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To develop a theory, we must first refine our ideas into concise statements that will somehow be testable. We do this by formulating hypotheses. The main function of a hypothesis is to allow us to devise an experiment in which the hypothesis might be proven false. It can't necessarily be proven true, but until it is proven false the hypothesis can be considered valid. Everything we've discussed so far has developed into some interesting ideas. I think we now have enough information to propose some hypotheses.
To do so we will first establish what evidence we have available. The knowledge from the Bible comes from supernatural revelation; it can therefore never be scientifically proven true or false. It can nonetheless be accepted if we believe in divine revelation. So we will stipulate the following postulate: We will accept the revealed knowledge from the Bible as true, and also accept the findings of science as true.
We can now propose the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: A perfect supernaturally created universe brought into fully formed existence at any current state, would be indistinguishable from a natural universe coming into existence from a natural origin and progressing forward to the same current state.
Hypothesis 2: A fully formed universe created by a supernatural event, would include evidence of time moving into the future from the moment of creation and extending into a past predating the creation.
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From any point in such a universe, any observation of the future would be indeterminate, while a natural past would be complete all the way back to either an origin point or to infinity.
Hypothesis 3: In a supernaturally created universe, earlier states of the universe will be overwritten as newer supernatural changes are applied.
Only the evidence of the final state of creation will be available for observation from within the natural universe.
Now we need to test our hypotheses.
Test for hypothesis 1:
Was a fully formed perfect universe created by supernatural events? Yes, the Bible reveals that there was a supernatural creation accomplished by God as described in Genesis.
Is there evidence that the universe had a natural origin? Yes, Scientists have found evidence of a natural origin that occurred around 14 billion years ago.
Other than the revealed knowledge in the Bible, is there any natural evidence that the Universe was created fully formed more recently than its natural origin? No, scientists have so far found no evidence that the universe could not have formed naturally beginning with the Big Bang, and based on the understood laws of physics do not expect to find such evidence in the future.
Can we conclude that such a supernaturally created universe must be so perfect as to leave no evidence of its creation? Yes, the preceding statements would lead to such a conclusion.
Conclusion? Hypothesis 1 is valid.
Test for hypothesis 2:
Was a fully formed universe created by supernatural events? Yes, the Bible reveals that there was a supernatural creation accomplished by God as described in Genesis.
Is there evidence that the universe had a natural origin? Yes, Scientists have found evidence of a natural origin that occurred around 14 billion years ago.
Is there evidence that the supernatural creation was more recent than the natural origin? Yes, the Bible reveals histories and genealogies which would suggest that creation happened six thousand years ago.
Is there is evidence of time extending into the past? Yes, the Big Bang theory is based on scientific evidence of a natural origin of the universe and it exists in the past from the supernatural moment of creation.
Did the supernatural creation somehow result in that history of a natural origin? Yes, the preceding statements would lead to such a conclusion.
Is there evidence of time flowing forward from that moment of creation? Yes, at least six thousand years have progressed since that even until the present.
Can we conclude that the past is determined by the state of the universe at the moment of creation? Yes, the preceding statements would require that to be the case.
Can we conclude that the future is indeterminate? Yes, the Bible tells us we have free will and science tells us that future events are determined by current actions. Any actions would be expected to conform to the natural laws of the universe, but even within that constraint, all the possible results of random chance and free will make the future indeterminate.
Conclusion? Hypothesis 2 is valid.
Test for hypothesis 3:
Were there earlier models of the universe in which the conditions of the universe were unlike anything we know of it today? Yes, the Bible tells us there was a time in which the entire universe was nothing but light. It also tells of a time when there were all the land plants and fruit-bearing trees, but no animals, and other states during the creation in which one stage changes the previous state.
Is there any evidence of any of those previous states of creation in the order as listed in Genesis? No, science has not found any evidence of the type of changes that can identify any such stages as they are described in Genesis.
Can we conclude that at each stage of the universe the changes would have affected the past as well and the only natural evidence of its past is that which would lead to the universe as it existed in its final form at the completion of creation? Yes, based on the accepted data from the Bible and scientific evidence that would be a reasonable conclusion.
Conclusion? Hypothesis 3 is valid.
