Fallen Angel Model (FAM)
Our Motive
We imagine a dream team of physicists, theologians and philosophers coming together to explore a new idea presented in this paper. This idea, which we call the Fallen Angel Model (FAM), is a new way of thinking about what caused the beginning of our space-time universe. There are three major groups we are addressing: 1) those seeking to strengthen their faith by understanding that science and religion must agree, because truth is truth and it cannot be different from one discipline to another; 2) theologians who are interested in new insights to the key theological problems brought forth in this paper; and 3) physicists, because we believe this model helps explain the blur that exists between the material and the non-material aspects of experimental and theoretical physics. FAM suggests that we should be able to see traces of the non-material in space-time. We believe this is possible through the current equations and concepts in physics.
We are Catholics and we not attempting to change Catholic theology. We see this model as providing a new perspective for the stated theological issues our Church currently faces.
Purpose of this paper
People have been speculating about the origin of the universe and other fundamental questions for a very long time. Examples include:
- Where did all of the matter and energy that form our space-time, universe come from?
- Why do so many of the fundamental constants of nature seem to be fine-tuned to the precise values needed for matter and life to evolve?
- Why would God take almost 14 billion years to create humans, if He can instantly create angels?
- If God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, why is there so much suffering, evil and disorder in the world?
At the present time there is no comprehensive vision of how the universe came into existence that allows satisfactory answers to all of these kinds of questions. Real collaborations between scientists, theologians and philosophers have been rare. We believe that by integrating ideas from all three disciplines we can get new insights. These would be new insights that cannot be seen in the individual disciplines by themselves, even using any two of these three disciplines. FAM is an example of a brand-new insight that comes from a collaboration among all three of these disciplines.
It is the purpose of this short paper to briefly discuss this new insight and show how it provides the framework to answer the fundamental questions like those stated above. For a much more comprehensive discussion of this new idea and its implications please download the free eBook “How to Believe in God and Science — In Three Easy Steps”. It is available for free at Smashwords.com.
Science and Theology
Scientists and theologians agree that before the Big Bang there was no space and time as we know them in our universe.
Scientists tell us that our universe started about 13.8 billion years ago, in an event that has come to be called the Big Bang. It began as a very small volume of pure energy and then immediately expanded rapidly. After the rapid expansion, the universe got very hot, then it cooled some, and eventually particles began to form. Over a very long evolutionary process, the expanding universe produced light, atoms, molecules, stars, planets, and on at least one planet, life in the form of plants, animals and human beings. Most scientists believe this process was completely natural from the moment of the Big Bang all the way through to the present day.
Theologians tell us that God transcends space and time. Before God created anything, there was no space and time as everything was spiritual (non-material). God created the angels first. The angels were spiritual creatures and existed with God in the spiritual realm. At that point, there was no space and time. Then some of the angels rebelled and no longer wanted to be with God. They left heaven or were thrown out of heaven. (That certainly raises the question: Where would they go?)
It’s important to point out that theologians emphasize that this sin was a sin of pride. The angels were pure spiritual creatures with free will. God is love and love requires free will. All of the angels had free will, but some of them chose not to follow God’s will and fell. The point is that the angels that fell were not created with any physical weaknesses or tendencies to sin, and therefore, God is not responsible for their sin.
Issues for Scientists
Scientists typically try to explain everything in natural terms and have done a tremendous job of explaining how the universe has evolved from the Big Bang to the present time. There are some issues, however, that cannot be explained in ways that are scientifically verifiable.
First, what caused the Big Bang? Unfortunately, we can’t do scientific experiments to verify theories before there was space and time.
Second, scientists have discovered that many of the fundamental constants of nature have values that fall in a very narrow range. If any of these constants were outside of these ranges, then matter, and eventually life as we know it, could not have evolved. It seems as though these constants must have been “tuned” so that life could emerge. This has led to our universe to being called the “Fine-tuned Universe.”
The fact that the constants have to be in such narrow bands is indisputable, but the cause of the “tuning” is very controversial. The most common argument from those who do not believe in God is that we are really in a multiverse. In other words, our universe is only one of billions of universes where all possible values of the fundamental constants are possible. With this assumption, there is bound to be at least one universe that has fundamental constants with the values that we have in our universe. Naturally, we would have evolved in that universe. Again, this is more philosophy than science because these other universes are not detectable by any scientific experiments.
