Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

The clergy once persecuted astronomers, now it is finding common purpose

"If the Big Bang was the start of everything, what came before it?"

Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, the dean of the Pontifical Lateran University's philosophy department, will be the Vatican's point man on the scheme. He says: "From the Church's point of view, this is about getting religious people to see that scientists are not the enemy and getting scientists to see that religious people are not the enemy. "The aim is for both sides to come together for the good of humanity." ASI's Piero Benvenuti believes it is all about understanding reality. "Science can help in that, but it doesn't have all the answers, and we must accept that," he says. While the Vatican will oversee the website's theological sections, ASI will look after the scientific content, including the latest European and American space flights.

Here's an encapsulation of the Transudationist position regarding this issue:

All life is a form of light, and the cosmos is a holonic Holy Hologram

Pope Benedict’s Recent Statements On the Big Bang & the Transudationist Paradigm:

In the course of celebrating the Epiphany, the day the Bible says the three kings reached the site where Jesus was born by following a star, Pope Benedict delivered a sermon at St. Peter’s Basilica in which he made the following statements:

"The universe is not the result of chance, as some would want to make us believe."

"Contemplating it (the universe) we are invited to read something profound into it: the wisdom of the creator, the inexhaustible creativity of God."

According to various news reports, Pope Benedict stated that some scientific theories were "mind limiting" because "they only arrive at a certain point ... and do not manage to explain the ultimate sense of reality ..." Moreover, it is reported that the Pope said that scientific theories on the origin and development of the universe and humans, while not in conflict with faith, left many questions unanswered: "In the beauty of the world, in its mystery, in its greatness and in its rationality ... we can only let ourselves be guided toward God, creator of heaven and earth," he said.

Please see the following news articles for details concerning Pope Benedict’s recent statements:

• God Responsible for Big Bang and Universe Creation, Pope Says
• God was behind Big Bang, universe no accident: Pope
• Pope: God Was Behind the Big Bang

Pope Benedict’s position on this particular issue is congruent with one of the key tenets of Transudationism, namely, that the cosmos is not the result of undirected material processes, but rather that there is a Creator being/entity responsible for the origin of the visible universe, i.e., the Big Bang. More specifically in this regard, Transudationism asserts the following:

• The "Big Bang" was actually a "Big Seed."
• There is a Creator, whose identity is unknowable.
• The Creator is best perceived as a spiritual gardener.
• The cosmos is a holonic, living organism.
• Therefore, the "Big Bang" was actually an autotelic cosmic seed and the universe is an organism for cultivating Consciousness/Spirit/Geist.
• All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason.
• ALL life is precious.

For more information on Transudationism, the reader is invited to read the following three articles:

1. A Hypothesis Favoring the Existence of a Creator
2. Thoughts on Stephen Hawking's new book The Grand Design
3. On Arsenic-loving Bacteria & Roger Penrose's New Book Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

The Big Bang was not a random expansion of space-time matter-energy (i.e., it was not an event analogous to a "bomb" "exploding"); rather, it was an ordered expansion of space-time matter-energy (i.e., it was an event analogous to a "seed" "sprouting"): therefore, it did not "explode" – it sprouted. As to who or what "planted" it, your author makes no hypothesis, other than to endorse the reasonableness of Aristotle’s notion of the unmoved Mover (or God, if you prefer). The theistic-spiritualistic-teleological paradigm is just as, if not more, sound than is the atheistic-materialistic-evolutionist paradigm; note please the use of the term evolutionist: evolution is true, scientific, and undeniable. Evolutionism, on the other hand, is the philosophy of nihilism. Transudationism does not deny evolution; Transudationism is, however, the antithesis of evolutionism: evolutionism is nothing more than atheist metaphysics.

Darwin wasn’t wrong; it’s just that he didn’t perceive the larger, all-encompassing order – the layered, nestled, hierarchical space-time matter-energy bioelectrical harmonic webbed nexuses of holonic planes and dimensions – in which the processes of evolution unfold, without which evolution could not engender ever more complex life and Consciousness: but for the Proto-Order embedded in the Big Seed, blind, random evolutionism is absolutely incapable of producing anything other than Chaos. Evolution is a cosmic process initiated by the Force that begot the Big Seed; evolution is most emphatically not an earthbound phenomenon.

The seed of the universe is the big bang, says Kyle McDermott in "The Declaration of White Independence: The Founding Documents of Transudationism". An explanation of this view which holds that all of current humanity and life on Earth today was intentionally set in motion all those billions of years ago, "The Declaration of White Independence" probes matters of cosmological significance with straightforward candor and accessibility. Featuring intriguing concepts and ideas, "The Declaration of White Independence" is highly recommended for metaphysical studies shelves. -- Midwest Book Review

Extrapolating to the Milky Way as a whole, the researchers predict that at least 500 million of the galaxy's probable 50 billion planets reside in the habitable zone. That certainly offers a hopeful sign for the existence of life beyond Earth.