There is only one reality and it is beyond words and human understanding. All our cosmologies are just human attempts to account for the ineffable. If our faith is built on a cosmology, rather than direct experience of the divine (the Holy Spirit, the Tao, Sat Chit Anand, nirvana) it is as vulnerable to doubt and contradiction as anyone else’s. And I see very little “cosmology” in Jesus’ teachings - he simply took the understanding of his time and place as a given, and pointed out the way, the truth and the life, of the Kingdom. Arguing about cosmologies is as futile as discussing the number of angels on the head of a pin (see medieval scholasticism).
Isn’t this where faith comes in? Can anyone doubt that we are granted life by Grace? Or the fact of our free will? The delimna is to actively choose faith and to choose to live our lives according to the example of Jesus, or not. The Apostles chose faith. As do I.
Modern science considers all previous worldviews ignorant at best, with zero willingness to believe themselves misguided. A true scientist would consider his worldview tentative because there is more to be learned than the most erudite can imagine. What future man will 'know,' if the Malthusean global warming reactionaries don't kill us off first, will unquestionably look back at the early twentieth-century account of origins and trends as cartoonish as the materialist humanists think of first-century thinkers.
First, on what scientific basis do you glibly describe the thinking of the Apostles? If Jesus was who he claimed to be, who is to say what he taught his disciples? Might he even have withheld information about how he created because they could hardly understand what he taught them about his mission?
In the same vein, when God revealed his creation in Genesis, how many volumes might it have taken to specify his methodology? His audience of three or four thousand years ago, nor even an audience of twenty-first-century scientists, most likely could not comprehend a presentation of actual events.
The Dunning-Kruger effect operates on twentieth-century scientists in exactly the same way as on ignorant peasants. No one is immune to hubris.
Not so much irrelevant, as a distraction. And I’m not sure any cosmology has been defeated. They are all attempts to account for why and how we come to be here. But they do not open the doors of the Kingdom for us, and often bar the way - not because they are wrong but because our left brain loves them and gets trapped in them. See Paul and Greek philosophers, for example.
I wish you would describe your solves, though. It *is* a tension and maybe someone else has a better solution than I do, because I’ve got conflicting choices, here
Geocentrism is just as plausible a position to hold as heliocentrism. It just comes down to what sort of frame of reference you want to choose. I’ve been told that apparently the “math” works out easier for figuring out orbits and such if you use a heliocentric model, but really the geocentric model of the universe still works if you choose to place Earth as the fixed point of reference. People realized this I think because of the theory of relativity or something. Anyways all that to say that if even geocentrism has been restored as a plausible position that gives me hope that the rest of the Biblical cosmos will also one day be vindicated. Cheers.
Well, I call Jesus the Grand Anomaly, the Christ Event, meaning his resurrection, except for that possibility, for me a probability. Death in the End is King as far as I can tell looking at history and what I know of the Universe. And the proof of his resurrection and subsequent ascension is the inward gift of the Holy Spirit in the here and now. That knowing of the close presence of God is the first thing I got immediately on the spot when I trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior in my early 20’s, assorted miracles and other deeds of the Spirit of Jesus has been confirmation along the way. So in the casino of life I have placed all my chips on the fact of the Resurrection and that Jesus is alive and present to me along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, a little bit of angels and demons here and there too.
Interesting points. I wrestled with some of these kinds of questions for over 10 years during and after finishing my PhD—surrounded by the cosmology of my peers in biology seemingly daily challenging my ongoing conversion to Christianity—but also learning from my Cambridge trained Anglican/presbyterian pastor, and every other Christian resource I could get my hands on. It seemed a bit maddening of a struggle sometimes, schizophrenic paradoxes left and right, yeah. At the same time I wonder how many people ever get that far to question their assumptions. I mean most people have what they see as better things to do. So how realistic is it to ask people to peer into that mirror? Maybe that’s where the Holy Spirit or something like Pascal’s wager comes into play for many…or for others more simple self knowledge. But aren’t most people on these questions just essentially influenced by the powers that be of their day, whether those be clerics or philosophers or scientists? And if so doesn’t the church’s decline in power explain most of this?
Is this the consequences of secularism and the Church’s loss of authority? Was it the chicken or the egg? What caused the church to lose authority, was it cosmological or something else? Do you have any sources you’ve run across that look at that? Personally I had come to believe that the root cause of that loss of authority dated much further back in time to well before modern science, but the clergy’s ceding ground on cosmology in recent times isn’t something I’d considered before.
