RMPS
Nature of Belief:
Science and Belief
Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2
6833
Spring 2000
HIGHER STILL
RMPS
Nature of Belief:
Science and Belief
Intermediate 1 and Intermediate 2
Support Materials
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CONTENTS
1.
TEACHER’S GUIDE
2.
STUDENT’S GUIDE
3.
HOW DO WE COME TO KNOW THINGS?
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The scientific method
The scientific worldview
The effects on religious belief
Other methods used by scientists
Science is not enough
Religious belief
Religious experience
The spiritual dimension
4.
HOW DID THE UNIVERSE BEGIN?
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The size of the universe
The Big Bang theory
The First Cause
Genesis
What Christians believe about origins
5.
HOW DID LIFE COME ABOUT?
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The theory of Evolution
Creation
Design
The Anthropic Principle
Creationism
Meaning and purpose
6.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1.
TEACHER’S GUIDE
When we say that we believe something, a theory, a story, or body of doctrine we
generally mean that we accept it as true. We may even be prepared to use it as a
guide to living and act on it although we may lack conclusive evidence that it is in fact
true. We all live much of the time by our beliefs, and there are relatively few matters
on which we would claim to have certain knowledge. When we talk about knowledge
we usually take it for granted that we have grounds or evidence for what we know. In
the case of belief the situation can be very different. Many beliefs are not amenable to
the same kind of testing as for example scientific hypotheses, and cannot be verified
or falsified by the same kinds of evidence. This lack of certainty does not worry us
very much where everyday matters are concerned. Some of our beliefs are concerned
with fairly ordinary even trivial things. I believe it will rain today so I will take my
umbrella. I believe that the latest James Bond movie is the best one I’ve seen. Other
beliefs are much more serious and are often acquired, nurtured and developed over
many years. This can be the case with a person’s political views or their beliefs about
topics and issues that interest them and that they have come to care about deeply.
Other kinds of beliefs which people hold are often referred to as ultimate,
transcendent, or metaphysical beliefs because their truth or falsity cannot be
established by any kind of empirical evidence. These include religious beliefs about
the nature, origins and destiny of human beings, their place and significance in the
universe; about good and evil and how we should lead our lives; about the existence
or non-existence of God. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries beliefs such as
these encountered significant opposition. Until then, for most people in Britain and
throughout Europe, Christianity had provided the basis of their beliefs and values. It
told them everything they needed to know about the meaning and purpose of life. The
challenge came from two directions. First, scientific discovery and scientific methods
began to undermine religious belief. The universe as revealed by science appeared to
be governed by natural laws and to be subject to natural forces. Even human life
seemed to be explicable in terms of a random process of natural evolution. Second,
and perhaps more seriously, secular belief systems emerged which repudiated the
supernatural in favour of critical reason. The most powerful of these was Marxism
which influenced countless revolutions and, until recently, drove a political wedge
between east and west. Humanism, which lies at the heart of Marxist theory, if not all
of its practice, places great store on modern science and the scientific method of
inquiry as the basis for its view of the world and human nature. Consequently,
religious believers find themselves faced with challenges which seem to consist of a
mixture of scientific, humanist and marxist argument.
These materials deal specifically with Science and Belief. They introduce the
challenges which scientific discovery and scientific method raises for religious belief
and discuss some of the ways in which Christians in particular have responded.
Science and Belief is one of three options within the unit called ‘Nature of Belief’.
The three options are:

Existence of God

Science and Belief

Belief and Action.
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Each of these options at Intermediate 1 has a clear progression route to their
equivalent options at Intermediate 2, and each of the options at Intermediate 2 has a
natural progression to the three options within the unit at Higher level called Critiques
and Challenges.
The Nature of Belief unit whose option is Science and Belief has three key issues:
1.
2.
3.
How do we come to know things, dealing with the different ways in which we
acquire knowledge about the world;
How the universe began, which looks at scientific and religious theories and
stories about the origins of the universe; and
How did life come about, which considers the different interpretations
surrounding ideas about creation and evolution?
Students should be encouraged to identify the issues and explain why they present a
challenge for religious believers. Analysis of the issues involves distinguishing and
explaining both the challenges and responses. Although the citing of sources is not
essential, students should be encouraged to make use of them in order to enhance the
quality of their understanding.
For the purposes of evaluation it is important that all students are given the
opportunity to respond to questions that require discussion of both sides of an issue.
For summative assessment purposes, however, students at Intermediate 1 level will be
required to express an opinion and justify it by giving at least two reasons.
In general students should have opportunities to:
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demonstrate understanding of certain issues of religious belief
analyse the issues in terms of challenges and responses
evaluate by discussing both sides of an issue
justify their conclusions.
Teachers will have their own strategies and preferred ways of organising learning. A
recommendation to include variety, however, is an important one given that students
will inevitably have different learning styles. Students should be encouraged to make
use of their own life experiences when exploring and reflecting on issues, and to seek
views from a wide range of sources including books, video material, and from
recognised specialists in the areas being studied. Opportunities to talk through
particular challenges and responses in order to tease out their meaning and
significance will be important. Also important will be class and group discussion so
that through dialogue, students can learn from others and begin to formulate their own
opinions. Familiarity with key texts and passages will enable students to demonstrate
an appropriate level of understanding in relation to both challenges and responses, and
to support their own conclusions.
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Learning strategies will therefore take a number of forms such as:
 Gathering information and viewpoints from books, video, CD-ROM
 Student presentation
 Teacher presentation
 Class and group discussion
 Role play
 Direct teaching.
Organising teaching groups
The following advice is suggested for teachers/lecturers who might be considering
teaching more than one level in the same class i.e. Nature of Belief Intermediate 1
and 2, or Intermediate 2 and Christianity: Critiques and Challenges.
Nature of Belief (Int 1 and 2)
The content is the same for both levels. It is suggested that differentiation should take
place in one of two ways. Students might be given the same or very similar tasks and
activities and their work would then be assessed against the performance criteria.
Differentiation would be reflected in the length of the response: restricted or extended
responses respectively. Alternatively, the tasks themselves might be differentiated.
This applies particularly to outcome 3 where Intermediate 1 students are required
simply to ‘express a clear personal opinion’ on the chosen issue, while Intermediate 2
students must ‘discuss both sides of a given issue’.
Nature of Belief (Int 2) and Christianity: Critiques and Challenges (H)
In the content for each level, there are three options which have a close
correspondence with each other:
Nature of Belief
Christianity: Critiques and Challenges
Existence of God
Science and Belief
Belief and Action
Secular Humanism
Science
Marxism
Generally speaking there is extended content in the options at Higher, but most of the
ideas and issues at Intermediate 2 appear in the equivalent Higher option. It is
suggested that students at both levels should be doing communal work at the
beginning of the unit and perhaps might be given the same or very similar formative
assessments. Clearly, summative assessment of the units at each level would be
different, and this reflects the difference in the nature and challenge of the material at
each level.
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2.
STUDENT’S GUIDE
These materials are intended to help you study the challenges to religious belief raised
by scientific development and scientific methods and to explore the various responses.
You will be expected to explain these challenges and responses and to say what you
think about them. You will become familiar with some key texts, passages and
commentators within both Science and Christianity. These will help you to
understand better the challenges and responses and to support your own views and
conclusions. The main issues and areas to be covered are:

