1 st. Post: Religious and Cultural Divides.

Worldviews or the way we see the world and the basic beliefs about the world are in conflict. The world is not necessarily divided by geographic boundaries but by religious and cultural traditions.

Will Durant in Ch 3 Worldviews in Conflict said, " From barbarism to civilization requires a century but from civilization to barbarism needs but one day."

WE all are religious creatures and our lives are defined by our ultimate beliefs more sharply than by any other factor. So the culture wars in the West are actually being orchestrated by great Belief Systems. This clash is more important than what is happening in Islam or Asia or the political scene. It is exactly what is dominating the whole globe at the present time.

The Information Age has transported across barriers of geography and national border the ideas of the West. Even Asian and Islamic societies have been flooded with Western books , movies, videos and culture. People around the world are wrestling with the same issues that are being thrown at the western societies in our day. These issues are not always good nor wanted but are flooding across the borders because of cellphones, computers and the Internet.

Read Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey, "HOW NOW SHALL WE LIVE? Marshall and Pickering, London

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No.9. How did the whole Universe Begin?

Notes from Colson p.57 -67 Scientists have completely reversed their theories in the past few decades. They thought for ages that the Physical Universe was eternal and therefore needs no 'creator'. Now they postulate that the universe did have an ultimate origin and that it began at a finite time in the past - just as the Bible teaches. Many ancient cultures believed that the material from which the Universe came was eternal. However, today "the indestructibility or permanence of matter" is a scientific fact" wrote a 19th Century proponent of materialism. For many years that is how things stood. Any thought of a Creator and the earth having a beginning was just bare religious faith standing in lonely opposition to established science. Now in the 20th Century several sources of new evidence appeared : the implications from general relativity theory that the Universe is expanding; that some stars exhibit "red shift", implying that they are moving out...

No.10. The Birth of the Universe (cont.)

Notes from CREATION Magazine. Big Bang Universe by Jonathan Safati. The Currently leading Cosmogony (Gk. "birth of the universe") is the big bang theory. This basically says, ' Nothing exploded and became everything'. One part of this energy became matter as per the famous Einstein formula E=mc2. However, when this occurs, the standard laws of Particle Physics state that an equal amount of matter and antimatter must be produced. Yet our universe comprises overwhelmingly of matter, with only rare and fleetingly short-lived antimatter particles, produced for example in experimental high energy collisions. These are of the same mass but opposite charge (if the particle is charged) and magnetic moment as the corresponding matter particle . They soon interact and are mutually annihilated - anti-electron with an electron, anti-proton with proton, anti-neutron with neutron etc. How did matter survive annihilation from an equal amount of anti-matter....

No. 7.. Naturalism and Utopian-ism.

Naturalist generally think that human nature is essentially good. This very idea comes from the Enlightenment, and leads to Utopian-ism. Utopian-ism says, "If we can only create the right social and economic structures, we can usher in and age of harmony and prosperity. But Christians can never give their allegiance to Utopian projects. We know that sin is real and that it has deeply twisted human nature and that none of our efforts can create heaven on earth. Heaven is the Eschatological Hope of the Christian that will only be fulfilled by Divine intervention at the end of time. In the meantime, because of the human propensity to do evil and cause disorder, then we will need Law and Order enforcement throughout history. The Only Utopia which will ever exist is when Christ will set up His Reign and His Glorious Kingdom on earth and Satan will be bound.

Culture wars in the West.

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