God, Creation and Science

With the preceding as background, we can now turn directly to the subject matter at hand: the relation of creation theology to scientific cosmology and, in specific, the question: “did God create our universe?” I will first give a brief analysis of the extensive discussions of this question when the scientific model was the standard Big Bang cosmology, and then turn to discussions of inflationary and quantum cosmologies.

1. Standard Big Bang and Creation Ex Nihilo

There has been extensive discussion of the possible theological significance of standard Big Bang cosmology, particularly regarding the initial singularity, t=0. Is t=0 relevant to Christian theology, specifically to the claim that God created the universe? Questions of this sort represent what I am calling path (2), and we will touch on three kinds of responses to it.

One response is that it is directly relevant to theology: the scientific discovery of an absolute beginning of all things (including time) would provide empirical confirmation, perhaps even proof, of divine creation. This was the position taken by Pope Pius XII in 1951 in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. In 1978 Robert Jastrow, then head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, spoke metaphorically about scientists who, after climbing the arduous mountain of cosmology, came to the summit only to find theologians there already.The idea that t=0 provides strong, even convincing, support for belief in God is frequently advanced even today by conservative and evangelical Christians.

Even before the address by Pius XII, Fred Hoyle, an outspoken atheist, together with colleagues Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold, began to construct an alternative cosmology that would have no temporal beginning or end. Their “steady state cosmology” depicted the universe as eternally old and expanding exponentially forever. One reason Hoyle developed this model was his concern that Big Bang cosmology seemed, at least in the public mind, to support Christianity. In my view, Hoyle’s concern suggests that he, too, at least implicitly assumed that t=0 was of directly relevant to Christian theology. What is crucial to note is that, whereas the previous examples represent a move from science to theology (path 2), Hoyle represents a move from ‘theology’to science, proceeding along path (7) to construct an alternative cosmology to Big Bang cosmology. Moreover, the motivation to take path (7) implies that path (2) is implicitly accepted or there would be no theological reason to undertake it. This fact underscores the presence of relations between science and theology actually running in both directions! We’ll see similar arguments when discussing Hawking’s quantum cosmology below.

The diametrically opposite view is that t=0 is completely irrelevant to theology. The strongest case for this comes from those who hold that theology and science as such are totally separate fields with no possible relationship between any elements in either area. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the strongest support for such a “two worlds” approach has come from the side of religion, particularly from Protestant liberal, existentialist, and neo-Orthodox theologies, and more recently from feminist, liberation and post-modern deconstructionist theologies - as well as from the National Academy of Sciences. What may seem more surprising is that several of the most important scholars in the theology and science interaction agree that when it comes to creation theology, creatio ex nihilo is an entirely philosophical argument for which empirical evidence is irrelevant. The contingency of the universe consists in its sheer existence, and is independent of the question of its temporal beginning. Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, and Bill Stoeger,take this position on the specific issue of t=0. A final example would be process theology, which eschews creatio ex nihilo in general, and therefore the discussion of t=0 in particular.

Finally there are a variety of positions that one can take between the two extremes of direct relevancy and complete irrelevancy as developed by such scholars as Ian Barbour, Phil Clayton,Mark Worthing,Howard van Till, and Ted Peters. I have sought to develop one which views t=0 as indirectly relevant to theology by following path (3) instead of path (2).Unlike those claiming that t=0 is directly relevant to theology (path (2)), I claim that it is the philosophical interpretation of t=0 which serves as data for theology. Unlike those who claim that it is only the strictly philosophical significance of cosmology that is relevant, and thus that t=0 is irrelevant, I claim that scientific issues like t=0 when interpreted philosophically are at least indirectly relevant to theology. Of course such issues are highly nuanced by the theoretical framework of theoretical cosmology, with its penumbra of attendant assumptions about nature, and they may be forever beyond the possibility of direct empirical confirmation. Nevertheless when a philosophical analysis of nature is focused on such issues as these, it gives its theological appropriation at least some connection with the empirical world.

