God of the Big Bang: How Modern Science Affirms The Creator
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God of the Big Bang: How Modern Science Affirms The Creator
208Paperback
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781617954252 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Worthy |
| Publication date: | 04/14/2015 |
| Pages: | 208 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
God of the Big Bang
How Modern Science Affirms The Creator
By Leslie Wickman
Worthy Publishing Group
Copyright © 2015 Leslie WickmanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61795-425-2
CHAPTER 1
Family Star Parties: A Plan and a Purpose
Throughout my life, it seems that God has been preparing me to write this book. My interest in science began developing while I was a child, when my father took my brothers and me outside on clear, starry nights—a somewhat rare occurrence in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up. Looking through his telescope at the moon, stars, and planets sparked my early passion for astronomy and all things space-related.
Being raised in a Christian home, from as far back as I can remember, I had an underlying belief in God as the Creator of everything. At the same time my father, an engineer, was quite analytical. He had a strong interest in math and science and encouraged that interest in my brothers and me. And, at least in that way, I wanted to be like my dad.
Studious and geeky, possibly to the point of bordering on Asperger syndrome, I was painfully shy as a kid—at least until my family's move from Washington to Oregon forced me to start coming out of my shell. Due to the suddenness of the move, my older brother and I were temporarily sent to live with another family. That experience initiated years of hard, intentional work on my social skills.
The Great Divide
Whenever my brothers and I looked at the heavens, we understood that God was their Creator. My parents and the church taught us that the world was God's creation. But at school my science teacher taught something quite different. From his perspective, the facts of nature had nothing to do with God or religion.
Back then, my heart believed that God was the Creator, yet my mind didn't know how to integrate that conviction with science. How could the purely naturalistic theories of origins being taught in school mesh with my understanding of God?
When I was in junior high school, I was so concerned about the discrepancy between what I was learning at church versus what was being taught in my biology class that I took it upon myself to go through the book of Genesis in the Bible counting generations and adding up the years between Adam and Jesus just to try to figure out how much time might have passed between the first human being and the first century. That exercise helped me start researching my questions on my own.
As time went on, I continued studying both science and biblical interpretation. Through my research, it became increasingly clear that rather than contradicting each other, science and theology complement one another and together flesh out a more coherent view of the world. Too little information had created the dilemma that made me feel like I was supposed to choose between them. Deeper and more complete understanding of each discipline started resolving my angst and enabling me to embrace both science and theology.
Several scientists from the seventeenth century (Bacon, Galileo, and Newton) are among those credited with stating that "God is the author of two books: the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature." Even earlier, Saint Augustine warned Christians that they must be able to understand the relationship between science and Scripture:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, ... and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.
The more I learned by studying nature, the more I began standing in awe of nature's Creator. The intricacies and synergies—or uncanny collaborations—of creation have continually inspired me to worship the One who put it all together.
Unfortunately, there is indeed an illusion of conflict between science and religion, but that seems to be perpetuated by the fundamentalists at the polar extremes of this dialogue, those so thoroughly entrenched in their own positions that they cannot step back and think critically about their own perspectives.
A primary motivation in the writing of this book has been to help break down that perceived wall between science and faith, so that people—especially young people—realize it's not an either/or choice. A person does not have to leave his faith to pursue science, nor does someone have to reject science to be true to her faith. I didn't.
Fast-Forward
Over the years my research, work, and life experience have validated the compatibility of science and faith issues to the point that I frequently discuss them with family, friends, and people I meet in the normal course of my day. Sometimes that individual is a university student. Sometimes in my travels a person hears my background and asks one of the "big" questions of life. And sometimes I instigate a discussion with someone who shows an interest in either science or faith.
Scientific discoveries continue to surprise me with their potential to open up new opportunities to share my beliefs. In March 2014, after the Antarctica-based BICEP2 experiment announced possible evidence for gravity waves in the cosmic microwave background radiation, an editor at CNN's Belief Blog invited me to write an opinion editorial. This article, which CNN provocatively titled "Does the Big Bang breakthrough offer proof of God?" went viral. With over half a million views in less than a week, it ranked in the top five of the world's most shared news stories on social media. In the wake of the publicity it generated, Worthy Publishing contacted me to write this book.
Coincidentally (that's said facetiously because I don't really believe in random coincidences), the week before the BICEP2 news broke, I met with an editor friend who had been encouraging me to write a book on science and faith for several years. She advised me that to produce a successful book I'd need a public platform, an audience, and a publisher, then BOOM—two weeks later I had all three.
