What Caused the Big Bang?

Rem Blanchard Edwards

Jan 2001 · Value Inquiry Book Series Kitabu cha 115 · Rodopi

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This book critically explores answers to the big question, What produced our universe around fifteen billion years ago in a Big Bang? It critiques contemporary atheistic cosmologies, including Steady State, Oscillationism, Big Fizz, Big Divide, and Big Accident, that affirm the eternity and self-sufficiency of the universe without God. This study defends and revises Process Theology and arguments for God's existence from the universe's life-supporting order and contingent existence.

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REM B. EDWARDS received his A.B. degree from Emory University in 1956, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. During graduate school, he was a Danforth Graduate Fellow. He received a B.D. degree from Yale University Divinity School in 1959 and a Ph.D. from Emory University in 1962. He taught for four years at Jacksonville University in Florida, moved from there to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 1966, and retired from there partly in 1997 and partly in 1998. He continues to be professionally active and kept an office on the University campus until the end of May 2000. He was a U. T. Chancellor's Research Scholar in 1985 and a Lindsay Young Professor from 1987 to 1998. His areas of specialization are Philosophy of Religion, American Philosophy, Ethical Theory, Medical Ethics with a special interest in Mental Health Care, Ethics and Animals, and Formal Axiology. He is the author and/or editor of sixteen books, including Reason and Religion (New York: Harcourt, 1972 and Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1979); Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979); with Glenn Graber, BioEthics (San Diego: Harcourt, 1988); with John W. Davis, Forms of Value and Valuation: Theory and Applications (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991); Formal Axiology and Its Critics (Amsterdam--New York: Editions Rodopi, 1995); Violence, Neglect, and the Elderly, co-edited with Roy Cebik, Glenn Graber, and Frank H. Marsh (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1996); New Essays on Abortion and Bioethics (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1997); Ethics of Psychiatry: Insanity, Rational Autonomy, and Mental Health Care (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1997); Values, Ethics, and Alcoholism, co-edited with Wayne Shelton (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1997); Bioethics for Medical Education, co-edited with Dr. Edward Bittar (Stamford, Conn.: JAI Press, 1999), Religious Values and Valuations (Signal Mountain, Tenn.: Paidia Publishing Co, 2000); and Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value: Old Friends, New Thoughts, co-authored with Thomas M. Dicken (Amsterdam--New York: Editions Rodopi, in press). Edwards is also the author of over sixty articles and reviews, including "How Process Theology Can Affirm Creation Ex Nihilo," Process Studies, 29:1 (2000), pp. 77-96. He is an Associate Editor with the Value Inquiry Book Series, published by Editions Rodopi, where he is responsible for the Hartman Institute Axiology Studies special series. For a number of years he was co-editor of the Advances in Bioethics book series published by JAI Press. Edwards has been the President of the Tennessee Philosophical Association (1973-1974), the Society for Philosophy of Religion (1981-1982), and the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology (1984-1985). He is a Charter Member and Fellow of the Robert S. Hartman Institute for Formal and Applied Axiology, has served on its Board of Directors since 1987, and since 1989 has been its Secretary-Treasurer. He chaired the committee that established the website for the R. S. Hartman Institute.