Religion in an Age of Science by Ian Barbour
Chapter 5: Astronomy and Creation
IV. Theological Implications
4. Eschatology and the Future
been envisaged have varied greatly in differing historical periods.
(There have also been varying conceptions of resurrection, immortality, and heaven, but these are not our main concern here.) How did these ideas about the end of time develop, and how might we interpret them today?
The early prophets (for example, Amos, Micah, or Isaiah 9-11) held that Israel and its leaders had departed from the covenant. Believing in a God of justice, they saw God’s judgment in the disasters threatening the nation but hoped that a return to the covenant and the presence of a new leader from the Davidic lineage would restore the nation to peace, justice, and prosperity. But after the exile, when Israel was occupied by successive foreign armies, the prospect that human actions could
liberate the nation from oppression seemed dim indeed. The only hope seemed to lie in a more dramatic intervention by God. The apocalyptic literature (for example, Daniel) looked to a supernatural defeat of the worldly powers. Here the Messiah, who would bring deliverance and establish the Kingdom, was portrayed as a supernatural being rather than a political or military leader. The struggle would involve the whole cosmos and not just the nation. The coming Kingdom was envisaged in increasingly otherworldly terms. This shift also reflected a strong
dualistic influence from Persia and Zoroastrianism; the world was said to be the theater of conflict between two coeternal forces, those of light and darkness, or God and Satan. The last days would bring a cosmic battle and the final victory of good over evil.
The Kingdom of God was a central theme in Christ’s teachings, and he said that it was "at hand" (Mark 1:15). Sometimes he spoke of present aspects of the Kingdom; it is "in your midst" and it grows like a mustard seed. More often, he said it would come suddenly and unexpectedly.
After his death, his disciples asserted that he was the promised Messiah and that the fulfillment of the Kingdom would come soon with his return. But with the postponement of these expectations, diverse
responses arose in the early church. Some writings, such as the book of Revelation, continued the apocalyptic tradition and identified Christ’s return with the final conflict between good and evil. Others, including the Gospel of John, focused on the community’s continuing experience of the living Christ, understood as a kind of "realized eschatology" or future made present. By the time of Augustine, the institutional church was equated with the Kingdom already present on earth, though a distant consummation was still expected. In the Middle Ages and Reformation, much attention was given to the end of the world and the
last judgment, but this did not preempt concern for justice and righteousness in this world. The three main biblical stories were
extended to five stages of history: Creation, Covenant, Christ, Church, and Consummation.51
The diversity of future expectations continues among Christians today.52 Some groups take the book of Revelation literally and think that the final conflict is imminent. They seek a detailed timetable among the rich profusion of biblical images, and they look for "signs of the end" today.
Global crises and the threat of a nuclear holocaust have encouraged such apocalyptic thinking, but it engenders irresponsibility if it leads people to assume that they can do nothing about the future. Neo-orthodox and existentialist theologians, on the other hand, take Christ’s teachings on the imminence of the Kingdom to be a symbolic way of expressing the urgency of decision and the importance of obedience to God’s rule in the present. For them, the Kingdom is not a future event but a dimension of current existence. Liberal Protestants and exponents of liberation theology go back to the early prophets, for whom the Kingdom involved obedience to God and commitment to justice in society. In addressing their nation, the prophets combined a sense of God’s judgment with hope for a new beginning. The majority of Christians would probably say that we must work to build the Kingdom, but that it is also the work of God, both within history and beyond history. This offers a middle ground between relying on God alone and relying on ourselves alone in facing the future.
What can scientists tell us about the future of the universe? We have seen that the expansion of the universe is slowing down, but current evidence is insufficient to decide whether it is open (expanding forever) or closed (expanding to a maximum before collapsing). If it is closed, it will eventually contract to a very small size (the Big Crunch), but it could bounce back again and continue in an indefinite series of cycles.
This resembles the Hindu view of a cyclic universe with ages of destruction and ages of creation. The current structures of the world would be wiped out in such a "heat death," but new structures would appear in future cycles. The Second Law of Thermodynamics seems to imply a gradual "running down" in successive cycles, but it is not at all clear whether the law would be applicable between such cycles. The current expanding phase will last at least a hundred billion years, though our sun may not last longer than five or ten billion years. This is an incredibly long future in comparison to the half million years that human beings have been around, but it is not infinite.
