We will never be able to reconcile our understanding of “all that there is” because we evidently have very different epistemologies – how we know what we know and how certain we are that we know it.
For me, reasoning is very much subordinate to the revelations of God.
So I will not pursue discussing your views except to offer an additional view of the CMB versus the verse you mentioned from Job 38 (emphasis mine) :
“The results were presented as plots of slight temperature variations in the CMB that graph sound waves in the dense early universe. These high-resolution ‘power spectra’ show not only a strong primary resonance but are consistent with two additional harmonics, or peaks.
“The peaks indicate harmonics in the sound waves that filled the early, dense universe. Until some 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was so hot that matter and radiation were entangled in a kind of soup in which sound waves (pressure waves) could vibrate. The CMB is a relic of the moment when the universe had cooled enough so that photons could ‘decouple’ from electrons, protons, and neutrons; then atoms formed and light went on its way.”
Berkeley Lab “The Universe May Be Flat But It Is Nevertheless Musical”
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. – Gen 1:3
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. – Psalms 19:1-3
Yes, you see the convergence of our views. One one side we have the CBR at 2.73 deg K. Extrapolated back with blackbody radiation, that gives something like between 15B and 13B years. On the other side we have young galaxies forming at about 1 billion years. That leaves a gap, how do you get from a diffuse hot gas to galaxies in just a billion years?
Cosmologists have long pondered this conundrum. Too bad they don't READ the book of Job. The answer is RIGHT THERE : and the MORNING STARS SANG TOGETHER = a first generation of super massive stars that went supernova quickly, seeding the gas with heavier elements(future stars, planets)and the shockwaves thereof imprinted the "soap bubble" texture on galactic structure(galaxies occur mostly on the WALLS of the bubbles).
This is a wonderful convergence : religion hinting at what happened, and science finally(in its slow bumbling way)finding it out. Soon enough these "morning stars" will appear in the telescopes....
Analogy : Alfred North Whitehead(great mathematician)and Bertrand Russell(Philosopher)collaborated on a symbolic study 100 years ago. Using only the symbols of logic(*[%@& and so forth)they used 350 pages of these logic symbols to prove that 1+1=2. Ridiculous? Not to a computer. It only deals with symbols, software; it doesn't KNOW 1+1=2, that's only a LOGICal conclusion to it from its programming.
Science is sort of like that, cranking along to find out that 1+1=2 with advancing telescope power, when it was there in the book of JOB all along.
Sometimes I think of it as a matt of blind moss growing on a big rock by the sea. Here is a BUMP, there a crack, the occasional surf spray, as it spreads slowly across the rock. All inter-connected of course but here a theory(and a dead end wall)there a hypothesis that looks like a promising lead, then a cliff(big drop off). Then a center section that SEEMS solid(strong theory like the standard model), then along comes INCONVENIENT FACTS like CF/LENR and a whole section of the rock falls away : fall back, regroup.
And so it goes. Religion tells you what it IS, but the blind moss gropes its way across the rock anyway. Blind belief vs Maxwell's wanting to know the PARTICULAR GO of things. Which is the more reliable method?
Reliable religion? During the 100 year war of religion between catholics and protestants in europe, it was considered "sport" to cut fetuses out of pregnant women and hack both of them to pieces. Which has shed more blood, science or religion? How many souls have priests saved? How many lives have been saved by medical technology?
Thanks.
I concur. I have very decided biases in favor of Scripture--plain Scripture--without reading tons of possibilities into it--though those can be fascinating on occasion and some may even be right.
But in my experience of God, life and Scripture, the plain interpreting of Scripture as it plainly states things has always been the most productive and life giving, life enhancing route, for me.