Another point is that, when looking back towards the Big Bang, current cosmology sees entropy decreasing. In fact, at the moment of the Big Bang, entropy might have been zero. Zero entropy is perfect order. It is hard to explain such low entropy with purely natural arguments.
But what if the Big Bang never happened? What if we can never really observe the farthest regions of cosmological space time?
What if all we currently observe, every galaxy in the ultra-deep Hubble space photo, and all the galaxies we currently cannot see, just come into existence and then dissipate into the void and then eventually reappear? What about the argument that matter and energy in space time always existed and is eternal in substance, but not form? We believe this type of model can be “on the table”, but we would argue that it doesn’t agree with our best physics and theology. We will not pursue this possibility in this paper.
Issues for Theologians
Most theologians today do not have a problem with the basic notion that God created the universe starting with the Big Bang, and then used evolution to bring about the gradual emergence of life, consciousness and human beings. However, the devil is in the details, and there are several issues that theologians must deal with in an evolving universe. Most of these issues depend on the question: Did God intervene in the evolutionary process at key points, for example, to create life, human souls, and/or the Garden of Eden?
If God did intervene, then there are issues with science, because most scientists claim that no intervention was necessary. What if scientists develop life in a test tube, would that mean that all religion is wrong?
If God did not intervene, then there are a number of different issues that arise.
First, how can human beings have immortal souls if they evolved purely from nature?
Second, with purely natural evolution, it’s difficult to explain how the Garden of Eden could have existed on earth.
Finally, in either case, there is very, very little consciousness in our universe. If God was trying to create consciousness, He was very, very inefficient.
The Current Models of Creation
Every single one of the current models of how the universe was created, or came into being, all have at least one of the problems mentioned above. The atheistic models have to deal with the moment of creation, the fine-tuning, and the initial very low entropy. The Judeo-Christian models fall into the following categories: Creationism (literal Bible account), Intelligent Design (God designed, but did not intervene), Evolution+ (God created and used evolution but did intervene), Teilhard de Chardin (Evolution is God’s only creative process, no intervention and no angels). All of the atheistic and Judeo-Christian models of creation have one or more of the problems discussed above. There is currently no model of creation (with or without God as creator) that resolves all of these and the other similar problems of science and theology. As stated, it is the purpose of this paper to present a new model of creation that does provide answers to all of these issues.
A Little Philosophy
Before we go on, let’s do a little philosophizing.
We know that there are various states of energy and that when energy is in different states, it behaves differently. For example, electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. It is a sort of wave-particle, depending on how it is observed. Even when observed as a particle (photon), it does not have rest mass. We know from Einstein that matter and energy are related by his famous equation. When electromagnetic radiation transforms to matter, it behaves differently. As matter, it no longer can move at the speed of light.
Well, what else in this universe has very different properties from radiation and inert matter? The most obvious answer is life, consciousness and especially human consciousness. We not only know things, but we know that we know! Of course, many have claimed to explain consciousness using only the current laws of physics, but if you are like us, they have not really explained it satisfactorily.
Consider for a moment that the concept that consciousness is energy, but energy in a different state: “Conscious Energy.” We claim that this is not a physical state, but transcends materiality and cannot be explained by the sum of the space-time parts. This would mean that it might not be subject to all the current laws of physics. If that’s the case that would open up a lot of possibilities. Two of the possibilities are key to what we’re looking at in this paper.
First, perhaps the self-awareness of human consciousness that naturally evolved reached a new state that was capable of forming a relationship with God. The physical evolutionary process would then have provided a vehicle that God could use to give us our immortal souls.
Second, if matter and energy can evolve to conscious energy, then it would seem logical that it could go the other way. Pure spiritual conscious energy could devolve, lose order, or somehow “emit” energy. In physics, we know that when an electron drops from a higher energy orbit to a lower orbit, it emits energy in the form of a photon (electromagnetic radiation).
A New Model of Creation, The Fallen Angel Model (FAM)
Now we have reached the point where we can put it all together. Let’s take what we know from science and theology and throw in that speculation about conscious energy from philosophy.
