The Truth about Science and Religion

From the Big Bang to Neuroscience

Fleming

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498223300
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Religion has influenced the development of science over the past two millennia. The Truth about Science and Religion tells the story of their interaction. The book examines the origin of the universe, evolutionary processes, Christian beliefs, the history of science, what being human really means, and what science and religion have to say about these ideas. The Truth about Science and Religion is designed to help explore personal views on science and religion, offering questions for discussion at the end of each chapter. The book provides the historical and scientific background and the philosophical insight needed to think through issues of science and religion and their influences on personal beliefs. Metaphors, analogies, and comparisons are used to simplify complex topics so that any reader can engage with the key concepts. Unlike other books in this field, The Truth about Science and Religion follows a chronological scheme, treating increasingly personal topics as the book moves through cosmology, evolution, the life of Jesus, and the lives of several great scientists to regain a unified view of science and religion in today's world.

1. Is There Purpose to Life? Implications from the Big Bang

People long for understanding and meaning. Where did the world come from? What existed before there was a beginning? Is there a purpose to life? Does God exist? All attest to people’s fascination with one of life’s challenging questions: what, if anything, brought the world into existence? An intense explosion with precise timing and unimaginable force initiates a remarkable series of events that ultimately delivers earth: the blue planet, where butterflies dance between flowers and orcas breach seemingly for sheer delight. What a strange and beautiful world this is.

Two basic philosophical approaches have vied to explain the world’s origin; either the universe always existed or the universe had a beginning. Each approach has both scientific and religious implications. These philosophies have influenced science, but science cannot provide philosophical or religious proofs. Science provides a powerful method for investigating and revealing reality with which philosophy must wrestle. Although science and philosophy may seem esoteric, distant, and impersonal, at the root of these approaches are core beliefs that influence, or should influence, every person’s drive to live a life where actions are consistent with beliefs. Among the most significant of these questions is whether the world is designed and, if so, why? Alternatively, if the world is the result of chance, then how is purpose instantiated into each person’s life?

The Big Bang and the Bible

Big Bang theory states that the universe began from a very dense, very hot “singularity.” Elementary energetic particles called photons burst forth and spread out into the universe radiating energy. Cooling coalesced the photons into several larger atomic particles, quarks and gluons, that further coalesced into the three-quark structures: protons and neutrons. Over the following fifteen or so minutes, protons, neutrons, and electrons fused into the two most prevalent atomic species in the universe; hydrogen and helium. The entire sequence required less than an hour, indicating the remarkable ability of the universe’s early beginnings for self-organization and development. Physicists describe the extreme choreography of the Big Bang as being seemingly programmed into the very fabric of the universe. Physicist Fred Hoyle famously ruminated that “a superintellect has monkeyed with physics.”1

Many different pieces of evidence support the Big Bang theory. First, in the 1920s Edwin Hubble made the astounding observation that the galaxies were rapidly moving away from the center of the universe. If the universe is expanding then the natural conclusion is that sometime in the past the universe existed in a very compact form.

Scientists predicted that the enormous energy dissipating from the Big Bang would cause an afterglow in just the same way that a fire retains hot coals many hours after the last flames die. As sometimes happens in science, two groups simultaneously made the same discovery, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at Bell labs and Robert Dicke at Princeton; in this case finding the signature of the Big Bang as background microwave radiation. In a twist of fate, the scientists at Bell labs, while trying to develop better communication systems, found a constant background noise that could not be eradicated from their receivers. Inadvertently they had discovered the background radiation bathing the universe.

The rapid expansion of the Big Bang created an intense fireball with much of the radiation being emitted as light. God’s first creative act in the Bible’s opening chapter is the creation of light. Coincidence or correlation?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.2

The grand opening lines of Genesis declare that God created the world, although without any explanation how. Believers try to harmonize the Big Bang with the Bible’s famous description of God creating the world in seven days. Abundant scientific evidence for an old earth forces believers to revisit their interpretation that Genesis is literally describing seven twenty-four-hour periods. Some people concerned with maintaining the Bible’s truthfulness have favored a close, literal reading of the text. For example, each “day” corresponds to millions of years. Others, who stress science as providing an equally truthful tool for understanding creation, see the first chapter of Genesis as having a poetic form not suited to a literal interpretation.

In fact, this is nothing new. Theologians since the third century have identified problems with a literal interpretation, such as there being an end to the first day without a sun or earth. A non-literal interpretation of “day” overcomes the otherwise problematic issue of God’s work schedule. If God created light instantaneously, what did he do for the rest of the day? The focus in Genesis, it is suggested, is not how God made the world, but that God made the world as the stage for the drama of life.

