Loading...Time again for my weekly Readers’ Mailbag. I have three questions to deal with today, one that is substantive and about the New Testament, one about my personal life as an evangelical turned agnostic, and one about my views of the beginnings of life! Quite a mix.
As questions occur to you, please feel free to ask, either in a comment on this post or in an email. If it’s something I can handle, I will add your question to the list.
QUESTION: You have pointed out that Jesus was rejected by his family, and by his listeners in Nazareth and other towns & villages of Galilee. What do you think is the main reason for this widespread rejection? Is it because of his apocalyptic message?
RESPONSE: This question gives me the opportunity to make an important distinction that I’m afraid I have not always been careful enough to make on the blog. It is the distinction between the literary reading of a text and the question of historical reality. When I have been talking about the “rejection” of Jesus by his family, townsfolk, and others, it has always been (or at least I have *meant* it to be) about how Jesus’ ministry is portrayed in the Gospels of the NT – especially the Gospel of Mark. That is, I have been describing a narrative, seeing how Jesus is *portrayed* as being received by others in a literary text. That is a *different* issue from the question of how he was *actually* received, historically.
In Mark’s Gospel
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Nonetheless, you believe. And given the inherent problems to unraveling the mysteries of creation, that’s probably all anyone will ever be able to do. This is not a rejection of science–I believe in evolution, because I see the sense of it. The material world confirms that it’s at work around us. The fine details will never be fully resolved, however. And I’ve noted a rather suspiciously religious strain in the way certain people talk about it. Perhaps you have too.
I don’t believe there’s a purpose we can divine. That doesn’t mean there’s no purpose. I believe any God we can imagine, is, by definition, imaginary. That doesn’t mean there’s no God.
So it’s a choice, and the same choice won’t be right for everyone. And any choice is, by definition, irrational in nature–based on emotion, not logic. Because logic would say that with so little information, we should make no choice at all. Why believe anything? Because we can’t help it.
So religion will never die. It will simply reshape itself, as it has never stopped doing since the first primitive hominid turned his or her eyes skyward, and wondered…..
Well put. Thank you.
Well captured what I wanted to say but couldn’t. Yeap, just because we cannot fathom or understand the purpose does not mean there is no purpose. One of the greatest mystery to me is how the hell Einstein came up with his General and Special Theories of Relativity just based on some pure thought experiments. If he claimed he was given a divine message from God, I WOULD HAVE believed it.
When anyone says that, I am less inclined to believe him or her.
About your response to the first question… I remember someone here having suggested that the story about Jesus’s being rejected by his kin could have been made up by opponents of his brother James, and the type of Christianity James had begun to preach. At the time, you acknowledged that it was possible. What do you think, now, about the probability of that having been the case?
I’d say it’s certainly possible, but I don’t see any evidence to suggest it’s probable.
The story doesn’t really say he was rejected by his family–no version of the gospel says this. It says the people of Nazareth, the people who knew him as a boy, didn’t see him as this great teacher, were astounded that he seemed to speak with such authority on religious matters, and isn’t that precisely how you’d expect them to react? Can’t you imagine the same thing happening to you?
Then it says members of his family, being told that Jesus was ‘out of his mind’, when to restrain him. One would assume some members of his family were more open to his ideas than others (again, that’s just how it works in all families). And if he was creating a stir in a place they had to live and get along with others, they might have asked him to be less outspoken while he was there. That could have later been turned into them ‘restraining’ him. Perhaps, as you and others have speculated, as a way of undermining members of Jesus’ family who were influential in the Christian community later on. But I doubt the story was made up out of whole cloth.
I think it’s very likely this happened, but as with most incidents we have from Jesus’ life, it’s not likely to be a very exact recounting of the actual event. The main point of the story is that when you make a noise in the world and then go home, the people who knew you as a child won’t be so impressed with you–which is true. It resonates because we all know that’s what happens when famous people go home (not that Jesus was so very famous at this point, but he certainly was making a reputation for himself).
It’s also a restating of a point we find very often in the gospels, that a man’s blood family is not the most important thing–that was a very radical point for a man of Jesus’ culture to make. Family was everything. But given what we know he believed about the coming Kingdom of God, he very likely did believe that, while still having strong feelings about his family.
Would a town the size of Nazareth (more of a hamlet, really) really have had a synagogue for Jesus to speak in? I can’t imagine it would have been a very impressive structure.