In my view, then, t=0 gives the general philosophical category of contingency a modest empirical referent. In particular, t=0 is an example of at least one form of past temporal finitude. Past temporal finitude, in turn, is a form of temporal finitude, temporal finitude is a form of finitude, and finitude, to complete the argument, is a form of contingency. In this sense t=0 tends to confirm the much broader notion of the contingency of the universe, though the notion of contingency also includes the contingency of the laws and constants of nature and most fundamentally the contingency of its sheer existence. The contingency of the universe can then play a role in theology: it is a ‘prediction’ of systematic theology (i.e., the datum of the world’s contingency is ‘explained’ in terms of the theology of creation) as well as a philosophical ‘datum’ for natural theology (i.e., the datum of the world’s contingency serves as a basis for an ‘argument for God’). t=0 can thus play a helpful, if indirect, role in both systematic theology and natural theology, for it gives concrete empirical content to the much more diffuse philosophical meaning of contingency at work in these theologies. I believe this gives these theologies that take science seriously but indirectly an advantage over the many other theologies present today that insulate themselves entirely from science. On the other hand, by embedding t=0 within the philosophical form of theological data, the theological conversations about nature are not totally derailed when scientific cosmologies change, as they already have with the development of inflationary and quantum cosmologies (see below). I believe this gives such theologies an advantage over those which tie their claims about the universe directly to specific results in science. Perhaps the best way to test my claims is to see what happens to the conversations between theology and science in mutual interaction when we move to inflationary and quantum cosmologies.

Before doing so, I want to close this section with a brief mention of the Anthropic Principle. As is well known, the issue here is the apparent ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe that makes the biological evolution of life possible. As numerous scholars have argued in detail,the physical conditions which make evolution possible impose an extremely narrow restriction on both the form of the fundamental laws of physics and the values of the constants of nature. If there is only one universe, as standard Big Bang depicts, it seems quite reasonable to ask why the laws of physics and the values of the constants of nature which characterize this universe happen to lie within these restrictions. To the theist, this stunning question can form the basis for a cosmological version of the ‘design’ argument via path (2). Within the voluminous literature on the subject, a particularly striking recent argument has been given by cosmologist George Ellis and philosopher of religion Nancey Murphy. They argue that the most striking ‘fact’ about the universe which places severe restrictions on its ‘fine-tuning’ is not just the possibility of the evolution of life but in particular of moral capacity.

Such a direct relation between cosmology and theology, though, is vulnerable to shifts in cosmologies just as we saw with the direct use of t=0. In specific, if there are many universes, the ‘fine-tuning’ of ours seems to dissolve in a ‘cosmic Darwinism’ as we shall see below. However there are indirect, ways to use ‘fine-tuning’ within theology which draw out its implications for Big Bang cosmology while anticipating that the underlying scientific theories will change. They tend to follow path (3), embedding the Anthropic discussion within a philosophical analysis that then serves theological research.

2. Inflation and Quantum Cosmology: the Shifting Conversations with Theology

Now let’s turn to inflation and quantum cosmology. The inflationary Big Bang model was first proposed by Alan Guth and colleagues in the 1970's to overcome problems posed by the Big Bang model, including the horizon problem, the matter/antimatter ratio, and so on. The effect on t=0 is fascinating: In some inflationary cosmologies, the Hawking-Penrose theorems don’t apply. In these cosmologies we may never know whether or not an essential singularity exists, even if it does:a situation which John Barrow calls ‘undecidable.’ The move to inflationary models also provides a scientific explanation for why the initial conditions of the standard model seemed so ‘fine-tuned’ for the evolution of life: such cosmologies can have countless domains in which the natural constants and even the specific laws of physics can vary.

More recently, attempts have been made to unify quantum physics and gravity and apply the results to cosmology. Proposals by Hawking and Hartle, Linde, Isham, Guth, Hawking and Turok, and others, are still in a speculative stage, but there are already some indications of what different quantum cosmologies might look like, including models with or without an initial singularity (‘eternal inflation’), with open or closed domains embedded in an open or a closed mega-universe, and so on.

What effect has the transition to inflationary and quantum cosmologies had on the conversations with theology? The answer is intriguing. Clearly the case for a direct relation between cosmology and theology in which t=0 and the Anthropic Principle strongly support Christian theology is undercut and the risk of making such as case would seem clearer than ever. Yet the story is more subtle. In 1988 Carl Sagan also seemed to assume that a direct relation exists between the issue of t=0 and the existence of a creator God. In his introduction to Hawking’s Brief History he claimed that Hawking’s ‘no boundary’ model, in which the universe has a finite past but no beginning point, leaves God with ‘nothing to do.’ Sagan’s argument apparently follows path (1) from science to theology and seeks to pose a constraint on what theology can claim: namely if the universe has no beginning, then theologians cannot claim that God created it. Presumably the further, if implicit, constraint is that, since the universe is run entirely by natural laws, then all God could have done is to create it at the now non-existent beginning event; thus for all intents and purposes, God does not exist.

