From Christian Earth Science to Big History with David Christian
6:57 AM Sunday.
After a good bit of hemming and hawing I have decided to reframe my work on Christian Earth Science as a course in Big History. I started my formal decision-making process early on Saturday morning with a review of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart. This led to the following series of questions for Google Gemini:
- Are Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic all eras in the Phanerozoic Eon, and if so, what defines each era?
- Are these subdivisions of time considered part of the Standard Cosmological Model, or does that only apply to physics, not geology?
- Is there a term for the understanding of objective reality that is provided by the scientific worldview overall?
- Are there any alternatives to scientific realism that are accepted within the consensus scientific community?
- What about consciousness-based approaches - are they generally outside the scientific consensus?
- Say more about physicalism and its relationship to theology - how have theologians grappled with this concept, and is it the mainstream consensus in expert theological circles?
- Does belief in God and creatio ex nihilo necessarily put consciousness before physical reality?
- Buddhism is not physicalist - is that correct?
- In classical Buddhist philosophy, if I am understanding correctly, human consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of physicalism, whereas it is according to both the scientific consensus and the creatio ex nihilo theological perspective, is that correct?
- Are there any major disciplinary timescales intermediate between the Standard Cosmological Model and the Geologic Time Scale?
- Say more about the definition and field of Big History and how does it relate to the field of World History?
- What is the seminal text in the Big History field?
- Are some universities adding both World History and Big History into the undergraduate curriculum, and if so, are they two separate courses of study?
- What is the Pleistocene?
- What is the Quaternary Period?
- What is the status of the debate about the Anthropocene at the International Commission on Stratigraphy - do any proposals to start the Anthropocene have real traction, and if so, when would the Anthropocene begin?
- Do any geologists believe we could be approaching another mass extinction event and a new era after the Cenozoic?
- Would it be accurate to say that we are presently in the "lower" Holocene?
- By naming our present stage the Late Holocene, have geologists suggested that the Holocene is coming to a close? How long do most geologists expect the Late Holocene to last?
- What do "Pleistocene" and "Holocene" mean etymologically?
- What does "Meghalayan" mean?
- Is "natural history" the term that historians use for the history of the universe prior to "world history"?
- When does history start according to academic historians?
- Do historians generally define "prehistory" as extending back to human origins at the beginning of the Pleistocene?
- What does "history" mean etymologically?
- As you have already suggested, academic inquiry about the deep past beyond human origins falls under the disciplines of evolutionary biology, geology, and cosmology, in that order, is that correct?
- Is "Big History" widely accepted by academic historians or is it widely rejected as too ambitious and a contradiction of the academic definition of history?
- Who is Walter Alvarez and what is his relationship to the field of Big History?
- Is Alvarez Latino?
- Does Big History imply that traditional history is Little History?
Here is the answer thread:
Bonus question round:
1. Does Alvarez speculate that the improbabilities of Big History leave the door open to reasonable belief in a Creator God?
2. Is there a widely accepted term in the academic community for the consensus scientific worldview as it applies across all of the scientific disciplines?
3. Is Metaphysical Naturalism necessarily atheistic and does it hold that all consciousness is a product of physical processes?
4. What are the main competitors with Metaphysical Naturalism in philosophical circles?
5. Is classical Buddhism closer to dualism or idealism?
6. What about Advaita Vedanta - which of the above-mentioned schools of philosophy is it closest to?
7. Is the academic field of Big History predicated on metaphysical naturalism?
8. What about the Buddhist idealist - how would he or she relate to the study of Big History?
9. What about a Catholic theologian - is he or she ultimately required to reject Big History because it denies the miracle of Christ's virgin birth, or is there a workable middle ground for the Catholic theologian?
10. I have read that many young people are leaving Catholicism because they feel it conflicts with the scientific worldview - is there any evidence to support this conclusion?
11. Considering the Shroud of Turin - does methodological naturalism require the working assumption that this is not miraculous piece of fabric?
