Sunday, September 13, 2009

Web Surfing Straight to Hell

In case you were planning to ask, no, I don't know why I suddenly have an abnormal obsession with religion. But anyway ...

I spent quite a while the other day reading through a Christian web site for college students. I took the time to fill out this damned web contact form, and no matter what I did, I could not get it to post!

Screen shot from a religious web site for college students.

They had several science-related articles in which they acknowledged that the universe began with a "big bang" 13.7 billion years ago, and that humans per se have existed for only a smidgen of that. So I got curious. All the Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist Christians I have known were believers in the literal truth of the Hebrew Bible, and in particular, the time line of creation placing the age of the earth at (about) 6,000 years, explaining marine fossils in high mountains all over the world by appealing to the biblical story of the flood, etc. But these guys expressed an Evangelical style of religion and a non-psychotic view of science. It really did make me wonder, and I tried to post the following question:

Reading the posts on your website, especially the science-related ones, many questions arise for me.

I cannot grasp the concept of Jesus as a finite, temporal, corporeal being, "sitting at the 'right hand' of [an infinite, eternal, non-corporeal] God," one in the same being as God, and yet, the only possible way for any creature to connect with God. Are there are no intelligent beings on other planets? If there are, are they human? Are they, like us, "fallen from grace"? If so, has Jesus become incarnate separately to each of them to redeem them? Are there planets in which beings have not yet fallen from grace as they have on Earth? Are there any that were once fallen, but have since become perfected as is foretold for our world? Knowing from recent Hubble Space Telescope observations that the universe began with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago, and that humans as we are today have existed for but a few tens of thousands, does this mean there are likely worlds where beings with souls do not yet exist, but may exist in the future? Between now and the time our sun expires in about 4-5 billion years, is it likely there will be a time in which humans no longer exist? Now that humans have arisen on this planet, will other kinds of beings with souls ever arise here? Will humans as we know them today ever change or become extinct?

I understand that the true answer to most of these questions is "we don't know what forms of life there are on other planets, or what might happen to the human species in the distant future," but I am asking for examples of possibilities that would not be in fatal conflict with your belief in the nature of God, Christ and humanity.

It's easy to approach questions like these with a big rubber stamp saying "IT'S A MYSTERY," as they did when I was a kid in Catholic catechism classes, but I'm hoping you can answer them with more insight and detail than that.

Thank you very much for your time.

I really wanted to hear what they would have had to say.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yay! I'm so happy you're posting again.

Jay Queue said...

Would you kindly send me an e-mail? I would love to know who my fan is!

JamesieGod at Hotmail Dot Com . . .