The Future of the Universe: Chance, Chaos, God?

by Benz, Arnold

• ISBN13: 9780826414274
• ISBN10: 0826414273
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-01
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Academic

Summary

The word God shows up increasingly in popular works about modern physics. Some scientists piously see God as a key to deciphering further mysteries of the universe. Others aver that "science offers a surer path to God than religion".

Arnold Benz, an astrophysicist and a Christian, believes that science and religion, if one takes them seriously, resist seamless integration and harmonization. They are two different approaches to experiencing reality, two different planes that do not intersect, "yet it is possible for an observer reformed about both planes of inquiry to reflect on how they might relate".

Mediating between these two planes of perception, which could be described as "the greatest intellectual adventure of our time", requires taking both realms "fully in earnest". Arguing that it is senseless to seek God in the first moments of the Big Bang, as though creation were some once-and-for-all event in the distant past, Benz finds creation occurring throughout the entire development of the cosmos, here and now as well as in the distant future. In the fo

Table of Contents

Introduction	13	(19)
Part 1: Universe, Time, and Creation	19	(44)
A Night at the Very Large Array	21	(3)
The Time of Stars	24	(11)
A Star Is Formed	25	(3)
The Terminus of a Star	28	(1)
New Generations of Stars	29	(3)
The Universe Develops	32	(3)
Conflict or Distance?	35	(9)
Causality and Time in Science	35	(3)
Religious Perception	38	(2)
The Function of Creation Stories	40	(4)
Let's Separate What Does Not Belong Together!	44	(7)
Two Levels of Perception	45	(1)
Perception, Experience, Faith: What Is Truth?	46	(2)
Consequences and Problems of the Separation of Faith and Science	48	(3)
Necessary Rapprochement	51	(6)
The Nexus of Amazement	51	(2)
Crisis of Metaphysics	53	(2)
The Biblical Model	55	(2)
The Universe as a Creation	57	(6)
A New Song of Praise	58	(3)
Conclusions	61	(2)
Part 2: Physics and Reality	63	(34)
An Astronomical Breathing Meditation	65	(3)
Relation between Subject and Object	68	(6)
Uncertainty in Quantum Mechanics	68	(3)
What Is Physical Reality?	71	(3)
How Material Is Matter?	74	(6)
Particles and Field Quanta	75	(1)
The Vacuum Is Not Nothing	76	(4)
The Beginning of the Universe	80	(10)
The Vacuum Hypothesis	81	(2)
Dark Matter: More Important Than Expected	83	(4)
Developments in the Early Universe	87	(3)
Why This Universe?	90	(7)
Fine Tuning of the Universe	91	(1)
The Anthropic Principle	92	(2)
God as a Power of Nature, God of the Gaps or Transcendence?	94	(3)
Part 3: Living and Dying	97	(28)
Life at the Pond	99	(2)
Old and New	101	(7)
Life and Death	101	(2)
How New Things Emerge	103	(2)
Novel Structures in the Universe	105	(3)
The Evolution of Living Beings	108	(10)
The Life of Molecules	108	(4)
Evolution of the Theory of Evolution	112	(3)
The Role of Death	115	(3)
The Nexus of Death	118	(6)
Two Levels of Resurrection	119	(1)
Different Conceptions of God	120	(1)
Sympathetic Faith	121	(3)
Thesis	124	(1)
Part 4: The Future	125	(40)
Sensations of the Future	127	(2)
The Future Is Open	129	(11)
Chance Is Part of Physics	130	(2)
Chaos Limits Our Knowledge	132	(4)
Self-organization without Self	136	(2)
Openness and Freedom	138	(2)
The Future of the Universe	140	(8)
Sun and Earth Will Pass Away	141	(3)
The Universe Will Not Remain as It Is	144	(4)
Another View of the Future	148	(8)
``I am'' Sayings	148	(3)
Christological Interpretations as Models	151	(5)
Hope in Spite of Predictions	156	(9)
Recognizing Reality	157	(3)
The Role of Metaphors	160	(1)
Time and Hope	161	(4)
Acknowledgments	165	(2)
Notes	167	(6)
Index	173