John Pokinghorne Questions and Answers - overflow page

This overflow page was created on 20 March 2001 and updated 9 Jan 2006 because there were so many questions on the main JCP Q&A page

Omniscience Hello, I recently read a review of your lectures at the University of Oregon. The review was written from a Christian perspective and the main criticism was that you did not believe God is omniscient, is not truly in control, etc. I am wondering why you do not believe this? Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies to human beings, certainly, but if God can create the universe, are you not in awe of Him and of his amazing power? I believe God is far greater than we can even imagine. Yes, suffering does occur but Romans 8:28 says that all things happen for the good of those who love God. As one of the most highly regarded scientist-theologians of today, I urge you to depend first and foremost on the infallibility of Scripture and of God, to seek Him with all your heart. In the first and second chapters of 1 Corinthians, it says that the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom. Nothing we can ever deduce or induct from scientific reasoning or logic will ever come close to God's knowledge, nor will these take the place of faith (Hebrews 11:1). I thank you for all the work you have done, especially relating to the Anthropic Principle, which has helped me a lot. I am very sorry if I misunderstood the comments about your lecture; please forgive me if I am misled. With much respect,

Preliminary Reply It never says in the Bible that God is omniscient - it does say that God is Love. In His love, God has created a universe in which we are given the privelege of freedom so that we can do things which we have chosen and He has not. When our choices go aginst his will then we sin and are in need of redemption - and it is this dynamic of love and redemption that it as the heart of the Gospel. The best way we can find of talking about this is to say that God, in love, limits His omniscience and omnipotence. Naturally He would be able to un-limit it if He chose, just as He would be able to destroy the Universe. Of course John is in awe of God's amazing power - but even more of His amazing Love.

Romans 8:28 can be translated in many ways:

• We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (NRSV)
• We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. (RSV)
• And in everything, as we know, he co-operates for good with those who love God and are called ... (REB)

The word for works together is sun-ergei and a sun-ergos is a 'fellow-worker' and the REB is probably the better translation. Which is very much in line with what John is saying. (though the Greek is a little odd and could be read either way)

Why doesn't God just stop creation?A catechism of the Presbyterian church defines God as "infinite, eternal and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth." While one might quibble with portions of this definition it would seem to be at least roughly in keeping with historic Christianity. From the real or mythic time of Cain and Abel until the present, man has behaved in an exploitative, brutal, not infrequently lethal fashion toward his fellow man. Indeed the 20th century was one which in which this human predilection for violence, coupled with "improved" technological means, produced what for us humans was incalculable human misery and death. Furthermore, entirely aside from organized, state sponsored etc. violence, vast numbers of human being, during all times, suffer substantially, as a visit to a pediatric oncology ward or even a nursing home demonstrates. I suppose that some may look on the acute miseries of humans as being inconsequential, or as somehow entirely beneficial. I, for one, find such an assessment wrongheaded and perverse. If God, from all eternity, knew that humans would make the bad choices that we humans make, would experience the suffering that humans do experience, why didn't He simply "pull the plug" on his creation plan? Given our understanding of God, it is hardly conceivable that God didn't know what was in the offing. But assuming that we can come up with some way of explaining to ourselves that He didn't know, He surely knows now. And since He knows, and since He is wise and holy and good and just and loving, why doesn't He call a halt to all of this right now? The above comments don't grow out of hostility to Christianity but rather out of perplexity, perplexity and an awareness that no few numbers of people in this world find the miseries of the human condition on the one hand and the assertion that God loves human kind on the other to constitute an offensive and preposterous irrationality.

