Ernie Rea broadcasts Beyond Belief, the BBC Radio 4 program, as he seeks to discuss whether modern Physics has explained away God. This is an incredibly relevant debate for the AQA AS Unit 'Psychology of Religion' as it seeks to analyse the impact which science has on religious faith.
For aspiring physicists the broadcast analyses the compatibility of science and religion: Quantum theory of uncertainty; the Big Bang and creation; Galileo's involvement and conflict with the Church; Newtonian principles; the relationship between the laws of nature, theology and the fundamental scientific forces in action around us.
When listening to this, think of how religion and science can work together by learning from each other, whether science seeks to undermine philosophy or whether both disciplines share an innate rationality which makes them inextricably linked.
Try to research the 'God of the gaps' theory and how it relates to the 'multiverse theory'. Is it possible for theology to explain the existence of an omnipotent God, creator of our universe without us being in contact with any other evidences of creation? Or is it more plausible that creation is a devine act and not that of a chemical reaction.
It is very deistic to think of the creation as a single, punctual event that happened in the past and "switched the world on". I divided my comment into two parts: the first is about why I disagree with this view and the second is about the idea I find more convincing.
ReplyDeletePART I - What I don't believe in
First of all, the idea that God is the ultimate cause of everything, and that creation was the event resulting in the existence of the Universe, immerses the God in time, which contradicts one of the properties attributed to God by definition: timelessness.
Secondly, if we define the creation to be the first event ever, we assume there is only one, absolute axis of time, having a beginning, which is a very arbitrary and not completely philosophical statement. Questions on finiteness or infiniteness and unity or plurality of time (or times) are the scope of physics and astronomy, not philosophical speculation.
Thirdly, the idea that the Big Bang was the creation of the Universe in a sense contradicts a scientific, logical and rationalistic approach. It cuts off the discussion and rejects any possible scientific explanations - e.g. Hawking's universe-out-of-nothing hypothesis, Lee Smolin's version of multiverse theory, and so on.
To sum up, myself being a believer, I don't believe in the God of the gaps. I think that modern, monotheistic, science-consistent religion should avoid thinking of the creation as an event or even as a process. Famous contemporary scientists-theologians, e.g. J. Polkinghorne, F. Ayala and M. Heller, seem to hold a similar view.
PART II - What I do believe in
Instead of thinking of God as an ultimate cause - which is necessarily temporal - I prefer to use a more general term: condition. A type of condition that is not a cause is, for example, a purpose, a concept extensively used by Aristotle. Instead of existing before their effects, as causes do, purposes exist after the results. While causes are often compared to domino blocks falling on each other, a purpose could be represented as a magnet attracting successive domino blocks to fall. However, the concept of a purpose is also temporal, so the idea of God as the ultimate purpose is equally naive as the idea of God as the ultimate cause.
Fortunately, there are also conditions that exist neither before nor after their effects, examples including the axioms of mathematics. I don't want the post to become too technical, but it is remarkable that in a sense axioms are conditions of existence of some mathematical objects, e.g. the axiom of choice is a condition of existence a base of every linear space; the axiom of induction is a condition of existence of natural numbers, etc. It may sound mad, but I suppose that a similar type of conditionality - instead of causality - may apply to God and the Universe.
Finally, I believe that God is not the ultimate, first cause existing somewhere in the beginning of time, but rather the ultimate *condition* - a concept which is far more general and abstract, making it more divine.