In 2007, the University of Kentucky passed over a candidate for director of its observatory and hired a much less qualified applicant. According to emails and other evidence gathered in the resulting lawsuit, the reason he was passed over was his religious views. You see, C. Martin Gaskell is a Christian. Not only that, but one who happens to believe that God created the heavens and the earth.
I know, huh!?!
Before you start taking sides one way or the other, Mr. Gaskell’s views are actually pretty mainstream (at least for non-academics). His view of Creation does not conflict in any meaningful way with either Biblical accounts or standard evolutionary theory. In short it essentially holds that God created the Universe through some means we don’t understand and set in motion events that lead us to the present. He expounds on his views in some detail in an essay on this topic that he wrote as a synopsis to a talk he is regularly asked to give.
The main controversy has been between people at the two extremes (young earth creationists and humanistic evolutionists). “Creationists” attack the science of “evolutionists”. I believe that this sort of attack is very bad both scientifically and theologically. The “scientific” explanations offered by “creationists” are mostly very poor science and I believe this sort of thing actually hinders some (many?) scientists becoming Christians. It is true that there are significant scientific problems in evolutionary theory (a good thing or else many biologists and geologists would be out of a job) and that these problems are bigger than is usually made out in introductory geology/biology courses, but the real problem with humanistic evolution is in the unwarranted atheistic assumptions and extrapolations. It is the latter that “creationists” should really be attacking (many books do, in fact, attack these unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations).
This is exactly the way I envision things. As to what was before the Big Bang, beats me. I figure that I’ll find out from God one day.
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