Creation and Modern Man

CREATION AND MODERN MAN

Preached at North Mymms 26/10/1997

"Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. Thus man became a living creature". Genesis 2

It is fashionable for young people to dismiss belief in a creator God because it is perceived to be at variance with our modern scientific outlook.

Today, young people are educated in a system which leaves them to expect that everything must be tested and proved before it can be believed.

As a consequence of such an approach, the Bible is seen as belonging to a pre-scientific age, and the more science reveals, the more God is thought to be pushed out of the picture.

This is sometimes called the "God of the gaps" theory. In other words, whenever we cannot answer a question we put in the name God. However, as science answers more and more of those questions so God is pushed more and more out of the equation. Ultimately it is assumed that science will be able to answer all questions and then there will be no need for a God. Hence Stephen Hawkings concludes that he can see no need for a creator God.

Science and Religion

Now I do not for one minute profess to being a scientist. I rather like the late Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who once said "My ignorance of science is so profound as to be distinguished".

However, I would be the first to recognise that enormous advances have been made in science and that these have important theological implications which must be addressed.

At the same time, it is important to realise that science often reinforces traditional views; as our knowledge increases, so God reveals more of himself and continues to guide us into all truth.

This is probably why I have a particular interest in the depth psychology of Carl Jung and its application to the spiritual life as expressed particularly in Susan Howatch's novel Mystical Paths.

Alas it is all too easy to dismiss religion from a scientific point of view by suggesting that theology has no basis in scientific fact. This is the position of the arch atheist, Dr. Richard Dawkins, a Reader in Zoology at New College, Oxford. He compares religion to a virus - a disease that only survives because it is transmitted from parent to child in early life.

Such an approach, I would suggest, does not stand up to close scrutiny. As Bishop Nigel McCulloch has pointed out, religion has survived in society where the most strenuous efforts have been made to wipe it out.

Take for instance, Albania, where for over forty years religion was strictly forbidden and all evidence of religious faith destroyed. Nevertheless, the Christian faith has survived.

It would appear that whether or not people are taught it, faith reappears in men and women, just as music or poetry or the desire to paint a picture is never quenched.

But scientific method of observation, experiment and induction does not, and never can, apply to the whole reality of life. Every phenomenon may have a scientific explanation, but science does not exhaust the explanation.

Challenge of Science

There are two biblical accounts of creation.

Many young people, when presented with these two variant accounts of creation, automatically dismiss religion because they do not square comfortably with our scientific understanding concerning the origins of the universe and the development of human kind.

The first major attack upon the biblical account of creation came in the 19th century with the publication of Charles Darwin's books The Origin of Species in 1859 and The Descent of Man in 1871.

Darwin maintained that species of living beings evolved by natural selection, the fittest for their biological purpose in each generation surviving.

In later years he modified his theory in some degree and was prepared to take more account of the influence of environment upon evolution. Darwin himself became increasingly agnostic.

Jeremy Craddock, a retired forensic biologist, who is also an Anglican Reader, maintains that there can be no doubt whatever that evolution has occurred and is occurring and that Darwin's theory is supported by mathematics and by molecular biology in ways that Darwin himself could never have foreseen.

In more recent times, the biblical story of creation has supposedly been discredited by the Big Bang theory of creation whereby the universe is thought to have started with a great explosion some 15 thousand million years ago, which is considerably longer than the six days recorded by the author of the Book of Genesis!

Russell Stannard, Professor of Physics at the Open University, who is also an Anglican Reader, has pointed out that the galaxies of stars are still receding from each other in the aftermath of that explosion. Remnants of the fireball that accompanied the event have been detected, and the observed mixture of chemical elements in the universe agrees with the composition one calculates ought to have been emitted by the Big Bang.

Religion’s Response to Science

So how can Christians square the theories of Darwinism and the Big Bang with the Biblical account of creation?

Some Christians completely dismiss the discoveries of science by adopting a fundamentalist approach to the Bible and maintaining, with Bishop Usher of the 19^th century, that the world was created in 4004 BC. Such people are known as Creationists and are particularly strong in the Bible belt of the United States of America.

Others accept the findings of science and suggest that such discrepancies show that the creation of the universe by God was a much more protracted and intricate affair than previously realised. In other words, the more we discover about the workings of the universe the more we discover about God.

Such an approach sits very comfortably with modern Biblical scholarship which sees the stories of creation in Genesis as myths rather than historic or scientific fact. In other words, Genesis was never intended to be interpreted in a literal scientific way. Genesis is an example of myth - the art of encapsulating in story form the timeless truths and their relevance for us today. It does not seek to offer a rival scientific theory of the Big Bang, or for that matter, the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Conclusion

In April 1992, The Independent devoted its whole front page to the discovery of "ripples" in the radiation from the Big Bang. Reacting to that front page news, Bishop Bill Westwood, then of Peterborough, said, "This doesn't make a great deal of difference to me. It certainly doesn't make any difference to God. If anything it makes him even more amazing" .

I believe that science can enlarge our image of God provided we are humble enough to listen to what is being said and allow our preconceived images of God to be smashed and rebuilt with each new revelation of himself.

As the Psalmist says:

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork". Psalm 19.1.