Norwich Cathedral Lecture

Tuesday 15^th October 7.00pm

All are welcome to this open lecture; no booking is required.

Are we here by chance or by design? This debate continues and modern cosmology continues to attract attention, with its fascinating theories of multiple universes, dark matter and energy and the origins of time. As an astrophysicist and theologian, Dr Holder is well qualified to explain how well the concept of God fits with our current understanding of the Cosmos (and vice versa).

Dr Holder has taken a leading role in rebutting the arguments for atheism made by Stephen Hawking, Lawrence M. Krauss and others. For example, in "The Grand Design", Hawking argues that there is no need to invoke God to set the universe going. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." By contrast, Rodney Holder is a proponent of cosmic fine tuning: ‘The Universe we live in seems to be a very unlikely place... Are we just lucky? Or is there some deep significance to the fact that we live in a Universe just right for us? This argument is explained in

his new book “Big Bang, Big God”, and will be the main theme of his lecture in Norwich Cathedral.

Dr Holder is the author of several books at the interface between science and religion, including “Nothing but Atoms and Molecules?”(1993); “God, the Multiverse and Everything” (2004) and “The Heavens Declare” (2012)and has been interviewed on Radio 4 and in dialogue with Professor Krauss. He is former course director of the Faraday Institute at Cambridge University and is an Editor for the journal Science and Christian Belief.

For further information, please contact the secretary, Professor Nick Brewin sfnorfolk1@gmail.com .