How do we come to ‘know’ things?
Scientific method and religious beliefs.

How did the universe begin?
Genesis story and Big Bang theory.

How did life come about?
Evolution and creation.
You will need to be able to:
 describe what the issue is about
 explain why the issue presents a challenge to religious believers
 explain clearly the challenge and a relevant response to the challenge
 discuss both sides of an issue you are given
 reach a personal conclusion on the issue and give reasons which support it.
You should try to refer to sources as often as you can, especially where this helps to
show your understanding of a viewpoint or issue. You are encouraged to use direct
quotations if you can but there are other useful ways of referring to sources:
 By naming the title of the source and/or where appropriate, the author
 By paraphrasing the source so that you use your own words in order to give an
accurate account of what is said
 By a combination of these methods.
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3.
HOW DO WE COME TO KNOW THINGS?
Over the last two hundred years religion and science have had an uneasy relationship.
They have been seen as poles apart in terms of the method they use and the
assumptions they make about how the world should be investigated. Science has been
seen as concentrating on observation and experiment and being concerned with the
demand for evidence and proof. Religion, on the other hand, has been seen to rest
mainly on ‘revelation’ and as being about commitment and faith. Its beliefs cannot be
proved using the methods of science.
As a result the answers which science gives to questions such as, How did the
universe begin? and How did life come about? are seen as much more believable than
those offered by religion.
Some would argue that the success of science in the twentieth century has been as a
direct result of the methods it uses. But is there such a thing as a specifically
scientific method? And if so what is it?
The scientific method
The scientific method is sometimes summed up in the phrase, ‘Only Hippos Eat
Vultures’ - observation, hypothesis, experiment, verification. This experimental
method is generally thought to have been invented in the seventeenth century and
explained first in the writings of Francis Bacon. He was himself an enthusiastic
scientist and sought to justify the new methods and assumptions so that science could
progress on to greater discoveries. His passion for experiment is said to have resulted
in his own death after he contracted a chill. He is said to have got out of his carriage
in the depth of winter to carry out an experiment with snow as a means of preserving
meat!
This scientific method relies on collecting evidence using our senses and tries to draw
conclusions based on a number of observations. You make an observation or perform
an operation and note the consequences. If the same observation or event is
repeatedly followed by the same consequence, you can draw the conclusion that this
reflects the way the world is. For example, if you throw a switch on the wall and a
light comes on it could be caused by the switch or it could be just a coincidence. If
you do the same a second time and the light comes on again, you may well suspect
that it was the switch that caused the light to go on. A third, a fourth and a fifth time
and you may be pretty sure you are right. This was the scientific method formulated
by Francis Bacon and for about 300 years afterwards it was the way most scientists
believed they worked.
The scientific worldview
The roots of the scientific view of the world go back at least to the eighteenth century.
Until then, for most people in Britain and throughout Western Europe, Christianity
provided the basis of their beliefs and values. It told them everything they needed to
know about the meaning and purpose of life. It was the Church that marked and gave
meaning to the great moments in their lives. It welcomed their newly born into the
community through baptism, blessed their marriages and comforted and reassured
them in death. A significant proportion of people gave themselves up completely to
religion and became monks and nuns.
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The main points of the modern scientific worldview as it developed during the course
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are:
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In contrast to the medieval universe which was created and continually watched
over by God, the scientific universe was impersonal and governed by regular
natural laws.
The universe was now regarded, at least in principle, as completely
understandable by the human mind. A knowledge of physics, mathematics and
of scientific method was all that was required. There was no need to bring in
God. Other aspects of human nature such as the emotional, aesthetic, ethical,
and imaginative were generally regarded as irrelevant for an objective
understanding of the world.
Science replaced religion as the dominant intellectual authority. It was science
not the church that people began to look to for information about what the world
and the universe was really like. Human reason and scientific observation
replaced theological doctrine and the Bible as the principal means for
understanding the universe.
The freedom of individuals to make up their own minds about what they
believed was now strongly emphasised. As a result religious beliefs and
religious institutions, which some thought had interfered with people’s right to
independence and individual self-expression, became much less important.
The effects on religious belief
The main effect of scientific discovery and the scientific method was to undermine
religious belief. First there was the realisation that it was the earth and not the sun
which moved in the Heavens and that the Earth, and therefore humankind, was not
after all the centre of the universe. The universe itself was seen to be far vaster than
anyone had previously imagined.
Moreover, the universe as revealed by science seemed to be an impersonal one,
governed by natural laws and understandable in terms of Physics and Mathematics.
Even people appeared to be the result of a random and impersonal process of
evolution. All this seemed to make the need for God somewhat unnecessary. As
people began to accept a scientific view of the world which looked for explanations in
terms of regular natural laws, belief in religion was seriously undermined.
The scientific methods employed by science were perhaps even more of a challenge to
religious belief than scientific knowledge itself. As we have seen in order to establish
what is ‘true’ in the scientific realm it was essential to observe, to investigate, carry
out experiments, and draw conclusions. Everything was open to question. In other
words, for something to be counted as true or factual there had to be evidence
available to support it. The problem was that the evidence for many fundamental