Preliminary Answer The problems of evil and suffering are not to be ignored, but it seems pretty clear that the value of the eternal love and bliss into which God calls us is infinite and that the pain of suffering here is finite (see Romans 8). We cannot fully understand God's reasons for allowing the level of suffering that he does: after all as Al Plantinga says "I look inside my tent: I don't see a St Bernard: then it is probable that there is no St Bernard in my tent...[but if] I look in my tent and don't see any noseeums (very small midges with a bite out of all proportion to their size) [then] it is not particularly probable that there are no noseeums in my tent" We can begin to see that much suffering is due to the freewill of humans which is an essential logical prerequisite for love, and much of the rest is due to the 'free processes' which seem to be an essential feature of a fruitful universe. We can also see that suffering often, although by no means always, leads to good results. For the rest, it is a question of faith. But faith is an essential part of any loving relationship. I'll see what John has to add.

Redemption for All? I had the privilege of attending the lecture given by Professor Polkinghorne at Canterbury this evening and afterwards asked him whether he thought god had sent Jesus to redeem the Jews or create Christendom - he replied he was sent to redeem everyone and referred me to St Paul who wrestled with this problem - could you give me the actual reference in the Bible? Can any theory be advanced why God felt it necessary at this time to send Jesus to earth and secondly if God recognises everyone and creates a life hereafter does this mean everyone ie of whatever denomination or non-believer?

Preliminary Reply This is treated with great depth in The Mystery of Salvation which John co-wrote. 2Cor5:11-21 is a good start but there are plenty of other passages in Paul and elsehwhere, not least Jn3:16-17. John adds: also 1 Cor 15:22

Why did God create Mankind? I've been reading Belief in God in an Age of Science. Mr. Polinghorne's arguments are encouraging to me. His discourse offers a logical explanation for the existence of God, but it doesn't offer much in the realm of "why". I noticed one "why" question (Why is there God?) on the Polkinghorne website, and I believe I understand the response posted. The question or the response doesn't, however, fully address another "why" as in, "Why did God create mankind?" except to say that, "we have a deep intuition that there is a point". A quick internet search will return hundreds (if not thousands) of hits that ask this same question of a variety of theological scholars. Although I haven't read every response, it seems that the best anyone can come up with is something like, "God wanted to share his love" or, "God created us to glorify him" or even, "God was lonely". Every one of those responses suggest to me that God is in need of something or lacking in some way which doesn't seem possible if one believes that God is "self existent" as you say. I don't mean to sound petulant, and maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that knowledgeable people such as yourselves and other scholars would be able to suggest more intellectually satisfying possibilities. To me, and judging from the number of other people asking it, this question is of deep concern. Do you have any further thoughts regarding the question, "Why did God create mankind?".

Preliminary Reply: Obviously this is a bit speculative - only God knows God's deep purposes. But I think we can say something useful:
a. God is obviously not 'lonely' because we (Christians) know that God is a perfect unity of three persons joined in perfect love.
b. It is in the nature of perfect love to desire to share this love with others and to be creative. It is therefore easy to see why a loving utlimate being would chose to be a creator and to create beings that were free to learn to chose to love.
"Self existent" simply means not dependent on anything/anyone else for existence. It is logically possible for a self-existent being to be lonely, I just don't think it applies to God.
John says: Complete agreement.

Supplimentary Question: Thank you and John for replying. I have trouble with the word “desire”, or any transitive verb like it as in your response b. “It is in the nature of perfect love to desire to share this love with others and to be creative.” Desire implies want. In fact, in my Webster’s the two words are interchangeable. Further, “want” implies a deficiency of some sort. If God is perfect (maybe I used the term "self existent" incorrectly), why would he need, want, desire, hope for, etc., anything? Or, are you saying that it's possible that God is not perfect? Nicholas' Reply: I think this is a slight confusion. To say "I desire the best for my children" does not imply that I lack anything - or that my children do. If God were an abstract concept then maybe one could be content with the (allegedly) "greek" idea of perfection as being essentially static. But we know that God is far more like a Person than a thing (indeed God is Triune) and for a Person or persons, being static is not perfection but death. Love, like God, is infinite and capable of infinite growth. Suppose, for example, that in Heaven Bach (or Mozart if you prefer) has become a Perfect Composer. This would not mean that he had stopped composing, but that he was continuing to compose new and wonderful works - each of surpassing beauty. Does this help/make sense at all? Response: Yes, I believe I understand your position. Thank you for taking the time.

