Origins and Creation

Abstract

It is arguably difficult to find a more heated topic of discussion than that concerning the origins of the universe, and especially of life and of intelligence, and whether such origins can be understood without evoking a Creator God. Responses range from the extremes of a Stephen Hawking or a Pope Pius XII to almost all conceivable intermediate positions. Hawking claims that, if his quantum cosmological theory of the origins of the universe without boundary conditions is correct, then we have no need of God. Pius XII attempted to claim that with Big Bang cosmologies scientists were coming to discover what had already been known from the Book of Genesis, namely that the universe had a beginning in God’s creative action. In between we have such positions as evolutionary naturalism and episodic divine intervention. Evolutionary naturalists would claim that, although our scientific knowledge of evolution is limited, the best explanation of the universe and all that it contains is through complexificati on in an expanding, evolving system in which both deterministic and chance processes play out their roles in a universe abundant with opportunities, 15 billion years old and containing 10²² stars. Those who profess episodic divine intervention would claim that divine activity is required, at least in some phases of the evolutionary process and, in particular at the occurrence of human life and intelligence, because natural processes alone are not adequate to explain the end result. What is one who is both a believing Christian and a scientist to make of all of this?