It is not just biological evolution that poses challenges to
traditional Christian views, scientific understanding of cosmological
evolution also raises issues for people of faith. According to
the Book of Genesis, God created the universe - and all the heavenly
bodies, the sun, the moon, and the stars - in six days. But according
to contemporary cosmologists the universe began with a great explosion
known as the Big Bang, after which the stars and galaxies slowly
formed over billions of years. Just as Darwin proposed that the
evolution of life was a long, slow, and gradual process, so cosmologists
now believe that our universe evolves by long slow processes.
Yet if the biblical account and the scientific account don't
match up in all their details, there are many parallels. Perhaps
most importantly, both suggest that the universe came into being
out of nothing a finite amount of time ago. Indeed, many contemporary
religious believers see the Big Bang as providing confirmation
for the Christian notion of creation ex nihilo (creation out of
nothing). Interestingly, when evidence of the Big Bang was first
discovered in the late 1920's (with Edwin Hubble’s finding
that the universe was expanding), many scientists rejected the
idea because they thought it smacked of religion. If the universe
had a beginning they felt, then it must have had a creator. But
that would be unscientific. At the time, the prevailing view was
that the universe had existed in much the same state forever and
that it therefore had no beginning.
Hubble's discovery that the universe was
expanding put paid to this static vision of the universe and suggested
that the cosmos had a definite starting moment. Moreover, this
view was supported by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity,
which provided a beautiful set of equations to describe how a
universe could arise out of nothing. Ironically, the tables have
now been turned with some scientists today arguing that the Big
Bang demonstrates that the universe came into being by purely
natural processes needing no supernatural power.
This view has been expressed most famously by the English physicist
Stephen Hawking. In his best-selling book "A Brief History
of Time", Hawking suggested that if current cosmological
theories turn out to be true then the creation of the universe
will have been completely explained by the laws of physics. In
that case, Hawking asks, what role would there be for a creator?
But again, where Hawking sees science
as writing God out of the picture, others take a different view.
Physicist Paul Davies, for example, has written that the beauty
and order of the laws of physics themselves suggests there must
be something behind those laws, something driving the mathematical
beauty and order in the universe. Likewise physicists John Polkinghorn
and John Barrow believe the incredibly finely balanced mathematical
order of the universe suggests there must be some kind of intelligent
force responsible. Stephen Hawking himself has associated God
with the laws of physics. In particular, he and Davies have associated
God with a so-called "theory of everything" - a single
theory that physicists hope will one day unite general relativity
with quantum mechanics, thereby bringing the entire universe under
one grand mathematical umbrella. This theory is a major goal of
contemporary theoretical physics, and it is this which Hawking
has famously linked to "the mind of God". Perhaps more
than any other science, cosmology is a case where one can either
see God reflected in the picture, or not. In the end, science
neither proves nor disproves the existence of God. More often
than not, the scientific evidence can be read either way.