Some scientists find this prospect very depressing. The astrophysicist Steven Weinberg holds that humanity is alone in an immense and impersonal universe, headed for oblivion. The earth is "just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe." Scientific activity itself is the only source of consolation in a meaningless world:
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. But if there is no solace in the fruits of research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. . . . The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.53
If the universe is open, it will continue to expand and cool forever, but at a decreasing rate. It has usually been assumed that this would lead to the "freezing death" of all life as temperatures continue to fall. But Freeman Dyson has argued that biological life will be able to adapt to such new conditions in the future. Moreover, we could use genetic engineering to redesign organisms for extreme conditions. The energy requirements of a system are proportional to the square of the
temperature, and very little energy is required at low temperatures.
Dyson also holds that the "software programs" that exist in the human brain could be transferred to computers and other kinds of "hardware,"
so that new forms of intelligence and consciousness will be able to survive at very low temperatures. He expects communication networks to spread among planets and galaxies. Mind will take control of matter throughout the universe. "Life and intelligence are potentially
immortal."54
A similar vision is set forth by Frank Tipler. The human brain, he says, is essentially a computer. As we colonize space, information processing in various forms will spread in networks throughout the universe. The information processing rate and the memory storage could both increase without limit, which would produce an essentially infinite intelligence.
The computer network would be an "evolving God" emerging from the process and taking total control of the universe. There would be "an eternal continuation of intelligence," even if human beings are extinct, for computers would be able to replicate themselves. Even if we live in a closed universe, there could be an infinite number of thoughts before the final singularity, and this can be considered a form of this-worldly immortality.55
These projections are, of course, highly speculative and rest on many unverified assumptions. They seem to me inconsistent with the biblical message, not because they disagree with some of the imaginative future scenarios in the Bible, but because they reflect views of humanity, God, and the future that are at odds with basic biblical convictions. The Bible views the person as a unity of body, mind, and spirit (see chapter 7), not as a purely rational intellect defined by information-processing ability.
Moreover, Dyson and Tipler propose a technologically based salvation that seeks control of the cosmos, whereas the Bible speaks of the need for personal transformation and social reconstruction in response to God. Though biblical eschatology takes many forms, all agree that future fulfillment will be the work of a personal God as well as of humanity, not the work of humanity apart from God.
Dyson and Tipler think that a future heat death or freezing death can be avoided. But if they cannot be avoided, would that contradict biblical assumptions? Would such a future imply that the universe is
meaningless, as Steven Weinberg holds?56 I do not think so. I would argue that biblical stories about both the beginning and the end of time are symbolic expressions of trust in God. Together they represent an ultimate framework for temporal history, not events in that history.57 The future of the cosmos, like the past, can also be seen as a phase of continuing creation. The long time scale does indeed make us aware that evolution will continue. It would be grossly anthropocentric to assume that we are the goal or the only purpose of creation. There is an
immensely long time for this part of the cosmic experiment to continue.
In the meantime, there are meaningful challenges to action in our own lifetime -- above all, to move toward a just and sustainable planetary society. Our hope is based on the conviction that God is at work in the world and that we can cooperate in that work.
According to process thought, every entity has value in three ways.
First, as a moment of experience it has intrinsic value. The value of these experiences is inherent in each present moment. Second, every entity is valuable for its contribution to the future of other beings in the world -- both in the immediate future and in the distant future. Third, every entity is valuable for its ongoing contribution to the life of God.
The values achieved in this world are preserved in God’s eternal life, and this is part of their enduring significance and permanence beyond the flux of time. In addition, some entities, such as human beings, have a fourth kind of future value, if as conscious individuals we survive
death.
If we think that life on earth or in this universe will eventually be
extinguished, only a portion of the second of these sources of value and meaning is threatened, namely the contribution of our present actions to the very distant future. The others are all unaffected. Moreover, there may be forms of life on other planets or in other universes. Who is to say what are the limits of new possibilities for God in this cosmic cycle or in future cycles or in another creation? These considerations take us far beyond science, and we will return to them in chapter 8.
In conclusion, then, I think we can join the astronauts in celebrating the beauty of our amazing planet and in expressing gratitude for the gift of life. Standing under the stars at night, we can still experience wonder and awe. Now we know that the cosmos has included stretches of space and time that we can hardly imagine. What sort of world is it in which those strange early states of matter and energy could be the forerunners of intelligent life?
