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Cosmology

Relating to God Through the Sciences.

DEFINITION: Science is the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation. It is both an organized body of knowledge and the dynamic process of discovering how the universe works.

  1. Physical Sciences: The study of non-living matter, energy, and the laws of nature. (Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Earth Sciences [Geology, Meteorology]).

  2. Life Sciences (Biological Sciences): The study of living organisms and life processes. (Biology, Zoology, Botany, Genetics, Ecology, Neurobiology.)

  3. Social Sciences: The study of human behavior, societies, and social relationships. Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science.

  4. Formal Sciences: Unlike the first three, these are a priori disciplines—they don't rely on empirical observation of the physical world, but they provide the language and tools that all other sciences use to exist. (cosmology, philosophy, natural history, human history, mathamatics, logic)

  • COSMOLOGY is the scientific study of the origin, evolution, and eventual fate of the entire universe. Cosmology is a subset of Phyisical sciences (ie, Astronomy and Physics), but is itself a formal science because he looks at the universe as a whole. Reproducability of observation and experimentation is a no-op for cosmology despite is anchoring in the physical sciences. Cosmology because of its sample size of 1, relies heavily on the other formal sciences like math. Cosmology belongs to the physical sciences because it deals with matter, energy, and spacetime, its constraints force it to operate much like a formal science—relying on the absolute laws of logic and mathematics to map out the history of everything.

Genesis 1:1-2 — Ge 1:1 ¶ In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Internal Challenges in the Bible Text:

  • Reasoning with Genesis chapters 1 and 2
  • "corners of the earth":
  • Isaiah 11:12 [an edge; a wing; a corner "wings of the earth"]; idiom: farthes reaches, like the edges of the wings of a bird -- an ancient Near East figure of speach meaning "everywhere" not only present in the Bible -- an idiom for the 4 cardinal directions: North, South, East, West

John 10:9 I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.

  • Revelation 7:1 [an angle, corner, quarter] In the Greek text of Revelation 7:1, the word translated as "corners" is gōnia. Literal meaning: An angle, a corner, or a junction (it’s the root of modern English geometric words like polygon). In ancient Greek geographical contexts, gōnia was the standard word used to translate the Hebrew kanaph (extremity/wing). It was used to denote the four quarters or quadrants of a map or region.

1. The Beginning

  • Genesis 1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
  • Genesis 1; John 1:1
  • Big bang 4.6 billion years ago our sun was born. (singularity, Einstien's General Relativity)
  • a "primordial atom" or a "cosmic egg" exploding outward. an absolute point of origin followed by a sudden, universe-spanning emergence of radiation. ("light?")
  • Expansion: Isaiah 44:24
  • Constant laws Jeremiah 33:25-26 (character of God)

Days of Separation (Domains)Days of Population (Inhabitants/Rulers) Day 1: Light and Darkness are separated.Day 4: The Sun, Moon, and Stars are created to rule the light and dark.Day 2: The Waters above and below are separated.Day 5: Fish and Birds are created to fill the waters and sky.Day 3: Dry Land is separated from the Seas.Day 6: Land Animals and Humans are created to inhabit the land.

2. The Early Earth

  • No structure, inhospitable to life: Genesis 1:2
  • Dark and covered with water Genesis 1:2
  1. "Without Form and Void" (The Magma Ocean Stage) In planetary cosmology, a planet is considered "formless" before its internal layers differentiate and a solid crust stabilizes. Immediately following the accretion of cosmic dust and the cataclysmic, Moon-forming giant impact, the early Earth was a molten, chaotic mass with no permanent features (Allègre & Schneider, 1994; Lunine, 2006).

According to geodynamic modeling published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, the early Hadean Earth was characterized by:

"...an eon of extreme violence... when the entire planet was thought to be covered by a magma ocean between ~300 and 2000 km deep" (O'Neill & Debaille, 2014, p. 49).

During this window, the surface was a literal fluid wasteland of bubbling silicate melt—a planet entirely devoid (void) of stable geographic structure, topography, or life (Allègre & Schneider, 1994; Sleep, 2010).

  1. "Darkness was on the Face of the Deep" (The Steam Atmosphere)

While the phrase "the deep" typically evokes liquid water, in the context of a cooling planet, the initial "deep" was an oppressive, globally enveloping primordial atmosphere.

Research outlined in Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology demonstrates that the extreme heat of the young, molten Earth vaporized all volatile compounds, creating a dense, opaque blanket of supercritical steam and heavy gases (Sleep, 2010).

The Super-Greenhouse: This early atmosphere contained massive amounts of carbon dioxide (up to 100 bars) and water vapor (Sleep, 2010).

The Blocked Sun: This thick, ultra-dense cloud layer was so volatile and heavily saturated that it completely choked out incoming sunlight, blanketing the planet's surface in total, pitch-black darkness (Allègre & Schneider, 1994). The "face of the deep" was a pressurized, shrouded world where the sun would not be visible from the surface for millions of years.

  1. "The Face of the Waters" (The Global Hydrosphere) As the planet's surface cooled below the critical threshold, the thick steam atmosphere condensed, resulting in a global downpour of historic proportions.

As noted in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, "liquid water existed continuously on the surface within a few hundred million years" of Earth's formation (Lunine, 2006, p. 1721). Because the Earth had not yet developed robust, deep continental tectonic cratons to push up massive mountain ranges, the early water accumulation formed an unbroken, global marine environment (Korenaga, 2021). Geophysical models suggest that the Hadean Earth was essentially a waterworld, where a vast, deep, global ocean covered nearly the entirety of the planet’s surface (Korenaga, 2021).

3. Rise of Humanity

  • from a small population
  • migrated from mesopotamia (where did it arise?)
  • relatively recently
  • made in God's Image

PHILOSPHY

The Core Logic

The argument relies on Modal Logic, which is the philosophy of what is possible, what is impossible, and what is necessary. It introduces the concept of Possible Worlds—a complete, alternative way the universe could have turned out (e.g., a world where gravity is slightly stronger, or a world where you had oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs).

The argument hinges on a crucial philosophical distinction:

Maximal Excellence: Possessing the highest possible degrees of goodness, power, and knowledge within one specific possible world.

Maximal Greatness: Possessing Maximal Excellence across all possible worlds.

The argument posits that a being cannot truly be "maximally good" if that goodness could suddenly cease to exist or if it only applies to our specific universe. True, maximal goodness must be an unalterable, necessary feature of reality that holds true across every single possible reality.

Real Existence is Better Than Imaginary Existence: If you imagine a being that is perfectly loving, perfectly just, and maximally good, but that being only exists in your mind, it lacks a critical attribute of goodness: the ability to actually execute that goodness. A real dollar is better than an imaginary dollar; a really existing source of objective goodness is greater than a purely fictional one.

The Necessity of Goodness: If a being is truly maximally good, its goodness cannot be accidental or temporary. It must be a necessary truth. Because modal logic states that if something is necessarily true, it must be true in all possible realities, the existence of a maximally good being becomes an all-or-nothing proposition. If it is even possible for supreme goodness to exist, it must exist everywhere.

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