field that blocks much of the radiation aimed at our planet from the Sun. Without our magnetic field, the radiation falling on our planet wouldn’t just give us a sun burn, but would be too deadly for any life to eke out a sad little existence. The solar wind that the sun produces would also interact with our atmosphere and push the molecules in it away from our planet. In other words, no more atmosphere. Sadly this is what happened to Mars.

Our red neighbor is much smaller than Earth. As a result, the radioactive elements in its core were not sufficient to keep the core molten. At one time in the distant past, Mars had a molten core, because there are dead volcanoes on the surface. At one time Mars had an atmosphere similar to ours, because there are signs of dead rivers and lakes on the surface. Unfortunately, by the time we came along, the core has cooled down and the magnetic field has disappeared. The atmosphere that sustained flowing water on the surface was blown away by the solar wind and the planet has become the home of deserts, dust storms and NASA rovers.

Since we don’t want to end up as thirsty sun burned Martians, we need our molten metal core to keep producing our protective magnetic field which keeps our life sustaining atmosphere intact. But our life sustaining molten metal core means earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis. Shake your fist at God when natural disasters strike, but without the planetary forces that cause these problems, we wouldn’t be here to complain.

Which leaves the question, why did God make it this way in the first place? I will give you my two simple answers for this. First, because it works. The forces of the cosmos are perfectly balanced to allow us to exist on this wonderful world. But the same forces that give us life are also very destructive. So even though we live on the edge of a knife, the system works brilliantly. Second, if you believe in God and if you believe that God has an eternal plan for you, it all makes perfect sense. For those of us with faith, our lives here are just a small part of the eternal universe adventure that God has in store for us. If an earthquake causes my house to fall in on me, I will continue to live on in the ever expanding cosmos. Hopefully someday I will truly see all of the good that comes from the bad, and understand God’s plan more than I can today. In the meantime, I thank God everyday for this incredible creation and the precise design that makes my life and yours possible.

God bless you,

Pastor Bill Whitehead

Science Brings Ukrainian To Christ

Eugene Shevchenko, like most folks in the Soviet Union, grew up in a secular household and had seen a Bible only once in his life before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But his studies in science pointed him to a higher power, he said. He was intrigued particularly by the second law of thermodynamics, which states that usable energy in the universe tends to get converted to unusable energy over time. (I had to look that up.) I found a website called “All About Science” that explains it this way:

The universe is constantly losing usable energy and never gaining. We logically conclude the universe is not eternal. The universe had a finite beginning — the moment at which it was at “zero entropy” (its most ordered possible state). Like a wind-up clock, the universe is winding down, as if at one point it was fully wound up and has been winding down ever since. The question is who wound up the clock?

Eugene Shevchenko found the answer to that question in the Almighty. He studied the Bible and was baptized in 1993.

Read More…

Christianity Today Searches for Adam and Eve

Christianity Today takes a look at the theology and science surrounding Adam and Eve. Can we using modern science, know anything about these people? A very good article looking at all sides. Below is part of a review by a respected scientist / Christian.

(Excerpt from a review by Christopher Benson)

With a cartographer’s precision, Ostling carefully maps the terrain of the debate on the historical Adam, judiciously bracketing the noisy gongs (no names will be mentioned, although it’s tempting) and spotlighting figures hitherto unknown by vast swaths of Evangelicals, figures such as science-religion writers Karl Giberson and Denis Lamoureux, biblical exegetes Daniel Harlow and Peter Enns, theologian John Schneider, Old Testament scholars Bruce Waltke and Tremper Longman, public policy analyst Michael Cromartie, and biologists Dennis Venema and Darrel Falk. These figures deserve a patient hearing without reflexive and vituperative charges of heresy. The biggest star of all, who should and may already be a household name, is Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health and former director of the Human Genome Project. Posterity, I submit, will regard his research in genetics with the same indebtedness as other pioneers in modern science like Einstein and Watson & Crick. In 2007, he founded the San Diego-based BioLogos Foundation which is now the leading voice in the integration of faith and science, advancing evolutionary creation. (A rival organization to BioLogos is the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, home to the Intelligent Design movement.)

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Understanding God and Science

I like The BioLogos Foundation; an organization that tries to bring together science and faith. I like them because I’m an amateur astronomer and I see it as studying how God made the heavens and the earth. To me it’s fun and challenging. However, it is also fraught with conflicts that appear unresolvable. I’m trying to find a way to resolve the conflicts and so are the BioLogos people. If this subject interests you below is an excerpt from an explanation of what they believe and how they are trying to understand how God created everything.

The development and advance of science have allowed us to discover more about the universe. Such discovery results in an increasing accumulation of scientific truth. For believers, these discoveries must ultimately be compatible with the truth that is revealed in the Bible, and it is the conviction of BioLogos that this compatibility is not only desirable but also possible. The limitation is that our access to all forms of truth, including scientific and religious, is at best partial.

Read more…

When God Rested, The Creation of New Animal Species Stopped

Genesis 2:2 says that after God created humanity, God rested from His labors. Another way of saying this, God stopped creating new animals on this planet.

