RMPS: Christianity - Belief and Science for Intermediate 2 ... · Web viewintroduction....

NATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS CURRICULUM SUPPORT

Religious, Moral and Philosophical Studies

Christianity: Belief and Science

[INTERMEDIATE 2;HIGHER]

Tommy Hughes

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2 CHRISTIANITY: BELIEF AND SCIENCE (INT 2/H, RMPS)


Contents

Introduction 4Note for teachers 5

Area 1: Sources of human understanding 6Christian revelation 6Scientific enquiry 10Christianity, science and the origins of human life 14

Area 2: What is the origin of the universe? 16Christianity and the origins of the universe: a creator God 16Science and the origins of the universe: the Big Bang Theory 23

Area 3: Is there compatibility between Christian belief and scientific theory? 26

Area 4: Christianity and science: the origins of human life 30Christian approaches to the origins of human life 30Science and the theory of evolution 33Christian responses to the theory of evolution 35

CHRISTIANITY: BELIEF AND SCIENCE (INT 2/H, RMPS) 3


INTRODUCTION

Introduction

All Christians believe that God created our world and all that is in it. Human beings are the highest expression of God’s creation because they are made in God’s image and likeness. The book of Genesis bears witness to this fact in its opening chapters as it describes the six days of creation, the creation of Adam and Eve by God, and their subsequent fall from grace.

This view was widely accepted until the rise of modern science, which began to question this accepted world-view. Was the world created in six days as the Bible says? Did God create human beings from the dust of the earth? Scientific investigation seemed to suggest that this was not the case and, as science developed its investigative methods, more and more doubt was cast on the Bible’s reliability to give answers to the origins of the world and human beings. As a result of this, many people came to believe that it was impossible to reconcile science and its methods with belief in a creator God.

But this was not the only problem. Some Biblical scholars began to apply the methods of scientific investigation to their study of the Bible with the result that they began to discover more about the nature of the texts that they had been studying. Texts that had previously been understood as giving a literal account of an incident or event were explained in a different way as a result of this study. While this was welcome news to some Christians who found the challenge of science undermining their faith in a creator God, other Christians felt that this was an attack on the very foundations of their belief in God and how the world they inhabited had come into being.

The purpose of these study notes is to allow you to make sense of the debate surrounding all of these issues and enable you to begin to articulate an intelligent response having weighed up the evidence in a systematic manner.



INTRODUCTION

Note for teachers

The PowerPoint presentations that accompany these notes are provided so that teachers can present students with two key areas of understanding.

The first PowerPoint covers the rise of cosmology. It allows teachers to explain to students how the view of the cosmos accepted by Christians came about. It traces its origins from the early Greek philosophers through Aristotle and St Augustine to St Thomas Aquinas.

The second PowerPoint will allow teachers to present students with an overview of how the accepted Christian view of the cosmos came to be challenged through scientific research. It traces developments from Copernicus and Galileo to Isaac Newton.



SOURCES OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

Area 1: Sources of human understanding

By the end of this section you should be able to:

describe the nature and importance of revelation in the Christian Tradition describe the methods of scientific enquiry describe answers to specific questions about human origins which arise

from Christian revelation and scientific enquiry.

Christian revelation

To understand the significance of the concept of revelation for Christians, it is important to know what revelation actually is. Revelation comes from the Latin word revelare, which means ‘to remove the veil’. In the first instance revelation has been understood to mean that there are certain facts or information that can be communicated about God and expressed in sentences. This is the propositional understanding of revelation, in which individuals give their assent to certain ‘truths’ about who God is and what his will is.

Revelation and cosmology

Contemporary theologians tend to view revelation in a more ‘personal’ manner. God does not so much reveal facts about himself, but actually discloses who he is in himself. Revelation is about God making a gift of his own being to us: his self-revelation. This is more in tune with the actual meaning of the word. In this sense, revelation has a cosmological dimension, God’s self-revelation is actually tied up with the mystery of creation. Creation is not just something that happened once upon a time and is then static from that moment on, but is an ongoing process in which God is communicating his own life to the world.

When considering the developments in modern science this seems to make sense for Christians. Our universe is the product of a process, which began




millions of years ago and has slowly evolved to its present state. Over a period of some 20 million years, matter has struggled to become alive, and life to become conscious. This raises a very fundamental question for many people. Does life in the universe have a purpose or is it aimlessly drifting onwards to nothingness? In response to this, many Christians believe that the only answer to this is that life must have a meaning and purpose, and that this is ultimately guided by a caring designer who reveals himself through this whole process. In this sense, Christians would say that they discern in the evolution of our universe a design or a call to the world to go beyond what it is now. The book of Genesis bears witness to this in its opening sentences when it tells us that God called the world into being. For these Christians then, creation actually communicates a promise, a promise which is in reality God’s revelation of himself, guaranteeing hope of fulfilment. This hope for a future fulfilment has been passed down from generation to generation in the history of Israel and reaches a climax in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. From this perspective, revelation is the full unfolding of the universe as St Paul exclaims in his letter to the Christians in Rome:

All of creation waits with eager longing for God to reveal his children. For we know that up to the present time all of creation groans with pain, like the pain of childbirth. (Romans 8:19, 22)

Revelation and history

In the light of all that has been said above, it is important to understand that Christians believe that revelation also has a historical context. In other words revelation takes place at a given time, in a given place, to a given people. So, as well as believing in a universal revelation, Christians believe that God has revealed himself in the story of the people of Israel. What this means is that in the lives of significant individuals and events in the history of Israel – Abraham, Moses, the delivery from slavery in Egypt, king David, the Prophets and others – God was revealing himself in a particular way to save humankind from sinfulness. For Christians, this reaches its climax in the life death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth in whom they have the forgiveness of their sins and restored to their rightful relationship with God.

In the first instance these events were handed on by word of mouth so that their importance could be preserved for future generations. However, they were consigned to writing at various times and places, and were eventually gathered together into what we now know as the Bible. Christians believe the Bible is the word of God but they can mean different things when they say this.

Some Christians believe that the Bible is literally God’s word. These Christians believe that what is written in the Bible has to be taken literally as




an exact record of what happened. So, for example, in relation to the story of Jonah being swallowed by a great sea monster, they would accept that this was exactly what happened. These Christians are sometimes called fundamentalist or literalist.

Other Christians understand the Bible to be the word of God in a different way. They would say that the Bible contains the message that God wants to communicate to them for their salvation. This approach avoids the temptation to make the Bible answer problems that the Biblical authors could never have thought of. Why do these Christians take this view? They are influenced by what is called ‘Biblical criticism’. This is an unfortunate term because in the English language the word ‘criticism’ is seen as something negative, but this is not what is meant. The word ‘criticism’ has its roots in Greek and actually means ‘to judge’ in the sense of evaluate. What this means, then, is that scholars take a particular book of the Bible and embark on a careful analysis of it, and this can take various forms. One form approaches the Bible as literature and looks at the way in which the author has composed the text, the techniques they have used, how they are using their characters if they are telling a story. When speaking of Biblical criticism most people refer to what is known as historical criticism. This involves seeking knowledge about the author’s background, the problems he was facing, the people he was writing for and their particular situation at that time. This also involves a judgement about the type of writing the author is dealing with: is it history, poetry, law? So this approach to the Bible tries to get to the heart of what the author was really trying to say to those for whom he was writing. This does not mean that God is not involved in the process of inspiring the Bible, but what it does recognise is the importance of the context in which the limited human knowledge of the author was at work.

It is hardly surprising therefore that some Christians have adopted a literalist or fundamentalist approach to the Bible. With the advent of Biblical criticism, particularly historical criticism, some Christians perceived a mounting threat to their faith. They sensed in these new approaches to the Bible an attempt to obscure God’s word and the divine inspiration of the Bible. In response to this, around 1910, two wealthy Southern Californians sponsored a series of pamphlets designed to defend the fundamentals of the Christian religion, for example the miracles of Jesus, the resurrection, the divinity of Jesus and an anti-Darwinian view of creation. The aim was to show that Christian doctrine could be proved directly from the Bible, and that maintaining the literal meaning of the text alone could do this.