It’s doubtful they had a building — but a synagogue only required a group of adult Jewish males gathered together.
On the rejection narrative. Is it not inconsistent with his having a ministry? It seems doubtful if his first audiences rejected him that he would have gone on.
Ah, but lots of eventually successful people do!
“Truth was true, and anything contrary to truth should not be believed.”
I find your saying this puzzling. It’s certainly what I, um, believe! But in some situations, you’ve insisted that things that aren’t *really* true can be “theologically true.” Even that there’s some sense in which the tale of George Washington’s having cut down the cherry tree is “true,” and it’s OK to teach it to children, as fact!
I’m in the camp that does not acknowledge that – for example – a miracle (bread and wine being transformed into Jesus’s body and blood) takes place during every Catholic Mass. That’s not *true*, in *any* sense. The priest may be doing something that has *symbolic value*, but that’s not the same as the transformation claim’s being *true*.
No, I’m afraid you’re getting me wrong. Those things *are* really true. They are really true theologically. That doesn’t mean they are really true mathematically, or literarily, or historically — just as things that are mathematically true are not true historically or theologically etc. For CAtholics, transubstantiation CAN express a theological truth, even if you, as a non-believer, don’t believe it.
In that case, the “truth” is that *someone believes something*, not that the thing itself is true!
And about your argument that something like a novel, which you perceive as great literature, can contain “truths”: what’s “true” is that (at least as some readers perceive it) *the author has succeeded in doing something*: namely, reproducing, in *fiction*, emotions people experience and/or behavior they display in real life.
But that’s just how I see it (grins).
You should never confuse the word ‘true’ with the word ‘factual.’ They do not mean the same thing. As Susan Sontag once write “The opposite of fact is fiction. The opposite of one great truth may be another great truth.” I was raised Catholic, and I don’t believe water literally changes to wine. And yet I agree with Bart that theologically speaking, it’s true. Because theology is not about scientific facts.
This is not confined to religious dogmas, by the way. “Love is better than hate.” That’s true. Is it a fact?
About the third question? I think not of “primordial soup,” but of a phrase Isaac Asimov once used to describe a way another universe might come into existence after this one: “a random fluctuation in a vacuum.”
Of course, *now*, many of us think “mere” universes are born from the eruptions of supermassive black holes in older ones! But I’m imagining the “random fluctuation in a vacuum” as the start of it all.
My hypotheses about consciousness…and purpose…are, though, very different from yours…
Thanks, Bart, very enlightening. I find the theory (there is nothing ‘Just’ about a theory) of evolution infinitely more satisfying than the folk-myths of religion, interesting though they are from an anthropological point of view. Of course, evolution has nothing to say about life’s origins but inventing a creator, for which there is no evidence, asks more questions than it answers.
My move from being mildly religious to agnosticism (the only honest position, in my view) came in my early teens when I used to go to churches of various denominations, depending on who my friends were at that time and which ran the best youth club. But they all preached different and often contradictory messages. And that got me thinking.
Some years ago the late Geza Vermes wrote a book called, ‘The Authentic Gospel of Jesus,’ which was an attempt to create an historical account of Jesus’ life, beliefs, followers and motivations. Am I right to infer that this interpretation does not differ materially from your own findings?
Vermes was a truly great scholar; we disagreed on some things, but our basic views were similar.
It would be very interesting for you to address the rather substantial differences in the way in which Vermes and you approach Jesus’ use of the Son of Man language specifically and his approach to Jesus and apocalypticism in general.
I doubt if I’ll go into all the nuances of the debate, but I may spell out my own views.
You’ve shared your view here already (eg, in response to Hurtado’s misunderstanding of your view). Vermes, Hurtado, and Casey all have similar views to each other, with important differing nuances but all strongly opposed to your view. If you do not want to discuss their views in any detail, could you perhaps point to some other scholar who has effectively critiqued their views in favor of your view?
I’m happy to explain their views — I just don’t want to go into all the ins and outs (it involves Aramaic!). If I get to this soon, I’ll lay out some of the options, including the one they take, and then explain the one that I think is more plausible myself.
“it involves Aramaic!”
You say that as if that is a problem. The Aramaic Son of Man question is central to the ‘Jesus of History’ cottage industry and, in my opinion, irresoluble with any degree of certainty. Perhaps it is not even worth serious scholarly consideration outside of Q-hypothesis. For, if one does not believe in the Q-hypothesis, Mark would be the first to use the Son of Man ‘title’ and he is clearly using theology inspired by Daniel 7. Without the Q-hypothesis, there is no reason to presuppose any pre-Markan use of the ‘Son of Man’ title/language.
