{"id":4968,"date":"2010-09-23T12:23:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T16:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=4968"},"modified":"2010-09-23T13:43:37","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T17:43:37","slug":"making-the-creator-in-our-image","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/making-the-creator-in-our-image\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Creator in Our Image"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Chuck<\/a>
Chuck Colson<\/figcaption><\/figure> 9\/22\/2010 – Chuck Colson –<\/p>\n

The debate about the origins of the universe just got a lot weirder. I can safely say, \u201cNow I\u2019ve heard it all.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday on BreakPoint, I told you that Stephen Hawking, the great scientist, believes that the universe and life itself can be explained without referring to God; that God is, in Hawking\u2019s words, \u201cunnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are some scientists who do believe there was a creator. The problem is that some of their ideas about the \u201ccreator\u201d and his \u201ccreation\u201d are straight out of a comic-book convention.<\/p>\n

According to a recent article written by a university astronomer in the U.K.\u2019s Telegraph newspaper, it\u2019s possible that the \u201cuniverse around us was created by people very much like ourselves, using devices not too dissimilar to those available to scientists today.\u201d<\/p>\n

In this scenario, our universe is only one of many universes: what physicists like Hawking call a \u201cmulti-verse.\u201d In one of these universes, someone, using a device only slightly more advanced than the Large Hadron Collider, created a black hole, which in turn, led to the Big Bang that created our universe.<\/p>\n

Mind you, there\u2019s absolutely no proof of this or, for that matter, the existence of \u201cparallel universes.\u201d Nor should we expect any: As physicist Lawrence Krauss documents in his book Hiding in the Mirror, hidden dimensions and parallel universes are mathematical abstractions that can\u2019t be proven in the lab or through observation.<\/p>\n

In Krauss\u2019 estimation, \u201cour continuing intellectual fascination with extra dimensions may tell us more about our own human nature than it does about the universe itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even more outlandish than creation-by-beings-from-a-parallel-universe is the idea that the universe, including us, is really a gigantic computer simulation. If that sounds familiar, it ought to: It\u2019s the idea behind the blockbuster film The Matrix.<\/p>\n

The \u201creasoning\u201d goes something like this: \u201ctechnological advances\u201d could enable \u201cadvanced humans,\u201d or \u201cpost-humans\u201d to \u201cprogram and run simulations of \u201ctheir evolutionary history.\u201d These simulations would take the form of \u201cvirtual worlds inhabited by virtual people.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, not only is everything around us fake, we are, too.<\/p>\n

According to one of the leading proponents of this idea, \u201cthere\u2019s a 20 percent chance we\u2019re living in a computer simulation.\u201d His proof? Like the creation-from-a-parallel-universe, there isn\u2019t any, and we shouldn\u2019t expect any. An intelligence sophisticated enough to create such a simulation is, by definition, sophisticated enough to hide the truth from us.<\/p>\n

Krauss is right: These kinds of speculations do tell us something about human nature, specifically its perversity. Surrounded by evidence that universe is not the product of blind chance but, instead, the result of purposeful intelligence, we imagine \u201ccreators\u201d that are literally the stuff of science fiction.<\/p>\n

And not coincidentally, these \u201ccreators\u201d are \u201cvery much like ourselves.\u201d More to the point, they make no demands on us \u2013 acknowledging their possible existence leaves us free to live as we please, with no obligations to either them or each other.<\/p>\n

When St. Paul wrote \u201cclaiming to be wise, they became fools,\u201d this is the kind of folly he had in mind. Creation makes God and his attributes knowable, but that kind of knowledge carries a price many of us are unwilling to pay. So, we opt instead for a \u201ccreator\u201d made in OUR image. One that is far better suited for the comic books.<\/p>\n

HT: Break Point<\/a> originally posted on 9\/14\/2010<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

9\/22\/2010 – Chuck Colson – The debate about the origins of the universe just got a lot weirder. I can safely say, \u201cNow I\u2019ve heard it all.\u201d Yesterday on BreakPoint, I told you that Stephen Hawking, the great scientist, believes that the universe and life itself can be explained without referring to God; that God … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[68,37,51,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-culture-war","category-science","category-scriptures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}