religious beliefs seemed to be lacking. What sort of evidence could possibly be
gathered to support the belief in the resurrection, for example?
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Moreover the process of observing and gathering evidence seemed to many people to
be an entirely reasonable way of acquiring knowledge about the world. Religious
beliefs, however, appeared not to be subject to that process. They were not amenable
to the same kinds of testing and experiment as scientific theories. As a result they
began to lose much of their force and credibility.
‘Raisings from the dead, miraculous healings and exorcisms, a divine-human
savior, a virgin birth, manna from heaven, wine from water, water from rocks,
partings of seas - all appeared increasingly improbable to the modern mind.’
(Richard Tarnas, 1991, p303)
As a result of these developments some scientists and philosophers have claimed that
the only statements which can be considered meaningful are scientific statements (that
is, those that can be supported by evidence from our senses). Therefore all religious
and metaphysical statements or questions such as ‘I believe in God’, ‘Does life have a
purpose?’ ‘Is there life after death’? are meaningless. This has given rise to the
popular view that scientific language is the only acceptable way to talk about the
world. This view is well illustrated in the following quotations:
‘Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific means: and
what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.’ (Bertrand Russell)
‘Truth means scientific truth.’
(Richard Dawkins)
Other methods used by science
Far from there being one scientific method it might well be that scientists make
progress in their field in a variety of ways, some of which involves testing and
experiments, others which do not. For example, scientists rely on intuition, hunches,
inspirational guesses and leaps in the dark. One of the greatest discoveries in Physics
this last century – the General Theory of Relativity – was made by a young scientist
called Albert Einstein imagining what it would be like to travel on the end of a moon
beam! Scientists also rely on teamwork and, occasionally, on accident such as in the
‘discovery’ of penicillin by Fleming.
In the twentieth century the philosopher Karl Popper set out an alternative way of
thinking about science. The fact that many scientific developments and discoveries
had been arrived at by different means interested Popper. He tried to set out what he
regarded as the means by which science actually progresses. He said that scientists
begin with a theory, well informed guesses that required to be experimentally tested.
However, according to Popper, their theories are tested not to prove them right but to
prove them false. When all the scientist’s theories have been shown to be false except
one, then he or she can conclude, at least for the time being, that the remaining theory
is the correct one. But no theory is safe for all time. Every theory is ultimately only a
hypothesis and therefore it is always possible to prove them wrong. His account of
scientific method is sometimes known as the ‘falsification theory’.
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Science is not enough
The scientific method was devised as a more effective way of acquiring knowledge
about the world. It was believed that the information that resulted from such a
method would be much more reliable than the knowledge acquired by religion. Even
the method advocated by Bacon, however, can never establish absolute certainty. No
matter how often you throw the switch and the light comes on, you cannot be
absolutely certain the same thing will happen the next time you do it. The fact that, as
far as we know, every human being that has ever lived has eventually died, makes it
pretty certain that we will die too. But maybe we are wrong, one of us may be an
exception. These points highlight the limitations of this scientific method and has
been illustrated in a comical fashion by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. He
suggested that a chicken that awoke to be fed as it had every other day would
eventually awake to have its neck wrung! The chicken, on the basis of its everyday
experience, assumed that the future would always resemble the past!
The idea that the knowledge acquired through scientific methods is the only kind of
knowledge worth having has been increasingly criticised in recent years. It is said
that it represents a very narrow and blinkered approach to life. Such a view is often
blamed for the materialist nature of society which many claim has ignored the
spiritual and emotional aspects of life.
The trouble with relying totally on science for knowledge and truth is that science
seems to leave many questions unanswered as we can see for example in the
following quotations from a philosopher and a modern scientist:
‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’
(Leibniz)
‘Why does the universe bother to exist? I don’t know the answer to this.’
(Stephen Hawking)
Some people argue that questions like these cannot be answered and therefore it is not
even worthwhile talking about them. What we should do is just ignore them and get
on with our lives. Others, including some scientists and philosophers, believe that
such questions show that important and valuable though science is, it cannot tell us
everything about the world.
The biologist Steven Rose, for example, believes that science has given us a better
understanding of the world than we had, say, a hundred years ago. However, this
understanding will never be the whole truth about the world. Being an atheist
himself, he nevertheless believes that there are other ways of viewing the world and
other ways of understanding it. They come by investigating the world through art,
poetry, novels and also people’s own experience. Nor, he says, should we ignore
people’s interest in and concern with religion.
The twentieth century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, said that, as far as he was
concerned, the things that were really important in life couldn’t be supported by
scientific type evidence. In fact, they couldn’t even be stated very clearly! They
could only be suggested and pointed to. As a result, Wittgenstein did not have a very
high opinion of science. Scientific language and methods were only useful for finding
out about and describing matters of fact and logic.
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‘The facts of the world’, he wrote, ‘are not the end of the matter.’
(quoted in Clack & Clack, 1998, p.110)
All the issues that matter most to us and have the greatest significance for us lie
outside the scope of science. He said that even when all possible scientific questions
have been answered, the problems of life will still remain completely untouched.
Religious belief
Although religious beliefs are passed down from generation to generation, within