How certain are you of the existence of Q (and the pre-Markan ‘Son of Man’ tradition)? 35 years ago, when I was writing my thesis in Europe, Q was clearly the view of the scholarly consensus and could pretty much be assumed as part of one’s working method. Is that still the case? It seems to me Mark Goodacre has made huge inroads into the Q-hypothesis. Is it still the consensus view?
Yes, the consensus is still very much behind the existence of Q!
” Truth was true, and anything contrary to truth should not be believed.”
Outstanding! The true mark of an Agnostic!
As Huxley put it,
“..as between Agnosticism and Ecclesiasticism,…, there can be neither peace nor truce. The Cleric asserts that it is morally wrong not to believe certain propositions, whatever the results of a strict scientific investigation of the evidence of these propositions. He tells us “that religious error is, in itself, of an immoral nature.” He declares that he has prejudged certain conclusions, and looks upon those who show cause for arrest of judgment as emissaries of Satan. It necessarily follows that, for him, the attainment of faith, not the ascertainment of truth, is the highest aim of mental life….”
But! Some of us came from “elect” *rocks*. Others? Not so fortunate……………….
Yes, I prefer to think that I myself came from a very nice rock.
Some form of gneiss, perhaps?
“I told them that the problem was not that I believed we descended from lower forms of primate; I believe we descended from *rocks*. ”
GREAT response! It certainly should make people think! It is always interesting to me how the logic works. There are a lot of claims about science and evidence. But when you ask a creationist what causes them to even think there was a creation, it always ends up based on a literal Bible account, not really about science. That’s one reason your work is so important. As you’ve said, people can still have belief in the Bible if they choose, but the idea of it literally being true and reliable fails and there’s no reason to force views from that worldview on society.
I believe we descended from *rocks*.
Yes, and we even have a Holy day observed by some Western Christians, (Catholics, Lutherans, etc.) called Ash Wednesday! “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return”.
Right! I have a very Christian view after all!
Kudos for accurately relating the distinction between agnosticism and atheism — i.e., one addressing the question of knowledge, and the other the question of belief. These are too often confused, as if it is an either-or rather than possibly both. Those who think that “agnosticism” is merely a different point on the same scale, as if it’s a midpoint between “atheist” and “theist”, are usually unaware of the very real phenomenon of agnostic theists. That is, there are those who acknowledge their inability to know, but have opted for a theistic belief nonetheless. This is why simply saying “agnostic” is only part of the picture — it correctly identifies one’s inability (or at least present state) to know, but doesn’t quite answer what the individual believes or doesn’t believe.
It’s also important to point out that one doesn’t have to “believe” in evolution, the same way one has to “believe” (i.e. have faith) that God created all living things. Alas, all the evidence points to all earthly life evolving from single-celled organisms to the complex, multi-celled organisms we see around us today, including ourselves. No belief is necessary. The facts speak for themselves, which should be the motto for your blog.
Unfortunately, facts can be disbelieved! (And often are…)
With regard to the question about Jesus’ rejection: In your book “Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium”, you state (pp. 200-201) that “the theme is attested in multiple and independent traditions, and is not the sort of thing later Christians would be likely to make up. That is, it passes our criteria.” I took this to mean that you thought that this theme (rejection by his family) was probably historically accurate.
Ah, sorry — I thought the question was referring to the posts I had been making on the blog.
My sense is that Jesus’ family did not agree with him that he was the messiah to come.
Condensed to bare “bones,” evolution is also a creation story. But unlike the many other creation stories throughout history, evolution is based on scientific observations of many independent fields of research.
I find the scientific creation story much more fascinating than what I read in Genesis.
Was there ever a time before completely throwing in the towel on the accuracy of the Bible that you tried to look at it all in a totally different way? Facts get in the way, obviously! But, was there still any kind of overall message you took away from what the NT authors, regardless of how sloppily they did it, were trying to say?
Oh yes, lots of time. Years! I was a good liberal, theologically interested, committed non-evangelical Christian for a good long time!!