Up until the time of the rise of human beings, the creation of new animal species ran at a rate of approximately one per year. A pretty amazing pace. But since humans hit the scene, no new animal species have been created upon the earth. This includes habitats where no humans were present. When God created us, the creation engine stopped.

There is still argument between biologists over the definition of an animal species. I am using the broadest sense that science is currently using. Dr. Hugh Ross describes it as this; “In natural habitats undisturbed by human activity, biologists have yet to observe the production of one distinctly new (physiologically incapable of interbreeding) animal species.”

The Bible says that on the seventh day God rested. Modern biology says that when God rested, the earth stopped producing new animals.

(the above picture is the first new species created since humans – the KermitCat.)

Peace,

Pastor Bill

Introduction of Life on the Earth

Genesis 1:12


The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

The early earth’s atmosphere was rich in carbon dioxide, which was produced by a great deal of volcanic activity, and water vapor created when a large asteroid crashed into the planet and vaporized the oceans. The same volcanic activity caused the creation of land at just the right time for plant life to take advantage of the perfect atmospheric conditions. Looking at the above passage you can see a description of God created plant life on earth. Abundant plant life created enough oxygen to support large bodied animal life.

Psalm 104:29-30

When you hide your face,
they (all living things) are terrified;

when you take away their breath,

they die and return to the dust.

When you send your Spirit,

they are created,

and you renew the face of the earth.

From the beginning of life on earth, creatures are introduced by God and removed in just the right sequence. Take a look at these verses from Psalm 104. The passage describes living things appearing on the earth and also disappearing. What science calls extinction we now know as necessary for the renewal of earth’s biology and the appearance of more sophisticated species. Humans could not have competed with the dinosaurs, and thus those enormous creatures died and were “return(ed) to the dust”.

Genesis 1:20

And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky."

Roughly 500 million years ago the land and the oceans teemed with life. Upwards of 80 percent of all of the life that has ever lived on this planet existed during this remarkable period called the Cambrian explosion. As you can see God made it all and declared it good. And the Bible gave us a record of this amazing process long before science started to tease it out of the fossil record.

Peace,

Pastor Bill

The Bible and Science Describe the Early Earth

 


Genesis 1:1 describes the following conditions that match what science is saying about the early earth;

1. Entirely covered with water
2. Wrapped in darkness
3. Devoid of life
4. Unfit for life

Modern science says that the early earth was covered in an ocean, and had a thick atmosphere that did not allow light to strike the surface.

Genesis 1:2 describes God’s Spirit present over the developing creation like an expectant parent. (see Deut. 32:11 for similar usage of language)

Genesis 1:3 says that God caused light to fall upon the world. Current science says that a large asteroid hit the earth causing the early oceans to turn to super heated steam thus blowing away the early opaque atmosphere, allowing light to hit the surface of the earth through a translucent atmosphere. This event also created our moon; Genesis 1:16.

Genesis 1:6-8 is a description of the water cycle, which makes life on our world possible.

Genesis 1:9-10 describes the growth of the land masses.

I hope you can see from this brief description, that the Bible and modern science are not as far off as most people believe. If you wish to learn more I suggest buying the book; “Why the Universe is the Way it is” by Hugh Ross. The above information comes from this wonderful Christian physicist.

Peace,
Pastor Bill

Bible Talks About the Expansion of Space

Long before the famous scientist Stephen Hawking gazed out into space and decided to be a physicist, we Christians knew. In fact, long before Einstein or Hubble or any of the giants of modern science even for a minute considered that the universe around us is expanding, people who studied the Bible knew. That’s right; the theory of the expanding universe is mentioned in the Bible, in texts that were written over 2,000 years ago.

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity hinted at the expansion. But it wasn't until the astronomer Edwin Hubble took the light of distant galaxies and ran it through a spectrograph that he realized that the light rays were being stretched out. This stretching shifts the light towards the red end of the spectrum. Measuring this shift told him that the galaxies were moving away from us; in fact they were moving faster than the speed of light. The only explanation for this was an expanding universe. The laws of physics still work because light moves at a consistent rate, but light must travel more distance. The changing sound of a receding train is a good example of this principle.

Psalm 104:2 says; He (God) wraps Himself in light as with a garment, He stretches out the heavens like a tent.

There are ten other Old Testament passages like this one. In Biblical times tents were made from cotton or animal hides. Both can be stretched. God is seen by the writers as creating the heavens by expanding them to make room for God’s purposes. God stretches the fabric of heaven just enough to fill it with all of His creations.

And it’s a good thing that God’s universe is expanding. The early universe was so full of high energy materials, what we call radiation, that life as we know it could not have survived the constant radioactive bombardment. But as the heavens stretched out, the radiation stretched out with it decreasing the amount of high energy material that strikes us. God stretched out the tent of the sky just enough to make a safe place for us to live.

Thus the concept, though not the theory, has been sitting in the Biblical texts waiting for twentieth century people to apply them to science.

God bless you,

Pastor Bill