God and Nature 2025 #1
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By Paul Carr
How did the cosmos and humans emerge? In the beginning was the word (logos) or plan, and this cosmic blueprint “was God and was with God” (John 1:1). Astronomers have described how God’s universe emerged from a hot big bang, and how, about 400,000 years later, the new universe expanded and cooled so that primordial hydrogen condensed out like dew drops. God’s logical plan (logos) or emergent organizing principle is encoded in natural laws. It resulted in the primordial hydrogen atoms, after 13.8 billion years, being transformed into humans… and “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1).
How did this happen? Hydrogen consists of a single positively charged proton surrounded by a negatively charged electron. The electrical attraction between opposite charges holds hydrogen and all matter together. Astronomers have observed that hydrogen is still the most abundant element in the cosmos.
How did the cosmos and humans emerge? In the beginning was the word (logos) or plan, and this cosmic blueprint “was God and was with God” (John 1:1). Astronomers have described how God’s universe emerged from a hot big bang, and how, about 400,000 years later, the new universe expanded and cooled so that primordial hydrogen condensed out like dew drops. God’s logical plan (logos) or emergent organizing principle is encoded in natural laws. It resulted in the primordial hydrogen atoms, after 13.8 billion years, being transformed into humans… and “God saw that it was good” (Genesis 1).
How did this happen? Hydrogen consists of a single positively charged proton surrounded by a negatively charged electron. The electrical attraction between opposite charges holds hydrogen and all matter together. Astronomers have observed that hydrogen is still the most abundant element in the cosmos.
...God’s evolutionary logos plan eventually resulted in children-of-the universe called humans. |
God’s logos plan was for gravity to pull some hydrogen atoms together to form creative communities called stars. These stars were so hot that they cooked or fused the hydrogen into helium, lithium, carbon, oxygen, and other elements up to iron. Then, at the end of their lifetimes, these first stars exploded into giant supernovae of multi-element cosmic dust. God again planned for gravity to pull this cosmic dust back together, forming new stars like our sun and planets like our earth. We are made of stardust!
In the 4.5-billion-year history of our earth, God’s evolutionary logos plan eventually resulted in children-of-the universe called humans. It was a long process. The early atmosphere of our earth, like that of our neighboring planets Venus and Mars, was mostly carbon dioxide. Then, some prokaryotic cells evolved into photosynthesizing cyanobacteria that used sunlight to gain energy by converting water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, slowly changing the earth’s atmosphere. Later, simple prokaryotic cells evolved into more complex eukaryotic plant cells that released even more oxygen through photosynthesis. About 600 million years ago, there was enough oxygen for cells to cooperate in a Cambrian explosion of multicellular animals: fish in the sea and reptiles on land. Animals combine oxygen with sugar in food to get the energy needed for mobility.
About 66 million years ago, a large asteroid hit our earth, making a cloud of dust that shut out the light from our sun. The colder temperatures killed the large, cold-blooded dinosaurs, and warm-blooded mammals became dominant. These included ancient humans like Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. Our kind of human, Homo sapiens, later evolved and were created in God’s image (Genesis 1). Anthropologists have determined that the earliest Homo sapiens lived 300 thousand years ago.
Bishop Ussher (1581 – 1656) concluded from his calculations based on biblical genealogy that Adam lived 6000 years ago. Adam’s name means man in the original Hebrew and is likely related to the similar-sounding Hebrew word meaning soil and earth—cosmic dust. Eve’s name comes from a word that means living, or to live, breathe, give life. Thus Adam and Eve, the first biblical humans, can be seen as “living humus,” or simply humans. Their son Cain was a farmer; his brother Abel, a herdsman, telling us that agriculture and animal husbandry were already established in Adam’s Tigris and Euphrates River valleys (in what is now Iraq). Before agriculture, we Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers.
Created from cosmic stardust, we humans ask, “How did we get here and why?” Even though we die, we yearn for eternal life with our creator. God’s good creativity is continuing, and we, as created co-creators, should be responsible stewards of the life on our good earth.
Paul H. Carr, BS, MS, MIT; Ph.D. Brandeis, IEEE and ASA Fellow, led a branch of the AF Research laboratory that developed the miniature components used in cell phones and radar. Retiring in 1995, the Templeton Foundation awarded him grants for the course "Science and Religion: Cosmos to Consciousness" he taught at U Mass Lowell. This inspired his book Beauty in Science and Spirit (2006). His autobiography is Loves in My Life: Spirituality, Science, Family (2023). You can find him at www.MirrorOfNature.org.
In the 4.5-billion-year history of our earth, God’s evolutionary logos plan eventually resulted in children-of-the universe called humans. It was a long process. The early atmosphere of our earth, like that of our neighboring planets Venus and Mars, was mostly carbon dioxide. Then, some prokaryotic cells evolved into photosynthesizing cyanobacteria that used sunlight to gain energy by converting water and carbon dioxide into oxygen, slowly changing the earth’s atmosphere. Later, simple prokaryotic cells evolved into more complex eukaryotic plant cells that released even more oxygen through photosynthesis. About 600 million years ago, there was enough oxygen for cells to cooperate in a Cambrian explosion of multicellular animals: fish in the sea and reptiles on land. Animals combine oxygen with sugar in food to get the energy needed for mobility.
About 66 million years ago, a large asteroid hit our earth, making a cloud of dust that shut out the light from our sun. The colder temperatures killed the large, cold-blooded dinosaurs, and warm-blooded mammals became dominant. These included ancient humans like Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis. Our kind of human, Homo sapiens, later evolved and were created in God’s image (Genesis 1). Anthropologists have determined that the earliest Homo sapiens lived 300 thousand years ago.
Bishop Ussher (1581 – 1656) concluded from his calculations based on biblical genealogy that Adam lived 6000 years ago. Adam’s name means man in the original Hebrew and is likely related to the similar-sounding Hebrew word meaning soil and earth—cosmic dust. Eve’s name comes from a word that means living, or to live, breathe, give life. Thus Adam and Eve, the first biblical humans, can be seen as “living humus,” or simply humans. Their son Cain was a farmer; his brother Abel, a herdsman, telling us that agriculture and animal husbandry were already established in Adam’s Tigris and Euphrates River valleys (in what is now Iraq). Before agriculture, we Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers.
Created from cosmic stardust, we humans ask, “How did we get here and why?” Even though we die, we yearn for eternal life with our creator. God’s good creativity is continuing, and we, as created co-creators, should be responsible stewards of the life on our good earth.
Paul H. Carr, BS, MS, MIT; Ph.D. Brandeis, IEEE and ASA Fellow, led a branch of the AF Research laboratory that developed the miniature components used in cell phones and radar. Retiring in 1995, the Templeton Foundation awarded him grants for the course "Science and Religion: Cosmos to Consciousness" he taught at U Mass Lowell. This inspired his book Beauty in Science and Spirit (2006). His autobiography is Loves in My Life: Spirituality, Science, Family (2023). You can find him at www.MirrorOfNature.org.