No matter what particular position Christians take on the understanding and interpretation of the Bible, they agree on one thing: the Bible gives them guidance for their lives and understanding of the world in which they live. They are able to evaluate trends in society, scientific developments, etc., by




reflecting on what the Bible has to say. Obviously, there are some developments that the Biblical authors could not have envisaged, such as in-vitro fertilisation, scientific theories on the development of the universe, or the development of atomic energy. Christians can have problems trying to reconcile their faith with these developments, and this is where some Christians would look to what is called Tradition to guide them. This is the case for Catholic Christians, who understand that the word of God is embodied in Scripture and Tradition. Tradition is not habits, customs or practices, but is rather the belief that, before the Bible came into existence, the Apostles had already received from Jesus what was essential for Christian faith. They, in turn, were able to hand it on to others so that the Church had authority to teach on matters that were not committed to writing in the Bible. The New Testament itself attests to this when it states that not all the things that Jesus said and did are recorded. So, on certain questions that are not explicitly treated in the Bible, Catholic Christians can look to the Church to guide them and teach them on the correct answer to these questions.

Questions

1. What does the Latin word revelare mean?2. What is the ‘propositional’ understanding of revelation?3. In what way do contemporary theologians understand God’s self-

revelation to be tied up with the mystery of creation?4. How would Christians respond to the question of whether or not the

universe and life have a purpose?5. What does it mean for Christians to say that revelation has a historical

context?6. How is this linked to the history of Israel?7. Explain in detail how Christians understand the Bible to be the word of

God.8. What is the significance of ‘Biblical criticism’ for some Christians in

understanding the Bible?9. Why do some Christians reject this approach to the Bible?10. What approach to the Bible would Christians have in common?11. What is the significance of ‘Tradition’ for Catholic Christians?

Extended-answer question

1. To what extent do Christians agree that revelation is an important source of human understanding?




Scientific enquiry

The word ‘science’ comes from the Latin word scientia, which means knowledge. Science is about gaining knowledge about ourselves and the world we live in. This means that there are obviously different types of knowledge: the study of how the human body works is called biology or physiology; the study of how various sounds are put into compositions is called music; the study of the use of colours, shapes and composition is called art; the study of numbers and formulae is called mathematics; and the study of the existence of God is called theology. These are all forms of knowledge (and there are many others also) and so they are sciences in their own right. However, today we are more inclined to view biology, chemistry, physics and maths as science because we believe that science is about observation, analysis and experimentation. Why is this?

Believe it or not, the first scientists were actually religious people! They were usually philosophers and theologians who, marvelling at the wonders of the world they lived in, sought explanations for how the work of the creator God actually functioned. As time passed, however, this common purpose and vision became fragmented so that by the sixteenth century there was a separation of religion and science. Up until this time, our understanding of the world was informed by observation and mathematical calculations based on the fact that the earth was the centre of the universe. Science basically fitted in with the Christian view of the universe as expounded through the Bible and by theologians, using the physics and philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. The reality of the universe was explained in religious terms with a specifically geocentric (earth-centred) view of the universe being taught as supported in the book of Genesis. God made the world and everything that moved therein was caused to do so by him.

Strangely enough, the first person to challenge this geocentric view of the universe was a Catholic priest named Nicolaus Copernicus! He was employed by the Church to produce a new calendar and, as a good astronomer, he set about gathering evidence from his observation of the stars to be able to do this. He noticed that there was no change in the position of the stars when they were viewed from two different places on earth and so he calculated that the stars must be further away from the earth than the sun. He published his findings in his work De Revolutionibus Orbium in which he claimed that the sun was the centre of the universe and that the earth went round the sun, as did the other planets, in perfect circular orbits, once per year. This was a highly significant discovery because it challenged the geocentric view of the universe held by the Church (informed by the philosophy of Aristotle) with a heliocentric view of the universe based on mathematical calculations and observations. This suggested that the view held by the Church was wrong. This opened the way for others to develop the approach of Copernicus,




especially in the thinking of a man called Galilei Galileo, which resulted in conflict between Church and science.

The key to understanding Galileo’s ideas is based on the importance he gave to reason and observation in reaching his conclusions. Galileo came to the conclusion that the world was not the centre of the universe and reasserted the Copernican view that we inhabit a heliocentric universe. He believed that what occurred in the universe was based on mathematical laws and he came to these conclusions by making his observations via a telescope! Rather than support the view that the heavenly bodies were perfect, on the basis of his observations of sunspots, the moons of Jupiter and the fact that Venus had phases, he maintained that they changed. His main work was the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which led to the general acceptance of Copernicus’ theories but brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church. Galileo was not anti-Christian, but his theories were considered to challenge what had been revealed by God in the Bible, and, because the Christian world-view of the time was a synthesis of theology and the philosophy of Aristotle, Galileo seemed to be challenging the whole system on which the Church’s world-view was based. He was inevitably put on trial as a heretic and was found guilty, forced to recant, and his works were banned.

Galileo believed that in discovering more about the universe we actually discover more about God, and that science and the Bible were complementary to each other. However, by showing that we could gain knowledge about the world by observation and mathematical calculations, his theories paved the way for understanding the universe without reference to God. Scientists no longer needed to appeal to theology, the Church or the Bible as final arbiters on the way the world worked because they could determine this for themselves. This marked a massive shift in how humanity eventually came to understand its place in the world. If science can provide the answers to the great questions concerning the origins of the universe, then religion only has any use in supplying the answer to questions that science hasn’t managed to answer yet, but probably will do in the future. This gave rise to the view of religion as belief in a ‘God of the gaps’. God was the answer to the gaps in human knowledge.

The inevitable development from Galileo’s thought was the advent of modern science. This was based on the belief that the world was indeed orderly and intelligible, that knowledge could be acquired through measuring, testing observing, and that the authority of religion in this sphere of enquiry no longer held sway. The prime movers in this direction were probably Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, who believed that knowledge started with observation of the world and, on the basis of this, the human mind could work out the laws of nature – this is known as empiricism.




This empirical approach led to specific approaches to gaining knowledge. These are known as deduction and induction.

Deduction is really all about knowing the rules. Take a game of chess. If you don’t know how to play chess then its is difficult just to pick up a piece and play a game. If you know the rules of the game, however, and you know how each piece moves, then you can deduce what moves are likely to be made by someone playing the game. Deduction is fine, as long as you know what the rules of the game are and (this is very important) understand the assumptions that a given deduction is based on. Let’s go back to Galileo to illustrate the point we want to make here. If you work on the assumption that the planets are perfect and that they travel around the earth in a circle because that is the perfect shape, then you will make certain deductions about the planets based on this assumption. This is fine, until Galileo turns up and suggests that the planets do not actually travel around the earth in circles. He challenges the assumption based on his own observations and shows that the previous deductions were inaccurate!

Science uses the inductive method of enquiry by gathering as much evidence as possible, ensuring its relevance, and drawing conclusions from it in the form of what are called hypotheses. What is a hypothesis? It’s quite simple: hypothesis comes from the Greek word hypotithenai which means to propose, suppose, or literally: put under. This means that a hypothesis is an assumption that is put under an argument to support it, or a suggested explanation for a group of facts or phenomena, accepted either as a basis for further testing or as likely to be true. As a result of a given hypothesis, scientists would logically expect other results to follow from an experiment. If this proves to be the case then the hypothesis would be taken as verified, or it would be modified according to the results of the experiment, if this was necessary. On the basis of this, a scientist would then argue for a theory which will predict what will happen if a series of events are put in place. This is how scientists work out scientific laws. This does not mean laws in the sense of those composed and imposed by a government, which seek to limit actions that would be detrimental to our country. Rather it means the description of how things behave given certain circumstances.

