Three big bangs: November 7, 2013
Date
2013
Authors
Rolston, Holmes, 1932-, speaker
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Abstract
Scientific natural history discovers "three big bangs," each marking a serendipitous singularity. (1) At the primordial big bang, matter-energy appears, initially in simpler forms, but with the remarkable capacity to generate heavier elements, without which life would not be possible. (2) Life explodes on Earth with DNA discovering, storing, and transferring information. Across a singular natural history, life persists in the midst of its perpetual perishing, generating and regenerating billions of species. These increase in biodiversity, with trajectories escalating biocomplexity. (3) The human genius, a massive singularity, crosses a trans-genetic threshold, generating language and making possible cumulative transmissible cultures, radically novel in kind and in scale. Life becomes ideational; ideas pass from mind to mind. Ideas generate ideals. The nature of matter-energy, the nature of genes and their genesis, invites those at the center of complex caring intelligence to wonder where they are, who they are, and what they ought to do. Human uniqueness on a wonderland Earth generates intense responsibilities. Is there sacred Logos in, with, and under a cybernetic system with such breakthrough creativity?
Description
The Carter-Chalker Lectureship on Faith and Contemporary Issues, The College of Idaho, November 7, 2013.
Also on DVD disks in CSU Morgan Library: B818.R665 2013.
Also on DVD disks in CSU Morgan Library: B818.R665 2013.
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Subject
cosmological constant
Logos
human uniqueness
mind
universe
evolution
theory of everything
anthropic principle
cosmic singularity
big bang theory