What does the new cosmology have to do with faith and an understanding of God?

Question

Stephen Hawking asks us to think about human survival - what does this have to do with his understanding of cosmology? Can our understanding of the universe inform our understanding of God and vice versa?

Answer 1

When you understand that there is a God then so many things will fall into place. The fear of God is the being of wisdom and why everything as to do with faith is because "faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen"

wishing you the best

Answer 2

Well cosmology is any theory of how our universe is organised so would not that effect what we think about god? It is tricky to answer in a brief manner but any notion of god/s woul include the physical "out there" as it is or would be created by this god or gods. Unless the god/s is or are not responsible for the creation. Perhaps god IS the universe. Maybe the rules we discover in science are just ways of describing in a logical manner what god has done -even though we make mistakes with our theories all the time.

When we thought that the galaxy was geocentric it effected reliogiona nd when we realised it was heliocentric this caused problems. You might like to read "The Elizabethan World Picture" and another book called the SLeepwalkers by Arthur Koestler.

It used to be (in Europe anyway) that cosmology was a part of theological thinking.

Ouros

Answer 3

Cosmology may change the way people think about God. For centuries, God has been conceived as a larger than life all-knowing and seeing entity that answers prayers etc. This notion may have been useful, but its usefulness is coming to and end. If there is a god (single omniscient entity) which I doubt, this entity may have designed our universe, and may even have the means of observing it, but I doubt that it has the time or energy to listen to me whine about how tough my life is.

John Bell, a Nobel prize-winning physicist created something called Bell's Thoerem (NOT THEORY) in which he proved the interconnectedness of any object that interacts with another in a meaningful way (touches for example) Since it is probable that we were all created from the singularity of a big bang about 13 or 14 billion years ago, by definition of a singularity, we were all touching and are therefore somehow interconnected. Not just people but the whole universe.

Somehow Buddha figured this out about 500 years before Christ was born and his philosophy, which is compassion for all things, but without mentioning "GOD" or including dogmatic rules. Although I am just learning about Buddhism, they seem to be on to something...spirituality with a vengeful father figure watching our every move. The universe itself reacts to our actions creating our karma. Something to contemplate

Answer 4

Personally, I think Hawking has too much time on his hands... may have something to do with being stuck in that wheelchair and talking through a computer because sick people ALWAYS start believing in God... even Carl Sagan 'believed' in God after he got cancer and just before he died.

I think it's called "covering all your basis"... when I'm at the end of my time, I'll probably believe in God, Yahweh, Allah, Mohamed, Buddah, Vishneu, Geezus, Brahma, Lucifer, and all the ancient Greek and Roman Gods... At that point in your life, it doesn't pay to piss off any diety.

Answer 5

Amazing enough, a Christian by birth, I have been reading the Kabbalah, Jesus being a Rabbi and the basic ideals of Judiasm. The Light or all Being comes from the cosmos...so I guess I must do more research to give you an answer. But why have all the Temples, pyramids, etc, tower to reach the heavens? What did they know that we don't? Are we alone? I doubt it. You may only find out when you cross to the other side.

Answer 6

God can be understood in only two ways: through his revealed word in the Bible and through personal revelation in meditation. Both methods are dependent upon on another, that is, you cannot understand the Bible without meditating upon its principles, and revealed knowledge through meditation is meaningless without knowledge of the Bible. This new cosmology is just another phrase for new age, which is just another phrase for witchcraft. The devil keeps coming up with these new expressions to sidetrack people from the real truth, which is Jesus Christ. Our Lord said: " I am the way, the truth and the life: no one cometh unto the Father but by me."

Answer 7

Yes, human knowledge is said to be a flight from known to unknown....!
The deepest of Unknown things is The Creator of the Universe, so what better idea than to understand the whole of Universe so that we can understand the Creator THROUGH His Creation !

Answer 8

It is in fact one extra ray of light on a vast, very vast and deep domain : faith and God....knowing though that the concept of God and faith are also man generated concepts and can vary from an individual to another. "Relativity" is so far the most scientific answer to questions like yours

Answer 9

As far as we are unable to evidently prove that the universe is not the creation of God, the existence of God is a valid argument. When our visibility barrier is broken - then only we can have a visual proof of it.

Answer 10

I feel the more we know about cosmology, the less sense the creation theory makes.