Metaphors "Due to the limitations of our anatomy our comprehension of the universe is curtailed. Is it not so that our only recourse is to address the unknowable through metaphors such as science, religion, philosophy, music and so on and that we choose our metaphor according to our particular sensibility?"

Preliminary Response Our limitations are of course more than anatomical! Science, Religion, Philosopy and Music all give different glimpses into the deep truths of the one world which is God's creation. They all use symbols and often metaphors but I think they do a little more than that. When we say, for example, Jesus is the Son of God we are not making a metaphorical statement: His is the real Sonship of which the biological fact of descent is, in some sense, a metaphor. After all, comparing the case of a father who deeply loves a son who is (possibly unknown to him) not in fact his biological descendant with a father who happens to have a son of whom he is unaware we can see that the biological aspect of son-ship is not the most fundamental. It can also be a fine line between deepening our knowledge of trasnscendent reality through the routes that are most accessible to us and trying to tame ultimate truth in the ways that we find most comfortable. Ideally we get a judicious mixture of what we chose and what is best for us. John Adds: The only thing I would wish to add: at the heart of Christianity is the mysterious and exciting idea that God has acted to make the divine natur most accessibly known in human terms through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is the true icon of God. If you want to see why I believe this to be true you might look at my Science and Christian Belief (SPCK - US version here)

Bock Universe I'm reading Julian Barbour's The End of Time what do you think of this? Preliminary Response Dont know it but from what I read on the web it looks pretty un-impressive. There is a long history of trying to deny the existence of time but although it makes the maths easier in some ways it fails to correspond to reality. The best book I know on time is "A treatise on Time and Space" by John Lucas. He rightly begins with "time is more fundamental than space". John's comment I do not believe in the block universe as I think our experience of the flow of time is much more fundamental than any abstract arguments to the contrary. You might like to look at the debate about this written by Chris Ishram and myself in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, ed. RJ Russell at al (UK)

Jesus and the Fig Tree (an attempt to summarise the question of a somewhat confusing e-correspondence) "You say that, on the basis of the Biblical evidence, Jesus is 'perfect God and perfect Man' and yet there are passages such as Mark 11:12-14 which show Jesus acting in a very imperfect way. How do you reconcile this with intellectual rigour as practiced by eg Scientists? Preliminary Answer In any deep encounter with reality - whether in science or religion - there will always be puzzling aspects. The issue is to make sense of the data as a whole, and in particular to consider competing 'theories' in the light of the relevant data. Against the Fig tree passage one can test both "perfect god and perfect man" (PGPM) and "silly petulant annoyed miracle-worker" (SPAM) and superficially this may be the one bit of the NT where SPAM seems plausible. But it is quite clear from the way Mark reports it (and only slightly less clear from Matthew) that this is an enacted parable about the meaning of what he is doing with the temple - a crucial incident that will lead to his crucifixion. It makes you think, and helps you see PGPM more clearly.
Supplementary Preliminary Answer Actually, now that I have read Tom Wright's wonderful Jesus and the Victory of God I can see the point of the fig tree.  This was a regular symbol of Israel and by cursing it when he finds that there is no fruit when he passes, Jesus is making an enacted parable/symbolic act to show what the real situation of the reaction of the Jewish authorities was.  It is not at all an arbitrary incident, it's just that we don't in the 21stC automatically get the point.  It's rather as though someone did something to a Red Rose/Elephant in a political context in the UK/US - everyone now would know that this referred to the Labour/Repubican parties (respectively) but a reader in 2,000 years time might well be puzzled unless they took the time to understand what these symbols meant.