And on the other hand, secularism seems a very Christian phenomenon. And modern science as an enterprise does owe its existence to the Church, likewise, although obviously it’s a bit of a rickety vessel at times, and seems to have lost sight of the shore from which it departed here. But the proponents of scientism as opposed to your regular scientist focused on doing good work smack to me as a would-be rival priestly class, who historically have probably derided and tried to undermine historical Christianity just as much because they see them as potential rivals to be squashed.
Another thing I’d point out is that of course there is some interesting confessional overlap and gray areas and crossover; not to take away from the valid generalizations you pointed out. But particularly in evangelical Presbyterian circles, there has been a good bit of active debate between and study from both the “old earth” and “new earth” perspectives. Regarding Catholics, sometimes I get the feeling that the ambiguity isn’t always just clerical short-sightedness, but perhaps a certain (worldly?) concern for not grieving many of their regular mass goers, together with something like a long-game patience with the scientific enterprise and secular society. Depending where you are, there are quite a few former evangelical Catholics that still hold to a lot of their evangelical beliefs on cosmological questions, probably because they weren’t disabused of their notions when they became Catholic. Perhaps all that is feeble or foolish on the clergy’s part, perhaps if the cosmological issues really are causing many on the wrong side of things to slip into hell it is.
You say Christianity is "bleeding out" but that isn't true. Liberal Christianity is. Some forms of Evangelicalism are. But Eastern Orthodoxy in the USA, for instance, is bursting at the seams.
A major feature of the “mental landscape” of the NT writers was the assumed inward tangibility and accessibility of the Holy Spirit. No arduous years long “acquisition of the Holy Spirit” as it is termed in Orthodoxy for them. After all Jesus is introduced in each of the 4 Gospels as being the one who will baptize in the Holy Spirit.
There is only one reality and it is beyond words and human understanding. All our cosmologies are just human attempts to account for the ineffable. If our faith is built on a cosmology, rather than direct experience of the divine (the Holy Spirit, the Tao, Sat Chit Anand, nirvana) it is as vulnerable to doubt and contradiction as anyone else’s. And I see very little “cosmology” in Jesus’ teachings - he simply took the understanding of his time and place as a given, and pointed out the way, the truth and the life, of the Kingdom. Arguing about cosmologies is as futile as discussing the number of angels on the head of a pin (see medieval scholasticism).
I would ask if perhaps declaring cosmology irrelevant is what the defeated cosmology does after it has lost to try and continue playing the game?
Isn’t this where faith comes in? Can anyone doubt that we are granted life by Grace? Or the fact of our free will? The delimna is to actively choose faith and to choose to live our lives according to the example of Jesus, or not. The Apostles chose faith. As do I.
Modern science considers all previous worldviews ignorant at best, with zero willingness to believe themselves misguided. A true scientist would consider his worldview tentative because there is more to be learned than the most erudite can imagine. What future man will 'know,' if the Malthusean global warming reactionaries don't kill us off first, will unquestionably look back at the early twentieth-century account of origins and trends as cartoonish as the materialist humanists think of first-century thinkers.
First, on what scientific basis do you glibly describe the thinking of the Apostles? If Jesus was who he claimed to be, who is to say what he taught his disciples? Might he even have withheld information about how he created because they could hardly understand what he taught them about his mission?
In the same vein, when God revealed his creation in Genesis, how many volumes might it have taken to specify his methodology? His audience of three or four thousand years ago, nor even an audience of twenty-first-century scientists, most likely could not comprehend a presentation of actual events.
The Dunning-Kruger effect operates on twentieth-century scientists in exactly the same way as on ignorant peasants. No one is immune to hubris.
People who actually read Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species know that he wrote that God did it.
Mechanism is being argued.
Evolution is a Theory.
“Infallible” teachings are quite rare. There are about 3 of them.
The Bible is packed with metaphors and other literary devices.
We should worry less about what others think about us.
Not so much irrelevant, as a distraction. And I’m not sure any cosmology has been defeated. They are all attempts to account for why and how we come to be here. But they do not open the doors of the Kingdom for us, and often bar the way - not because they are wrong but because our left brain loves them and gets trapped in them. See Paul and Greek philosophers, for example.
