scholarly journals What is dark matter? An attempt at a theological answer

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-506
Author(s):  
Vladimir M. Menshikov ◽  

Based on the analysis of modern scientific data, the teachings of Russian religious thinkers about “Sophia” and S. L. Frank on reality, the biblical text concerning the creation of the world on the first day shows that dark matter is a special reality in the world. Modern science claims that there is a special “dark matter” in the world, which occupies up to ninety-five percent of the mass of all matter, but its properties are still unknown. Russian religious philosophers show that the creation of the world and matter by God was preceded by the birth of uncreated Sophia, the creation of created Sophia, or the “emanation” of “uncreated reality” and the creation of “created reality”. Based on the first words of the Bible, the assumption is made that the first verse “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1: 1) should be understood not as the creation of the real heaven and the real earth, which is stated in the Bible just below, but as a creation of the angelic world and some kind of special earth, which, apparently, actually is what today in science is referred to as dark matter. The article discusses its properties.

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 151-166
Author(s):  
Johanna Roelevink

When T. S. Eliot contemplated the void and the darkness after the Creation, he assumed that there must have been a predetermined moment through which time was made: for without the meaning there is no time, and that moment of time gave the meaning.We are about to meet an early eighteenth-century scholar who tackled the very same problem, the relation between the lapse of’historical’ time and the ultimate meaning of history. But to him, like so many others, time just started with the movement of the stars, which mercifully also provided adequate means for measuring it. In the beginning was chronology. And in its inexorable progress the lapse of time would also in due course spell the end of the world. But when precisely? The answer of our particular scholar to this question sounds deceptively simple. The Bible teaches that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. Again, Holy Scripture reveals that to him one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. So here, by way of analogy, we have the outline of world history. Once having computed the date of the Creation, we can easily deduce that Our Lord Jesus Christ will return on 11 November 1740 to inaugurate his glorious reign.


Author(s):  
Kathleen C. Oberlin

The typical story about creationist social movements centers on battles in the classroom or in the courtroom—like the Scopes Trial in 1925. But there is a new setting: a museum. “Prepare to Believe” is the slogan that greets visitors throughout the Creation Museum located in Petersburg, Kentucky. It carries the message that the organization Answers in Genesis (AiG) uses to welcome fellow believers as well as skeptics since opening in 2007. The Creation Museum seeks to persuade visitors that if one views both the Bible (a close, literal reading) and nature (observational, real world data) as sources of authority, then the earth appears to be much younger than conventionally understood in mainstream society. This book argues that the impact of the Creation Museum does not depend on the accuracy or credibility of its scientific claims, as many scholars, media critics, and political pundits would suggest. Instead, what AiG goes after by creating a physical site like the Creation Museum is the ability to foster plausibility politics—broadening what the audience perceives as possible and amplifying the stakes as the ideas reach more people. Destabilizing the belief that only one type of secular institution may make claims about the age of the earth and human origins, the Creation Museum is a threat to this singular positioning. In doing so, AiG repositions itself to produce longstanding effects on the public’s perception of who may make scientific claims. Creating the Creation Museum is a story about how a group endures.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-83
Author(s):  
Svetlana S. Neretina

In the essay “Conversation about Dante,” Mandelstam described logic, which he defined as the “realm of unexpectedness,” which is unlike any everyday logical construction. Based on the analysis of Mandelstam’s text, it is assumed that we are talking about a tropology that arose in the Middle Ages, the principles of which can be derived from studies of St. Augustine’s treatise De Dialectica and Petrus Сomestor’s Historia Scholastica. It is this triple commonwealth (Augustine – Comestor – Dante, read by Mandelstam) that creates the multilayered logical framework of the work. Augustine created a completely different dialectic than in classical antiquity. Augustine considers dialectics as an art of discussion and describes the real steps that contribute to the emergence of speech, which corresponds to Mandelstam’s concept of conversation. According to Augustine, at the basis of any speech, is a trope-turn. In the article, attention is drawn to the sound nature of creation process. This logic, used in explaining the creation of the world according to the logos/word (tropology), assumes that, at the basis of the speech act, there is no the word as a unit of speech, but the sound itself – the sound, which was considered initially equivocal (ambiguous). In the process of pronounciation, the sound could turn into its opposite and could change the meaning of speech if the context has been changed. Dante expressed the meaning of tropology in practice. Mandelstam wrote that he had chosen Dante for the conversation (between poet and poet) “because he is the greatest and indisputable master of reversible and reversing poetic substance.” Mandelstam saw Dante as the Descartes of metaphor.