Believing bits of the Bible I have always believed in evolution and that the earth is 5 billion years old. If one accepts that the Bible is not always literally/factually true, then is it a worthwhile discussion to decide which parts are likely true or should it be left to each reader to decide for himself/herself? Presumably, it is OK not to believe that the Red Sea literally parted and then returned to drown the pursuing Egyptians or that the great flood literally killed all humans and animals except those in Noah's Ark. But what about the life of Jesus? Can one not believe in the (biological) virgin birth or that Jesus physically came back to life after three days and still be a Christian?

Preliminary Reply On each Bible passage, the key question is "what meaning does God want us to take from this?" and it is clear from the 2 accounts of creation in Genesis, that conflict on details, that often the details don't mattter. So the question is not quite "which parts are true". God wants us to understand that he delivers his people - exactly how he did it at the times of Exodus and Noah is not so important (I have seen some quite plausible, though admittedly speculative, explanations of why the waters could have parted enough for people to walk over but chariots got bogged down and then the waters came back - and "whole Earth" can mean "whole known inhabited parts").
When we come to matters which are in the Creeds then it seems clear that anyone who does not yet fully believe the creeds has not yet fully bought into the credal aspects of the Christian faith. (Whether they are a Christian or not is another matter). The Virgin Birth is not about God not liking sex but about emphasising that the incarnation is, from the beginning, a divine act. Of course it is biologically unlikely but not impossible - and since Mary was around for many years after Jesus died it is absurd to suppose that the stories in Luke would have been believed in the early Church is she had contradicted them. As for the 'physical' resurrection, it is clear that Jesus' physical body had disappeared (otherwise the authorities could have killed Christianty stone-dead by producing the corpse) and the only issue is whether the disciples faked it or whether God made it happen. It is hard to see how someone who believed the former could be a Christian.

John adds: When we read the Bible we have to work out what we are reading. For example poetry is very different from prose, though both convey truths of different kinds. Gen 1 and 2 are not about the scientific truth of the detail of how things happened but about the theological truth that everything that exists does so because of God's will that creation should be meaningful and fruitful. When Jesus was raised from the dead, it wasn't like someone being resuscitated, coming back to life in order eventually to die again. He was resurrected into a new kind of glorified life that will never end. Christians beleive that it is God's will that we too should share in that new life after our deaths.

Playing God (asked as follow-on to above)When reading one of Rev. Polkinghorne lectures, I come away with the view that miracles and "supernatural" acts obey the same natural laws but the natural elements come together in a certain state (which he calls the new regime) that is very rare in our everyday experience. Is he saying then that the divine aspect of the act is the elements coming together to make the phenomenon possible? Given that understanding, in theory, we should be able to perform the same "miracles" provided that we can arrange the natural elements the same way. In other words, we should try to understand the natural laws behind virgin birth and resurrection and possibly duplicate them if they are deemed beneficial. Afterall, that's what we have done by developing drugs to cure diseases, an act that would have been interpreted as miracles in the past. Then the question is Is there anything wrong with trying to play God?

Preliminary Reply The bodily presence of the Son of God is clearly a condition that cannot be replicated in a laboratory :-). Nor do we know enough about what a resurrection body is like to begin to try to replicate one. But in IVF we already practice a crude form of Virgin Birth, and clearly for God it would not be necessary to remove eggs from Mary, fertilise them in vitro and re-implant them: the same result could be achieved by causing one sperm cell with the right genetic sequence to fertlise one of her eggs in utero. It's not difficult to imagine advances in nanotechnology that would bring us closer to being able to do this. And we already have technologies that allow us to resusscitate people who have 'died', though of course this is not the same as Jesus' resurrection.
To turn to your specific question: it is clearly wrong to "play God" in the sense of presuming to take decisions or actions that can only properly be taken by God alone: it is not wrong to use our God-given gifts of understanding to do things that God wants us to do (such as curing the sick). Of course sometimes it is not easy to be sure of the difference - but then that's life (esp. moral life) - it's sometimes really complex.