Now, while this seems to provide a cast-iron guarantee of certainty, this is by no means the case. What induction provides is a high degree of probability that, given x and y, z will naturally follow. But this is not necessarily the case because it is entirely possible that an additional piece of information will nullify the hypothesis.

All of this led to a philosophical understanding of science, which has been influential on the exercise of scientific enquiry and investigation to this day. This particular school of philosophy is called logical positivism. This view




was advanced by a group of philosophers who came together around 1922 and were known as the Vienna Circle. Scientists came to their conclusions based on observations, testing, measuring over a sustained period of time. In philosophy, their methodology is called empiricism because it is based on what is learned from experience. Logical positivism was actually logical empiricism because it held that the only knowledge worthy of the name was based on what was empirically verifiable. In relation to the origins of the world, logical positivism would reject any notion of a creator God because God is not something that is empirically verifiable – we cannot prove God’s existence by observation, measurement or testing. Therefore, not only does God not exist, but the concept of God is entirely meaningless since it is not verifiable! This is a view that many, though not all, scientists take today, as well as many ordinary people who believe that science has provided all the answers to questions concerning the origins of the world and human life. The problem with this view, however, is that it falls prey to its own premise of verification (testability). It cannot be verified that a statement is only meaningful if it can be verified! But more of this later on.

What must be noted here is that, in relation to scientific enquiry as a source of knowledge, the importance of testing, observing, measuring and verifying is of the utmost importance and seems to enter into a conflict with what is claimed by religious language. It seems to be the case then that it is a matter of choosing a religious explanation of the world and risking being accused of living in the dark ages, or choosing a scientific approach to explaining the world and being accused of rejecting belief in God. Is this the case? Well, we shall see as we progress through the remainder of this unit.

Questions

1. What is the origin of the word ‘science’?2. What professions did the first scientists work in?3. How did they explain the existence of the universe?4. Who was the first person to challenge the accepted geocentric view of

the universe?5. What led him to this conclusion?6. What name is given to this view of the universe?7. What is the key to understanding Galileo’s views of the universe?8. What were the consequences of Galileo’s conclusions?9. What did Galileo’s views pave the way for?10. What do you understand the term ‘God of the gaps’ to mean?11. What is empiricism and how does it relate to scientific enquiry?12. Explain the deductive method of enquiry and what its weakness is.13. Explain the inductive method of enquiry and what its weakness is.14. What is logical positivism?




15. Why would logical positivism reject the idea of a creator God?16. What dilemma does this approach to science seem to throw up?

Extended-answer questions

1. To what extent do the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo mark and end of the accepted religious view of the universe?

2. ‘The inductive method of enquiry provides a cast-iron guarantee that science provides exact answers to questions.’To what extent would you agree with this statement?

3. Discuss the significance of the impact of logical positivism on the contemporary approach to science and understanding the origins of the universe.

Christianity, science and the origins of human life

For many people in Britain today, Christianity no longer plays an influential part in their lives, and many of the questions they ask about the meaning of life in this world are answered by science. Nevertheless, there are still a significant number of people for whom Christianity is the foundation of their lives and for whom Christianity provides the answers to the deepest questions about the meaning of this world and life beyond death.

Significantly, there are many Christians who feel that scientific enquiry is compatible with their Christian faith and poses no challenges for them. For other Christians, however, science is seen as a threat to what they believe, because it seems to question what the Bible says.

In relation to the origins of human life, the first group of Christians would accept that God made human beings in his own image and likeness, just as the Bible says. They would also accept that, based on the most recent scientific enquiry, the creation of human beings probably did not happen exactly as the Bible describes it. In adopting this approach, they approach the story of creation in the book of Genesis as symbolic rather than literal. They accept the Biblical truth that God is the creator of human life, but that He creates it according to the scheme of evolution so that in time his plan for human life unfolds through this dynamic.

Other Christians (sometimes called ‘Creationists’, ‘Literalists’ or ‘Fundamentalists’) find this approach unacceptable and see evolution as a theory which undermines what God has revealed through the Bible. This approach is based upon the belief that the Bible alone reveals God’s will and God’s law, and so anything of human invention (contemporary science) that would deny what has been revealed by God cannot be accepted as providing




accurate knowledge of how humans came into existence. For these Christians, what Genesis describes in relation to the origins of the world and human life is exactly what happened, because they want to maintain the fact of human life being directly created by God.

For other people today, religion has nothing useful to say about the origins of human life. As far as they are concerned, the Bible is nothing other than an archaic, outmoded way of looking at the world and human life and has been superseded by science, which gives concrete answers to the questions concerning the origins of human life.



WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE?

Area 2: What is the origin of the universe?


explain interpretations of specific answers to the question of the origin of the universe which suggest a conflict between Christian belief and scientific theory

explain interpretations of these answers which suggest that Christian belief and scientific theory are compatible

explain the reasons for differences between these interpretations.

In the last section we briefly touched upon some answers that Christians would give to questions on the origins of human life and why others would reject those approaches in favour of a scientific explanation of human origins. What we will do in this section is progress to a deeper analysis and evaluation of these approaches to determine whether or not some compatibility can be established between a Christian understanding of the origins of the universe and human life and that of scientific enquiry.

Christianity and the origins of the universe: a creator God

(You will need to have read Genesis 1 before reading this section.)

You will remember from the first section of this publication how Christians approach the Bible in differing ways. Some Christians, while accepting that the Bible is the word of God, will nevertheless explore the Bible using the methods of contemporary Biblical criticism to understand the precise nature of the writing they are dealing with. Others accept the Bible as the word of God exactly as it is without question and believe that the methods of Biblical criticism are an unworthy way to approach what God has revealed. You must keep this in mind when reading what follows.

Why do Christians take such differing approaches to the story of creation? It all stems from the text of Genesis itself! Look closely at the text: looking at




day four, we see that at this point God puts lights in the sky to divide day from night, which are the sun, the moon and the stars. Now how can this happen on the fourth day if there have already been three days? Surely to have a ‘day’ you would need to have the sun and the moon from the beginning, to mark when the sun rises and a new day begins, and when the sun sets and the day ends? What is this thing that God puts in the sky to divide the waters above the earth from those below? Why is there water above the earth? On the sixth day God creates every type of living creature, so this must mean that evolution is nonsense since God has already created every creature that there could be! If this all happened at the beginning then nobody could have been there to witness it, so where did all these details come from?

These are very valid questions and they inevitably point us to the nature of the text that we are dealing with. Is it a text that must be taken literally or is it possible to understand the text in another way while at the same time preserving the truths that it communicates? Well another close look at Genesis will begin to help us answer this.

If you take up your Bible again and turn to Genesis 2:5–25, you will find another account of creation which is distinctly different from that of chapter one and yet communicates the same message, i.e. that God is the creator of the universe. Why are there two accounts of creation? Well the answer to that question brings us to why some Christians don’t accept a literal explanation of the book of Genesis and look to Biblical criticism to help them understand the text and its message.

The first thing that must be understood is how the Bible came into existence. The Bible was not compiled as one big book. Throughout time, the people of Israel reflected on their faith in the God of Abraham, the one God. They did this in a variety of ways, through story, song, law, wise sayings and history. These were originally handed on by word of mouth (oral tradition) before being consigned to writing at a later date. When these were consigned to writing, the influence of the person writing the text would be brought to bear on the traditions he was working with. Scholars believe that the texts we are dealing with are based on a response of the people of Israel to the culture and religion of Mesopotamia and Canaan. During their time in these lands, the people of Israel were exposed to beliefs that were incompatible with their faith in one God, because this culture believed in many gods and explained the origins of the world and human beings in relation to these gods. The great Mesopotamian account of creation is called the Enuma Elish and in this account the chaos at the beginning of creation is personified in a male god, Apsu, and a female god, Tiamat. These two are the source of all human beings, having first given life to gods who subsequently rebel against their parents. In this conflict, Apsu is slain and Tiamat is revealed as the dragon of




chaos. She gives birth to a host of demons who attack her offspring, who in turn seek protection from other gods. The god Marduk defends them, slays Tiamat and uses the carcass to form the universe. In this world the disc of the earth rests on the seas. Over this spans the sky with the stars, and above this is the place where the rain is contained. Above all this Marduk builds his heavenly palace. Man is created by mixing the blood of a slain god, an ally of Tiamat, with clay in order to carry on the worship of the gods. In this story chaos is the orginator of all that is and is subsequently overcome by the creator god, Tiamat.