Just read your last comment which sparked another question! Do you believe that the creation story in Genesis, I guess based on your knowledge of Hebrew, is completely at odds with the origins of the universe? I only ask because it seems that way if it is taken literally, but when you don’t, it seems to parallel the Big Bang theory in a way. First there was nothing and then there’s light (BANG?)…many eons later when things have cooled down to “Day 4” you finally have a solar system…then an eon later you have the first signs of life that happen to be in the water. Ultimately you end up with people literally coming out of the ground (dust of the Earth). It almost sounds like the author had things at least in the right order. Rocks cooling down, solar system, life in the waters, then beasts on land, then finally humans. So–your idea of evolving from the rocks actually makes perfect biblical sense! Ha! Right?
Yes, there are interesting parallels. But Genesis cannot be seen as a scientific explanation of the universe, since when the author wrote, there was no such thing as science! But it probably didn’t take too much thinking to realize that some things came into being before other things (since, for example, your parents came into being before you! Babies come into being before adults. Etc.) It is striking, though, that inanimate precedes animate, vegetation before animals, other animals before humans, and so on….
The whole discussion about ‘agnostic’ and ‘atheist’ I find unnecessary.
If a person says “I don’t believe that the store is open today”….you don’t have to say “I am agnostic about whether or not the store is open today”. You may not be 100% sure that you are correct. There is very little in life that we can be that sure about. But we don’t go around talking this way.
It should be understood that no one could say with 100% certainty whether or not there is a god….and if so….how would one even define such a being? Even believers say that god is ‘beyond human knowledge’…so there is also a certain percentage of uncertainty there. If god is beyond human knowledge, how can you define him/her/it?
These discussions are usually an attempt by a believer to get you to say that there is a god but that you don’t believe in him…which is of course ridiculous.
Well, if someone asks me if the store is open today, I might quite justifiably say “I don’t know.”
Thank you for saying you’re an atheist. That word is often used to morally condemn people. But anyone who knows much about you knows that you do a lot of good. Being an atheist doesn’t mean someone is bad or good. It only means they don’t believe in God or gods.
What a dead serious kind of post this was but it had me laughing at the end.
I am quite surprised that not one of your students in your classes did not believe in evolution.
How in all that is common sense name not believe in evolution in 2015?
Like yourself I used to be an evangelical Christian in my youth and one of my problems for me was when I was taught the world was no more than 5,000 years old. Denying gay rights was my other nitpick. Geological evidence and fossil records show very strong evidence.
I think if evangelicals did not try so hard to shun culture and redefine truth many such as myself would not have left.
Your biblical scholarship of yourself and other experts make it quite hard to believe in a mindset such as this.
It’s STARTDUST, Bart, not rocks! And it is not secret knowledge from a gnostic, it is open knowledge made accessible by our own Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an agnostic. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
Of course it’s stardust! And it’s golden. And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden!
I meant stardust in the most literal sense, the products of the Big Bang and of all the explosions, formations and destructions of objects in our universe. Dr. Tyson is an astrophysicist and head of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. He explains how planets, etc form and how materials incorporated in them get interchanged and provides the building blocks for both organic and inorganic molecules. So, the stardust to which I refer is the dusty unconcealed precursor to the rocks in your post. Nothing to do with Tinkerbell, whether you clap or not. But, if you can arrange it, I wouldn’t mind golden rocks in my garden.
Yes, I understood that, and I completely agree that we are made up of stardust. But why neglect a chance to interject a little Joni Mitchell?
Right on, man….
We descended from rocks? Well I guess some of us have descended further than others! I better go and evolve now…
The journey away from lifelong beliefs is not an easy one, and not everyone ends up glad they took it. But it is a one way trip once you reach a certain point.
Yes, when I get in debates with some people I’m not always sure they’ve descended so very *far*….
I suppose if we are descended from rocks it’s no surprise so many are hard headed! 🙂
“I went kicking and screaming, but I changed my view [of scripture]. I continued to think the Bible was in *some* sense inspired by God, but I realized it was not inerrant. Then I found more, and bigger discrepancies. Major discrepancies. Sometimes entire points of view from one Gospel to another were at odds. These discoveries were very difficult for me, emotionally draining, agonizing.”
Why so agonizing? I guess Protestant fundamentalists have an extreme view of scripture, some would even say a form of bilblotry, but why is it so surprising or shocking to a graduate student that the bible is a collection of books written by people with diverse viewpoints.
In part because I was not overly attracted to the idea of roasting in hell….
Seriously? As your faith began to change in graduate school, did you really feel that you were in danger of roasting in hell by adopting more liberal theological opinions?
Yeah, go figure….