When some of the angels fell from heaven, these spiritual creatures certainly lost some of their order and energy. Assume this energy was released in the form of space-time. That would mean that the Big Bang happened when the some of angels decided to no longer follow the will of God. We are suggesting that when the fallen angels left the perfect order of the spiritual realm, this precipitated the beginning of space-time and the realm of disorder. We call this idea, or model of creation, the Fallen Angel Model, or simply FAM.
What is most amazing about this new idea is that it offers simple and logical answers to the scientific and theological issues mentioned above.
Let’s look at how FAM resolves these issues.
Origin of the Big Bang. The origin of the Big Bang is a natural result of conscious energy devolving from a higher state to a lower state. Note that all scientists could see some merit in pursuing this idea, even those who do not believe in God or angels. When we look at matter and energy at the most fundamental level we clearly see the line blurred between the material and the non-material. Higgs field interactions producing mass, non-local phenomena in quantum experiments, and many, many other examples could be given.
Fine-tuning. As stated above, science has discovered that the universe seems to have been fine-tuned to produce matter and eventually life. One example is that the ratio of the mass of the electron to the mass of proton must be very close to what it is (a ratio of 1 to 1836) for atoms to hold together. If the ratio were just slightly different, atoms could not form.
Another example is expressed in the fine-structure constant. This constant is very nearly equal to 1/137. It is the "coupling constant" or measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force that governs how electrically charged elementary particles interact. Again, matter as we know it and, therefore life, could not exist if its value were much different.
We believe that the values of these constants are part of the order that came from the spiritual realm and that is consistent with the Fallen Angel Model. David Bohm called it the “implicate order.” Teilhard de Chardin called it the “within.” Through physics and chemistry, we see that the elements of the periodic table are structured by specific rules. These rules were formulated by observation in physical experiments. The rules tell us how the elements are ordered, but they do not explain why they are ordered in the exact manner we observe. Behind the rules are non-material principles which are responsible for what we see. These ordering principles themselves are not material. We believe that physicists could identify these non-material connections in their current quantum theories. We are suggesting that space-time came from the perfect spiritual realm and the order of our universe is mirrored in the fine structure constant and the values of the other fundamental constants which are necessary for matter and living creatures to evolve.
In summary, the “fine-tuning” that is so difficult to explain using the current models of creation become the natural result of a devolution of higher forms of energy. A simple example is a broken vase. Suppose you walk into a room and notice glass fragments on the floor and that some of the pieces fit perfectly together. You could speculate that somebody designed the pieces to fit together (Intelligent Design), you could speculate that there are many rooms full of broken glass and only in this room do they fit together (multiverse), you could speculate that this kind of glass just has to be that way (Teilhard), or you could simply figure that somebody dropped and broke a vase (FAM).
Low Entropy. The fact that the universe started at very low, perhaps even zero, entropy makes perfect sense if the Big Bang originated from a well-ordered, non-material, spiritual realm.
Garden of Eden. FAM can provide a new perspective on the Garden of Eden. Also, for the first time ever, it provides a mechanism for how an original sin, in this case the rebellion of the fallen angels, could have consequences that propagate throughout evolutionary history in a way fully consistent with what we know from science.
Evil, Suffering, Death and Inefficient Creator. Finally, FAM makes it easy to see how God is the creator and yet explain all the inefficiency, suffering, evil and death that we see in our evolving, material, space-time universe. They are the natural consequences of a free, conscious decision to turn away from God. However, we believe that God knew when He created angels with free will that some of them would sin and what the consequences would be. We believe that God had a plan from the very beginning to send His Son, “in the fullness of time,” into space-time as a Redeemer to save us from this sin and the sins we would commit. God could have remained focused only on the angels who did not sin. However, we are reminded of the many parables where heaven is like the one lost sheep, the one lost coin, etc. God did not have to enter space-time to redeem us, but He did. Only a truly loving God would do this.
We believe to get new insights like this that physics, theology and philosophy must be combined. Truth is truth and it must be the same in all three disciplines.
Science and theology must agree. No one can say for certain how the universe began, but all reasonable ideas should be “on the table.” It is the purpose of this paper to put FAM on the table along with all the other models of creations.
Again, for a much more comprehensive discussion of the ideas in this paper please download the free eBook “How to Believe in God and Science — In Three Easy Steps.” It is available for free at the eBook link below.
Or contact us at the email link below.