It is in response to this that the people of Israel formed their own account of creation, which corresponds to their belief in the one God who revealed himself to Abraham and who entered into a covenant with His people. In Genesis the sole creator is the one God, not chaos. God is in control of all things, and all that is comes to be by his command, not the fighting of demons and gods, nor the carcass of a dead god. Man is made in the image of God and is brought to life by the very breath of God, not by the blood of a slain god. Man is called to communion with God from the very beginning and not, as in Enuma Elish, to slavishly indulge gods. The God of Israel is the one God who alone is the sustainer of the universe and all that is.

For this reason, many Christians feel able to look at the Biblical account of creation and see it for what they believe it actually is: a symbolic account of God’s creation, communicating very important truths about the purpose and meaning of creation. They do not believe that they have to accept this as a blow-by-blow account of what actually took place, but are rather more able to articulate their faith in God’s creation of the universe with what science has to say about the emergence of the world we live in. This is not to deny what is revealed in the Bible about creation, but is rather a means of understanding the origins and context in which the writing of Genesis occurred so that it can speak to them in their own context. For these Christians then, science does not undermine faith but rather enhances faith so that it does not, in the end, matter if there was a ‘Big Bang’ that started the universe. These Christians believe that God could have created the Big Bang and that this is the manner in which He began the process of creation. The working out of that process leads them to see His presence in the world:

The question about the origins of the world and of man has been the object of many scientific studies which have splendidly enriched our knowledge of the age and dimension of the cosmos, the development of life forms and the appearance of man. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers.

(The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 283)




Other Christians cannot accept this view at all. Some of them are known as Fundamentalists or Literalists, and others as Creationists although they would prefer the term ‘creation science’ to ‘creationism’. They cannot accept the Big Bang Theory because it seems to undermine their belief that God has created all that there is and that the Bible bears witness to this. Accepting the Big Bang Theory would mean denying that God is the creator and preserver of the universe. Relying solely on science to provide us with accurate knowledge of how the world came to be is insufficient because it depends purely on observation and is prone to missing the bigger picture. Why do they think this? Well, they see the problem arising with Isaac Newton who laid the foundation for understanding the world as a machine and God as a watchmaker who winds the world up and lets it go on it own way. On this basis there was no longer any need to admit of divine intervention in sustaining the world and that any divine intervention would take place through cause-and-effect relationships. With God reduced to this level of intervention, all science has to do is provide the reason for these cause-and-effect relationships and God is gradually surplus to requirements. Humans can explain the source, meaning and purpose of the universe themselves! So, for these Christians, the Bible is the sole guide for what to believe concerning the creation of the world.

If you look with the eyes of faith you see God in nature, both in creation and in preservation. But if you look only with the eye of reason and of cause and effect you may not see Him. This is why the Creationist can see God while the man who does not look on the phenomena of nature with the same faith does not see him there.

(John W. Klotz, Creationist Viewpoints, in A Symposium on Creation, Vol.1, Baker Book House 1968, pp. 34–52)

For Creationists therefore, the world cannot be the result of a random explosion known as the Big Bang. On the basis of the Bible, they will argue that God created the world in six days, but that these ‘days’ are actually a longer period of time than 24 hours. The world itself is too complex to be anything other than the result of a prime mover who has instilled his creative purpose in the whole of creation. Take, for example, the properties of water. The amount of water on the earth’s surface, estimated to be enough to form a layer over a mile deep spread evenly over the earth’s surface, tends to prevent sudden increases and decreases in temperature, as for example between day and night. A rock, for instance, is very hot during the day and very cold during the night. The change in temperature of water, by comparison, is insignificant. The presence of large quantities of water in the great lakes and the oceans is responsible for the fact that that coastal cities are not as warm in the summer or as cold in the winter as inland areas: they have natural air conditioning. The Creationist Christian would argue that this is no accident but is the design of a creator God.




Both of these groups of Christians, despite their differing approaches to the question of the origins of the world, accept one thing and that is that God is the creator of the universe. How does God create the universe? This has been explained in a variety of ways throughout the centuries and one of the most significant of these is the Cosmological Argument, which was developed by St Thomas Aquinas in his Five Ways.

The Cosmological Argument is actually more than one argument. It is a series of related arguments that attempt to point to the existence of a creator God by relating to a first cause. They do this by looking at the fact of the world’s existence, and arguing from the experience of the world’s existence to the existence of God. This type of argument is called a posteriori argument because it uses as its starting point a given experience – the existence of the world.

The First Way: the argument from motion (cause and effect)

This argument takes as its starting point the fact of motion. Why? Well, there are many things in the world that are in motion: cars, trains, human beings, birds, etc. If something is moving then it must have been moved by something. If you follow this series of motions backwards you will eventually come to the first mover, the one who started it all off. To see the reasoning behind this, imagine you were watching a game of snooker on television and you saw the black ball disappear into a pocket. You ask someone how the black ball managed to drop into the pocket and they reply ‘It just did!’. You would not accept that for an answer. Surely the black ball must have been moved by something? Well the answer is ‘yes’. It was a pink ball that moved the black ball into the pocket. But what caused the pink ball to move the black ball? Well, the pink ball was struck by a red ball, which moved the pink ball towards the black ball, which was hit and sent into the pocket. Now this backwards series can go on and on until we get to the cue ball which actually hit the first of the ten remaining red balls on the table. So we have arrived at the answer? Well, no. What moved the cue ball? Well, the cue moved the cue ball and (yes, you’ve guessed it) the player moved the cue!

For St Thomas, this chain cannot go on into infinity in relation the movement of the world, so there must have been a Prime Mover, someone who set the whole process in motion. And this is what St Thomas argues is what people would call God. God is the unmoved mover.

It is important to note what St Thomas means when he actually speaks of motion. When he uses the word ‘motion’ he does not only mean things that actually move, but also a change in size or a change in the state of something, in other words moving from potentiality to actuality. Take, for example, a piece of wood that we want to light to make a fire. Before it is lit, it is




potentially hot. What makes it become hot is something that is actually hot (fire). When it is actually hot, then the wood has the potential to become cold again. What makes the wood actually hot, or for that matter cold, is something that acts on it from outside and changes it. When the wood is on fire and becomes hot then its state has changed; it has moved from its previous (not hot) to its present state (hot).

The Second Way: the argument from efficient causes

St Thomas’ Second Way is based on what is called the First Cause Argument. The argument proceeds in this manner: Everything that exists has a cause and this cause in turn has a cause, and so on and so forth. Now this series of causes must either go on into infinity, or have a starting point in a first cause. St Thomas rejects the idea of this series going on into infinity and so he posits that there must be a first cause and this is what people would call God. Why does he argue this? Well, it is simple: I know that I exist and that I am writing these notes for you. If I am writing these notes for you then I must be the cause of these notes. The notes could not be their own cause because that would mean that the notes were already in existence before they were written down! This is, of course, logically impossible! Equally, the fact that I exist and am writing these notes presupposes that I am not the reason for my own existence and that I depend for my existence on a cause outside of myself. It is for this reason that St Thomas argues that there must at some point be a first cause, which is the reason for all the other causes in the world. St Thomas argument can be broken down in this way:

i. In the world there are efficient causes. ii. Nothing can be the efficient cause of itself because it would be the

cause of its own existence.iii. Efficient causes cannot go on infinitely because the first cause causes

the next, and so on, to an ultimate cause.iv. If you take away the cause you take away the effect.v. If you take away the first cause among efficient causes there can be no

other causes in the world, neither intermediate nor ultimate causes, and this is plainly false.

vi. Therefore, it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name God.