Three terrific questions with three solid “rock” answers. This “Friday” mailbox has rapidly become better than the “God Squad” column, which often is quite good, in my “Friday” morning paper. Keep it going!
I do think that such a vast and amazing universe coming from nothing is a big puzzle. This reminds me that for years I carried a “B.C.” comic strip in my billfold. One character in the cartoon is baffled by the “Big Bang” and states “And you think the story in Genesis sounds farfetched.” Actually, Genesis sounds very farfetched as does the universe coming from nothing. I understand that God coming from nothing also sounds farfetched. So with Bogart in the movies “You pays your money and you takes your choice.”
Since the discovery, less than twenty years ago, that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, the question of how “something could come from nothing” (or, put more physically, where all the energy in the universe came from) has become easier to understand. It turns out that to produce the acceleration a whole lot of negative energy is needed (the so-called dark energy). The amount needed is just enough to cancel all the other energy in the universe, so that the net energy of the universe is zero. So the big bang is not a case of something coming from nothing, but rather of nothing coming from nothing.
So, which came first? Rocks, or fish? My former professor, who isn’t quite as smart as you, but who’s still pretty smart, insists we evolved from fish. You say rocks. My father says God is most probably the Universe itself, in so much as it is constantly creating, recreating and regenerating itself.
None the less:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2e_M06YDyY
Well, where in his opinion did fish come from???
Talking of fundamentals, I once asked a physics friend which bits of his subject were metaphor and which real – ‘It is all metaphor,’ he said. ‘What, electrons, quarks, photons and everything?’ ‘Yup,’ said he. ‘Time?’ ‘Especially time.’ Perhaps Schopenhauer was onto something when he argued that the world was actually undifferentiated. I suppose we can never get beyond what our brains are capable of perceiving – but it’s great fun trying.
HA! I will certainly have to ask him! (Admittedly, I wasn’t paying much attention; so if he mentioned rocks, I wouldn’t know).
From the elephants standing on the turtle holding up the earth.
And in response to that second question/answer, if only you could have had a blog like this and fellow bloggers to provide a kind of spiritual nourishment while breaking away from false beliefs. Still, you came through and now can understand why we appreciate you so very much.
Like someone else said…I’m amazed that there can be young people, today, who don’t accept the truth of evolution!
I’m in my mid-seventies. And when I was in high school – a *religious* (Catholic) high school! – our textbooks gave all the evidence for evolution, and presented it as fact. I never knew anyone who disputed it.
I also never heard anyone explain how it was supposed to be compatible with Catholic teaching. But…I admit that when I was in my twenties (no longer influenced by Catholicism at all), I assumed the difference in intellectual potential between subhuman and human was so stark that the first true human must have been the result of a one-time mutation, with all subsequent humans being descended from that one and his or her mate. I know better now, of course!
Calling on my memory( always problematic at my age), I have read several books dealing with the translation of the Bible into various “native tongues” and the strong opposition to such by the church. They apparently wanted the masses to depend on them for interpretation and meaning. Do you think the church always saw the problems and for that reason wanted to keep a translation out of the hands of the lay?
Not always — but for a good long part of Christian history!
A question: I think I remember your having said recently that you don’t believe Jesus was really tried by the Sanhedrin before being passed on to Pilate. If so, can you explain why you think that? And tell us – if anyone today knows – whether the Sanhedrin kept any written records? (I fantasize about an indisputable record of Jesus’s trial someday turning up.)
No, no written records. The trial itself (on the evening of Passover!) is completely implausible, and you can understand why Christian storytellers would later want to *claim* that it was “all the Jews doing”.
I am a former Catholic, so I find the relation between Jesus and his family, as represented in the different gospels, really interesting. In Mark, we have the line about the people thinking Jesus is “beside himself” and his family attempting to intervene. There is certainly nothing here to suggest his family understand him to be special, much less the Messiah, the son of God, or in anyway divine. Mathew and Luke strike that verse and add stories about Jesus’ conception, indicating that at least Mary is “in” on the messianic secret. But she plays very little role in the remainder of the story. John doesn’t give a virginal birth but does give us the story of marriage a Cana and she appears at the foot of the cross. Mary does seem to know that Jesus is special, but she doesn’t seem to expect that he would somehow overcome the crucifixion. If she new that he was God, wouldn’t she know that he couldn’t be permanently killed? And then some years later, Mary becomes very important in the Catholic Church, someone to be venerated, called Theotokos, and even co-redemtrix who was immaculately conceived and bodily assumed into heaven. I’m curious to hear anything you might have to say about the different portrayals of Mary in the gospels and her evolution within the church. Thanks for hosting such a great blog.