Evolution and Christianity I play the organ at the local church, and devote much time and thought to helping some wonderful people worship. I regard the teachings of Jesus as the best advice ever given on how to live. However, to my great sadness, I cannot really share in the congregation's worship (except as a form of therapy which focuses attention on caring for others) because I see Christianity and Evolution as being in profound conflict on many issues, of which I name but three.

1. When one looks at the evolution of life on Earth -- at its long early period of `stagnation', at life's near extinctions, at the 150 million years in which dinosaurs dominated everything -- it is impossible to believe that Earth was always intended as the home of Man.

2. When one looks into the future to a time when, in its own death throes, the Sun destroys the Earth and leaves this beautiful planet a burnt-out hulk, Point 1 takes on even greater force.

3. Let me assume for the moment that I have a `soul' in the precise sense that (in some way which I do not need to understand) I can survive my physical death. Now trace back through evolution to the first of my ancestors to possess a soul in this sense. That ancestor with a soul was born of parents neither of whom had one. This reductio ad absurdum convinces me that I have no soul.

You say on your Web site that "Logically there is no contradiction between science and Christianity - it's only rabid atheists like Dawkins who pretend there is". It seems to me that Evolution continues to provide a much more serious challenge to Christianity than does anything else in Science. If it is the case that Christianity can answer Points 1,2 and 3, then I, and many others of the would-be faithful, would be deeply grateful to know how.

preliminary response 1. Even non-believers, like Sir Martin Rees FRS, the Astronomer Royal accept that there is an astonishing ammount of 'Anthropic Fine-Tuning' in the Universe. It is exactly as though the fundamental constants of nature have been chosen to have the precise values they need to allow the evolution of intelligent life. The only alternative he sees to admitting the existence of "a beneficent Creator, who formed the universe with the specific intention of producing us ... [a view] now espoused by eminent scientist-theologians such as John Polkinghorne" is to posit an infinite "multiverse" of which our universe is just one 'atom' (see Just Six Numbers pp149-150). There are also a number of special features of the Earth which are particularly suitable for development of intelligent life (the book Rare Earth summarises many of them). We are the right distance from the right type of star, protected by Jupiter from too many asteroid impacts, in a near-circular orbit. So far, it looks very like a specially-prepared home.

Now to the particular problems you mention. No-one understands evolutionary biology well enough to do the necessary caclulations convincingly, but it does seem clear that the evolution of intelligent life on an earth-like planet needs a few billion years. Complex life-forms need the right ecological niches and the early single-celled forms that existed for the first few billion years could do nothing much more than "prepare the ground" and also of course prepare the atmosphere and get the Oxygen levels up to the right sort of level for highly energetic land-based creatures. This is conceptually no more problematic than the few billion years required for the first generation stars to form and explode into supernovae so that the heavy elements could come into being. We know from the Psalms that "a thousand ages in Thy sight is like an evening gone" and scientist will also tell you that long timescales are not intrinsically significant: you merely adjust your units according to the pheonomenon you are studying. Although latest research suggests that some of the mass-extinction events are in fact artefacts in our data there really seems to have been a mass extinction when the Dinosaurs died out and at that time the Mammals were ready eventually to take over. We don't know why the dionsaurs existed but I suspect that there were good reasons why the mammals arrived when they did, and that the Dinosaurs, like the cyanobacteria, were preparing the ground in some important way.

Consider for example the organ on which you play. A 'scientific' account of its origins could talk about the billions of years in which the metals of which the pipes are now composed lay in the earth in the form of ore, the processes of smelting and casting and machining, the biological history of the trees from which the wood was hewn, the physical processes of manufacture, and the fact that it will probably only be in use for 100 years or so, during which time it may be played no more than 3-5 hours a week. None of these facts, considered rationally, makes it impossible to believe that the organ was intended to play church music. Indeed, whilst not denying any of these scientific facts, we can point to many other aspects of the Organ which seem only to make sense on the hypothesis that it was intended to play church music. It is of course logically possible that these are all meaningless coincidences, and that the Organ has been thrown together by accident in such a way that just happens to look as though it is designed to play music, just as you might pick up a reed and find that there were holes which allowed it to be played as a flute. I also don't think that, rationally it makes any difference whether it is made from trees 100 years old or a newly-minted plastic.