The Third Way: the argument from possibility and contingency

St Thomas’ Third Way is based on arguing from the contingency of things in the world. Contingency means something has a dependency for its existence because it need not have existed in the first place, or could have been other than it actually is. Again this is based on observing things in the world.




When we look at things in the world we know that, even although they exist at this present moment, there was a time when they either did not exist or existed differently from the way in which they do now. Things are brought into existence and then they go out of existence. This is particularly true of human life, and therefore human life is contingent; its existence depends on a whole series of other factors. In other words, everything in the world points beyond itself to something else. This is where St Thomas makes his critical move in the argument. He argues that, if all beings were contingent, then at some point there would have been nothing in existence since all things depend on something outside of themselves for the their existence because at some time they did not exist. However, since there are things that actually do exist, there must be something that is not contingent (a necessary being) to be the causal agency for the things that are contingent, and this is what we call God. St Thomas’ argument can be simplified as follows:

I. Some contingent beings exist.II. Therefore, if these contingent beings exist, the necessary being which

causes these to exist must exist.

Some criticisms of St Thomas’ Three Ways

The argument from motionSome people today argue that St Thomas Aquinas’ argument is no longer valid because he is thinking within a cosmology that is different from ours. Scientific discoveries have helped advance our understanding of the world we live in so that we now know that two cold things being rubbed together will actually provide heat. It has also been observed that human beings and animals move themselves!

The argument from efficient causesIf you begin with the premise that nothing can cause itself, then surely it must follow that God is also caused? Moreover, why can we not assume that the world has no cause and that it simply exists? This was picked up by David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, when he argued that even if the universe did have a beginning it does not necessarily follow from this that anything caused it to come into existence.

The argument from possibility and contingencySome people would argue that the world is not contingent but is actually necessary. They argue that objects may come into existence and then perish, but the matter from which they are made is eternal and carries on necessarily. The world therefore could not not exist. There are really no ultimate questions about a creator God therefore, but only questions about matter.




How Christians respond to these criticisms will be covered in a later section.

Science and the origins of the universe: the Big Bang Theory

Not all scientists reject the idea of a creator God; however, many of them do because they feel that science has put an end to the view of the universe that was put forward by the Church based on the Bible. These scientists believe that the idea of a creator God is a device that was developed to fill the gaps in human knowledge, and now that science has given the real answers to the origins of the universe, there is no need to use God as this kind of device. So what do these scientists put in the place of a creator God?

These scientists use the Big Bang Theory to show that there is no creator God. However, it must be pointed out from the very beginning that scientists who do accept a creator God can also use the Big Bang Theory to point to the existence of a creator God.

The Big Bang Theory begins from the observation of the universe as it is at the moment, and on the basis of these observations, calculates what happened at the beginning of the universe. Scientists now agree that there was an actual beginning to the universe because it is an observable fact that the galaxies are moving apart. Those further away from us are moving away faster than those closest to us and, on the basis of this fact, scientists argue that at one time all the galaxies were actually closer together and that they are now moving apart in different directions. Scientists can therefore tell how far away a galaxy is from us based on the speed by which it is moving away from us. What they also discovered was that the spectrum of light changes if a body is moving away at a high speed in space and, detecting that some distant galaxies seemed to give off a red light, they concluded that the universe is expanding in all directions.

This brings us to the key point. If the universe is expanding in all directions, then what caused this process of expansion to take place? This is where the Big Bang Theory comes in: between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago there was an enormous explosion of energy which set the process of expansion in motion; this is called a space–time singularity by scientists. This is very important because it is the point at which space and time are created simultaneously. As a result of this huge explosion, matter in the form of hot gas spread out over enormous distances. As it began to cool down, it condensed to form stars and galaxies that now make up the universe. This process eventually developed the capacities for human life to evolve on the planet that we now inhabit.




To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the designer. You have to say something like ‘God was always there’, and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might just as well just say ‘DNA was always there’, or ‘Life was always there’, and be done with it.

(Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker , Penguin 1990, p. 173)

Questions

The Book of Genesis

1. In your own words, give a brief account of the creation of the world as reported in Genesis chapter 1.

2. What are some of the problems with reading the text of Genesis 1 literally?

3. What would you say is the significance of finding another creation account in Genesis 2:5–25?

4. Explain what the oral tradition is.5. Give a brief outline of the context in which the creation accounts in the

book of Genesis were formed.6. How would Christians who accept Biblical criticism explain the

significance of the creation account(s) in Genesis?7. How does this help them demonstrate that science does not undermine

their faith in a creator God?8. Why would some Christians find it impossible to accept the Big Bang

Theory?9. Why is the contribution of Sir Isaac Newton important for

understanding the position of these Christians?10. Why is important for these Christians to look with the ‘eyes of faith’ at

the world we live in?

The Cosmological Argument

The First Way1. What is the name of the saint who made the most significant

contribution to the development of the Cosmological Argument?2. What is the Cosmological Argument?3. What is the starting point for St Thomas’ First Way?4. Why does he start at this point?5. Why can the chain of movement not go on into infinity?6. What does St Thomas mean when he use the word ‘motion’?




7. Give an example of what he means by this.8. Give a simple explanation of a criticism of the First Way.

The Second Way1. What is the name given to St Thomas’ Second Way?2. What does it mean to say that something has an efficient (first) cause?3. Why is it logically impossible for something to be the efficient cause of

itself?4. Give a simple explanation of a criticism of the Second Way.

The Third Way1. What name is given to the Third Way of St Thomas?2. What does contingency mean?3. Why does St Thomas argue that if all beings are contingent then there

must have been a time when nothing existed?4. What is the significance of the non-contingent necessary being?5. Give a simple explanation of a criticism of the Third Way.

The Big Bang Theory

1. Why do some scientists deny the existence of a creator God?2. From what does the theory of the Big Bang begin?3. Why do scientists agree that there was an actual beginning to the

universe?4. How can scientists tell how far a galaxy is away from us?5. What significance does the spectrum of light play in this?6. What is the Big Bang?7. What is the significance of a space–time singularity?8. How did the planet that we now inhabit develop from the initial

enormous explosion?


1. To what extent does Biblical criticism provide Christians with the means of providing a coherent and scientifically compatible account of the story of creation?

2. How successful is St Thomas Aquinas’ Cosmological Argument in pointing to the existence of a creator God?

3. To what extent do you think that the Big Bang Theory dispenses with the idea of a creator God?

4. How critical is it for Christians to be able to challenge the idea that the universe was created purely by chance?



COMPATABILITY BETWEEN CHRISTIAN BELIEF AND SCIENTIFIC THEORY?

Area 3: Is there compatibility between Christian belief and scientific theory?


explain perceived strengths and weaknesses of interpretations that suggest that Christian belief and scientific theory are compatible

assess the implications of these interpretations for human understanding of the purposes and goals of life

give reasons to support the assessment you have made.

Despite all that has been said earlier, many Christians believe that their faith and scientific theory can go together. They believe that, rather than disproving the existence of God, science actually points to His existence and that both Christian belief and science shed light on the same truths. Let’s revisit the Big Bang Theory to see how they go about this.

If we look at these pages we know that we can actually trace their origin back to the Big Bang. They are on paper, and the paper came from a tree, and the tree grew from seeds from another tree and the whole species of the tree came from an even simpler plant, which in turn evolved from even simpler plant life, right back to the beginning of life on earth. We know that life was caused by a complex arrangements of chemicals which, in turn, can be traced all the way back to the initial explosion of energy about 10 billion–20 billion years ago. At this point we run out of causes in the universe.

