challenge + response

• 4 discoveries that challenge Christian belief:

  • evolution
  • big bang
  • quantum theory
  • neuroscience
• evolution:

  • issue of natural selection - challenges the idea of God as a unique designer
  • challenges the notion of purpose + the unique status of humans

  Darwin lost his religious beliefs, considering them to be naive
• big bang theory:

  • rapid expansion of the universe
• 19th century response to evolution:

  • CofE ridiculed the theory = claimed it was a way of turning humans into beasts
  • evolution challenged the idea that humans were created literally in God's image
  • Anglicans admired the theory = evolution was the way in which God designed the world
  • most favoured modern response: natural selection = mechanism by which God works; maintenance of epistemic distance (Hick)
  • Karl Rahner (Catholic theologian) = humans are made wholly by evolution but also wholly by God - the two are compatible
• 19th century response to evolution:

  • Charles Kingsley = idea of God who created creatures capable of self-development was as noble as the idea of God who needed to intervene to produce new species
  • some Christians took an interventionist approach = natural selection is not needed because God can intervene when he wants to
  • Bishop Wilberforce = there was no evidence to show that there could be any change in their species
• modern response to evolution:

  • many Christians see no incompatibility between evolution + God's role as creator
• contemporary responses to the big bang theory:

  • provides evidence that there was a beginning of the universe
  • validates Aquinas' cosmological argument
  • fine-tuning argument = the fact we are here suggests that something - God - has fine-tuned the constants, as the odds against us are so extreme
  • if this is the only universe, God must have made it
  • challenged by the multiverse theory
  • Catholics = Big Bang theory is compatible with the Catholic idea of creation
• opposition views to the big bang theory:

  • young earth creationists: God created the world as it is literally described in Genesis
  • old earth creationists: God created the world over 6 periods rather than days; rejects evolution in favour of the view that God created species uniquely
  • intelligent design: argues that certain features of the universe + living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than by an undirected process i.e. natural selection
  • rejected as a pseudoscience