particular religious communities religions hold that their beliefs are also and more
importantly the result of revelation. For Christians the Bible is the central revelation
of God to human beings. The Bible is seen as a source of truth about God, revealing
that he exists, what he is like, and what he has done in relation to human beings.
Christianity claims that God sometimes reveals himself to particular men and women.
In the Old Testament God revealed himself to Moses on Mount Sinai giving him the
Ten Commandments. In the New Testament they believe that God revealed a new
law for humankind through Jesus Christ.
Examples of revelation from the Bible are the following:
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was
without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit
of God moved on the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light...’
(Genesis 1)
‘And when Jesus was baptised, he went up immediately from the water, and
behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a
dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’ (Matthew 3)
Christians regard the Bible as the final authority in matters of faith and practice.
Some understand this to mean that the Scriptures provide us with the truth in all
matters including History and Science. Others believe that the authority of Scriptures
does not extend this far but can be trusted to give the truth about the meaning of life
and about God.
Religious experience
Research shows that many people still have religious experiences. Sir Alistair Hardy
and several of his colleagues collected and analysed over three thousand cases of
reported religious experiences. He concluded that a large number of people have a
deep awareness of some spiritual reality beyond themselves. Those people who have
had such a specific, deeply held experience of a spiritual power do not necessarily
refer to it as a religious experience, nor do they necessarily belong to an institutional
religion. He discovered it often happens to children and to atheists and agnostics and
it usually induces in the person concerned a conviction that the everyday world is not
the whole of reality, that there is another dimension to life.
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More recently, similar work has been carried out by David Hay at the Oxford Centre
for Religious Experience. He conducted many interviews throughout the country and
found that a high proportion of people claim to have had experiences of a power or
presence beyond themselves. Within Christianity ordinary believers often claim to
have experienced God, sometimes in the form of dreams, visions or inner voices, or
sometimes in the form of extraordinary and miraculous experiences. Among the more
famous examples are Lourdes and the Toronto blessing.
In his classic study of religious experience, Rudolf Otto coined the phrase ‘numinous’
to describe the sense of mystery which people come to feel in certain circumstances.
1.
For example, people are frequently struck with a sense of awe as they gaze at
the stars and contemplate the vastness of the universe.
2.
They may be overcome with a sense of the beauty and wonder of nature.
3.
On the other hand, they can experience a feeling of helplessness as they struggle
to deal with some event which changes or devastates their lives.
4.
They may have a feeling of being in the presence of something eerie or uncanny
which is powerful and awe-inspiring.
Otto regarded the disposition to have such feelings as the basis of religion and
religious experience. It was, he says:
‘the feeling of ‘something uncanny’, ‘eerie’, or ‘weird’. It is this feeling
which,……forms the starting point for the entire religious development in history.’
(Rudolph Otto, 1926, p6)
The spiritual dimension
It is a popular view that over the last two hundred years science has become the
dominant influence on how people in the West see the world and their place in it.
Science is often seen as being on the way to explaining everything, to solving all the
world’s problems and to making the world a better place and our own lives happier
and more fulfilled. It is now clear that far from making the world a better place,
science has contributed to some of the worst aspects of modern life. It produced the
atomic bomb and is responsible for the pollution of the natural environment by toxic
chemicals. Increasingly therefore, western societies are looking to the values of nonwestern societies who have tended to adopt a more spiritual approach to life and relied
less on scientific remedies and inventions. There is today, for example, a growing
emphasis on alternative medicines as opposed to scientifically produced drug based
therapies. Universities are introducing degree courses in areas such as aromatherapy,
reflexology and kinesiology.
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One of the most important influences in scientific thinking in the twentieth century
has come from discoveries in the field of Quantum Physics which studies the
behaviour of sub-atomic particles. For example, atoms had always been thought of as
solid, the building blocks for everything we see around us. They have now been
discovered to be largely empty. As a result the basic material of nature, the atom, can
no longer be described simply as hard matter. The world itself is not just a physical
object but also includes a non-physical or spiritual dimension. Christians would argue
that if the world has a spiritual dimension this is evidence for the existence of God.
Another point which many people believe reflects a spiritual dimension in the world is
the experience of human life itself. Our own human personality possesses a quality
that has to do with what we might call incompleteness. If it is true, as some would
argue, that we are all looking for something, it is also true that we never seem to find
it. In surveys when people are asked what it is they most want out of life, a common
response is that they just want to be happy or to be fulfilled. We always seem to be
on the way to being something. As some philosophers and psychologists prefer to put
it, we are in a process of becoming. By this they mean that human beings are always
on the move, going forward, starting something new, achieving new goals. For this
reason human beings have not yet reached the finishing post and face a future in
which they still have to shape themselves. We are capable of becoming whatever we
want to become and achieving whatever we want to achieve.
People who take this view argue that science will never understand everything about
human beings, and how and why they behave the way they do. Human beings are not
just another problem which science will eventually solve. Scientific theories may
give us valuable insights into ourselves from time to time but they will never provide
us with a complete understanding because personality is a mystery.
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THINGS TO DISCUSS AND WRITE ABOUT

Why do you think many people believe that the knowledge coming from science
is more reliable than that which comes from religion? What do you think?

Using examples, explain what effects new scientific knowledge has had on
religious belief.

Explain what is meant by the ‘scientific’ method?
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Why do you think the scientific method has proved such an effective challenge
to religious belief?
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Can all aspects of human life be investigated using the scientific method? Are
there any aspects, in your view, which are not open to this method? Why or
why not?

‘What science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.’ How far do you agree
with this?

‘The facts of the world are not the end of the matter.’ What do you think
Ludwig Wittgenstein meant by this? Do you agree with him? Give reasons for
your answer.
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What do religious believers mean by ‘revelation’?
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Describe an example of a religious experience.
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What evidence is there that religious experience is widespread?
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What did Rudolph Otto mean by religious experience?
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What objections might some people make to the claim that religious experience
is proof of God’s existence?
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What do you understand by ‘the spiritual dimension of life’?
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Can the tensions and misunderstandings between science and religion ever be
resolved?
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4.
HOW DID THE UNIVERSE BEGIN?
The size of the universe
According to astronomers our star, the sun, is one of about 100,000 million stars in
our galaxy, which is called the Milky Way. And there are reckoned to be 100,000
galaxies in the universe. The sun is about 100 million miles away from us and the next
nearest star is about two million million miles away from us. Our galaxy is about
50,000 million million miles across. Some of the most distant things that can be seen
are thousands of millions of millions of millions of miles away. It’s so big you just
can’t imagine it! We can’t be sure that there are other planets just like our own which
can support life. However there are so many stars like our sun that, even if only one
in a hundred has planets, it means there are a great number of planets. And even if
only one in a hundred of those planets is at a suitable distance from its star to support
life, that’s still a lot of stars with planets able to support life. Also, for about fifteen
billion years the universe existed, so far as we know, without any human beings to
observe it. And human life will probably come to an end at some point as the earth
and similar planets become uninhabitable through cold or heat.
The Big Bang theory
The universe then is very large but was it always like that? What do we know about
the origin of the universe and how it developed? Although, of course, no one was
there to see it, what scientists think happened was that there was an enormous Big
Bang. At the beginning everything was concentrated into a very, very dense spot (for
want of a better word) and this exploded. Out of that explosion came everything: all
space, all time, all matter, all energy. And since then it has been gradually expanding
and cooling. At first it was a great ball of energy, but with time it has turned into
matter. It all came from the Big Bang about 15-20 thousand million years ago.
There are essentially three pieces of evidence for the Big Bang. The first is that the
galaxies are still moving apart as a result of that great explosion. We can tell this
because the light we get from them is redder than you would otherwise expect. This
is what you get if a source of light is moving away from you at speed (something like
the noise of a police car’s siren which is lower the faster it moves away from you).
This points to them all having been in one place at one time. Second, as with any big
explosion, the Big Bang was accompanied by a blinding flash of light. The cooled
down remains of that flash are still about in the universe and have been detected and
measured by scientists. Third, scientists have been able to measure the proportion of
different kinds of atoms in the universe and these proportions are exactly what you
would expect to come out of the conditions which existed at the time of the Big Bang.
In the light of this evidence there is almost universal agreement now among scientists
that the universe began with a Big Bang. There are those, however, including some
scientists, who do not accept this conclusion. These include members of the Creation
Science Movement a UK organisation devoted to upholding the literal interpretation
of Genesis, with its account of the creation of the world in six days. They say that the
evidence is not so conclusive as is generally thought. They also argue that the Big
Bang theory has to assume that at one time there was nothing and that nothing
eventually exploded into everything. They say you can’t get something from nothing.
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Also the idea that the orderliness of the universe and our solar system arose out of an
explosion is surprising. We tend to expect explosions to give rise to chaos rather than
order.
Genesis
For other Christians this approach appears to fly in the face of the scientific evidence
bringing religion into headlong collision with scientific judgement. Moreover, say
these Christians, there is not one creation story but two. The second story in fact
contradicts the first in several important respects. Nor is there is any attempt by later
editors to smooth out the contradictions. For example, the first creation story begins:
‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth; the earth was a formless
void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over
the face of the waters. The God said, ‘Let there be light; and there was light.’
The story goes on to describe how God created the world over six days and ends with
God blessing the seventh day and setting it apart as a special day because by that day
he had completed his creation and stopped working.
The second story, written perhaps 400 years earlier, begins at chapter 2, verse 4:
‘When the Lord God made the universe, there were no plants on the earth and
no seeds had sprouted, because he had not sent any rain, and there was no one
to cultivate the land.’
The second story goes on to describe humankind’s first home in the Garden of Eden,
which the first story did not mention. In the first story male and female human beings
were created together; both formed part of ‘adam’, that is, ‘humanity’. In the second
story, however, Eve was created after Adam. Whereas the first story presents the
world as a very ordered and well regulated place, the second story describes the world
as much more complex and mysterious. In particular, there were two magical trees in
the garden, the ‘tree of life’ and the ‘tree of the knowledge of good and evil’. God
forbade Adam to eat from the tree of knowledge but gave no reason. Finally, in the
first story God says that the whole of creation is good, but in the second story a
talking serpent is introduced into the Garden which persuades Adam and Eve to eat
from the forbidden tree and rebel against their creator.
In a recent book, Karen Armstrong maintains that since the stories appear to present
us with different versions of the creation it is likely that neither is intended to be
historically accurate. Also by presenting two obviously conflicting creation stories,
the Bible editors were making an important religious point namely, that no one human
account can ever contain the whole truth about human life. The authors could see, for
example, that there was order in the universe, but they were also aware that the world
was a mysterious and dangerous place. They lived in a society where women were
the social inferiors of men, but in portraying the simultaneous creation of men and
women in the first creation story, they also sensed that there was more to be said:
‘By allowing these contrasting views of creation to coexist side by side, the
Bible makes it clear from the very beginning that it will not give neat, tidy
answers to questions that simply do not admit of a simple solution.’
(Karen Armstrong, 1996, p19)
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These Christians give a number of reasons why the Big Bang theory is compatible
with the Genesis story of creation:



The stories are written by people of faith for people of faith. There is no attempt
to reason things out, to prove anything or to present any evidence. The stories are
more concerned to place before us what they believe to be ultimate explanations
relating to God, ourselves and the world in which we live.
The creation stories are using the language and imagery of poetry rather than the
language of the scientific laboratory or of any scientific theory. They are not
concerned with geology, physics or astronomy. To try to read the first story as if
it were a scientific account of the origin of the world can only lead to endless
confusion and useless debate.
What scientists are telling us is how they think the universe as we know it came
about. The emphasis is on the ‘how’, what the stages were in the development
from the Big Bang to the present day. What the writer of Genesis is grappling
with is much more questions of ‘why’. Why is there a universe and what sort of
universe is it? Why are we here?, Why do we suffer?, Why do we die?
The First Cause
For many Christians and scientists the question of whether something can come out of
nothing lies beyond the remit of science. It is something, they say, science cannot
answer because science is based on observation and ‘nothing’ cannot be observed.
But is it possible to offer some kind of explanation? Does it make sense to ask, ‘What
caused the Big Bang? Some scientists believe that an explanation of sorts is possible
by considering that branch of science called Quantum Physics, which deals with and
molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles. Quantum Physics says that
unpredictability and uncertainty affect everything that can be observed or measured.
This means, that in the laboratory events can occur for no apparent reason. A
radioactive atom, for example, might decay just like that, for no reason. So could the
universe have occurred in the same way, spontaneously?
The physicist and popular science writer, Paul Davies, argues that we have two
choices when it comes to the origin of the universe. One is to say that it was a
supernatural event, and as a result we can’t really enquire any further. The other is
to find some way of treating the whole thing as a natural event. But if a natural event
can occur once, it can occur many times. Consequently, he argues, if we are going to
use Quantum Physics or any other kind of science for that matter, to explain the origin
of the universe as a natural event, we have to be prepared to admit that there could be
many other universes that can originate in the same way. It is this idea that has given
rise to the theory of parallel universes, the view that all possible alternative universes
are equally real and exist in parallel with one another. These parallel universes are
physically separate from each other. We cannot reach them no matter how far we
travel through our own space and time.
Some scientists believe that science will eventually be able to offer an explanation as
to how the universe might have come into existence without any intervention –
without anyone doing anything to make it come into being. We would then be able to
see how it came from absolutely nothing. And if we can do that, they argue, it would
be a pretty strong argument for saying that you don’t need a creator to do it.
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So where might God fit into all this? Could the origin of the world have a
supernatural explanation? Certainly, arguments about whether the universe had a first
cause have a long history. The First Cause argument is sometimes called the
Cosmological argument because it is an attempt to prove the existence of God by
reasoning back from the existence of the cosmos or universe.
The ‘First Cause’ argument was put forward most famously by Thomas Aquinas in
the thirteenth century. He argued that it is possible to ask a question about the cause
of any particular thing that happens to exist. For example, we might ask what caused
our own existence and answer the question by referring to our parents, when they met,
when they got married and when we were eventually born. But that could never
really be a complete explanation because we have not yet explained how our parents
came to exist. Any explanation of our own existence has to include an explanation of
how our parents came to exist, and their parents, and so on back through the
generations. The explanation for our existence therefore involves a long chain of
explanations stretching back to the beginning of time, and this applies to everything.
According to Aquinas the chain of explanations or causes can’t go on for ever; so
there must be a ‘First Cause’, whose existence doesn’t require a cause outside itself,
to bring the chain to an end. The only being that could possibly be a First Cause in
this sense is God. So God must exist.
The famous Humanist and philosopher, Bertrand Russell, describes how, as a young
man, he claimed to see the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. While reading
an autobiography, he was struck by the realisation that if he and everything else had
been made by God, who had made God? He wrote:
‘If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be
anything without a cause, it might just as well be the world as God, so that there
cannot be any validity in that argument.’
(Bertrand Russell, 1979, p15)
What Christians believe about origins
It wasn’t just the Israelites who wrote creation stories. There are creation stories from
Babylon and from Egypt and indeed from all over the world. They were common
amongst ancient civilisations. There are many stories about how the world began out
of a struggle between the gods and goddesses. Many of these are identified with what
we see around us, the sun, moon and the various planets, the rain and drought and
war.
In the Genesis story, however, there is only one God. God is not identified with
anything in nature. He is different from the world and stands beyond it – he is
transcendent. There is no sign of a struggle to create the universe. The universe is an
orderly place, a place in which human beings can ultimately put their trust. There is
no battle with chaos as in the Babylonian creation story which starts with waters of
chaos and monsters of chaos. In that story the creator god, Marduk, has first to
subdue the chaos. In the Genesis story the universe comes about simply because ‘God
said……and so it was.’
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According to the story human beings are made in the image of God:
‘In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.’
This is partly explained by the words which follow in the story. Christians believe
that we have been given authority over the rest of creation and are called to share
something of the leadership which God exercises. This seems to mean we have been
placed in a position of responsibility towards the rest of creation and have to look
after other species and the environment.
We have already seen that some Christians do not accept the Big Bang theory and
maintain that the universe was created in six days, as described in Genesis 1. Clearly
there were no eyewitnesses who could have seen what God did as He created the
world. Nobody could have known what he thought and said. Some Jews and
Christians, in an attempt to explain how the biblical authors came by this information,
have claimed that God himself must have dictated the text to Moses. They agree that
there is a great deal of poetry in the Bible, in the Book of Psalms for example. But the
early chapters of Genesis, they argue, including the creation stories, were always
regarded as history by the early Church.
Other Christians say that the Big Bang theory and indeed any scientific description of
the origin of the universe is compatible with an understanding of God as creator.
When Christians talk about God as creator they are saying that in the end, the
existence of the universe depends upon God. The universe is not self-sufficient. Its
existence can’t be explained without bringing in God. But precisely how or when the
universe came about is a matter for scientists to work out.
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Things to discuss and write about

Explain what is meant by the Big Bang theory.

What evidence is there to support this theory?

What criticisms do some Christians make of the Big Bang theory?

What do Christians understand by the First Cause argument?

To what extent does the First Cause argument prove the existence of God?

Do you think science will one day be able to explain what caused the Big Bang?
Give reasons for your answer.

Outline the main features of the creation as described in Genesis 1.

What conclusions do some Christians draw from the observation that there are
different versions of the creation in the book of Genesis?

To what extent is Genesis 1 compatible with scientific theories about the origins
of the universe?

What challenges does the Big Bang theory raise for Christian belief?

How successful, in your view, are Christian responses to the challenges raised by
the Big Bang theory?
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5.
HOW DID LIFE COME ABOUT?
The theory of evolution
Charles Darwin’s best known work on evolution, The Origin of Species, was
published in 1859, twenty years after his return from his famous voyage on HMS
Beagle. Darwin was not the first person to think about evolution, the idea that living
things evolved from each other and were not simply created in the form in which we
now see them. From as early as the fifth century BC there were people who tried to
describe the origins of life in evolutionary terms. Darwin was the first to present a
coherent theory which has stood the test of time.
His theory of evolution by natural selection has two main elements, competition and
variation:
 Darwin said that all living things were bound to produce more offspring than their
environment could support. So, inevitably, all creatures were bound to be thrown
into competition with their fellows.
 Individuals of the same species vary. One antelope is very much like another but
they are not identical; some run faster than others for example. As a result the
ones that are best adapted to their circumstances, for example, most successful in
escaping from predators such as cheetahs, are the ones that survive and produce
offspring. And this argument holds for all living creatures - explaining why they
have good eyesight, or why they have hands that can grasp in the case of
monkeys. In other words, some hereditary characteristics are good for survival
and reproduction and some are not.
All this goes back 3000 million years although for the first 2000 million it would have
been mostly bacterial life. Then about 1000 million years ago life appeared which
was built up of many cells capable of being seen by human beings. After that animals
and plants appeared which had a shape and form and could have been seen without a
microscope. Later there were bigger and more complex creatures like we have today.
So what causes the variations in the first place? According to biologists it is mistakes,
random mistakes in the molecules we call genes leading to the development of new
individuals. Organisms which are well suited to their environmental surroundings
will do well, and will pass on copies of their successful genes to their descendants.
Organisms that are less well adapted will have fewer offspring, and over the
generations the better-fitted genes will dominate. If it is the most successful genes
that are passed on there must be some variety from which to select. This variety
arises from the mistakes or imperfections that take place during the copying process.
In this way evolution moved from the very early beginnings of life through to human
life itself.
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Creation
The controversy surrounding the publication of Darwin’s books on the theory of
evolution by natural selection (in 1859 and again in 1871) resulted in a media circus
regarding every supposed clash between scientists and theologians. Typical headlines
were:
‘Darwin makes a monkey out of man.’ and ‘ Man is but a worm.’
There was no clear cut division between scientists and theologians. Many scientists
rejected evolution, while many theologians had much sympathy with Darwin’s theory
and, simply regarded evolution as God’s mechanism for creation. But for others it
was a challenge to all that was sacred. A very gradual process of evolution, in the
view of many, was not compatible with the six days of creation and the fixity of
species implied in Genesis 1, or indeed with Eve being created from Adam’s rib in
Genesis 2. All of this had been considered the literal truth revealed by God and
therefore could not be mistaken.
It was on the basis of the stories contained in Genesis that many Christians, both
scientists and non-scientists, objected to the ideas of Charles Darwin. It was not so
much the general idea of evolution which they objected to. After all it was possible to
suppose that, in the beginning, each type or species had been created separately by
God and then was gradually changed by evolution. What really offended them was
Darwin’s view that one species could change into another, and that present-day living
things may all have evolved from just one first ancestor. This appeared to contradict
the Genesis story in the Bible quite directly and to disprove its description of how life
came about.
Many Christians today, however, take the view that the scientific theory of evolution
by natural selection does not conflict with their religious beliefs. In particular, they
argue that those who rejected Darwin’s theory because they thought it conflicted with
the account of creation in the Bible have been proved wrong. Augustine, who lived in
the second half of the fourth century, was one of the first to realise that the creation
stories were not to be taken as literal descriptions of physical facts. Today, many
Christians point out that in the biblical stories of creation, the language and imagery
belongs much more to the world of story and imagination than to the world of the
laboratory and scientific research. Also they believe that there are two creation stories
in Genesis, neither of which can be regarded as historical. (see section on ‘How did
the universe begin’ for more information on the creation stories)
Creationism
Today many Christians are still unwilling to compromise in any way. They still hold
to the idea that the Scriptures cannot be mistaken, even in areas of science. This view
has given rise to ‘creationism’ which completely rejects the theory of evolution and
holds that all species have been directly created by God in the way described in the
opening chapters of Genesis.
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Creationism is particularly strong in the United States where polls suggest that a
significant proportion of the adult population reject evolution on religious grounds
and where many schools present the Genesis story as an accurate scientific account.
Last year the American states of Kansas and Kentucky agreed to omit the teaching of
the theory of evolution from its school curriculum and to exclude any reference to
Charles Darwin.
Creationists believe that there is no strong evidence to support the theory of evolution,
particularly the scientific position that new species can develop from existing species.
They refuse to accept the belief that life on earth began almost 3000 million years ago
because they believe the book of Genesis is telling a completely different story. The
story of creation in Genesis is regarded as historical and describes the creation of the
world in six days. Nor do they accept the fossil evidence, saying that it is impossible
to be entirely sure how old the world is. They also believe that the theory of evolution
is turning people away from God and weakening the emotional and moral well-being
of society. (Independent on Sunday, 26 March 2000)
Design argument
Until the publication of Darwin’s work, Christians had relied on the so-called ‘design’
argument to support their belief in the existence of God. The design argument looked
to the variety, order and beauty of the natural world. When we look around the world
we find so much that is beautiful and ordered that we feel bound to say that it must
have been created or designed. In nature the various parts of the body of humans and
other living creatures are so well suited to fulfil their respective functions, it seems
only logical to conclude that ‘Someone’ must have designed them for those purposes.
The argument from design takes the order and apparent purpose in the world, and
moves from that order and purpose to suggest a designer, God, who must have been
responsible for it.
The most famous version of the design argument was set out by William Paley in the
eighteenth century. Suppose you are walking across a heath, says Paley, and you
knock your foot against a stone. You might think, if you were to think about it at all,
that the stone had always been there. This would, in the circumstances, be a very
logical answer. But if you were to come across a watch, then you would naturally ask
where the watch had come from; you would not in this case naturally conclude that it
had always been there. You would wonder who had made the watch and for what
purpose.
Paley uses this story as an analogy for the universe. Like the watch, the universe
requires a creator or designer to explain its existence, because it is just as complex a
mechanism, perhaps even more so. For Paley then, the universe resembles a watch in
its organisation and complexity, although on a much greater scale. Its existence can
only be explained by reference to some external intelligence. Surely, therefore, there
must be a cosmic designer who has made and arranged the world in the way it is for a
purpose?
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Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was a major challenge to the
argument from design. It presented an alternative explanation of how life on earth
came about. It also suggested that the variety, order and beauty of the world was not
the result of a Creator God but the result of a purely natural process. In the theory of
natural selection, accidental chance mutations rather than the purposeful work of an
intelligent being lay behind the existence of the world.
Critics of the design argument have first of all questioned the validity of the analogy
