General Physics Seminar 11 November 2004


Understanding the universe as creation

Rolie Barth
FOM Institute for Plasma Physics 'Rijnhuizen', Nieuwegein, The Netherlands


After many years of working in the field of Thomson scattering, I have accepted a job as preacher, vicar in a small congregation in Baarn and Soest. In this seminar I will talk about issues concerning faith and science, especially the questions about believing in a personal God as Creator of the Universe in the light of scientific theories, like the Big Bang and evolution theory. Questions to be addressed are: 1.What do we mean by creation: God who pushed the trigger button of the universes begin and then retired? Or should we think of a God who is at work not only at the beginning but also during the development of the universe and especially, of life on earth? 2.Related to this question: what kind of interaction should we think off when we admit that God is at work along the full history of nature? Is He bounded to the laws of nature or is there freedom for both God and human beings to express their will? 3.Is it possible to integrate the biblical story about creation described in the first chapters of Genesis with scientific theories? 4.What are the limits of scientific theories? 5.How strong is the evidence for the chemical and biological evolution theory? 6.Is the fitness to life of the universe a 'prove' for the existence of a Creator God? 7.Why behaves nature in a lawful manner anyway? 8.Sciences have discovered a lot of laws of nature, which give in many cases an adequate description of natural processes. But who or what gives 'fire to the equations'? 9.And so on. One of the things I want to show is that understanding the universe as creation has a large existential impact on our lives. Believing in God as Creator means, seen from a Christian perspective, that human beings are asked to represent in their lives the kingly character of their Creator. In this way human beings may share, in what I call, the dream of God. This certainly is a challenging way of life. I will try to show that sciences can play an important role in this challenge, since the scientific enterprise has shown and will still more demonstrate the greatness of Gods creative power and wisdom.