I wish you would describe your solves, though. It *is* a tension and maybe someone else has a better solution than I do, because I’ve got conflicting choices, here
Geocentrism is just as plausible a position to hold as heliocentrism. It just comes down to what sort of frame of reference you want to choose. I’ve been told that apparently the “math” works out easier for figuring out orbits and such if you use a heliocentric model, but really the geocentric model of the universe still works if you choose to place Earth as the fixed point of reference. People realized this I think because of the theory of relativity or something. Anyways all that to say that if even geocentrism has been restored as a plausible position that gives me hope that the rest of the Biblical cosmos will also one day be vindicated. Cheers.
Well, I call Jesus the Grand Anomaly, the Christ Event, meaning his resurrection, except for that possibility, for me a probability. Death in the End is King as far as I can tell looking at history and what I know of the Universe. And the proof of his resurrection and subsequent ascension is the inward gift of the Holy Spirit in the here and now. That knowing of the close presence of God is the first thing I got immediately on the spot when I trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior in my early 20’s, assorted miracles and other deeds of the Spirit of Jesus has been confirmation along the way. So in the casino of life I have placed all my chips on the fact of the Resurrection and that Jesus is alive and present to me along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, a little bit of angels and demons here and there too.
I'm pretty sure I see "the globe model" in the book of Job.
Interesting points. I wrestled with some of these kinds of questions for over 10 years during and after finishing my PhD—surrounded by the cosmology of my peers in biology seemingly daily challenging my ongoing conversion to Christianity—but also learning from my Cambridge trained Anglican/presbyterian pastor, and every other Christian resource I could get my hands on. It seemed a bit maddening of a struggle sometimes, schizophrenic paradoxes left and right, yeah. At the same time I wonder how many people ever get that far to question their assumptions. I mean most people have what they see as better things to do. So how realistic is it to ask people to peer into that mirror? Maybe that’s where the Holy Spirit or something like Pascal’s wager comes into play for many…or for others more simple self knowledge. But aren’t most people on these questions just essentially influenced by the powers that be of their day, whether those be clerics or philosophers or scientists? And if so doesn’t the church’s decline in power explain most of this?
Is this the consequences of secularism and the Church’s loss of authority? Was it the chicken or the egg? What caused the church to lose authority, was it cosmological or something else? Do you have any sources you’ve run across that look at that? Personally I had come to believe that the root cause of that loss of authority dated much further back in time to well before modern science, but the clergy’s ceding ground on cosmology in recent times isn’t something I’d considered before.
And on the other hand, secularism seems a very Christian phenomenon. And modern science as an enterprise does owe its existence to the Church, likewise, although obviously it’s a bit of a rickety vessel at times, and seems to have lost sight of the shore from which it departed here. But the proponents of scientism as opposed to your regular scientist focused on doing good work smack to me as a would-be rival priestly class, who historically have probably derided and tried to undermine historical Christianity just as much because they see them as potential rivals to be squashed.
Another thing I’d point out is that of course there is some interesting confessional overlap and gray areas and crossover; not to take away from the valid generalizations you pointed out. But particularly in evangelical Presbyterian circles, there has been a good bit of active debate between and study from both the “old earth” and “new earth” perspectives. Regarding Catholics, sometimes I get the feeling that the ambiguity isn’t always just clerical short-sightedness, but perhaps a certain (worldly?) concern for not grieving many of their regular mass goers, together with something like a long-game patience with the scientific enterprise and secular society. Depending where you are, there are quite a few former evangelical Catholics that still hold to a lot of their evangelical beliefs on cosmological questions, probably because they weren’t disabused of their notions when they became Catholic. Perhaps all that is feeble or foolish on the clergy’s part, perhaps if the cosmological issues really are causing many on the wrong side of things to slip into hell it is.
You say Christianity is "bleeding out" but that isn't true. Liberal Christianity is. Some forms of Evangelicalism are. But Eastern Orthodoxy in the USA, for instance, is bursting at the seams.
I’ve seen no evidence for this outside of the very online.
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1715720530/saintconstantineorg/blizg8tbqqdmep9kjc0u/OSI_TheAmericanOrthodoxPriestShortageCrisis.pdf
Video discussing the report:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_jGEJXmvYc
Surge into the Orthodox Church:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESBsGDHI0XA
Recommended reading: “The Discarded Image” by C.S. Lewis about medieval
Cosmology. And the Psalms because they are always about our relationship with God and his creation.
A major feature of the “mental landscape” of the NT writers was the assumed inward tangibility and accessibility of the Holy Spirit. No arduous years long “acquisition of the Holy Spirit” as it is termed in Orthodoxy for them. After all Jesus is introduced in each of the 4 Gospels as being the one who will baptize in the Holy Spirit.