Yes, Mary is an interesting figure through the Gospels, as her role increases from one to the next, when arranged chronologically from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John. Maybe I’ll post on this at some point!
I assume you know her “immaculate conception” supposedly referred not to her having been conceived without sex, but without the “stain” of “original sin” on her soul?
I was raised Catholic, and it’s always puzzled me that Bart (and perhaps all Protestants?) refers to it as a “sin nature,” a *tendency to sin*. The Catholic teaching, as I understand it, is that everyone but Mary and Jesus has been born with an actual “stain” on their soul: we’re *guilty*, before we’ve done anything!
I have a question for next time.
You have noted that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet and I have no argument with that – self evident. You have mentioned and written that there were quite a few other similar prophets floating about the same region at the same time. These others are not well known to most, but the historical record is there. My question is was there something in the air roughly 2000 years ago that gave rise to such apocalyptic beliefs. Was the world uniquely viewed as a ‘hell on earth’ requiring imminent Godly intervention, or are such views one of those ‘hardy perennials’ that exist all the time with deluded individuals perceiving themselves as possessing unique insight into the mind of God and so qualified to opinions on The Plan? (I am well aware that the end of the world is routinely prophesied and we all have a good laugh when “The Date” comes and goes and life goes on.)
Yes indeed, apocalypticism arose out of a very specific historical context. Maybe I’ll post on that.
It can be hard to grasp what the world was like before life. Today we can’t imagine organic molecules spontaneously forming and lasting for more than a few seconds before being devoured by some bacteria. But in a world without bacteria, nothing rots, nothing decays, and organic molecules have plenty of time to hang around in the sea, waiting to hook up with other organic molecules. Pretty soon you have lipids, amino acids, nucleotides, peptides… hey we could almost build some sort of self-replicating molecule with this. And there aint noone around to eat it. There’s no stopping once you get to this point.
What about the universe? How did it start? Well that depends on what was there before it. Hang on a minute! It appears time is a dimension of the universe itself and is related to space. So without the universe there is no time or space. So there is no such thing as “before” the universe. Now that’s a problem!
Yeah, that’s a rather big ‘un….
But according to some recent theories, universes are being “born” all the time. Quite possibly, our “Big Bang” was the eruption of a supermassive black hole in an older universe. I’ve heard Michio Kaku refer to “continual genesis.”
And trillions of years from now, the entirety of the mammoth “Milkomeda” Galaxy-to-be – presumably lifeless by then – will be sucked into the colossal black hole in its center. (The two separate supermassive black holes that exist now will have merged into one.) One new universe, coming up!
Of course, we don’t know how it all started…or whether the process actually has been going on “forever,” with *no* beginning.
And I’ve heard of another little problem. That all those predictions about the future will be on the mark…unless there’s something scientists call a “phase transition.” *That* – whatever the heck it is – could cause our entire universe to vanish at any moment, and be replaced by something else!
The Big Bounce Theory seems to be gaining in popularity.
Um, I don’t think so! I wasn’t familiar with that term and had to look it up, but I found it means what I’d suspected: an oscillating Universe with expansion and contracton cycles, Big Bangs alternating with Big Crunches.
That was the theory I favored fiftysome years ago. But it was seemingly shot down when, in the mid-20th century, scientists made the then-startling discovery that the expansion of the Universe wasn’t slowing down: it was speeding up, expanding faster and faster. They postulated that “dark energy” was causing ever more vacuum to come into existence between clusters of galaxies. And as this expansion of vacuum *progressed*, they thought, *everything* would “come apart”! Even individual atoms. That was when Isaac Asimov offered the hopeful thought that “a random fluctuation in a vacuum” might give birth to another Universe.
But *now*, it seems, many scientists are theorizing that just as there are other galaxies – billions of them – that we once didn’t know about, there may also be other *universes* we don’t know about. And speculation about (a) the Big Bang and (b) the problem of what happens to matter that goes into black holes has led to the theory that new universes are *born* from the eventual *eruptions* of supermassive black holes.
Dr. Nikodem Poplawski seems to think universes are born through a big bounce, and that we are inside of a black hole of another universe. I think we’re talking about the same thing here.
http://www.newhaven.edu/Faculty-Staff-Profiles/Nikodem-Poplawski/
A small correction: the acceleration of the expansion of the universe was discovered in 1997, not min mid-century. By then, Asimov had been dead for five years, so he couldn’t have commented on it.
