InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
Beginning September 30th, join us for a grand conversation on Faith across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science with author, Andy Walsh. Yes, that’s the weekly ESN science blogger! Since Andy’s part of our network, I thought I’d ask him a few quick questions:
[Read more…] about Faith Across The Multiverse Book Club Event
Last week’s post on Avengers: Infinity War generated interest in a follow-up, so we’re returning to the Marvel universe. Again, I’ve avoided spoilers, but I’ll understand if you want to play it safe and wait until you’ve seen the film.
It’s perhaps a strange thing to say about a 2 hour 40 minute movie so full of stars it threatens to collapse into a black hole, but I feel Avengers: Infinity War was missing something. Both earlier Avengers films made time to consider the plight of folks who don’t have alliterative names or the narrative security of an already announced sequel. We saw our heroes protecting and rescuing innocent bystanders, like the office workers for whom Captain America took a grenade or the family Iron Man carried to safety in a bath tub. We also met Beth the waitress (played by Ashley Johnson) in The Avengers and Zrinka the concerned older sister (played by Dominique Provost-Chalkley) in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Each got multiple, albeit brief, moments before, during and after the respective third act battles, allowing the audience to develop a personal, emotional connection to the global stakes.
[Read more…] about Science Corner: Sympathy for the Bedeviled
The following is a reflection on superhero storytelling inspired by Avengers: Infinity War. I have done my best to avoid spoilers, but if you know nothing about the film’s story and want to keep it that way until you see it, you may wish to save this for later.
What does it look like to have a theology but not a religion? The answer may now be showing at a theater near you. Avengers: Infinity War, the 19th and latest installment in Marvel’s ambitious serial storytelling project, advances the metaphysical aspirations of superheroes that have roots all the way back to Superman’s 80-year-old origin story as a baby placed in a space-basket to spare his life. At this point, those aspirations aren’t even subtext; actual Norse god of thunder Thor is an Avenger. These stories have a lot ideas about power & control, will & freedom, the infinite and the divine. But are they interested in applying that theology as a religion?
[Read more…] about Science in Review: Thor, Thanos and Theology
Last week, we looked at this article on the quest for validation of a multiverse hypothesis. If each universe in the multiverse is physically distinct, they might interact with each other. Those interactions could leave telltale patterns in the cosmic background radiation. (Cosmic background radiation is an energy signal from the early days of the universe; it’s basically our universe’s very first baby photo.) Find those patterns — circular impressions, like you get when two bubbles bump into each other — and you might just have evidence of universes beyond our own.
Now, whenever the multiverse comes up, one of the obvious questions is how to reconcile the assertion that the only reality is what we can hear, see, or touch with the idea that most of reality, by the definition of the multiverse, can never be directly experienced. Or to put it another way, the only evidence we might hope to have of a multiverse is indirect, via influence on the world we can observe — which raises some interesting comparisons. But I’ll leave that particular metaphysical conversation for another place and time. What interested me most about this item was that I had read it before. Not in another scientific publication, mind you, but in that august periodical known as New Avengers from Marvel Comics. [Read more…] about Science in Review: Avengers Annihilate!