Author(s):  
Saurabh Mitra ◽  
Jayati Chatterjee Mitra

<p>Electronic waste or e-squander is one of the quickest developing issues of the world. E-squander involves a large number of parts, some containing poisonous substances that can adversely affect human wellbeing and the earth if not dealt with legitimately. In India, e-squander the board expect more noteworthy essentialness not just because of the age of its own e-squander, yet additionally as a result of the dumping of e-squander from created nations. This is combined with India's absence of proper foundation and methods for its transfer and reusing. The generation of electrical and electronic gear (EEE) is one of the quickest developing worldwide assembling exercises. Quick monetary development, combined with urbanization and developing an interest for customer merchandise, has expanded both the utilization and the creation of EEE. The Indian data innovation (IT) industry has been one of the real drivers of progress in the economy in the most recent decade and has contributed essentially to the advanced unrest being experienced by the world. New electronic contraptions and machines have invaded each part of our everyday lives, furnishing our general public with more solace, wellbeing, and security and with simple data procurement and trade. The information society anyway is making its own poisonous impressions.</p>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasil Dinev Penchev

Many researchers determine the question “Why anything rather than nothing?” as the most ancient and fundamental philosophical problem. Furthermore, it is very close to the idea of Creation shared by religion, science, and philosophy, e.g. as the “Big Bang”, the doctrine of “first cause” or “causa sui”, the Creation in six days in the Bible, etc.Thus, the solution of quantum mechanics, being scientific in fact, can be interpreted also philosophically, and even religiously. However, only the philosophical interpretation is the topic of the text.The essence of the answer of quantum mechanics is:1. The creation is necessary in a rigorous mathematical sense. Thus, it does not need any choice, free will, subject, God, etc. to appear. The world exists in virtue of mathematical necessity, e.g. as any mathematical truth such as 2+2=4.2. The being is less than nothing rather than more than nothing. So, the creation is not an increase of nothing, but the decrease of nothing: it is a deficiency in relation of nothing. Time and its “arrow” are the way of that diminishing or incompleteness to nothing.


Author(s):  
Paulians A
Keyword(s):  

The scriptures of the Eighteen Books of the Caṅkam'maruviya period and the Christian holy book, the Bible, are the divine lyrics of the Lord. The article explains that humanity is cultured by the admiration of sovereignty and the removing of evils and the good and good. The article explains the importance of the world being the creation of God and the atom without him, the merit of the lord's nature and the way of worshipping God, its benefits and the merits of the sovereignty.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Barrie Davis

<p>The reunion of a man with God is the subject of a medieval text which aggregates excerpts from the Bible and Arabic alchemical texts that had recently become available in Europe. The Aurora Consurgens personifies God as Wisdom, a spiritual being who not only formed the world in the beginning but is also a guide to men to return to God subsequent to their separation at the Fall. The union of feminine Wisdom and a man is aligned with pairs of opposites such as spirit and soul, and is also conflated with the union of a man and a woman. While the text is perhaps falsely ascribed to St. Thomas, it is consistent with his ideas so that it may be explicated using his writings on the Trinity, psychology, angels, and Greek philosophy. From there, correspondence is established with C. G. Jung‘s concept of archetypes, and the text is subsequently interpreted from the perspective of analytical psychology. It is identified how interaction of archetypes associated with the union of a man and a woman provide an explanation for the process of redemption given in the Aurora. A similar process of redemption is identified in other writings from the beginning of the Christian era up to the modern teachings of the Catholic Church.</p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62
Author(s):  
N. R. Oinotkinova

The paper analyzes the plots and motives of Altai myths about the creation of the earth and man with the use of comparative material from the folklore of peoples with which the Altai people had close contacts in the past, in particular from Russian and Buryat-Mongolian folklore. The motives characteristic of these versions are considered: diving behind the earth; creation of the earth; the creation of man; the dog protects the human body; desecration of the human body; spilled elixir of immortality; lost heaven; the overthrow of the devil from heaven; competition of deities for primacy in the rule of the world. In the Altai folk tradition, two versions of the myth of the creation of the world and man are distinguished: the first is dualistic (pagan) and the second is “Buddhist”. In the dualistic version of the myth, the main characters are two deities – Ulgen and Erlik. In the plot of the “Buddhist” version of the myth, unlike the dualistic one, 4 deity brothers participate in the act of creation: Yuch-Kurbustan (Three Kurbustan) and Erlik. This story is joined by a Buddhist legend about how bodhisattvas competed in order for the victor to become the ruler of the world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-78
Author(s):  
Djonly J. R. Rosang