I believe we now understand enough of the necessary conditions to define a universe in which all events can be attributed to God; God can reveal himself to us and explain about the higher reality, but we can only see the resulting existence in our own universe of anything God does in the higher reality. We’ve also learned that God’s miracles might seem different based on his existence in the higher reality, but must result in the things we see in our observable universe.
We need to develop a theory that disregards neither the revealed knowledge of the supernatural nor the observable evidence of the natural. We need to explain how the literal interpretation of creation in Genesis can be true, while still accepting the scientific explanation of the chronological past for the natural universe. I will now propose a theory that might accomplish this. This theory even suggests that such a past should exist in a perfect universe, and the scientific evidence and theories explaining them are what we could expect to find.
Void to Universe Theory -
God created a perfect fully formed universe during six days in the exact manner as described in Genesis.
He did so by bringing forth each thing into existence fully formed at each step and in the order described in Genesis.
Each thing God brought forth would thus have all aspects of its existence fully formed at the moment it was created, including the mass, energy, time, and space for such a thing to be perfect.
The biggest deviation from any previous theories of creationism is that we now include time as just another aspect of the universe. This is what makes the Void to Universe theory different. Now we can see the chronological past isn't a process leading to the formation of God's perfect universe, it's the result of it. At the end of His six days of creation, God's universe simply includes the fully formed matter, energy, space, and chronological past of every natural thing within it. A natural universe would be expected to have all of its past time. So the perfect past time must have been brought into existence the moment God created the universe.
For many people, the hardest problem with resolving science with their beliefs from the Bible seems to be mostly because of time spans. They sometimes have a problem with things happening over millions of years when they know from the Bible that creation was only six thousand years ago. Some people have simply never thought about how time, space, energy, and matter are all aspects of the universe. Just as God created all the energy and matter in the universe, he had to have also created all the space and time. The universe as we know it could not exist without all four aspects. So, God must have created it all. If there is evidence of a million-year time span between one event in Genesis and another, it doesn't mean that God took a million years to do it. God just created that time span along with the other space, matter, and energy for everything He made.
Let's now run an initial thought experiment to see if the proposed theory can hold true under such a test. Here's the first question for our experiment: “When God created all the plants, were the trees fully grown, and did they have tree rings?”
Here is what the Bible says in Genesis -
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.”
2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
2:6 But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.”
2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
2:17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
So, we know from those verses that trees became fully grown as soon as God created them and gave them water because Adam could eat of the fruit in the Garden from all except one. We can imagine a time-lapse video of an empty field in which God made all the plants and trees sprout and grow years to full maturity all in a matter of moments. It must have been a beautiful sight to see. We know he didn't have to wait years for the trees to grow before producing the fruit, at least some of the trees had to be fully mature to provide the fruit for Adam to eat. A fully formed tree would also need to have growth rings. For many trees, especially fruit trees the tree rings are part of the structure that supports the tree. The growth rings would be part of what made these trees perfect like the rest of God’s creation.
Each growth ring is produced by one year of the growth of a tree. So, at the moment God made the trees, they included a history of their growth. The Bible makes no mention about the maturity level of any created trees other than some at least are already producing fruit. So that leaves us free to consider there would be a variety of maturity levels among the trees created. Some of them might have been 5 years old, others might have been 50 years old, some might even have been hundreds of years old. The Bible doesn't tell us how big or how old any of the trees were, but we know such variety is likely. A perfect world would have many trees of differing ages, maturing and bearing fruit at different times. What we do know from the Bible though, is that whatever the ages any of those trees might have been, none of them existed until the moment all of them were created.
Now, if one of those trees were cut down and a scientist were to examine it, he would see the evidence of that tree's growth. If there was some way to tell by the evidence that the tree had been instantly brought into existence fully formed, then it wouldn't be a perfect tree. We don't know what God would have considered the perfect growth for a tree, but those tree rings could be expected to show some pattern of some wet years and some dry years during the growth of that perfect tree. It would have come into existence fully formed, but evidence of its growth can be expected because it is a perfect tree.