This does not exhaust the questions for some Christians. They believe we can still ask why the universe exists and why it is the way that it is. The universe is contingent and this has been shown by scientific developments in modern times that allow us to describe the behaviour of the universe as a whole. Not only do the things in the universe obey the laws of science, the universe itself obeys them! This means that the Big Bang must point beyond itself to a cause because if the universe obeys the laws of science then the cause of the universe cannot be part of the universe itself but must be outside of the universe. This would seems to suggest for these Christians that there is




indeed a creator God who sets the whole process of the origins of the cosmos in motion through the Big Bang.

My conclusion then, is that the physical universe is not compelled to exist as it is; it could have been otherwise. In that case we are returned to the problem of why it is as it is… We have no choice but to seek an explanation in something beyond our outside physical world – in something metaphysical – because, as we have seen, a contingent physical universe cannot contain within itself an explanation for itself.

(Paul Davies, The Mind of God: Science and the Search for Ultimate Meaning, Penguin 1992, pp. 170–1)

This seems to take us back to St Thomas Aquinas, and so it does, but these Christians are trying to produce a synthesis between what St Thomas had argued about the need for a first cause and what science says about the Big Bang. In response to the argument put forward by some scientists that we do not need a first cause if the chain of causality is infinitely long, these Christians would respond that because a chain is infinitely long it does not mean that it has to exist. If the chain does not have to exist, then it needs a reason for its existence. Moreover, because science has revealed that the world is not infinitely old, then infinite chains must be ruled out as logically impossible. Therefore, as far as these Christians are concerned, God is not someone dreamt up by humans to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Rather, God is necessary if we are to make sense of the existence of the universe at all!

These Christians also take another very interesting approach to demonstrating compatibility between Christian faith in a creator God and the Big Bang. They do this by arguing for a Unity Law, which is based on the scientific fact of the existence of harmony and order in the universe. When Sir Isaac Newton ‘discovered’ gravity, what he actually did was discover the universality of gravitation. The force that makes the apple fall to the earth is the same force that makes the moon stay in orbit around the earth and makes the earth orbit the sun. Gravity, therefore, is not just something on the earth, but is found throughout the universe. Scientists have now discovered that this same gravity is responsible for the formation of the stars and the formation of the universe as a whole from the time of the Big Bang onwards.

Scientists have now shown, through investigations in physics, that all the fundamental laws in the universe are actually aspects of two laws – quantum mechanics and general relativity. This points to the very real possibility that there will be a Grand Unified Theory that is the foundation of all the variations that exist in the universe, which these Christians would call a ‘Unity Law’. This would clearly demonstrate that the whole physical universe




is not just the accidental development of the Big Bang, but is rather an ordered unity because it obeys a single law of unity:

Thus science is discovering a single law or principle behind or above the material universe, a law which brings about everything that exists and everything that happens in the universe. This is of the greatest importance, because this discovery is remarkably similar in many ways to the idea of God. God the creator is a unity, who causes everything that exists and everything that happens in the universe. This is really strong evidence that science is rediscovering God…However, there is a crucial difference between the Unity-Law and God himself. No law of science can exist by itself. The laws of science are properties of matter; they just describe how matter behaves. So the laws only exist where matter exists. Consequently, the laws of science cannot explain how matter comes into existence… The only answer is that where there is a law there must be a lawgiver. The law itself cannot be the cause of the universe. God is the lawgiver, the First Cause. The Unity-Law is the expression of the wisdom of God. It shows us that God’s creation manifests his supreme intelligence.

(David Barrett and Stephen Dingley (eds), Can we be sure God exists?Faith-Keyway Publications, p. 9 at www.faith.org.uk )

For these Christians, science does not put an end to belief in a creator God. Rather the complexity of the universe, as revealed through scientific investigation, points to the existence of God. The Bible, in its own way, teaches that God is the creator of all that is, and so reveals the purpose of creation.

Questions

1. Why do some Christians think that the Big Bang does not pose a threat to their faith?

2. Very briefly, and in your own words, explain how can these pages be traced back to the Big Bang.

3. Why does this process not exhaust the questions that can be asked?4. Why do some Christians argue that the Big Bang actually points to the

existence of God?5. Explain in your own words the argument that Paul Davies puts forward

in defence of a creator God. 6. In what way do some Christians argue that it is not possible to have a

chain of infinite events?7. What is meant by the Unity Law?8. Why is the discovery of gravity by Sir Isaac Newton significant for

some Christians?



http://www.faith.org.uk/


9. How does the fact of a Unity Law open up the possibility of a creator God?

10. Why do the laws of science fail to explain why matter comes into existence?


1. To what extent do you consider it significant that the universe itself obeys the laws of science?

2. If the universe is completely self contained, with no singularities or boundaries, and completely described by a unified theory, that has profound implications for the role of God as Creator.

(Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam 1995, p. 174)

To what extent would some Christians agree with Stephen Hawking and how would they develop this point to argue for the existence of a creator God?

3. How far would you agree with the position that science now points to the existence of God?



CHRISTIANITY AND SCIENCE: THE ORIGINS OF HUMAN LIFE

Area 4: Christianity and science: the origins of human life


explain how Christians explain the origins of human life from the Bible explain how Christians try to explain the origins of human life by using

reason understand how some scientists explain the origins of human life through

the theory of evolution explain why these scientists believe the theory of evolution removes the

need for a creator God understand and explain why some Christians reject the theory of evolution

as a threat to their faith understand why other Christians see the theory of evolution as pointing to

the existence of a creator God.

Christian approaches to the origins of human life

Rather than repeat what was said above about how Christians approach the book of Genesis when trying to understand what the Bible has to say about the origins of human life, it will be sufficient at this point if you refresh your memory by looking again at earlier sections of this publication and also reread Genesis chapters 1 and 2 on the creation of the first human beings.

All Christians agree that the book of Genesis reveals fundamental truths about the creation of the first human beings. However, they do not agree on how the stories of the creation of the first human beings should be interpreted. Some Christians (Creationists, for example) believe that the Bible describes exactly what happened in the creation of the first human beings and so they support a literal interpretation of what the book of Genesis says. For them, this is how we must understand the origins of human life, and any




attempt to explain the origins of human life in another way is considered to be a direct challenge to what God has revealed.

As we saw earlier, other Christians do not take this literal approach to the text. Relying on the methods of Biblical criticism, they understand the text to be symbolic in nature but, nonetheless, to be the word of God concerning the origins of human life. So how would they explain the significance of the text?

Once again, it is important to be aware of the context in which the accounts of the creation of human life originate. When looking at these stories, Biblical criticism points to the fact that the name given to the man ‘Adam’ is not actually a proper name. In fact it is more accurately translated as ‘earth being/creature’, and the word ‘Eve’ actually means ‘the mother of all’. The key point of the stories of the creation of the first humans is richly symbolic. Human beings are not made just to continue the cult of the gods (as in Enuma Elish) but are actually made in the image of God and share in his divine life through his breathing his spirit into them. Humans are not merely material beings but are made of body and soul in order to enjoy life with God. Human beings are made male and female so that they can cooperate with God in bringing new life into existence, and they are to be stewards of the earth. This is a brief summary of the key beliefs that can be taken from the Biblical accounts in Genesis. In essence, these Christians see the accounts in Genesis as telling us something that is profoundly true about us, about who we are, why we experience life the way we do, and what our destiny is. For them, to get caught up in questions about being formed from clay or a rib, or whether or not Adam and Eve had belly buttons, is to miss the point! What Genesis does, using symbolic and figurative language, is describe what happened at the beginning of time when no eyewitness account would have been possible.

William Paley’s Teleological Argument

You will know about Paley’s Teleological Argument from your class, so this section is intended to remind you of its key points and some of the problems associated with it.

