The beginning and the end

Here's a combination of views that I think a lot of people like me (college-educated Christians from evangelical churches) hold more or less unreflectively:

1. Young-earth creationism is silly. The scientific evidence (biology, geology, cosmology) overwhelmingly suggests that the earth is four or five billion years old, the universe began in a Big Bang about thirteen billion years ago, etc., etc.


2. Some kind of broadly millenial eschatology is sensible. The universe will not end in a gradual cold death, wiping out all possibility of life as the energy density goes to zero (as suggested by the current observations of the amount of matter in the universe, as far as I know), or for that matter in a heat death where the universe collapses again toward a singularity. Rather, God will redeem the world, restoring the universe to a state of perfect justice when Christ returns, and so on. Alternatively, God will destroy the universe and replace it with a good one (somehow managing to get people from this one to the other one—€“don't ask me).
   

That's kind of a weird combination. At any rate, there's an asymmetry. Physics tells us how the universe began, but not how it will end. That is, it's silly to think that the beginning of the universe would be different from what it looks like it was---that the past would be discontinuous with what we observe. And yet it's sensible to think that the end of the universe will be different from what it looks like it will be: again, discontinuous with what we observe.

Maybe this asymmetry is okay. After all, it really does feel like our pastward and futureward extrapolations are based on different kinds of evidence. But I don't really know what to say.

(Or maybe Christians who take both eschatology and science seriously need to believe the energy density of the universe will stay delicately balanced forever? Or maybe they should believe the final return and resurrection is in an important way non-physical? Anyone?)

In honor of round numbers

this is my one hundredth post.