This (the reply feature) is getting confusing! I’m not familiar with Dr. Poplawski. I admit I follow, mostly, the “How the Universe Works” series.
But I think almost everyone has agreed for decades now that this universe *isn’t* going to contract and have a Big Crunch, which would be followed by another Big Bang…because the rate of *expansion* is steadily *speeding up*. (Personally, my nonscientist self doesn’t believe in that nihilistic “dark energy” – I think the outermost parts of this universe are responding to the gravitational “pull” of other universes.)
And I hear our universe being described as a “white hole” – caused by the ultimate *eruption* of a supermassive black hole in an older universe. Not *in* that universe, outside it. And however things may have started, *every* universe succeeding the very first one may have been born as a “white hole.”
I just looked at the link about Dr. Poplawski. Maybe “bounce” is a confusing term? My understanding is that when a supermassive black hole is (presumably) “full” – everything in it, of course, having collapsed into a “singularity” – that singularity “erupts” and gives birth to a new universe, outside the older one. I’m *guessing* that happens when there’s nothing left within “range” for the supermassive black hole to suck in.
And there are many sizes of black holes – as I understand it, it’s only supermassive ones that can give birth to universes.
The nice thing about dark energy is that it answers one of the big problems with the big bang: where did all the energy in the universe come from? It turns out that the amount of dark energy, which is negative energy, needed to account for the acceleration is just enough to cancel out all the positive energy (including mass) in the universe, giving the universe a net energy of zero. So the big bang did not have to create energy out of nothing.
Actually replying to Michael Sommers, though his comment to me doesn’t appear yet…
From Wikipedia: “Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953)[1] was an American astronomer who played a crucial role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as one of the most important observational cosmologists of the 20th century. Hubble is known for showing that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from the earth, implying the universe is expanding,[2] known as “Hubble’s law” although this relation had been discovered previously by Georges Lemaître, who published his work in a less visible journal.”
As I understood it, the surprising thing discovered in the fifties was that the universe was *still* expanding, actually at an increased rate. I may be wrong. But I find it hard to believe I haven’t had my own views longer than since 1997.
Wilusa wrote: “As I understood it, the surprising thing discovered in the fifties was that the universe was *still* expanding, actually at an increased rate.”
The expansion was discovered back in the twenties, but that the expansion was speeding up instead of slowing down was not known until 1998 (not 1997 as I said before). Here’s a preprint of the original paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/9805201v1.pdf
Agnosticism is commonly taken to mean a namby-pamby “I don’t know.” Huxley, who coined the term (in opposition to “gnosis”) had a much more rigorous and robust idea in mind:
“Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.” (Thomas Henry Huxley, Agnosticism and Christianity and Other Essays)
Bart, are you aware the Hobby Lobby people are building a huge Bible museum in Washington DC that will contain some 40,000 scrolls, artifacts, and manuscripts, many of which are supposedly unknown to scholars? I saw this posted on Candida Moss’ Facebook Post. I am wondering if Biblical scholars will have access to these items. I suspect the Green family may not be to willing to provide access to scholars that specialize Biblical criticism.
Yes, I am fully aware of it! I know some of the people involved. It will indeed be interesting to see what kind of access is allowed.
I don’t know if I would call it God, but I believe there’s a super-consciousness out there and other entities both good and bad. We are a product of the universe, so I don’t see why consciousness wouldn’t exist both here and other parts of the universe.
Again replying to Michael Sommers: That scientific article is way over my head, but I certainly agree that you’re right about when the “speeding up” was recognized, and the scientists’ believing dark energy is responsible.
I remember that I (just reading “popular science” things) bought into the “oscillating universe” theory quite early. And I think there was discussion about *whether* there would be a contraction cycle or “eternal” expansion, before there was clear evidence either way.
It must have been in that sort of discussion that Asimov wrote, somewhere, that *if* everything ultimately came apart, a random fluctuation in a vacuum might be enough to start a new universe. I’m sure he also said, somewhere else, that if there was going to be a contraction cycle, life as we know it wouldn’t be able to exist during it, because there’d be too much *light*. I always wished I’d learned more of his thoughts about that – if life had been possible at the end of the expansion cycle, it certainly wouldn’t have ended *immediately* when the direction reversed! A moot point now, of course.