Paley’s argument is essentially an argument from design. His argument is also analogical in that it is based on analogy between a watch and the world. An argument from analogy moves from the known to the unknown and uses the following formula ‘just as… so too ...’ Paley uses the watch to demonstrate a design, or purpose, in the world. Just as the watch has been made for an intelligent purpose and has clearly been designed, so too the earth has a designer because it is clear from the way the world works that it must be the product of a designer. Paley argues this from the scientific




knowledge of the time concerning the rotation of the planets etc., and believes that his argument would still stand even if you had never seen a watch before, or could not work out how some of the parts operated. You would know by the very nature of a watch that there must be a designer, and the same applies to the world we live in.

David Hume’s critique of the Teleological Argument

Hume’s critiques of the Teleological Argument actually existed before Paley developed his own version of the argument. Hume’s position was set out in his work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), 23 years before Paley, which gives some indication of the lack of attention paid to philosophical arguments at the time! So how did he deal with the Teleological Argument?

We will deal with the main points that Hume makes without going into his argument in great depth.

First of all, Hume does not explicitly deny that the argument works. What he essentially does is demonstrate the fact that, from his perspective, the argument produces what can only be considered a very limited God. The fact that the world has so many imperfections (tidal waves, earthquakes, diseases, etc.) would seem to point to what he calls an ‘infant deity’, rather than a superior designer. Rather, all of this seems to point to a malevolent God. Moreover, he argues further that it can take many people to design and build something that is sophisticated in its operation. Why should we not also conclude that there are many gods?

Hume goes on to argue that it is indeed possible to argue that the universe was created by chance. He admits that there is design in the world, but he questions whether or not this actually implies the existence of a designer. Can we make the leap from admitting order in the world to a design of the world? It is entirely plausible that the world arose by chance. What Hume actually argues is that it is possible that the finite number of particles that the world is made up from could, after going through every possible combination, constitute a stable order which will naturally be realised in the world and provide the order we now experience. Order, therefore, has nothing to do with God.

In essence, what Hume does is attack the validity of the analogy that is used in the argument from design, and this is where many consider Paley to fall victim to Hume. Basically, what Hume argues is that the analogy is not close enough to really have any value whatsoever, and the result of this is that Hume claims that we should suspend judgement on the existence, or




otherwise, of God because there is insufficient evidence to prove his existence. This opens the way to the theory of evolution!

Science and the theory of evolution

In this section we will look at the theory of natural selection, proposed by Charles Darwin in his work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859). First of all we must be clear about what we mean when we say ‘natural selection’. This is the way in which evolution takes place. The characteristics of a particular species that help it survive are passed on through the genes to the next generation of the species, and so on, until all members of the species have those characteristics. If members of the species have characteristics that don’t allow them to survive, then these characteristics die with them. In this way a species evolves and changes so that, in this process of natural selection, a species develops all the characteristics necessary to survive in an ever-changing environment. This gives rise to the idea of the survival of the fittest.

What happens in the process of evolution is that primitive forms of life give way to more sophisticated forms of life so that plant and animal life today can be traced back to what might be called a common origin. This means that one species can be traced to another species, although that species might be different from it. Human beings can therefore be traced back in this process of linking to a type of ‘ape’ species, which in turn developed from some form of mammal and so on, to the most basic form of life at the beginning of life itself.

What Darwin’s book did was provide an alternative to the argument from design, or at least it appeared that way. His book offered a way of looking at the world without any reference to God and seemed to present the world in a purely materialistic way. Life on earth is just the product of matter evolving into ever higher forms, and so human beings, rather than being a special creation of God, appear to be a product of a materialistic evolution through the process of natural selection. The implications of this for Christian belief are obvious.

Darwin came to the conclusion that random variations which gave an advantage to a plant or animal in relation to survival resulted in the survival of the fittest species. He tried to illustrate this in an imaginary way by using the example of wolves being able to maintain the ability to catch their prey, when they were struggling to find food. He argued that it would be the fittest wolves who would be able to survive because they would be in a better position to catch their prey, rather than the weaker ones who would die. He even appealed to greyhound racing, pointing out that the way a breeder could,




through a process of selection, develop a faster greyhound is very similar to what naturally occurs in nature.

A contemporary supporter of Darwin’s position is Richard Dawkins. In his book The Blind Watchmaker he dismisses any notion of their being a creator God and believes that anyone who argues for the existence of a God who creates human life is basing their belief on what he calls ‘Arguments from personal incredulity’. By this he means that because a person cannot think of any other explanation for the existence of the world they simply opt for belief in God. For Dawkins, the order in the world is not due to God, but rather is due to a blind, unconscious and automatic process.

Dawkins also argues that humans have a selfish gene and that we are inherently selfish because that is the way in which we have developed to survive through natural selection. We act the way we do because we are effectively robots/machines programmed to preserve our gene pool and transfer it to the next generation.

Dawkins would reject any claims that the book of Genesis says anything of value about the origins of human life. Dawkins rejects the existence of an immortal soul in human beings, but he still accepts that there is human dignity. This comes from the way in which an individual’s genetic code is passed on to future generations so that we have now reached the point where we can actually try to discover the meaning of life. This, for Dawkins, is the most marvellous aspect of human development, that humans can reflect on the fact that they are in the universe! How Christians have responded to what Darwin and Dawkins have said will be covered in the next section.

Questions

1. In what basic way would Christians disagree about the interpretation of the creation of human life in the book of Genesis?

2. Give a brief explanation of how Christians who use Biblical criticism would explain the creation of human life in the book of Genesis.

3. Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons? Does it matter?4. What does it mean to say that Paley’s argument is analogical?5. How does Paley demonstrate his analogy between the watch and the

world?6. In what book did Hume set out his critique of the argument from

design?7. Why does Hume believe that the argument from design essentially

points to a very limited God?8. Why does Hume believe that the world could have been created by

chance?




9. What is the problem with Paley’s argument from analogy in the light of Hume’s critique?

10. In your own words explain what is meant by ‘natural selection’.11. Briefly explain the process of evolution in your own words.12. Why do Darwin’s findings seem to deny the existence of a creator God?


1. To what extent do Christians agree on the significance of the creation of human life as recounted in the book of Genesis?

2. How successful is William Paley’s version of the argument from design?

3. How far do you consider Hume’s critique of the argument from design to be successful?

4. To what extent do you agree with Dawkins that humans are essentially selfish machines programmed by natural selection?

Christian responses to the theory of evolution

The origins of human life: a Creationist response

As we saw earlier, Creationists take a particularly unique approach to the question of how human life appeared on earth. They approach the account of creation in Genesis as a literal account of what happened, and so they firmly reject the theory of evolution.

In six days I, the Lord, made the earth, the sky, the sea, and everything in them, but on the seventh day I rested. That is why I, the Lord, blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.

(Exodus 20:11)

For Creationists, creation is a miracle, but it is not a miracle for God, who is the master of all things. Creationists believe that the Bible can be used to track back to when God first created the world 6,000 years ago. In this respect, the ‘six days’ that Genesis (and Exodus) speaks of are considered to be ages, so that the first spiritual man (Adam) would be created in the span of the sixth age and the animals and fish etc. in the fifth age. They claim that there is no fossil evidence to demonstrate that man existed more than 6,000 years ago and that there is evidence from Jewish, pagan and worldwide tribal traditions that there was a worldwide flood around 6009. Much of this is based on the work of the Anglican Archbishop James Usher (1581–1656), who attempted to calculate the age of the world by adding the ages of the 21 generations of the Old Testament together. In this respect, Usher proposed a date for the creation of the world as 4004 BC with its potential duration being




6,000 years – 2,000 years after the birth of Christ. This compares with contemporary scientific theories that the world is approximately 4.54 billion years old!

