"....science is always provisional, whereas theology is always about the permanent and atemporal. What we call the "Big Bang" is merely the extrapolation of a certain model used by physicists to understand the physical world. In these models, at a certain point, the "history" of subatomic particles disappears into "nothing." Therefore, some people make the hasty conclusion that this must be the same "nothing" out of which God created the universe.
But this is not only wrong, but it demonstrates a peculiar lack of imagination. The "nothing" of the physicist is merely the area beyond the horizon of his model. There's still "something" there -- it's just that the physicist's model does not permit him to even hazard a guess as to what it might be.
But the Nothing of theology is a much vaster principle, having to do with the emanation of Being from Beyond-Being. This is what I meant the other day when I said that in my book I was not trying to equate the Big Bang with God's eternal creative act, but to use it as a "fable" to retell that timeless story. As I said on p. 2, "Borrowing freely from Christian, Greek, Jewish, Hindu, Taoist and other sources, the creation to which it refers did not happen just 'once upon a time,' but occurs continuously, in the timeless ground anterior to each moment."
"Put it this way: neither the cosmos nor this book have a proper 'beginning,' but both have a center, a center that starts where science ends and must therefore be described in mythological terms. The purpose of myth is to help us re-collect what we have forgotten about our timeless source, our eternal nature, and our ultimate destiny. ........"
I wasn’t intentionally ignoring you. You posted several links that I had to read, digest and, in a couple of cases, pray on. I thank you for the links. Pretty much killed half a day that should have been spent working, but it was worth it!
Hard science is rarely provisional, but it depends on existing knowlege. A poster upthread (courtesy pinged) is a Ph.D in semiconductors - those things may as well be magic to me by my understanding of how they work, since the only thing I know about them is n-p-n and p-n-p junctions, and that is hazy.
Sure, the whole idea of causality is having some problems at the moment (heck, it gives me a headache trying to follow the arguments), and for things you can’t see your are working through inference and inspiration more than observation, but that is no huge problem.