The Atheist Straw man

For all week I have been really excited about the "Has Science buried God?" debate. So much so that I started talking to a work friend about it. For some reason this work friend keep insisting that I am wrong about Christianity. She believes that Christianity originated from a pagan background. In our age of science, we are told (by people like Lawrence Krauss) that religions are all myths invented by man because before science we needed myths to make sense of our world. A cursory reading of the Bible such as from chapter 38 of the book of Job could easily justify what these opponents of religions are saying. Chapter 38 involves God questioning Job understanding of God's creation. Let's look at some of the verses:

Job 38:31-33 states:

 ³¹ “Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
    Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
³² Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
    or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
³³ Do you know the laws of the heavens?
    Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

Here the Pleiades, Orion, Bear (Ursula Major) and the cubs (Ursula Minor) all referred to constellations. Constellations are grouping of stars. In ancient time, people did make up myths based on the shapes of these constellations (hence Orion the Hunter, the seven sisters of the Pleiades). But to the ancient the shapes of the constellations are not supposed to change. Another way of thinking about how the ancients see constellations is like they are drawings on a blackboard. About the only exception to the evening sky are the planets which wander amongst the blackboard of two dimensional shapes. But that is exactly what the word planet mean, wanderer. The atheist would say "ha ha, there you are myths in the Bible!" But they cannot get away with it this easily. Because this not what this passage is saying, the author is not saying that he or she believes in these myths. The author is saying the God of the Bible transcends these myths. The Bible says God can actually change what the ancients assume are fixed shapes in the night time sky. Why is this important? Before we can discuss this, let's consider the idea of the God of the gaps. 

Atheists like Lawrence Krauss argue that ancient man invented gods for things that they cannot understand. This I would say are pagan religions. Pagan myths often described how the Universe come into being through the interactions between the gods (who are themselves part of the Universe). For example the Babylonians believed in Apsu, the god of fresh waters and Tiamat the goddess of the salt oceans were involved in the creation of the world. Science tells us all about water and so we know that there is no Apsu and no Tiamat . Apsu and Tiamat were the gods of the gaps because they fill in the understanding gaps of the ancients. As our scientific understanding grows there is less and less space for the gods of the gap. But is the God of the Bible a god of the gaps? In Genesis chapter 1, we see that the world came into being simply through God's word. Genesis chapter 1 is not a complicated cook book through which God created the world. The Israelite believed that God is sovereign over the universe but God is nothing like the pagan gods who themselves are subject to the forces of nature just like the humans who worship them. This clearly debunk any notation that somehow Christianity had its origin from pagan religions. 

It is possible to read Job 38:31-33 figuratively but when one realized that constellations are not merely static 2 dimensional shapes then God has the last laugh. In our night sky the belt of Orion consists of three stars in one line, Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka. Mintaka is 800 light years from earth, Anilam is 1000 light years away and Alnitak is 900 light years away. Together with all the stars that make the Orion constellation, they actually mark out a 3 dimensional part of the universe. More importantly stars are not static. Stars are suns like our sun (actually all three stars making up the Orion belt is many order of magnitude bigger and brighter than our own sun) and they move relative to one another. Unfortunately this relative movement is very very small, i.e. not easily observable without advanced instrument but clearly visible over several thousand years. It is as if God is smiling at us foolish humans saying, I am more then your gods of the Gap and I have done wonders far beyond the wisest humans can ever imagine!