2. Christianity has always been an Escatological religion - and the fact that the Earth would be consumed by fire at some time in the future would not have been news to St Paul. The Earth was always intended as the birthplace of Humankind but our destiny is Eternal Life - ie the quality of life within the Trinity, which takes us beyond this transitory planet and even this transitory Universe. John's latest book (The God of Hope and the End of the World) discusses such issues with a wealth of insights far better than I can offer here. Subsequent quotes are from this book.

3. Logically the paradox you quote is only a problem if "having a human soul" is a property that is preserved under inheritance. But the whole point of evolution is that new properties can, and do arise. Given that humans have evolved there must have been a first human whose parents were merely hominoid. Conventionally the first male and female humans are called Adam and Eve. They had human souls, their ancestors did not. In what sense gorillas, chimps, dolphins, mice etc.. have souls is a debatable point (Aquinas thought that vegetables had vegetable souls) but it is pretty clear that they don't have human souls.

John - in common I think with most contemporary Christian theologians - does not think that even human souls are intrinsically immortal. "Whatever the human soul may be, it is surely what expresses and carries the continuity of living personhood" (p105) It seems that this "carrier of continuity is the immensely complex 'information-bearing pattern' in which [the] matter [in our bodies] is organised. This pattern is not static" (p105-6). In this way of understanding it there is no intrinsic immortality of the soul. "Death is a real end. However it need not be the ultimate end.... It is a perfectly coherent hope that the pattern that is a human being could be held in the divine memory after that person's death ... It is a further coherent hope, and one for which the resurrection of Jesus Christ provides the foretate and guarantee, that God in the escahtological future will re-embody this multitude of preserved information-bearing patterns in some new environment of God's choosing." (p107-8). I do hope this helps, and I'll see what John can add. N

John adds:You have mentioned The God of Hope. You might also wnat to look at Arthur Peacocke's God and the New Biology for biological evolution, or even The Work of Love - a set of essays which I editied that seeks to undrstand God's creative action in allowing creatures to make themselves.

Dawkins & Dennett In your book "Belief in God in an Age of Science" you quote Dawkins and Dennett. Do you feel (personally) that these two men are compotent in their respective fields of study? I admire both men, as well as you, and I would hate to think I was recieving information from them that was contrary to real science. I understand that there theological/metaphysical beliefs are mixed in with their science, but if you take that out, would you have a compotent view of science or, in Dennetts case, consciousness. What do you think of Teilhard's work? I read an online interview in "Cross Currents" a while back that stated you admire Teilhard, do you still feel this way? My friend has a lot of respect for Teilhard and talks of him as he is the reason that he has not abandoned Christianity. In your opinion, is he that great? I own some of his books,and I would hate to feel that I wasted money buying them, is there anything to learn from him that is not misleading to a young and manipulative mind?

Nicholas' Preliminary Answer Dawkins is a Prof of public understanding of science and is very good at explaining a pretty mainstream view of evolutionary biology, although it is remarkably non-numerate and taken to extreme - he seems to think that Evolution explains everything. He does mix this in with aggressively atheistic metaphysics in a very unfortunate way. Also his "selfish gene" metaphor has probably done a lot to fuel the irrational fear of GM foods (not that all such fears are necessarily irrational, but some are) and he fans the flames of a daft genetic determinism that permeates the semi-educated.

