Milky Way

One of the sights I have been looking forward to here in Tongue is the night sky.

Living in Edinburgh we only see the brighter planets and stars. The Milky Way and the clouds of stars that make up the unpolluted night sky are just invisible in the city.

Tonight, as I arrived back home around 10:30pm, the Milky Way was stretched across the clear night sky above my head. A very bright planet was rising in the East (as they do!), and there were hordes of stars visible almost everywhere I looked (up the way, that is!).

When you see the night sky in all its glory it adds resonance to several passages from the Bible. The Christmas Star is probably the most obvious. The stars are created in Genesis, the bright Morning Star(s) shines in Job, Isaiah, 2nd Peter, and Revelation. At the End, the stars will fall from the sky. But tonight I am glad the stars are still shining brightly! And the planets too.

Us Human beings often think that we are in control of our own destiny. "If you try hard enough you can do whatever you want." Heard that one before.

Look up. What can we do compared with all that. We've reached the moon. We sent robots to Mars. We've sent a spacecraft to Pluto although it's not got there yet! Two spacecraft, the Voyager probes, have almost reached interstellar space - the edge of influence of our own Sun. Big deal!

The Universe is so awesome that we can hardly believe the numbers. So I'm not even going to try and make you now!

The Queen of Hearts encourages Alice to practice believing impossible things. In her own youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast."

Recently a well known scientist, physicist and mathematician, has declared that God wasn't there when the Universe began. Apparently it all started with an act of "spontaneous creation".

Quoting the BBC Website,
Stephen Hawking says: "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

It seems to me that Mr. Hawking has been trying too hard to believe impossible things. At least he believes in Creation. At least he believes there is a reason that the universe and humans exist. To me, 'spontaneous creation' seems like an unlikely reason. Indeed, I would say it is an unbelievable reason.

Laws do not occur spontaneously.
If gravity is a law, then there is a lawmaker, and a Judge.

The entire basis of Physics is that things do not occur spontaneously.
There is no uncaused event.

Quantum Physics throws some doubt on that assertion.
It deals with the microscopic, sub-molecular scale.

But it is not tenable to suggest that since sub-atomic events appear to be uncaused, i.e. occur spontaneously, then macroscopic events, such as the creation of the Universe, can also be spontaneous, uncaused events.

For years scientists have been saying that miracles, as described by present-day people, and recorded in the Bible, can not and do not occur.

Now we have a scientist saying that the Creation of the Universe occurred spontaneously.

Well that seems miraculous to me!