We imagine a dream team of physicists, theologians and philosophers coming together to explore a new idea presented in this paper. This idea, which we call the Fallen Angel Model (FAM), is a new way of thinking about what caused the beginning of our space-time universe. There are three major groups we are addressing: 1) those seeking to strengthen their faith by understanding that science and religion must agree, because truth is truth and it cannot be different from one discipline to another; 2) theologians who are interested in new insights to the key theological problems brought forth in this paper; and 3) physicists, because we believe this model helps explain the blur that exists between the material and the non-material aspects of experimental and theoretical physics. FAM suggests that we should be able to see traces of the non-material in space-time. We believe this is possible through the current equations and concepts in physics.
We are Catholics and we not attempting to change Catholic theology. We see this model as providing a new perspective for the stated theological issues our Church currently faces.
Purpose of this paper
People have been speculating about the origin of the universe and other fundamental questions for a very long time. Examples include:
- Where did all of the matter and energy that form our space-time, universe come from?
- Why do so many of the fundamental constants of nature seem to be fine-tuned to the precise values needed for matter and life to evolve?
- Why would God take almost 14 billion years to create humans, if He can instantly create angels?
- If God is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful, why is there so much suffering, evil and disorder in the world?
At the present time there is no comprehensive vision of how the universe came into existence that allows satisfactory answers to all of these kinds of questions. Real collaborations between scientists, theologians and philosophers have been rare. We believe that by integrating ideas from all three disciplines we can get new insights. These would be new insights that cannot be seen in the individual disciplines by themselves, even using any two of these three disciplines. FAM is an example of a brand-new insight that comes from a collaboration among all three of these disciplines.
It is the purpose of this short paper to briefly discuss this new insight and show how it provides the framework to answer the fundamental questions like those stated above. For a much more comprehensive discussion of this new idea and its implications please download the free eBook “How to Believe in God and Science — In Three Easy Steps”. It is available for free at Smashwords.com.
Science and Theology
Scientists and theologians agree that before the Big Bang there was no space and time as we know them in our universe.
Scientists tell us that our universe started about 13.8 billion years ago, in an event that has come to be called the Big Bang. It began as a very small volume of pure energy and then immediately expanded rapidly. After the rapid expansion, the universe got very hot, then it cooled some, and eventually particles began to form. Over a very long evolutionary process, the expanding universe produced light, atoms, molecules, stars, planets, and on at least one planet, life in the form of plants, animals and human beings. Most scientists believe this process was completely natural from the moment of the Big Bang all the way through to the present day.
Theologians tell us that God transcends space and time. Before God created anything, there was no space and time as everything was spiritual (non-material). God created the angels first. The angels were spiritual creatures and existed with God in the spiritual realm. At that point, there was no space and time. Then some of the angels rebelled and no longer wanted to be with God. They left heaven or were thrown out of heaven. (That certainly raises the question: Where would they go?)
It’s important to point out that theologians emphasize that this sin was a sin of pride. The angels were pure spiritual creatures with free will. God is love and love requires free will. All of the angels had free will, but some of them chose not to follow God’s will and fell. The point is that the angels that fell were not created with any physical weaknesses or tendencies to sin, and therefore, God is not responsible for their sin.
Issues for Scientists
Scientists typically try to explain everything in natural terms and have done a tremendous job of explaining how the universe has evolved from the Big Bang to the present time. There are some issues, however, that cannot be explained in ways that are scientifically verifiable.
First, what caused the Big Bang? Unfortunately, we can’t do scientific experiments to verify theories before there was space and time.
Second, scientists have discovered that many of the fundamental constants of nature have values that fall in a very narrow range. If any of these constants were outside of these ranges, then matter, and eventually life as we know it, could not have evolved. It seems as though these constants must have been “tuned” so that life could emerge. This has led to our universe to being called the “Fine-tuned Universe.”
The fact that the constants have to be in such narrow bands is indisputable, but the cause of the “tuning” is very controversial. The most common argument from those who do not believe in God is that we are really in a multiverse. In other words, our universe is only one of billions of universes where all possible values of the fundamental constants are possible. With this assumption, there is bound to be at least one universe that has fundamental constants with the values that we have in our universe. Naturally, we would have evolved in that universe. Again, this is more philosophy than science because these other universes are not detectable by any scientific experiments.