Looking at the accounts of the creation of the first human beings, Creationists believe that God created Adam and Eve as adults, so that the Bible, and only the Bible, is seen as the source of truth concerning the origins of human life. The creation of the first humans took place exactly as described in the book of Genesis and in no other way.

Any recourse to fossil evidence for the evolution of life from lower forms is rejected on the basis that before fossils appear in rock there is no record of life of any kind. Instead, Creationists claim that fossils explode into existence suddenly, pointing to the existence of a Creator at work. Creationists reject any argument that suggests that DNA is the key to understanding the origins and evolution of human life. They reject the idea that DNA contains the secret of life. But because of the complex nature of DNA (if you were to place the 10 trillion strands of DNA found in the human body end to end they would span the solar system), Creationists claim that DNA must be the direct work of a divine designer and not an accident of the upward spiral of the process of evolution.

What must be made absolutely clear is that Creationists are not fools. They have clearly researched their positions very carefully and link them with what the Bible says. They are anxious to preserve faith in the fact that God created human beings and see the theory of evolution as undermining what revelation has to say on the matter. Since the Bible is the sole rule of faith and is the word of God, science has nothing to contribute to the discussion.

We know that many reptile and mammal skeletons look almost the same structurally, even though the rest of each creature is extremely different. Of course! They were designed, not randomly evolved in some mystical evolutionary sequence. Our designer may have ‘mixed and matched’ parts when He was designing. The human eye is closely related to the octopus eye. Human milk is closest to that of donkeys. The human skeleton may be close to that of some primates – but so many of our other biological parts are not! Evolution is a myth and underneath the covers it is actually a spiritual deception.

(http://www.creationism.org/topbar/mutations.htm )

The origins of human life: an alternative Christian response

Other Christians, especially those who look to Biblical criticism to explain the nature of the stories of creation, cannot accept the position of the Creationists. They see the Creationist position as problematic because it is



http://www.creationism.org/topbar/mutations.htm


based on a literalist approach to the Biblical texts and therefore completely misunderstands their nature. For these Christians, the theory of evolution does not necessarily contradict the belief that God created human beings.

These Christians consider the argument put forward by the Creationist website above as bringing religious belief into disrepute and playing into the hands of people like Dawkins who deny the existence of God. This picture of God is considered immature and is contradicted by great Christian teachers such as St Augustine who did not interpret the Bible literally:

For as mothers are pregnant with unborn offspring, so the world itself is pregnant with the causes of unborn beings.

(St Augustine, De Trinitate 111.9.16)

These Christians do not reject theory of evolution. Rather, they reject what they call Darwinism – the theory that natural selection by survival of the fittest is the mechanism by which evolution takes place. They reject this because even the simplest life forms are so complex that they cannot be explained by merely suggesting they are the result of blind chance. Whatever the process is, these Christians accept that DNA has shown the profound link between all living creatures but that the differing genetic codes drive the developments of these creatures. It is precisely this insight that alarms Creationists because they see in it a tendency towards claiming that the evolution of human beings is merely blind chance. So how do other Christians reconcile faith in God’s creation of human beings with an acceptance of scientific theories about human development? In other words, what makes man unique?

One of the first things that can be said about human beings is that they are radically different from animals. Unlike animals, humans are able to move beyond the confines of their environment and instead are able to develop their own environment. Human beings are not determined by the laws that govern matter, we control and manipulate nature to such an extent that we are marked out as being a radically different creature from any other on the face of the earth (sometimes with remarkable, and other times with devastating, effects). What is it that makes us so radically different?

Humans share characteristics that are similar to animals. We reproduce, we defend out territories, we have the need to eat and the need for shelter etc. But we have characteristics that take us beyond the animals, such as our capacity to appreciate beauty, to be creative in dance, music and song, and to think and know that we are thinking! The very fact that we can think about the whole process of creation and develop scientific theories to explain this is itself an indication of the special nature of human beings.




These Christians believe that this is due to the fact that human beings are not purely material beings as scientists like Dawkins would have us believe. All the feelings we have are not just the effect of millions of brain cells interacting but are actually due to the fact that we have a soul. Why do they believe this? They believe this because physical processes, no matter how many of them are present in the body (or in this case the brain), will always be physical processes, and human consciousness has moved beyond the merely physical processes of the body.

In animals, the brain controls their instinct. The brain is part of the material universe and it must be tuned to the cycles of nature to do its job in animals, and this happens from the things in its environment. As the evolutionary process moves on from simple life forms to ever more complex ones, the size of the brain increases and the area of the cortex (grey matter) enlarges to facilitate ever more complex behaviour. In actual fact, the human brain is three times bigger than the brain that would have been predicted for a primate of our build. For some Christians then, something unique has happened in the origins of human life that was not present in the evolutionary process until that point.

If everything in the universe, especially the brain, is under the control and direction of the laws that govern nature, then it should not be possible to break out of that control. Nature cannot break its own laws without disastrous effects! So how do we account for this transformation in the human brain? For these Christians, the evolution of the universe is not part of a random process of blind chance. As we saw earlier, the Unity Law shows that there must be a creator God. God therefore brings evolution to the point where it is possible for human life to emerge. This is known as the Anthropic Principle. As basic life forms evolve into ever more complex forms, accompanied by a significant enlargement of the brain, God puts in place the means by which the brain can move beyond control by the environment through the human soul. This soul gives humans the power of self-control and the conscious power to think, choose and act. It is at this moment in the evolutionary process that man emerges, body and soul in one being.

The miracle of man is that the material mutation, which is born within nature to be this new form with this super power of energy in the brain, is by its very nature as physical directed to the order of the spiritual – to the soul, made in the likeness of God, and which only God can give … The two principles of being that make man, the material body and the soul, must be mutually made for each other. The physical ‘formula’ which is the brain of man was ordered in the beginning as the unique and peak achievement of that Unity-Law which framed the universe in the moment of the Big Bang … Thus in its very physical reality man’s body calls for, and is intelligible only in relationship to, that personal soul which God alone can create. God must give this soul




within the womb at the very ‘moment of man’, under the very Law of His own wisdom in creating. In this way man is at once a product of the evolution of the material creation and also a special creation through the soul.(Edward Holloway, Perspectives in Theology, Vol. 1, Christ the Sacrament of

Creation, pp. 10–11, The Rediscovery of God, Family Publications 2005)

For these Christians, therefore, there is absolutely no contradiction in believing that God created human life using the mechanism of evolution. They rely on a synthesis between revelation and science that brings about a complementarity rather than an opposition between the two. In this respect, what science demonstrates is the clear purpose that God had in mind for creation from the very beginning, that God created the world, with all its propose and intelligible order, so that he could create man and share his life with him. The book of Genesis and science both confirm the truth of this!

Questions

1. What is the foundation of the Creationist position on the origins of human life?

2. In what way do Creationists explain the ‘days’ of creation?3. How old do they think the world is?4. In what way would Creationists explain the creation of Adam and Eve?5. What problems would Creationists have with an appeal to fossils as

evidence of evolution?6. Why do Creationists reject DNA as proof of evolution?7. Why do Creationists reject Darwin’s theory of evolution?8. Why do other Christians reject the Creationist position? 9. In what way are human beings considered to be different from animals?10. Some Christians reject the materialist view of human beings held by

Dawkins. Why?11. As lower life forms evolve into higher life forms, what happens to their

brains?12. Why do some Christians see this transformation of the brain as

significant?13. Explain in your own words what the Anthropic Principle is.14. Why do some Christians believe that there is no contradiction between

what is revealed in the Bible about the origins of human life and the theory of evolution?





1. To what extent would you agree with Creationists that the theory of evolution does not explain the origins of human life?

2. To what extent does Biblical criticism contribute to providing a synthesis between belief and science concerning the origins of human life?

3. To what extent have Christians effectively refuted the scientific materialism of Richard Dawkins in relation to our understanding of the human person?

4. How effective is the Anthropic Principle as a means of providing a synthesis between Christian revelation and science?



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