12. Does this mean only that science can never prove the existence of a miracle, or does it also mean that miracles cannot exist according to science?
13. It seems like there is a fairly fine line between methodological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism - do people often conflate the two?
14. Have philosophers in effect "proven" that metaphysical naturalism is contrary to the scientific method (methodological naturalism), or is this not yet a consensus among expert philosophers of science?
15. Is it fair to say that both monastic Catholic theologians and monastic Buddhist philosophers would agree that metaphysical naturalism is intellectual overreach?
16. Is there any professional ethical standard for scientists that prevents a working scientist from being a Catholic or a Buddhist?
17. Was the Big Bang theory really developed by a Catholic scientist?
18. Did Lemaître use both the phrases "primeval atom" and "Cosmic Egg" in his 1931 paper in Nature?
19. Could "Big Bang" be seen as misleading in some ways?
20. Was Lemaître's primeval atom a singularity?
Alright, based on all of this and two additional data points I have yet to mention, it is now 10:41 AM on Sunday morning and I am not sure it is time for me to shift from Christian Earth Science to Big History with David Christian. First of all, I am certainly not ready to adopt metaphysical naturalism as my worldview, and I am even a bit concerned that it could turn Creation into Hell. Second, I have two additional data points to share.
Around the time I asked my first bonus round question ("Does Alvarez speculate that the improbabilities of Big History leave the door open to reasonable belief in a Creator God?"), I noticed that the light of daybreak was reflecting off the back window in my loft in a way that dramatically illuminated the Sacred Heart of Jesus wall art in my meditation area:
Indeed, I was so struck by the event that I shared the photos with my contemplative Catholic mentor in Vermont by email around 7:30 AM. He replied that they looked like signs to him!
The photos were both taken at 7:07 AM.
Needless to say, on the basis of this evidence, I am now very much questioning whether to move ahead with my plan and call this course Big History after David Christian, or whether to stay with Christian Earth Science.
This leads to a final round of questions for this morning:
- Have any Christian scholars of Big History coined the term Christian Big History?
- What is covered by the field of "Christian History" - could it conceivably include the content addressed by Big History, or would "Christian Big History" make more sense as a subfield dedicated to this approach?
- How does science explain improbable coincidences - they are not exactly miracles that violate the laws of nature, but are they natural synchronicities that do test the limits of chance?
- Why do some people have more difficulty with apophenia than others - persons with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, for example?
- Do healthy people sometimes attribute synchronicities to Providence?
- Do any Catholic, Jewish and Muslim scientists see profound coincidences as evidence of Providence intersecting with the natural world?
- Is there an intuitive or "gut" knowing that a coincidence is from Providence, would a Christian call this faith, and would a metaphysical naturalist call it human emotionality?
- Is it common in modern religious life for these two fundamental viewpoints to become voices of an inner dialogue between faith and doubt?
- Is it common for elders on the religious path to talk about this in terms of the difference between head-knowing and heart-knowing, or between intellectual and intuitive knowledge?
And here is the answer thread.
I don't think these photos are evidence of apophenia on my part, and I do not seem to be spinning off into any obvious grandiosity, e.g., "These are signs from God that I am a prophet!" or anything like that. On the contrary, I am not even sure they are signs from God that I should seek baptism as a Christian. They could point in this direction, or they could point in the direction of secular Big History as coined by David Christian. And I suppose they could point in both directions at the same time!
At this point, now that I am more firmly on the interfaith contemplative American Red Road, I am going to proceed with the course title "Big History," but I remain cautious about metaphysical naturalism.
"Is it common for lay believers to sometimes think that the voice of metaphysical naturalism is the voice of the Devil?"
Take it from experience, it doesn't help the slightly paranoid believer with well-managed schizoaffective disorder to discover that the first and oldest eon in "secular" geological history is called the Hadean Eon! "Vulcanic Eon" might have been slightly better.
End 11:51 AM.
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