Another point is that, when looking back towards the Big Bang, current cosmology sees entropy decreasing. In fact, at the moment of the Big Bang, entropy might have been zero. Zero entropy is perfect order. It is hard to explain such low entropy with purely natural arguments.
But what if the Big Bang never happened? What if we can never really observe the farthest regions of cosmological space time?
What if all we currently observe, every galaxy in the ultra-deep Hubble space photo, and all the galaxies we currently cannot see, just come into existence and then dissipate into the void and then eventually reappear? What about the argument that matter and energy in space time always existed and is eternal in substance, but not form? We believe this type of model can be “on the table”, but we would argue that it doesn’t agree with our best physics and theology. We will not pursue this possibility in this paper.
Issues for Theologians
Most theologians today do not have a problem with the basic notion that God created the universe starting with the Big Bang, and then used evolution to bring about the gradual emergence of life, consciousness and human beings. However, the devil is in the details, and there are several issues that theologians must deal with in an evolving universe. Most of these issues depend on the question: Did God intervene in the evolutionary process at key points, for example, to create life, human souls, and/or the Garden of Eden?
If God did intervene, then there are issues with science, because most scientists claim that no intervention was necessary. What if scientists develop life in a test tube, would that mean that all religion is wrong?
If God did not intervene, then there are a number of different issues that arise.
First, how can human beings have immortal souls if they evolved purely from nature?
Second, with purely natural evolution, it’s difficult to explain how the Garden of Eden could have existed on earth.
Finally, in either case, there is very, very little consciousness in our universe. If God was trying to create consciousness, He was very, very inefficient.
The Current Models of Creation
Every single one of the current models of how the universe was created, or came into being, all have at least one of the problems mentioned above. The atheistic models have to deal with the moment of creation, the fine-tuning, and the initial very low entropy. The Judeo-Christian models fall into the following categories: Creationism (literal Bible account), Intelligent Design (God designed, but did not intervene), Evolution+ (God created and used evolution but did intervene), Teilhard de Chardin (Evolution is God’s only creative process, no intervention and no angels). All of the atheistic and Judeo-Christian models of creation have one or more of the problems discussed above. There is currently no model of creation (with or without God as creator) that resolves all of these and the other similar problems of science and theology. As stated, it is the purpose of this paper to present a new model of creation that does provide answers to all of these issues.
A Little Philosophy
Before we go on, let’s do a little philosophizing.
We know that there are various states of energy and that when energy is in different states, it behaves differently. For example, electromagnetic radiation moves at the speed of light. It is a sort of wave-particle, depending on how it is observed. Even when observed as a particle (photon), it does not have rest mass. We know from Einstein that matter and energy are related by his famous equation. When electromagnetic radiation transforms to matter, it behaves differently. As matter, it no longer can move at the speed of light.
Well, what else in this universe has very different properties from radiation and inert matter? The most obvious answer is life, consciousness and especially human consciousness. We not only know things, but we know that we know! Of course, many have claimed to explain consciousness using only the current laws of physics, but if you are like us, they have not really explained it satisfactorily.
Consider for a moment that the concept that consciousness is energy, but energy in a different state: “Conscious Energy.” We claim that this is not a physical state, but transcends materiality and cannot be explained by the sum of the space-time parts. This would mean that it might not be subject to all the current laws of physics. If that’s the case that would open up a lot of possibilities. Two of the possibilities are key to what we’re looking at in this paper.
First, perhaps the self-awareness of human consciousness that naturally evolved reached a new state that was capable of forming a relationship with God. The physical evolutionary process would then have provided a vehicle that God could use to give us our immortal souls.
Second, if matter and energy can evolve to conscious energy, then it would seem logical that it could go the other way. Pure spiritual conscious energy could devolve, lose order, or somehow “emit” energy. In physics, we know that when an electron drops from a higher energy orbit to a lower orbit, it emits energy in the form of a photon (electromagnetic radiation).
A New Model of Creation, The Fallen Angel Model (FAM)
Now we have reached the point where we can put it all together. Let’s take what we know from science and theology and throw in that speculation about conscious energy from philosophy.