It is interesting to compare Sagan’s move to that of Hoyle. Both apparently see a direct relation between a theological claim (e.g., the existence of God) and a scientific claim (e.g., the existence of t=0), but they move in different directions: Hoyle’s move is from atheism to science (path 7 and 8), while Sagan’s is from science to theism. Actually, Sagan’s argument misses its mark since it is really aimed at a rather outmoded, deistic conception of God in which all God is needed for is an initial creation. For theists of all varieties today, God is the ongoing Creator of the universe even if there were no beginning, and the laws of nature, far from restricting God’s interaction with and action in the world, are our meager attempts to describe one dimension of God’s action as Creator.

I am suggesting instead that we look for indirect relations between cosmology and theology, ones in particular which involve a philosophical analysis of cosmological theories and their assumptions. In such an approach, the philosophical implications for theology of inflation and quantum cosmology may differ from those of Big Bang cosmology, but they are in no way eliminated. Instead, ontological, cosmological, and teleological issues resurface again as fertile sources of theological discussion. a) Ontological. Whether or not there was a beginning, the very fact of existence drives us to ask why anything exists at all? Actually Hawking himself underscored the fundamental nature of this question, and the insight that science per se may not be able to answer it, when he wrote in the conclusions of Brief History, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?” b) Cosmological. Why is the universe intelligible? Einstein returned to this fundamental question when he commented that “the eternal mystery of the universe is its comprehensibility.” c) Teleological. Why do the most general laws of physics, such as those underlying quantum gravity, and the natural constants used in quantum gravity, have the form and values they do? Could everything have been different such that no possible domain of the mega-universe would have been capable of life and mind? More generally, to what extent are inflation and quantum cosmologies relevant to theology? Are there specific features of inflationary and quantum cosmologies which deserve particular theological attention such as t=0 received in the past? with a theology of creation. As we begin to probe questions like these, it will be exciting to see what results are found in the next few years.

Finally, the ongoing developments in quantum gravity / quantum cosmology provide a rich example of what I’ve called paths (7) and (8). Here in ‘real time’ (and not just through such historical examples as that of Hoyle’s steady state) we can study the ways non-scientific factors play a role in both the formation of new theories and the reasons for choosing between them. A nice example of (7) comes from a comparison between the work of Penrose and Hartle/Hawking. In Roger Penrose’s approach, the universe arises through a small fluctuation in a quantum field in eternally-existing superspace. According to Hawking, however, the universe as a whole arises from the dovetailing of three-geometries in a quantum superspace leading to the formation of the four-dimensional spacetime manifold with no initial singularity. How do we decide between them? According to Chris Isham, the Penrose approach runs into trouble by its arbitrariness: why should one point in an infinite and homogeneous superspace be the seed for the universe and not others? In Isham’s view, Hawking’s model avoids this problem and is thus preferable. What is interesting here is the parallel Isham points out between his argument against the fluctuation model and Augustine’s rejection of the Platonic demiurge model in which God creates the universe at a point in an eternally pre-existing time. Instead, Augustine asserted that God creates time along with the universe;it is this concept of time as arising with the universe that parallel’s Augustine’s conception of the creation of time by God. Other scientists, including Hawking, have noticed this similarity, too. As an example of path (8) we can consider the theological claim that the imago dei, or image of God, includes the capacity for free will. But for us to be genuinely free, we must presupposes the possibility that we can enact our will by closing between alternative somatic dispositions, a possibility frequently seen as ruled out by Laplacian determinism but regained through the indeterminism that Heisenberg’s interpretation of quantum physics affords. It is reasonable, therefore, to extend this concern to the choice between an Einsteinian cosmology, with its inherent determinism, and a quantum cosmology. Clearly there are crucial scientific reasons for moving to the latter, but it is important to note that theology can be seen as offering intellectual reasons for such a move as well.

Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell