> if God exists, how might He have created the cosmos and guided its evolution?
This book is not a science text, far from it. This text is a theology that pays homage to God’s created universe by suggesting that the author of the universe is also the author of the Bible. In my mind, this explains the remarkable compatibility of science and theology. Both advance our understanding of God because both are creations of God. I would not expect one to contradict the other. To this end, the book was composed with the following four assumptions in mind.
God exists and is the Creator of the universe. As such, He is ontologically transcendent—existing beyond and independent of the material cosmos. Moreover, God possesses the classical attributes of a deity: omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and intentionality. The specific means by which He created the cosmos remain unknown and likely will remain unknown because God’s role cannot be proven, much less known. There is an epistemological divide between the metaphysical nature of God and the material limitations of human inquiry. Put simply, the existence and creative activity of God cannot be empirically verified nor falsified; they lie beyond the scope of scientific investigation and are ultimately apprehended only by faith.
In physics, we can write the most elegant equations describing space, time, and matter. These laws obey Einstein’s field equations, the Schrödinger equation, and the Standard Model Lagrangian – completely and beautifully self-consistent. Still, Hawking felt obliged to ask: Even if we had a theory of everything explaining all fundamental forces and particles, we still do not have the answer to the ultimate question: Mathematics is an intrinsic and inseparable property of God. Unlike the laws of the universe, the principles of mathematics are not created. Stephen Hawking may have been thinking along these lines when he asked these two famous questions:
“What breathes fire into the equations and creates a universe for them to describe?
"Why is theresomething rather thannothing?
In this book, I propose a kenotic model of divine action within creation. Rooted in the Christological doctrine of kenosis (from Philippians 2:7, where Christ “emptied himself” in taking on human form), I suggest that God, in a similar self-limiting act, governs the evolution of the cosmos by restricting His providential action to the indeterminate, quantum level. This voluntary divine self-limitation is not due to any insufficiency in power or knowledge but is intended to maximize human free will and consequent moral responsibility.
Finally, while it is fun to speculate whether God created the cosmos, as I do in this book, the question is not just about God’s existence. The question is whether science and theology overlap – like a Venn diagram. I believe the answer is no. God cannot be understood empirically, and theology cannot be empirically validated. Divine and empirical reflection inhabit different epistemological realms. In this way, empiricism and faith can be complementary, but neither supports the other. The only road to reconciliation between the two is faith.
Whether the empirical realm of science and the realm of God intersect is something I used to wonder about. Not so much anymore. I think this is because I am now so convinced of God’s existence that I do not need science to support that belief. And yet I do not believe in God due to faith. God proved his existence to me in a way I would have to call empirical—through events in my life that reason could not well explain any other way. God provided these events and arranged them in such a way that by my own rules of logic, I had to believe that he was real and intervening in my life.
This is not the kind of empirical knowledge you are thinking about, but it is not faith either. It is actually simple empirical knowledge such as we use to live our daily lives. For instance, suppose I receive several gifts of food throughout the afternoon, I conclude that someone is concerned about my having something to eat for supper. This is not faith. It is the reasonable conclusion one can draw from such events. If I later read the receipt and find part of my daughter’s credit card number at the bottom of it, I conclude that it is my daughter who has been so concerned. This is also not faith. I think we could call this empirical knowledge. It may be mistaken; my grandson may have used his mother’s credit card, or the food may have been delivered to the wrong address. If either of these turns out to be the case, will I lose my faith? Or will I simply correct what I thought were facts? If I had some emotional problem with my daughter, if I was convinced that she had no concern for me at all, might I believe that the food was from her son, even though this was not the case? All these are complicated questions about everyday knowledge, but they do bear on the question of whether we can know God empirically. Though these questions are a long way from quantum physics, they make me wonder about how God may be known. I doubt that we will ever learn it from scientific efforts, but I do not think it is strictly by faith.
Part of the reason this all comes up for me as a result of your post is that you speak of creation, and I have spent a lot, lot of time studying Genesis 1. I believe that the very accurate description of the creation, the coming into being, of the universe and the earth described there is perhaps as close as we can come to logical proof of God’s existence and ability to intervene in human affairs. There is no way that ancient human writers could have come up with all the points at which Genesis 1 fits with modern cosmology and the natural history of the earth. Traditional ways of interpreting this text cause this amazing congruence to go unseen. Read it with new eyes and you will see it. Or try my tiny website: understandinggenesisone.com
Sounds like we agree. Science and theology can neither validate nor falsify the other because they inhabit different realms of epistemology. Thus, I would just add that concordance (if I understand the term and referenced on your website) cannot prove divine involvement in the creation or operation of the universe.
Science will take one so far. After that one must leap over a chasm of doubt. That leap is faith.