Is naturalistic cosmology pointing us back to viewing stars as gods (similar to how pagans did), crediting stars with giving meaning to the universe?

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A lot of the scientific literature I've read, since Asimov on (things I can comprehend, popular science, not the hard stuff) seem to make this assertion; the way scientists describes stars make them seem as if they are creatures. At a macro scale, how could the interior life of an insect be considered to have "more creative power" than the interior life of a star.

Stars, if taken as an entity, produce elements, jettison them into space, dissolve, reform, creates the components for the dust the God formed Adam out of.

But if stars as creatures exercised their creative power to generate life, then Christianity all religion and everything is false, wrong and dangerous.

Considering a test for what man is opposed to other creators:

Within visible creation, man is the only creature who not only is capable of knowing but who knows that he knows, and is therefore interested in the real truth of what he perceives. People cannot be genuinely indifferent to the question of whether what they know is true or not. If they discover that it is false, they reject it; but if they can establish its truth, they feel themselves rewarded.

https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio.html

Especially the interior life, the ability to think about thinking is not present in Stars.

Therefore, as a system, maybe a macro system (like stars or solar systems - anything that is gravitationally interesting) could be considered somewhere above plants and the lower animals in the order of creation. But they can't be considered above humanity, the angels or having a remote connection to God.

Nothing except God can be eternal. And this statement is far from impossible to uphold: ... the will of God is the cause of things.

https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1046.htm

So, when someone tries to reorder creation, they are doing the wrong thing. They can try to shoehorn a new discovery in the order of creation under man, but they would have to prove the faculties of the soul that are of a higher order than man if they are to place anything between man and God.

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You need go no further in your search for "points to make about where science should end, and speculation based on atheistic interpretation [should begin]" than to consider the Christian presuppositions that underlay the researches and discoveries of famous scientists from the past.

I agree with Stephanie Hertzenberg who put together a shortlist of some of those famous scientists from the past, including Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, Linnaeus, George Washington Carver, and Gregor Mendel. These men knew where the line was drawn between science and Christian faith. They saw the two pursuits as complementary, since the scientific mindset, they believed, is a gift from our Creator-God and is meant to be used both to glorify Him and benefit humankind.

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He puts the horse before the cart. Only when you have an extant universe can it be populated with cosmic bodies. How can a star exist before the universe? You need to first have a universe before a star can exist.

Whatever created the universe had to have an existence that was not bound to our physical universe. This is offcourse not a possibility for the naturalist, but that is a limitation of the worldview and not a critique of Christianity.

Maybe if scientist like this spend more time in developing a more robust worldview and less time on day time television trying to be a spokesman then maybe his beliefs would better serve the atheism he tries to promote

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This may be closed, it doesn’t feel ‘Christian’ enough in its focus (?) but nonetheless, I also saw the documentary and concur: as much as I admire him, Cox does weave a pseudo-scientific neo-pagan / naturalist thread into his reading of the birth of stars. I think his subtext might be that although the West has, in the past, written off paganism as nonsense, there is a generative quality that the universe / stars / elements posses, and this quality (at least the germ of it) is recognised by pagan cosmologies.

I don’t think the secondary “creative” quality of stars competes with the creative actions of God: they cry out His glory - which includes his creative powers. The problem of course is that God is out the picture as the primary creative source..

I personally think the most intriguing statement is made at the end of the miniseries where Cox, almost talking to the crew more than us, mentions the information layer theorised to underpin the ‘holographic’ universe. The universe is sustained by the Word?

Your question and elaboration betray an era where Christian thought underpinned much public discourse. That era has sadly passed.. 😏

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