The discovery I wrote about for CNN made people around the world want to know more. Though space considerations prevented the entire piece from being posted on the blog, I supplied my original here for a fuller explanation of the correlation between faith and science in the light of this news:
The recent news headlines on the detection of evidence for gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background radiation—ripples in the space-time fabric of the universe—rocked the world of science. Touted as evidence for inflation (the rapid, faster-than-the-speed-of-light, early expansion of our newborn universe), confirming the gravity waves predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, and lending credence to the idea of a grand unified theory; this is big news.
But what are the implications of this new discovery for the Christian worldview? Insofar as it provides new evidence for the Big Bang, it provides strong support for the Judeo-Christian worldview. The prevalent theory of cosmic origins prior to the Big Bang theory was the Steady State theory, which stated that the universe had always existed and was therefore self-existent without a beginning that necessitated a cause. However, this new evidence lends further support to the Big Bang theory, which tells us that our universe had a beginning.
If the universe had a beginning, by the simple logic of cause and effect, there must have been an agent—separate and apart from the effect—that caused it. Sounds a lot like Genesis 1:1 to me: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
All of us devout Christians are concerned about a faithful reading of Scripture, but a reading true to the biblical text requires hard work. It's not just about opening the Bible and reading whatever we find there from a twenty-first-century American perspective. The context must also be studied. In addition we need to evaluate the culture, the genre, the authorship, and the original audience as they flesh out the intended meaning. By combining these various aspects, we see that what is being communicated in the origins passages of Genesis 1 and 2 is a theological message rather than a scientific one.
The creation message tells us that God created a special place for humans to live and thrive and be in communion with him. It also communicates that God wants a relationship with each of us and makes provisions for us to have fellowship with him, even after we rebel against him.
Genesis was never intended to be a detailed scientific handbook describing how God created. If it were and the author foreshadowed references to the Big Bang, gravity waves, dark matter, and dark energy; the text would have been confusing at best, and at worst maybe even frightening. If concepts that we still struggle to understand today were written about thousands of years ago, the text of Genesis would have been completely incomprehensible to its original audience.
Most of the time, our view of God is not big enough. We tend to be more comfortable keeping him in a box where we can pretend to comprehend him. But an infinite God is not constrained by our limited, finite human understanding. When he doesn't act the way we think he should, we may feel like the children of Narnia in C. S. Lewis' beloved tale—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While expressing their fear of Aslan (the Lion that represented Jesus), they were told: "'Course he isn't safe. But he's good."
The God who reveals himself through the biblical account of creation, as well as through scientific discoveries, may not fit our expectations, but he is good. A better understanding of each discipline informs our understanding of the other.
Science and faith are not in an "either/or" competition. The trick is in seeing how they fit together. A person can choose to be both a good scientist as well as a faithful Christian. If God is truly the Creator, then he will reveal himself through what he's created, and science is a tool that can be used to uncover those wonders. Properly practiced, science can be an act of worship in looking at God's revelation of himself in nature.
It seems that this cycle of new scientific discoveries, followed by an adjustment in our interpretation of Scripture relative to our understanding of God's interaction with the physical world, keeps repeating itself. A few examples include:
• Galileo's empirical evidence refuting the geocentric view of the cosmos
• Darwin's proposition of random mutations and natural selection for biological evolution
• Hubble, Gamow, Penzias, Wilson, and others' work showing evidence for a cosmic Big Bang beginning
Will Christians experience another crisis of faith if we discover convincing evidence for the multiverse hypothesis, or extraterrestrial intelligent life? Maybe so, but by breaking this cycle and taking God out of the box, we can worship the Creator as he really is—not safe, but good.
And, by discovering more reasons to believe in his existence, we'll learn even more about who he is.
CHAPTER 2Is God Real? Evidence for His Existence
Does God exist? That's one of the most important of life's big questions. As soon as I start thinking about it, another basic question quickly arises in my analytical mind: "Can anyone ever really prove that God exists?"
Of course, Immanuel Kant and others would say that God's existence can never be proven. And truthfully, if we could fully prove God's existence, what room would be left for faith and free will? If God's existence were as empirically knowable as other physical realities (like the sun or the wind, for example), a person would have to be in terrible denial not to believe.
Still, perhaps the idea of proving God's existence depends on what we mean when using the word proof, which has different meanings within different contexts, especially in today's postmodern world. For example, a scientist might refer to "empirical proof," something that can be verified using one or more of the five physical senses. Or a forensic specialist might refer to "logical proof," as in cause and effect. An attorney might refer to "legal proof," as in "beyond a reasonable doubt" or "a preponderance of the evidence." Personally, in the discussion about proof of God, I prefer the following question: "What would constitute adequate evidence for you to concede the existence of God?"
