I came across this forum while reading Joshua Swamidass’ intriguing The Genealogical Adam and Eve. His approach to integrating scripture, science, and genealogy neatly aligned with some philosophical patterns I’ve been exploring. I thought this might be a good place to hold up some of these ideas and see how they stand under the buffeting of others who value both science and theology.
Conveying an eternal message through human language has always seemed nearly impossible to me. Languages evolve, metaphors decay, cultures shift, and technologies reframe meaning. If someone wanted to communicate across millennia, I wonder if they might not rely on syntax or symbols at all, but instead encode meaning directly into creation itself.
Physicist John Wheeler famously summarized the universe as “it from bit”, suggesting that information may be the substrate of reality. If that’s true, could scripture’s claim that “the heavens declare the glory of God” be more literal than poetic? Perhaps creation isn’t just a stage where divine history unfolds but a kind of self-documenting system, its laws and constants carrying an embedded message. In computational terms, maybe the cosmos itself is “written” in recurring binaries: light/dark, life/death, fill/form, dry land/seas - dualities we find reflected at nearly every scale.
Take the enigmatic “number of the beast.” Traditionally, it’s linked via gematria to Caesar’s name. But carbon, the foundation of life, carries a fingerprint: six protons, six neutrons, six electrons. A beast is a carbon-based lifeform. Could it be coincidence, or is there something deeper encoded here?
The Greek word psephizo, translated “calculate,” refers to judgment by casting stones. Christ promises the redeemed a white stone meaning innocence. Carbon’s most common allotropes are black, often symbolizing guilt. And yet diamond, a rarer form of carbon, scintillates like a “light-bringer,” perhaps an echo of Lucifer’s deceptive Edenic transformation from cherub to seraph. The commandments warn against messing about with form. The model is, ‘God forms, man names’. This would make Lucifer’s transformation, and carbon’s dual roles as black stone and sparkling diamond, the act of a commandment breaker.
Carbon has even been called the “King of the Elements.” Throughout Earth’s history, five mass extinctions have reshaped life, each tied in some way to carbon fluxes: CO₂ spikes, global warming, ocean acidification. Many scientists argue we’re entering a sixth extinction now, again carbon-driven. Revelation speaks of seven kings: “five have fallen, one is, and one is yet to come.” Could these “kings” reflect epochs of carbon dominance, with the seventh marking a transition to something radically new (just as the Sabbath is set apart) - perhaps silicon-based systems, artificial life created in carbon’s own image? In that sense, might the “image of the beast” be more material than metaphorical?
Even death itself may be part of the pattern. “Darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit hovered over the face of the waters.” From the beginning, creation seems structured around tension: life and death, form and dissolution. Christ’s declaration, “I am the resurrection", suggests that death is not an intruder but a component of the design - the very engine of transformation. Genesis says death “entered” when man fell, it wasn’t created; physics shows decay has been present from the start. Perhaps we can say that carbon mediates the balance between life and death, leaving its signature in the geology around us?
Revelation warns: “No one may buy or sell without the mark… or the number of the beast.” For the first time in history, we are approaching a world where carbon itself may literally determine economic access, through carbon credits, emissions tracking, and climate-linked policy. Is this just coincidence, or are we seeing something larger?
I’m curious how others here interpret these overlaps. Perhaps the story unfolds in fractals, each hinting at a smaller and larger reality. Maybe it’s simply poetic consonance, maybe I’m just apophenic; but could there be deeper structures, both scientific and theological, that are converging in ways we’re only beginning to perceive?
Carbon’s isotopes may hint at a deeper story. Carbon-12, perfectly balanced, is the backbone of life, while carbon-14, unstable and decaying, becomes our clock for dating death. Adding just one or two neutrons completely shifts carbon’s role, almost as if creation itself encodes themes of life, death, and transformation right into its building blocks.