between a watch and the universe. Is it an appropriate analogy? In some ways the
universe is better described as a living organism with all living things depending for
their survival on each other. If the world is like a machine then the claim that there is
a designer would make some sense. But if the universe is more like a vegetable, as
the Scottish philosopher David Hume suggested in the eighteenth century, then the
idea of a designer seems inappropriate. In any case, aren’t there just as many
examples of ugliness as beauty within Nature and as many examples of disorder as
order? And even where there is a kind of order, as in the way plants and animals
adapt to their environment, isn’t that explained by Darwin’s theory of natural
selection?
For many people, the essential feature of Darwinian evolution is its accidental nature.
Variations occur by blind chance. As a result of these purely random changes in the
characteristics of creatures, Nature is provided with a wide range of options to select
from on the basis of what is more suitable or advantageous. On this basis, they argue,
the theory of evolution by natural selection is on its own sufficient to explain how life
came about. The element of chance even operates outwith natural selection.
For example, most biologists agree that dinosaurs did not become extinct because of
the development of mammals. It was much more to do with chance in the form of a
dramatic change in climate. The dinosaurs could be with us still and might have
dominated the earth until the earth itself died out. In short we are lucky to be here!
There would appear to be little room in all this for any kind of guiding hand to be
involved. If human beings evolved by chance, they can’t have been created by God.
Since Darwin many scientists have continued to see Christianity as incompatible with
evolution. A leading proponent of this position today is the Oxford zoologist, Richard
Dawkins. His book, ‘The Blind Watchmaker’, has the subtitle ‘why the existence of
evolution reveals a universe without design’. Dawkins sees no need at all to bring in
the idea of a creator God. The theory of evolution is on its own sufficient to explain
life. He argues that if there was a God, he would never have created the universe by
evolution. He would have surely done it directly over a much shorter period. By
choosing evolution as his method of creation he has completely covered his tracks and
made it impossible for human beings to appreciate him. On the other hand, if he did
create the universe this way, it makes him out to be totally indifferent to human
suffering because the consequence of natural selection is suffering on an enormous
scale all over the world. It’s not that nature is cruel, it’s just that it is totally
indifferent and is only concerned to maximise the survival of the genes.
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The Anthropic Principle
More recently, in his book The Existence of God, Richard Swinburne presents a
slightly different version of the design argument. He believes that the order we see
around us is a remarkable fact and points to the fact that the world runs according to
regular laws. Swinburne argues that some explanation is required for the striking
orderliness of the universe. It is not enough to say that this is because of the existence
of scientific laws. After all, it is these very scientific laws that we should be trying to
explain. He contends that God is the only explanation for the existence of scientific
laws and the orderliness of the universe.
Others have gone further and pointed out that even the slightest changes to these laws
would have made the evolution of life impossible. In other words the existence of life
seems to be dependent on a very fortunate combination of underlying laws and
conditions. Scientists studying evolution have been struck by how easily it could
have developed in a multitude of different ways that would have prevented life from
actually emerging. For example, had the universe exploded with somewhat greater
energy, it would have thinned out too fast for the formation of galaxies and stars. If
the energy had been a little less, gravity would have quickly got the upper hand and
would have pulled the universe back together again. If there had not been a dramatic
change in the climate 65 million years ago dinosaurs might have continued to
dominate the earth. In some ways the Anthropic Principle can be seen as supporting
the design argument for the existence of God, or at least for some creative purpose
behind the universe. Everything seems to be very carefully and precisely arranged for
the eventual emergence of life and human life in particular. This extraordinary set of
circumstances, making for the development of life against seemingly impossible odds,
has been called the Anthropic Principle. (Russell Stannard, 1996, p27-29)
Some people counter the Anthropic Principle by arguing that there are in fact many
worlds that could possibly evolve with slightly different conditions. Ours just
happens to be the one where the conditions produced life. It’s pure chance, just an
extraordinary set of coincidences. The Anthropic Principle can also be seen as simply
saying that the universe must be the way it is because we are here, it doesn’t point to a
designer God at all. If the universe had turned out differently we would not be here to
think about it and observe it – and that’s all there is to it!
Meaning and purpose
For Christians, meaning and value in life is related to the existence of a God who
created the universe and made human life possible. Darwin’s theory of natural
selection presents a serious challenge to the Christian view that life has meaning and
purpose. The theory of natural selection appears to replace God’s creative activity
with a wholly impersonal and natural process. As a result it becomes difficult to
argue that human beings have a special place in the scheme of things, that they are
part of an overall divine plan which gives meaning and purpose to life and the
universe. It is often this issue about the meaning of life that creationists are concerned
about when they object to the whole idea of evolution. They feel that to accept
evolution as the method by which life came about means to remove God and therefore
to remove all meaning from life. If there is no God then life and the universe can
have no meaning.
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Many Christians are quite happy, however, to accept that God brought living things
into being through a gradual process of evolution. There is no more difficulty in
thinking this, they argue, than in thinking that creation happened all at once. Indeed
the evolutionary account of how life came about is even more impressive. In other
words they see the idea of that life came about through a gradual process as even
more evidence of God’s creative activity.
Evolution, they argue, had an in-built capacity for moving from simple forms of life
with little or no consciousness to more complex forms with a high level of
consciousness, that is human beings. In other words the fact that complex beings who
possess consciousness and hold values have developed out of simple atomic particles,
strongly suggests that there is a purposeful Hand underlying the whole process.
Some Christians also take the view that the ‘randomness’ and ‘chance’ element in the
evolution of the universe is in fact an essential feature of God’s creative purpose. It
lets in some freedom, some openness, some creativity. It means that everything is not
preordained from the beginning. The new and the unexpected can occur. However,
this element of chance is not so large that it cancels out God’s ability to control where
the universe is going in a general way. In this way many Christians have been able to
adopt a faith which is more rational and compatible with scientific theories of how life
came about.
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Things to discuss and write about

Explain briefly Darwin’s theory of evolution

Do you agree that the theory of evolution is sufficient to explain how life came
about? Give reasons for your answer.

What do Christians understand by the ‘Design’ argument?

Explain how the theory of evolution challenges the traditional argument from
design.

To what extent does the ‘Design’ argument prove the existence of God?

Why do some Christians find the theory of evolution unacceptable?

What do scientists mean by the Anthropic Principle?

To what extent does the Anthropic Principle point to the existence of an intelligent
creator as opposed to a universe which came about by chance?

What is creationism?

Do you agree that schools should continue to teach the scientific theory of
evolution? Give reasons for your answer

Explain why some Christians argue that the theory of evolution confirms their
belief in God.

Does the theory of evolution support or deny the claim that life has meaning?
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6.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, Pimlico, 1991
Steven Rose, Lifelines, Penguin, 1997
Beverley Clack & Brian Clack, The Philosophy of Religion, Polity press, 1998
Rudolph Otto, The Idea of the Holy, OUP, 1958
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics, Penguin, 1983
Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian?, Routledge, 1979
Karen Armstrong, In the Beginning, Fount, 1996
Russell Stannard, Science and Wonders, Faber, 1996
Russell Stannard, Here I Am! Faber, 1992
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