When some of the angels fell from heaven, these spiritual creatures certainly lost some of their order and energy. Assume this energy was released in the form of space-time. That would mean that the Big Bang happened when the some of angels decided to no longer follow the will of God. We are suggesting that when the fallen angels left the perfect order of the spiritual realm, this precipitated the beginning of space-time and the realm of disorder. We call this idea, or model of creation, the Fallen Angel Model, or simply FAM.
What is most amazing about this new idea is that it offers simple and logical answers to the scientific and theological issues mentioned above.
Let’s look at how FAM resolves these issues.
Origin of the Big Bang. The origin of the Big Bang is a natural result of conscious energy devolving from a higher state to a lower state. Note that all scientists could see some merit in pursuing this idea, even those who do not believe in God or angels. When we look at matter and energy at the most fundamental level we clearly see the line blurred between the material and the non-material. Higgs field interactions producing mass, non-local phenomena in quantum experiments, and many, many other examples could be given.
Fine-tuning. As stated above, science has discovered that the universe seems to have been fine-tuned to produce matter and eventually life. One example is that the ratio of the mass of the electron to the mass of proton must be very close to what it is (a ratio of 1 to 1836) for atoms to hold together. If the ratio were just slightly different, atoms could not form.
Another example is expressed in the fine-structure constant. This constant is very nearly equal to 1/137. It is the "coupling constant" or measure of the strength of the electromagnetic force that governs how electrically charged elementary particles interact. Again, matter as we know it and, therefore life, could not exist if its value were much different.
We believe that the values of these constants are part of the order that came from the spiritual realm and that is consistent with the Fallen Angel Model. David Bohm called it the “implicate order.” Teilhard de Chardin called it the “within.” Through physics and chemistry, we see that the elements of the periodic table are structured by specific rules. These rules were formulated by observation in physical experiments. The rules tell us how the elements are ordered, but they do not explain why they are ordered in the exact manner we observe. Behind the rules are non-material principles which are responsible for what we see. These ordering principles themselves are not material. We believe that physicists could identify these non-material connections in their current quantum theories. We are suggesting that space-time came from the perfect spiritual realm and the order of our universe is mirrored in the fine structure constant and the values of the other fundamental constants which are necessary for matter and living creatures to evolve.
In summary, the “fine-tuning” that is so difficult to explain using the current models of creation become the natural result of a devolution of higher forms of energy. A simple example is a broken vase. Suppose you walk into a room and notice glass fragments on the floor and that some of the pieces fit perfectly together. You could speculate that somebody designed the pieces to fit together (Intelligent Design), you could speculate that there are many rooms full of broken glass and only in this room do they fit together (multiverse), you could speculate that this kind of glass just has to be that way (Teilhard), or you could simply figure that somebody dropped and broke a vase (FAM).
Low Entropy. The fact that the universe started at very low, perhaps even zero, entropy makes perfect sense if the Big Bang originated from a well-ordered, non-material, spiritual realm.
Garden of Eden. FAM can provide a new perspective on the Garden of Eden. Also, for the first time ever, it provides a mechanism for how an original sin, in this case the rebellion of the fallen angels, could have consequences that propagate throughout evolutionary history in a way fully consistent with what we know from science.
Evil, Suffering, Death and Inefficient Creator. Finally, FAM makes it easy to see how God is the creator and yet explain all the inefficiency, suffering, evil and death that we see in our evolving, material, space-time universe. They are the natural consequences of a free, conscious decision to turn away from God. However, we believe that God knew when He created angels with free will that some of them would sin and what the consequences would be. We believe that God had a plan from the very beginning to send His Son, “in the fullness of time,” into space-time as a Redeemer to save us from this sin and the sins we would commit. God could have remained focused only on the angels who did not sin. However, we are reminded of the many parables where heaven is like the one lost sheep, the one lost coin, etc. God did not have to enter space-time to redeem us, but He did. Only a truly loving God would do this.
We believe to get new insights like this that physics, theology and philosophy must be combined. Truth is truth and it must be the same in all three disciplines.
Science and theology must agree. No one can say for certain how the universe began, but all reasonable ideas should be “on the table.” It is the purpose of this paper to put FAM on the table along with all the other models of creations.
Again, for a much more comprehensive discussion of the ideas in this paper please download the free eBook “How to Believe in God and Science — In Three Easy Steps.” It is available for free at the eBook link below.
Or contact us at the email link below.