\u201cRootsTech is less than a week away. Here\u2019s what you can expect this year\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I tinker from time to time, when other more urgent (or tempting) obligations don\u2019t interfere, with a book manuscript on The Physical Cosmos in the Qur\u2019an<\/em>. \u00a0It is comprised of three distinct parts.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n- The first part of the book will examine the Qur\u2019anic doctrine of creation. \u00a0The virtually universal consensus of opinion is that the Qur\u2019an teaches creatio ex nihilo<\/em>, that God made the universe out of nothing. \u00a0I do not find this doctrine taught in the Qur\u2019an. \u00a0On the contrary, I read it as teaching creatio ex materia, that God formed the universe out of pre-existing \u201cstuff.\u201d \u00a0So I will make that argument.<\/li>\n
- The second part of the book \u2014 and, by a considerable distance, the longest portion of it \u2014 will systematically set forth the Qur\u2019an\u2019s conception of the structure of the physical universe. \u00a0I will argue that its view of that structure is fundamentally the same as the view that was held by, for instance, the ancient Babylonians and ancient Israelites.<\/li>\n
- The third part of the book will lay out what I regard as a simple Qur\u2019anic natural theology, in which (for example) the regularities of nature, the recurring seasons, and so forth, are offered as signs pointing to the existence and, to some degree, to the character of God.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
I just this morning picked up an old copy of\u00a0Thomas Howard, Chance or the Dance? A Critique of Modern Secularism<\/em> (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1969) that has been sitting forgotten in a box in one of the rooms of our house, and I was pleased to find this passage, which fits my Part Three very nicely:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The myth sovereign in the old age was that everything means everything. \u00a0The myth sovereign in the new is that nothing means anything.<\/span><\/p>\nThat is, to the darkened mind it did not mean nothing that the sun went down and night came and the moon and stars appeared and then dawn and the sun and morning again and another day, which would itself wax and then wane into twilight and dusk and night. . . . \u00a0(page 12, italics removed)<\/span><\/p>\nAnd when they heard about a thing like resurrection, they could believe it, since they thought they could see the same thing (life issuing from death) in other realms \u2014 seedtime and harvest, and morning and evening, and renunciation and reward \u2014 and so what else did it all mean but that it is the way things are that life triumphs over death? \u00a0(page 14)<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 The LDS Film Festival 2020 opens next week. \u00a0It will run from Monday, 24 February 2020, through Saturday, 29 February 2020, at the SCERA Center for the Arts in Orem, Utah. \u00a0 *** \u00a0 One of my great regrets is that I\u2019ve never, thus far, been able to attend RootsTech. \u00a0Unfortunately, I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8750,61,6237,82,2833],"class_list":["post-83063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-meaning","tag-natural-theology","tag-purpose","tag-quran","tag-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>