Saturday, April 30, 2011

Scientific and Biblical eschatology at AA-CC

I am looking forward to the Conference on the Church and the Academy at the end of June. There is still time to register and to submit papers. I just submitted an abstract for a talk,  A comparison of scientific and Biblical eschatology

How, when, and why will the world end? Both science and the Bible present pictures and possible scenarios for the end.Science tells us that the universe had a beginning, time has a direction (the arrow of time), and life, stars, and even the whole universe may come to an end.
I will review scientific discussions about how currently known physical laws do put constraints on the future. This has led some scientists to make statements about the future.
I will compare and contrast this scientific view of the future to Biblical eschatology which works with a different set of pre-suppositions. Furthermore, the predictions of science are of limited relevance to our personal lives, particularly because of the large timescales involved. In contrast, Biblical eschatology has significant personal implications.

I am planning this to be a development of a talk I have given previously in France, India, and Serbia.
This picture of the life cycle of stars is from nobelprize.org

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