Fr Gareth asks whether the universe, with all the creatures in it, was created by a miracle or a natural process? What might this mean to call God, Creator?
During the years I have lived as a seminarian and a priest, I have interacted with many children in Catholic schools. From multiple conversations, a repeated pattern seems to emerge. The children were taught about Adam and Eve, Noah and the Ark, at a tender age, an age when they implicitly trusted whatever significant adults told them. This belief in a creator God formed the bedrock of their understanding of God and the authority of the Church. As teenagers, they learn about Evolution and the Big Bang. But the childish ideas of God-the-Creator are so deep rooted that they cannot set aside a literal reading of Genesis without losing faith in God and the teaching Church. The baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.
Now, as a good scientist, I recognise that this is only a conjecture. Some sociological research would be needed to test my hunch. But the longer I work in Christian ministry, the more concerned I am getting that what we teach young children sets them up for doubt and disbelief at a crucial age. Pope Francis has commented on the danger of building on secondary ideas rather than primary truths about Jesus. It seems to me crucial that what we teach our children about God must be ideas which will hold firm, while becoming more nuanced, when they are adults. On the other hand, every Sunday in church, I recite the Creed along with my congregation, saying: “I Believe in God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth”. So as a scientist and a Catholic, what can I mean with integrity by affirming God to be the Creator?
Science and Scripture agree quite well about the basic sequence of creation found in Genesis 1: first energy (let there be light!) – then land and sea – then vegetation – sea creatures – land creatures – human beings. A scientist would question whether sun and moon (after planet and plant life!), and later birds, were out of sequence. But the fact that Genesis 2 offers a different sequence, where the other creatures were formed after human beings, is a big hint from Scripture itself that we are not meant to read the sequence too rigidly.
Sometimes our emotional reactions to the universe lead us astray. A friend once pointed out the famous Space Telescope picture of “God’s eye” (the Helix Nebula) in a newspaper. For her, its beauty and the resemblance to a human eye suggested that God must be behind it. I find it beautiful too – but I don’t need God’s intervention to explain why it looks that way. An exploding star will always put out a circular rim of debris with beautiful wispy dust inside, and I’ve seen plenty of other space clouds that look not unlike that one. At the same time, I am mindful that the ancient poet who sat down to write what we now call Psalm 8 looked at the beauty of the universe and praised God for being mindful of humanity.
Physics can explain a lot without needing God’s help. Physics can even account for ways in which matter can appear out of nothing. Though this sounds rather implausible, it has been borne out by experiment – if you don’t want to take my word for it, look up the term “Casimir effect”. Admittedly, it’s still a big jump from there to suggesting that physics can explain how the whole Universe could appear out of nothing – but not so big a jump as to be unthinkable. Current research, using machines like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, aims to pin down the laws of physics in extreme circumstances to see if they do allow this. Physics might even be able to explain the whole Universe as a possible or even necessary consequence of mathematics.
One kind of answer says there never was a beginning, that the past extends backwards for ever. Astronomers used to think this about the Universe (the “Steady State Theory”) and the Hindu religion also imagines the universe in endlessly repeating cycles. But Einstein’s General Relativity says that time and space are two ways of looking at the same thing, so when we talk about the Universe beginning, we are talking about the beginning of time: whatever “caused” the universe is outside time. Normally a cause is the thing that happened “before” to set things off, but if there is no time, how can there be a “before”? So the kind of cause we are looking for is one which is “always” true, not always in the sense of “every minute” but always in the sense of “by its very nature, so it cannot change with time, and can hold ‘outside’ time”.
There is a repeated pattern in physics: whenever we apply maths to the universe, things which are mathematically possible are found to be physically real. The starkest example would be the prediction of antimatter before it was actually discovered, simply because square roots can be negative as well as positive! Perhaps there is only one mathematically consistent way a Universe can be. In that case, logical consistency would be sufficient reason for the Universe to exist!
What we haven’t worked out yet is whether ours is the only kind of universe that can exist, or whether there might be more than one universe. If there could be more than one kind, then why is it our kind? There are at least three possible explanations. Perhaps there are many bubbles with different kinds of universe, and of course – (Darwin would endorse this) – we live in the one most fitting for us. Or it seems to be a requirement of quantum mechanics, that a conscious observer may be required to help a quantum universe decide which way it is going to unfold; perhaps this forces the Universe to crystallise in a way which accommodates us. Or perhaps it’s a random accident that the Universe makes it possible for us to exist. Then we get into the “God of the gaps” territory of whether it was actually God who fine-tuned the whole Universe, so that what appears random actually wasn’t. I am always wary of this way of thinking, because given long enough, scientists are good at coming up with sound reasons for why unlikely-seeming things actually took place.
One thing I am sure of: it is mathematically possible for the Universe to be here, otherwise we wouldn’t be. So what do I mean by calling God the Creator? Hebrews 11 declares that “that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible”. The God of the Bible introduced himself to Moses (Exodus 3) as “I am the one who exists” and Jesus said (John 14) “I am the Truth”. If there is a mathematical theory which explains the whole Universe, that wouldn’t do away with God – it’s a manifestation of the truth which is God, and with the start of John’s Gospel I can cheerfully agree: “through God’s Word, all things were made”. I wouldn’t want to limit God to being a statement of mathematical truth – but if the loving Someone I have come to know through prayer is the ground of all Being (Acts 17), then I am content to acknowledge this Someone as also the embodiment of all necessary logical and mathematical truths.
My faith in God exists alongside my appreciation of the universe we live in. Nothing in the beauty of nature proves to me that there’s a God – indeed, as a professional scientist, my job was to look at nature and ask, “How much of this can we explain with logic and reason alone?” Rather, my faith in God is because of the loving Someone who was there when I first prayed out of the depth of my neediness, and who I discovered had entered into History in Jesus of Nazareth: the same Jesus whose triumph over death we celebrate each Sunday. My faith in Scripture tells me that Jesus, the Word of God, was intimately involved in the making of all things that exist. My training in science allows me to marvel at how wonderfully nature takes its course to result in our beautiful world, of which Jesus Christ is Lord, yesterday, today and forever. Since Jesus said, “I am the truth”, I am content to accept that mathematical and logical truths are part of who Jesus is. I hope he explains it to me when I meet him in heaven!
Revd Dr Gareth Leyshon is a parish priest in the South Wales Valleys, who read physics at Oxford and completed a doctorate at Cardiff (a study of the structure of distant galaxies) before entering seminary