In the 1920s Edwin Hubble’s telescopic images demonstrated that the universe was continuously expanding. Prominent among the proponents of this idea was the Catholic priest and physicist, Georges Lemaître, who saw no problem harmonizing God and cosmological theory. Galaxies moving apart at the speed of light means that, playing the tape backward, there was a beginning from which all creation came. The space between galaxies is stretching with space continuing to grow, but exactly what is the universe expanding into? Like the question of what happened before the universe existed, this particular question is better suited to philosophical answers than scientific ones.

Harmonizing scriptures with new scientific discoveries is a continuous process. In a sense, the resilience of Genesis to reinterpretation as science advances shows either God’s providence or people’s stubborn belief in God. Harmonizing the truths of science and religion is ultimately only valuable if the result is a richer, purposeful, and more consistent life.

A Finely-Tuned Universe

Whether experiencing nature’s web in a pristine mountain glade or peering at the wonders of a working cell, evidence of an intricately functional universe is everywhere. The beautiful and elegant descriptions used of nature are exactly those used by cosmologists to describe the equations for the expansion of the universe. Equally surprising is that the mathematical equations that describe the universe’s development are few and simple, the kind of equations whose discovery earns Nobel prizes.

Scientists commonly speak of equations having beauty despite the fact that no definition of beauty exists in science. Collectively, scientists agree on what constitutes a beautiful equation, an ingenious chemical reaction, or an elegant design because as humans, people see beauty in the world—the delicate lines in a face, intense colors of sunset, and the wonder of seeing a child being born. Scientists are as passionate as artists but operate within a discipline that strives for complete objectivity. Science is inherently focused on explanations of how the world works, but scientists, as people, are much more interested in understanding the meaning of the results. Einstein’s conclusion to his first paper on general relativity captures this personal essence: “Scarcely anyone who fully understands this theory can escape from its magic.”3

The universe not only has a beautiful mathematical structure but the equations and values are very finely tuned. Just four basic forces affected the first particles during the initial stages of the Big Bang: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. The balance between these forces is extremely precise in two ways: first the physical constants of the universe have very specific values, and second, the initial “boundary” conditions for the universe are tightly specified. Boundary conditions refer to the starting or developing nature of the universe, such as the delicate poise between expansion and collapse, and the fluctuations that form galaxies without forming black holes. Cosmologists like to say that the universe seems quite finely balanced between the outward energy of expansion and the inward pull of gravitation. Like shooting hoops, the force and trajectory must work together.

Fine tuning is nicely illustrated in the life of a star. Stars get their energy by burning hydrogen to form helium. When all the hydrogen is consumed, the core of the star pulls together under extreme gravity to form beryllium. Beryllium is a toxic element lacking the right bonding properties for most living organisms but is very efficiently converted to carbon (~100 percent), because there is just the right relationship between the electromagnetic and nuclear forces of beryllium and carbon. The energy for the conversion of beryllium into carbon is very closely matched so that if the conversion were only 4 percent higher or 0.5 percent lower, virtually no carbon would form. Carbon, once formed, can be consumed through a carbon-helium collision whose energy is similarly highly controlled; a deviation of only half a percent would lead all the carbon to be converted to oxygen. Carbon is slowly converted to oxygen, gradually enough to allow carbon to build up, but at a rate sufficient to produce oxygen for life. A series of delicately poised transformations provides a way for carbon to be produced from stars to provide “the building block for life.”

If the value of the gravitational constant was slightly larger, then the stars’ lifetimes would be much shorter with much less time for planets, and life, to evolve. Alternatively, weak gravity would mean that the stars could not generate enough heat to grow and explode to liberate the heavy atoms needed for life. How finely balanced is the force of gravity? Estimates for the allowable variation are in the range of 1 part in 100,000,000,000,000 (one hundred thousand billion).

Another example of fine tuning is the attractive force between two large masses. If this were just a little stronger, the force between the earth and the sun would be too strong and cause them to collapse into one body. If the force was just a little less, the world would spin off away from the sun. In either case the earth would not be properly warmed by the sun, and life would be unable to evolve. Owen Gingrinch, Harvard astronomer and historian of science, interprets this as follows: “Had the universe exploded with somewhat greater energy, it would have thinned down too fast for the formation of ...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Is There Purpose to Life? Implications from the Big Bang
• 2. The Origin of Life: Who or What Creates Life?
• 3. Evolution: From Amoeba to Zebra
• 4. Primates, Hominids, and Humans: What Makes People Human?
• 5. Jesus Christ: Prayer, Miracles, the Causal Joint, and the Resurrection
• 6. A Brief History of Science: From Prehistory to Particle Science
• 7. The Real Me: Mind, Brain, Soul, and Spiritual Experience
• 8. Where Science and Religion Meet: Is there Personal Relevance?
• 9. Epilogue: Does Science Influence Personal Belief?
• Bibliography