Within a theistic framework it is not surprising that there is intelligent life on earth; we can see here the work of a purposeful Creator. Theistic belief makes sense of this datum and a variety of other kinds of human experience, even if it offers no conclusive proof. We still ask: Why is there anything at all? Why are things the way they are? With the psalmist of old we can say, 0 Lord, how manifest are thy works! In wisdom thou has made them all. . . . When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created" (Ps. 104:30).
Footnotes:
1. Readable general accounts of recent work in physical cosmology can be found in James Trefil, The Moment of Creation (New York: Collier Books, 1983), and John Barrow and Joseph Silk, The Left Hand of Creation (New York: Basic Books, 1983).
2. Michael Green, "Superstrings," Scientific American 255 (Sept.
1986): 48-60; Mitchell Waldrop, "Strings as a Theory of Everything," Science 229 (1985): 226-28.
3. For data in Figure 3, see Trefil, Moment of Creation, p. 34;
Barrow and Silk, Left Hand of Creation, pp. 86 and 156.
4. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes (New York: Basic Books, 1977).
5. Pope Pius XII, "Modern Science and the Existence of God"
The Catholic Mind, (Mar. 1952): 182-92.
6. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978), p. 116.
7. Arthur Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1979), chap. 2.
8. Fred Hoyle, Ten Faces of the Universe (San Francisco: W. H.
Freeman, 1977).
9. For example, Isa. 51:9, Ps. 74:14, 89:10.
10. Jon D. Levinson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988).
11. Joan O’Brien and Wilfred Major, In the Beginning: Creation Myths from Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, and Greece (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982).
12. Gerard von Rad, The Problem of the Hexateuch (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1966), pp. 131-43.
13. Claus Westermann, Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974); Bernhard Anderson, ed., Creation in the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
14. See Ernan McMullin, "How Should Cosmology Relate to Theology?" in The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Arthur Peacocke (Notre Dame: Univesity of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 19-21.
15. Edmund Jacob, Theology of the Old Testament (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 139.
16. Jaroslav Pelikan, "Creation and Causality in the History of Christian Thought," Journal of Religion 40 (1960): 250. See also John Reumann, Creation and New Creation (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1973), chap. 3.
17. Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaz~en and Earth (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959); also Creationism on Trial (Minneapolis:
Winston Press, 1985), chap. 8.
18. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, chap. 12.
19. David Kelsey, "Creatio Ex Nihilo," in Evolution and
Creation, ed. Ernan McMullin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).
20. Frederick Streng, Understanding Religious L~fe, 3d ed.
(Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1985); Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).
21. Weekday Prayer Book (New York: Rabbinical Assembly, 1962), p. 42.
22. Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press, 1977), p. 368.
23. B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature 278 (1979): 605-12.
See also John Barrow and Frank Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); George Gale, "The Anthropic Principle," Scient~fic American 245 (Dec. 1981): 154-71.
24. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York:
Bantam Books, 1988), p. 121; also his "The Anisotropy of the Universe at Large Times," in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data; ed. M. S. Longair (Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel, 1974).
25. Carr and Rees, "Anthropic Principle."
26. Barrow and Silk, Left Hand of Creation, p. 91; Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), p. 30.
27. B. Carter, "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology," in Cosmological Theories, ed. Longair.
See also Davies, God and the New Physics, chap. 12.
28. Stephen Hawking, quoted in John Boslough, Stephen Hawking’s Universe (New York: William Morrow, 1985), p.
121.
29. Freeman Dyson, Disturbing the Universe (New York: Harper
& Row, 1979), p. 250.
30. Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, chap. 8.
31. See P.C.W. Davies, The Accidental Universe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982).
32. John Leslie, "Anthropic Principle, World Ensemble, Design,"
American Philosophical Quarterly 19 (1982): 141-51; "Modern Cosmology and the Creation of Life," in Evolution and Creation, ed., McMullin; also "How to Draw Conclusions from a Fine- Tuned Universe," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding, eds. R.J. Russell, W. R.
Stoeger, S.J., and G. V. Coyne, S.J. (The Vatican: Vatican Observatory, and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).
33. Alan Guth and Paul Steinhardt, "The Inflationary Universe,"
Scient~fic American 250 (May 1984): 116-28.
34. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 174. A technical presentation of his theory is given in J. B. Hartle and S. W.
Hawking, "Wave Function of the Universe," Physical Revieu’ D 28 (1983): 2960-75. See also C.J. Isham, "Creation of the
Universe as a Quantum Process," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, ed. Russell et al.
35. Hawking, Brief History of Time, p. 175.