The creation of the universe, according to the Holy Bible has actually done as said in Genesis 1-2. However, there are some people who are still struggling in order to search for the reason to question the process of how is this universe actually began, so that they will look for scientific consideration to find the “theoretical justification” over the biblical truth. This writing aims to give an answer to the gap theory in Genesis 1:1-2. The author, through the study Genesis 1:1-2, the result of this study concluded as follows. First, there is no exegesis background that is strong enough for gap theory to give an assumption that there was an unmeasurably period of time or age in the creation of the universe. Second, a biblical statement, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... for in six days the LORD made heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1; Ex. 20:11) is an ultimate fact of God’s power and majesty in creating the earth from nothing to existence with His Word (creatio ex Nihilo). Third, the doctrine of world’s creation must be the foundation of faith that is tested in the authority of God’s words (2 Tim. 3:16) and the entire creation of God which become the medium of scientifical activity in the history of humanity must be according to the biblical perspective. Fourth, The statement of Genesis 1:1 appears to be refutation toward various scientific theories and human’s philosophic perspective that are opposite the biblical truth (Gen. 1-2, Ps. 33:4-9).Pernyataan Alkitab tentang penciptaan alam semesta sebenarnya sudah tuntas sebagaimana dikemukakan dalam Kejadian 1-2. Namun ada saja orang yang berusaha mencari alasan untuk mempertanyakan proses terjadinya alam semesta ini, sehingga mencoba mencari pertimbangan ilmiah untuk menemukan “pembenaran teoritis” atas kebenaran Alkitab. Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk memberi jawab terhadap teori celah (gap theory) dalam Kejadian 1:1-2, melalui studi biblika penulis mengemukakan argumentasi paham teori celah, dalam kajian metode induktif terhadap studi teks Kejadian 1:1-2. Hasil studi ini disimpulkan bahwa: Pertama, bahwa tidak ada dasar eksegesis yang kuat bagi teori celah untuk memberi ruang bagi asumsi adanya rentang waktu periode atau zaman yang tak terukur dalam proses penciptaan semesta. Kedua, pernyataan Alkitab, “Pada mulanya Allah menciptakan langit dan bumi ... dalam waktu enam hari lamanya” (Kej. 1:1, Kel. 20:11) adalah suatu fakta Alkitab yang tak terbantahkan sebagai tindakan kemahakuasaan dan keagungan Allah menciptakan dunia dari yang tidak ada menjadi ada dengan firman-Nya (creatio ex nihilo). Ketiga, doktrin penciptaan harus menjadi landasan iman Kristen yang  diuji dalam otoritas Firman Allah yang berkuasa (2 Tim. 3:16) serta dunia ciptaan Allah dan segala isinya menjadi arena kegiatan ilmiah dalam lintasan sejarah manusia haruslah berdasarkan perspektif Alkitab. Keempat,  pernyataan penciptaan Kejadian 1:1 merupakan sanggahan terhadap berbagai teori ilmu pengetahuan dan pandangan filsafat manusia yang bertentangan dengan kebenaran Alkitab (Kej. 1-2, Mzm. 33:4-9).


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-48
Author(s):  
PETER JONES

Based on Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (ESV), the apostle Paul in Romans 1:25 gives an amazingly com- plete definition of the only two ways of existing in the world: “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” I call these two ways of existing Oneism and Twoism. In Oneism, if you worship creation, you will believe that the world is self-created, self-explanatory, and all made of the same stuff (matter, spirit, or a mixture). Paganism is the worship of nature. If everything shares the same divine substance, then all distinctions are eliminated and everything is god. In Twoism, if you worship God, you will believe that he is the Creator—an external, intelligent, personal God. There are two kinds of existence—the Creator who is uncreated, and everything else, which is created. He has placed distinctions in his creation, making what I call Twoism a worldview based on the binaries of otherness and difference. From living under the cultural canopy of biblical truth, our world has changed in the last one or two generations. This becomes especially evident in the modern views of sexuality—in particular, transsexuality, where human beings now self-define and reject the creational binary of male/female sexuality.


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