He's a Big Bang God!

  From as young as I can remember I was under the assumption that one could not believe in God creating the earth while believing the earth was billions of years old. I was also under the assumption that it was near heretical to believe in a "big bang" kind of nonsense! What more could say, "there is no God"?
    One of the first lectures my professor gave he mentioned this tension, this chasm between science and supernatural occurrences. And though some of my shared faith may disagree with me, I think he said it best when he said that science and religion need not have a relationship at all. Science can not disprove or prove the existence of God nor  explain how miracles occur, so why must become so uneasy when science doesn't want to include God in their lectures of how the world was formed (teach your children at home, right?)? I think we forget that science, though absolutely astounding in the knowledge it brings to mankind about something so vast as our world, still operates within certain boundaries. Lets not forget the scientific method, it is the parameter for experiments and testing hypotheses. It is not for testing God or even the way He created the earth. But my question is why can't I, a Christian, look at science, accept it as science and still believe in God?  

 For most Christians this is a quandary, given that you think about such things. I think about these things and  I would like to tell you what I think in hopes that if you have not begun to think you will start to. 
 I didn't know I was scared of the "big bang theory", but I was. It threatened me somehow even though I didn't know it. It told me God didn't exist and that we all came from primordial slim without purpose, void of reasoning and eventually we would become monkeys, without purpose, void of reasoning. It was an existential nightmare! It was like when I was afraid of the Da Vince Code" and decided to see the movie in hopes of disarming my fears and when I realized all it was was terrible movie based off a book of some guys imagination, I laughed in absurdity!

Do we even know what we are afraid of?

The big bang theory is defined as :

"A cosmological theory holding that the universe originated approximately 20 billion years ago from the violent explosion of a very small agglomeration of matter of extremely high density and temperature."

    

Genesis 1:1 says " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters."

Now, I ask you this, why are we so adamnt of believing that when it says "God created" it must mean He created the neat little brown, green, blue ball we are all sitting on now? We have put Him in a bedtime story shoe box and placed Him under the bed. Is He not more awesome!!!  Could God not only for His pure pleasure have created the earth with a "bang"? A God size firework show? Just imagine it!! The Bible does not say how He did, it just says He did it. And do you think God has told us everything??!!? The magnitude of unknown galaxies is unfathomable to anyone...could He not have some secrets!? I know it might be uncomfortable for some of you, to imagine a God you can't imagine, but get over it...He is not God without His secrets.

       With that said, why can't the earth be 4.5 billion years old? Was Adam a man or a baby?? Is it out of the realm of possibility for God to create an old earth? 

 I just implore you...ask questions! Wonder about what you have been told and know for yourself. Life is too short and God too awesome, to not spend your time seeking to know Him in all His wonder, in all His BIG BANG-NESS!

    

Plates on Mars!!

    Let me start off by saying, I'm barely ready to do this! But did I not  vow to approach Geology with as much vigor as I do musing over the rest of life's complexities? I underestimate myself and my ability to ponder science and yet I find my mind at home contemplating Philosophy, a study with even less definition!!
 Nevertheless, here I am, searching the web for the latest story in Geology that would not only perk my interest, but yours as well.
     I'm not ashamed to say this, but it is true that I did not know Mars is a planet with similar features to Earth. And that is where my story begins:

 "Mars has tectonic plates, just like earth!"

    And when I read this I felt excited because in my second week of Geology I learned about Tectonic plates. They were two words I had no previous relationship to, but now I could recognize them! I couldn't say I knew much about them except that the were associated to other words like, mantle, crust, and  lithosphere and I knew that this all had to do with the Earth's vast and layered interior.

     In reading this article about this breakthrough discovery I came upon this explanation:

" Scientists have long believed that plate tectonics — in which huge crustal plates pull apart, smash together and dive under one another — exist nowhere in our solar system but Earth. But the phenomenon is also active on Mars, according to the new study."
 
      And for those of you who don't know the shifting plates are what causes earthquakes and volcanoes. My previous knowledge of this was limited to the "San Andreas Fault." Living in California I was familiar with this because of frequent earthquakes, but I did not know what it meant. I did not know that a fault line is when plates slide past each other. But now I know that not only does Earth  have Earthquakes, but Mars has Marsquakes!
         The article said,  "Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics," study author An Yin, a planetary geologist at UCLA, said in a statement. "It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth."
         
        This information also excited me because even though the earth is billions of years old this discovery on Mars could take us back billions of years! Time traveling geology! I imagine this would be a similar feeling to discovering America or walking on the moon. It is something you were born to discover!
             
          Yin analyzed about 100 images snapped by NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. And what I found most interesting is that when he studied the satellite images from Mars, many of the fault systems looked like similar ones he had seen in Himalayas, and Tibet and in California. There are also many volcanoes on Mars and they could have formed similarly to the Hawaiian Islands.

     All this to say if Mars is similar to Earth, it could sustain life and if it could sustain life, then maybe a sci-fi movie plot could become reality and a colony of people will establish a home on Mars and I will be the first to sign up! It could happen!