Origin Story #1 of 5

Thoughts on David Christian’s Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

At the moment of the big bang,

      the entire universe was smaller than an atom…

Distinct structures and forms emerged

      within a second of the big bang.

Why is the universe not just a random flux of energy?

      This is a fundamental question. (Origin Story, p. 23)

In the beginning

      God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void,

      and darkness was upon the face of the deep;

and the Spirit of God

      moved over the face of the waters. (Gn 1:1-2)

That moment of the big back is “Threshold 1 of 8” of the “modern origin story” told by David Christian in his book Origin Story. Such stories need to be told. Without an origin story we “fall into a sense of despair and meaninglessness” (p.8). His new origin story needs to be 1) global rather than tribal, and 2) scientific rather than religious—an origin story without god.

I’ve only read through this first threshold about how something hot and dense the size of an atom (not a real atom because atoms had yet to take form, but the size of an atom) blew up and formed our universe. All the energy and matter of our universe was stuffed into this hot, dense something the size of an atom—actually, “smaller than an atom”. Atoms are small. You can squeeze a million atoms into the dot that forms the period at the end of this sentence. That little hot, dense, smaller than an atom blew up 13.8 billion years ago and continues its explosive expansion to this day. In 4.5 billion years from now our sun will burn out. In a few gazillions of years our universe fades into some sort of dark soup. But for now, this is a good time for our planet—a Goldilocks time when everything is just right for folks like us.

It’s a breathtaking read. As the author himself exclaims, it’s all so “mysterious”, “magical” and “miraculous”.  He’s optimistic that “we moderns are not doomed to a chronic state of fragmentation and meaninglessness.” (p. ix)  There’s even a kind of saving gospel to the story: “The modern origin story …can prepare us for the huge challenges and opportunities that all of us face at this pivotal moment in the history of planet Earth.” (p. 10) 

Though he intends to tell a new, modern and thoroughly scientific origin story without a “creator god”; he acknowledges, from time to time, the challenges a godless universe presents. “If our story had a creator god, explaining structure would be easy. We could just assume that God preferred structure to chaos.” (p. 25) I hadn’t thought much about the wonder of structure, order and the arrangement of things. Why did this explosion result in a universe embedded with “fundamental laws of physics”? Why does math work? Christian (the author’s name not my faith), gives us a sense of the odds with a parable (that’s kind of Christian too): “If you throw a bomb into a construction site full of bricks, mortar, wires, and paint, what are the odds that when the dust clears, you’ll find an apartment building all wired up, decorated, and ready for buyers?”

It’s quite a story. Like the author, I find it all immensely interesting, even wondrous. For some reason I’ve never felt my faith threaten by this scientific story (article written for church denomination: https://www.cmalliance.org/news/2017/03/06/a-b-simpson-on-creation-and-science/). Do these wondrous scientific discoveries destroy our story about how “in the beginning” God decided to create the heavens and the earth? Or, the big story about how God has decided to stick with his creation—how He “remembered Noah”. The story about Christmas and Easter and a new heaven and new earth. About how “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (Jn 1:1). Or, one could translate it, “In the beginning was the Meaning, and the Meaning was with God, and the Meaning was God.”

I doubt science, of itself, can give us the “meaning” the author hopes for. It’s too mechanical and disciplined. Can a godless and spiritless creation grace us with meaning? I don’t think so. Maybe that’s why I never feel threaten by scientific wonders. Christian’s modern, scientific origin story fills me with greater wonder. Creation is bigger and more real than anyone could ever imagine. It’s so immense and wondrous, miraculous and awe inspiring, that one cannot help but think of “God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth”.

Charles Krauthammer

Politics…

                -when benign, it allows all around it to flourish;

                -when malign, it makes all around it wither.  (Things That Matter, p. 2 paraphrase)

Pray for rulers and all who have authority,

-so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life

-with reverence and dignity. (1Tm 2:2)

Show proper respect to everyone:

                -love the family of believers,

                -honor the emperor and worship God. (1Pt 2:17)

Last Sunday, for Fathers’ Day, Linda gave me Charles Krauthammer’s Things That Matter. Yesterday he died. That moved him up to my Morning Fire Reading. Mom hopes such reading will keep me in the conservative fold. She’s right.

He thinks broadly and deeply with warmth, curiosity and delight. The same with people. He engages all sorts of people with warmth, curiosity and delight. That’s how he speaks of his older brother Marcel, or Winston Churchill, Christopher Columbus, Rick Ankiel who played ball for the Saint Lewis Cardinals, eccentric mathematicians and chess competitors. Folks are flawed, yet curiously interesting. Individually precious.

Maybe that’s the heart of conservative thought—that the individual matters. We want a political system in which individuals like Dr. Krauthammer can flourish. As the Apostle encourages us: “Pray for rulers and for all who have authority so that we can have quiet and peaceful lives full of reverence and respect for God.” (1Tm 2:2)

Morning Fire 6.21.18

All answering to the master’s dream they laid

The strong foundations, torturing into stone

Each bubble that the Academy had blown. (Dymer, Canto 1.4)

For now we see through a glass, darkly;

        but then face to face:

now I know in part;

        but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1Cor 13:12)

This morning, by the fire, I read Lewis’ Dymer cantos VII & VIII in preparation for Inklings meeting with my pilot friend who has us reading and discussing Dymer line by line. I’ve read and even taught, or sort of taught, or pretended to teach Dymer. But my friend really wants to get it—to understand each line. It’s tedious, but good—very good.

I’ll settle for two Dymer thoughts this morning:

                1)  An aversion to perfection, or claims of perfection, this side of Glory.  Dymer is the story of our hero’s flight from that “Perfect City” that tortured “into stone each bubble that the Academy had blown”.  Published in 1927, Dymer becomes prophetic of the 20^th century horrors of those perfect political states the “academy had blown”—those communist revolutions in Russia or China or Cuba or Vietnam or Cambodia. We can think of such perfection insistence on a lower scale, of our church, our home, our marriage, our clan. Such perfection claims turn out to be something of our own construal—our wish dreams. We do well to be reminded of the Bible’s relentless “now” and “then”: “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” For now, we still live out our lives on this beautiful yet cursed earth. Every time we try to retake the garden on our own terms, we meet “the cherubim with the flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life.”

                2) That Lewis remained Lewis following his conversion. One recognizes in Dymer the Christian Lewis we know from Narniads. There is a continuity of person. When writing Dymer, Lewis was an atheist, or claimed to be an atheist, or tried to be an atheist. The next book he writes, The Pilgrim’s Regress, some six years later, he writes as a Christian with the subtitle: “An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism.” That’s the same jaded romantic we find in Dymer.  As dramatic conversions go, Lewis is certainly dramatic—from atheist to belief in the God of the Gospel. And yet, it’s not as if we find a different person. It’s more like the person who wrote Dymer finds himself in Christ.