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God as Creator
•Creation ex nihilo
•Young Earth Creationism
•Ussher
•Old Earth Creationism
•Qualities of the God of
Creationism
Theory of Intelligent
Design
•1970s
•Discovery Institute
•Science and Religion
together
•Fine-tuned
•DNA
•Anthropic Principle
•God is the intelligent
creator
God as Creator – Symbolic
interpretation of Genesis
•“Identical realities described in
vastly different terms.”
•Genesis and the Big Bang
•Let there be light
•Bible = symbolic truth that God
created the universe
•‘Middle way’ between
Creationism and scientists who
reject the creation story because
of Big Bang Theory.
God as sustainer
•Ontological
Dependance
•Creation ex nihilo
•Order – Heaven,
Earth and Waters
•Order – Time
•‘Being’
God as Personal
•Genesis – caring God
•Genesis 2 – God
described
anthropomorphically
•Relationships – Adam
and Eve
•‘In the image of God’
•God the Father
Deism
•God created world then left
•Reason and rationality reveals
creator God.
•God is not personal
•God is not a sustainer
•No relationship – prayer is
pointless.
The Big Bang – origin of the universe
Big
Bang
•10-15 billion years ago
•Huge explosion from a point of
singularity
•>1 second – time and space
•Second later, laws of physics and
chemistry, like gravity
•3 mins – protons and neutrons
formed atoms
•Half million years, temperatures
cool enough for hydrogen and
helium
•Billion years – stars and galaxies
•Many stars died before earth
formed.
Evidence for the Big
Bang
•The universe is
expanding
•Galaxies are moving
apart from one another
•Red Shift
•Background radiation
Nature of the universe
•Still expanding
•Random chance
•No creator
•Will end in Big Crunch or
will continuously expand
•Still cooling
•The explosion will slow down and stop
due to gravity
•Everything will rush back to the point
of singularity
•Oscillating Universe Theory
•Conditions for life = chance
•BUT expansion seems to be getting
quicker
•Expansion getting faster
•2nd law thermodynamics – entropy
•Heat Death
How does the Big Bang challenge
religion?
•Different to Genesis account
•Questions the age of the
universe
•Undermines the Bible
•Suggests that the universe could
be a cosmic accident rather than
the result of loving design
•Questions the relationship
humans feel they have with God.
•Explains the existence of the
universe without need for God.
Evolution
•Charles Darwin
•1859 – On the Origin of the Species
•Adaptation
•Survival of the fittest
•Natural Selection
•Richard Dawkins
How does Evolution challenge religion?
•Undermines the Bible
•Questions the special relationship and
the ‘image of God’
•Purpose? (“Blind, unconscious,
automatic process ...”)
•Is there any need for God? ‘Intellectual
suicide’?
•Suggests that creatures have adapted
to their environment, countering the
religious idea that God loving crafted
their environment.
How do Christians respond to
these challenges?
•Creationists – deny scientific
theories.
•Scientific creationism – the
Bible is science.
•Symbolic interpretation
(Schroeder)
•Mythological and theological
truth
•Reductionism
Science and Religion are irrelevant
to each other
•Science cannot discredit religious
faith
•“We can neither affirm or deny it, we
simply cannot comment on it as
scientists.”
•Evolutionary theory has no bearing
on the existence of God.
•“Either half of my colleagues are
enormously stupid, or else the science
of Darwinism is fully compatible with
conventional religious beliefs – and
equally compatible with atheism.”
“Dawkins presents Darwinism
as an intellectual highway to
atheism. In reality, the
intellectual trajectory mapped
out by Dawkins seems to get
stuck in a rut at agnosticism.
There is a substantial logical
gap between Darwinism and
atheism, which Dawkins
seems to prefer to bridge by
rhetoric, rather than
evidence.” (McGrath)
“Old God so wise that He
could make all things;
behold He so much more
wise … He can make all
things make themselves.”
(Kingsley)
So, do science and religion
conflict with each other? Are
they complimentary? Are they
just irrelevant to each other?
B Questions
A good B question will:
• Have a clear argument running through it, but
will not use ‘I’.
• Examine both sides.
• Contain analysis (next slide will help)
• Be focussed on the question.
• Come to a conclusion which is based on
evidence discussed in the essay.
Critical Analysis
• This is a very damaging criticism because ___.
• However, one could argue that _____.
• The Design Argument can not stand up against
this criticism because _____
• Although Polkinghorne defends the Design
Argument by stating _____, he fails to protect the
argument fully because _______.
• Dawkin’s argument’s is weak here because ____.
• Despite this criticism, the Design Argument is still
a sound one because ________.
Michael Behe
•Discovery Institute
•irreducible complexity
•Blood clots
Daniel Dennett
•Even complex structures, like the eye, can be
explained through Natural Selection
•Even the eye has flaws, such as blind spots –
why would God create flaws?