Classical Arguments
As a scientist, empirical evidence and rational arguments are very appealing. There are a number of well-known and often-used arguments for God's existence, which have been called by various names over the ages. Their essentials are summarized in the following four argument strategies:
1. the cosmological argument
2. the ontological argument
3. the anthropological argument
4. the teleological argument
The first three of these categories are discussed in this chapter, and the fourth (the teleological argument) is addressed in chapter 7.
The Cosmological Argument
This argument in various forms has been credited to a variety of sources—from Plato and Aristotle to medieval Muslim and Jewish philosophers, as well as to Saint Thomas Aquinas. Many versions are inspired by the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
Perhaps the simplest version, the Kalam cosmological argument, uses the logic of cause and effect, reasoning that anything that begins to exist has a cause. Thus, if the physical universe had a beginning (as both astrophysics and the book of Genesis tell us), something, or Someone, must have caused it.
This argument is pretty much the same as Aristotle's First Cause, or the Prime Mover concept: everything that happens is caused by something else, and everything (except the first thing) that causes something, is itself caused by something else. If you trace this line of reasoning back far enough (and avoid going crazy in the process), you eventually end up at the First Cause—the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover, or the Prime Mover. Aristotle thought this causal agent must itself be eternal, perfect, unchanging, and independent of anything else. Following this same line of reasoning, Saint Thomas Aquinas concluded that the "First Cause" must be God.
Modern-day theologian and philosopher William Lane Craig explained the cosmological argument by stating that since the universe began to exist (that is, it did not always exist), it is not a so-called necessary being and, therefore, it is not self-explanatory with respect to its existence. Since whatever begins to exist has a cause, there must be something that ultimately preceded it: an eternal, transcendent cause of the universe. Thus, the only noncontingent, self-explanatory "necessary being" is God.
The Ontological Argument
Originated by Saint Anselm of Canterbury, this argument uses abstract reasoning. Adapted and modified by others such as René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Kurt Godel, it goes something like this: anyone who would even consider that God does exist is, in a sense, admitting that there is a God. That's because part of what is meant when speaking of God is that he's a "perfect being," and a God who exists is more perfect than one who does not. If perfection is a part of the concept of God and if God's perfection implies his existence, then to speak of God as a perfect being is therefore to imply that he exists. Still with me?
Seventeenth-century French mathematician Blaise Pascal hinted at this concept with his notion of the "God-shaped vacuum" within every person. The fact that we have within us the idea of God suggests that God is its cause. Mankind's "God-consciousness" (or simply our thoughts of God) implies a God who imprinted such a consciousness on him.
This God-consciousness is universal in that it is experienced by humans everywhere, regardless of time, place, culture, and society. In more recent times, Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has updated the basic reasoning behind Anselm's argument by using the logic of necessity and possibility.
The Anthropological Argument
The third classical argument encompasses assertions from moral conscience and from religious experience. This argument is based on evidence for the human spirit. Our spiritual dimension differentiates us as human beings from animals, and it is evidenced by our quest for meaning and purpose in life.
When we worship, we are able to think abstractly and mentally experience the spiritual domain. We also think abstractly and are often inspired to reach beyond ourselves when we admire art, nature, music, or architecture. Reasoning by inference to the best explanation, these distinctly human spiritual traits are said to point to an intelligent, moral, and personal Creator.
The moral component to this argument asserts that the universal built-in human awareness of right and wrong, also referred to as "moral conscience" or "natural law," implies a moral Creator who put it there. Saint Paul the apostle writes in his letter to the Romans, "the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them" (2:15). One paraphrase of the Bible reads, "God's law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God's yes and no, right and wrong" (MSG).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from God of the Big Bang by Leslie Wickman. Copyright © 2015 Leslie Wickman. Excerpted by permission of Worthy Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xv
1 Family Star Parties: A Plan and a Purpose 1
2 Is God Real? Evidence for His Existence 13
3 Approach with Caution: Using the Scientific Method 23
4 A Reasonable Faith: Using Logic and Sound Arguments 39
5 The Bible: Its Evidence, Interpretation, and Message 57
6 Genesis and Origins: A Spectrum of Views 69
7 The Goldilocks Principle: Just-Right for Life 85
8 Environmental Stewardship: This Is My Father's World 113
9 The Universe: Are We Alone? 145
Conclusion 169
Notes 173