Imagine that the first tree cut down was a 100-year old tree, and then another tree is cut down that is a 25-year old tree. We know that they would both be perfect trees that had been brought into existence at the same time. If we compared the growth ring pattern of both trees, we would expect them both to show the same perfect wet year dry year tree-ring pattern. The last 25 years of the older tree would be expected to have the same growth pattern as the full 25 years of the younger tree. The same thing would have to be true of all the other trees in the Garden because they are perfect. The same would be true of all the trees on Earth with some variation based on their geographic locations. So at the moment, God created the trees, we would expect to find evidence of a 100-year past across the world because they are perfect trees. That 100-year past would not have existed until the moment the fully formed 100-year old tree was created. We know that because they are perfect trees.
So, we have shown that the Bible creation story can explain evidence of a past earlier than creation itself. We can even see it supports that all evidence of tree growth that science uncovered is what would be expected in a perfect universe.
Some might say, “That can't be right because a perfect tree would have equally spaced growth rings and show no pattern of wet and dry years.” Well, that might be what they think a perfect tree would be, but they really don't know what a perfect tree would be to God. We’ve already gone over perfection in an earlier chapter and determined it can best be described as a completed nature. Science has also found no evidence of any period in which there was a consistent evenly spaced pattern of tree rings at the time of creation. There's a field of science called dendrochronology, which is really just a big fancy word for tree-dating. Those scientists have already found trees that were alive 6,000 years ago and studied the tree rings. Those tree ring patterns match up with other trees existing at the same time and those ring patterns show wet and dry years during their complete lifetimes. So what they have found must be the perfect pattern of wet and dry years, because that is the record from the trees that God must have created. That might not seem like perfect tree-rings to us, but God created them so we know it must be the perfect pattern.
Those dendrochronologists have matched up the tree ring patterns of older and younger trees in different parts of the world from modern times to ancient ones. They've created a map of tree ring patterns that can be traced from the present all the way back to the even earliest trees including lumber and tree remains uncovered by archaeologists. The tree-ring data is so perfect that the map extends from the present back to about 12 thousand years ago. OK, now is where some heads explode. They might say, “but God only created the trees six thousand years ago, so even if those trees had growth rings they couldn't go back another six thousand years.” The answer to that would then be, “Why not? It's the same thing as the perfect tree needing a past so that it could have perfect growth rings.” That past must just go farther than we first suggested, so the past of the perfect tree could have also included being a seed, and that seed needed another tree to make it, and that tree would have a full past that includes being a seed itself, etc. for however many generations it takes. All of that is still simply the resulting perfect history from the trees God created. None of it existed before God made the perfect tree. If we take the literal interpretation of the creation story in the Bible, ask a few easily answerable questions, and follow the answer to its further logical conclusions, then whatever science has uncovered should be what could be expected.
What about this question then, “If what the Bible says is true, then how could the universe have started with a big bang fourteen billion years ago.” What about, “How could life have started in the ocean and then evolve into all the plants and creatures of the Earth including mankind?” The answer is the same as for the tree, “None of that existed until God created the universe. Just as the trees included a perfect history of growth; the creation of the universe included the perfect past that it would need.” We know that because God created the perfect universe.
So far it seems that the Void to Universe theory might prove that the Bible and science can both be right. Our first thought experiments show us how the supernatural creation story can lead to the scientific evidence that would be expected in a naturally occurring universe. The revealed knowledge and the observed evidence can both be true without compromising either. And we didn't need any pseudo-scientific alternative facts or evidence to do so. The proposed explanation isn't an alternative fact; it is just a possibility of what supernatural events could lead to the evidence we have. Our evidence is still the same; it hasn’t changed at all.
We don't know if that proposed possibility is the correct one because the Bible doesn't go into those types of details, and science has no way to determine happenings in the supernatural realm. The only data points we actually know are the specific description in the Bible and the resulting evidence that scientists find in the natural universe. What we can observe with the tools of science and what God reveals to us are the best we can ever expect to know with certainty about the natural universe; everything else is just speculation. We can only know with certainty that the story of creation exists in Genesis and the evidence of science exists in nature. We also know we can speculate that there is at least one and possibly many solutions that can explain how both science and religion can both be accurate.
Developing a theory application of scientific method. . (2022, Feb 21). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/developing-a-theory-application-of-scientific-method-essay
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