Dennett is also a talented communicator with some interesting ideas - more original that Dawkins, but is also guilty of grossly over-claiming. In Beyond Science John comments "despite the ambitious title...[Consciousness Explained] nowhere adequately addresses the issue of self-awareness...I am not unsympathetic to trying to use computer analogies to get some extremely modest and primitive insight into the problem...what I am opposed to is the claim that what in fact is only a preliminary exercies of very limited scope is the total solution to the problem. People such as Dennett seem to suppose that all one needs to do is to add a few simple ideas...to standard computational theory and all is solved. That seems to be like saying in 1900 that all one had to do to cope with the problems of atomic physics was to add Max Plank's notion of packets of energy to Newtonian Mechanics and all would be solved. Insightful though Plank's discovery was, the true explanation of atomic physics required a revolutionary transformation of our ideas of the nature of the physical world... It would surely be surprising if the comprehension of consciousness did not call for at least an equal upheaval in our understanding of reality."

Teilhard was in many ways admirable (although there are suggestions that he was involved in the Plitdown Man forgery) but I don't think the details of his ideas really stack up.

Creation Accounts 1) How does the narration of God's creation in the Bible support/refute the present understanding of the evolution of man? What are the concepts presented in the Bible and of the researches today that benefit/hinder each other's description and explanation of how we all came into being?
2) What are the "historical" bases (i.e. the early traditions) for such an understanding of God's creation? Why did the early Christians believe in that narration to be true? What are their solid bases (i.e. aside from faith) for that (e.g. findings perhaps, etc.)? Did science also play a role for the formation of Genesis 1?

Preliminary Answer Here are my preliminary answers - we'll see what John has to add. You might also wish to consult his books.
1. We need to clear that a biologist and the Bible are answering very different questions about "how man came to be". It is quite clear from Genesis that the details of times and sequence are not to be taken literally. When Genesis says God formed man out of the dust of the earth and Biology fills in many of the fascinating scientific details of how (evolution, biochemistry, anatomy etc.. playing their role) they are not in conflict, any more that the Biology is in conflict with the Physics that underpins it. The Bible is principally about relationships with God which by definition are beyond the realm of Biology.
2. We don't really know how the creation stories of Genesis came into their final form. It is thought that Genesis was compiled in its final fom after the exile, based on ancient sources dating from the 10th C BC. These were themselves distillations of deep reflection and the inspired sifting of tales, and echos, though is importantly different from, other ancient creation accounts. Christians belive, of course, that God is at work in the process of drawing scripture together, and that the texts that are given us are 'inspired' (although there is of course some divergence about exactly what that means). The mainline Christian position has always been that the Bible tells the truth about how we should relate to God, but is not a scientific treatise.

Start of Singularity As I understand the theory, preceding the big bang was a singularity, defined as infinitesimally small, with no time, infinite mass, and space infinitely curved. If so, what got the bang started? Is there any scientific theory describing a natural cause? It would seem to me that by definition a singularity would continue forever. Indeed, "forever" is the wrong term, because there would be no time. Yet nothing we can conceive of would have started the bang. Is there any sense to what I'm saying?

Nicholas Preliminary Answer We know that the curently-understood laws of physics break down just before the 'singularity' and there are plenty of theories - all rather speculative - as to what happens. There are even attempts to suggest that there is no singularity if you extend into 'imaginary' time (ie time with coordinates which are 'complex numbers' rather than just 'real numbers'). It also seems clear that quantum effects would be very significant at this time, and therefore 'random' fluctuations would allow the 'big bang' to occur 'spontaneously'. Ultimately, though, there must surely be a fundamental cause of the existence of the physical laws and initial conditions - a cause which transcends physics. "in the beginning, God" makes ultimate sense - the offered alternatives are far less convincing. I'll see what John has to add to this.

John comments I have nothing to add to your judicous response.

Suffering My question involves (yet again) the problem of suffering. I find the "free will defense" and your "free process defense" intellectually admissable, but pastorally unsatisfying - even, dare I say it, horrifying.
I am a Lutheran pastor who is, I am afraid, in danger of losing the faith. I am grateful that you cite those 2 defenses while saying "one cannot make [these] assertion[s] without a quiver" (p. 14, Belief in God in An Age of Science) and so I am bold to ask for more.
(Aside re: free will defense: If we were "automata" - well, would we care? Presumably the machine is not conscious of its lack of freedom. Freedom matters to conscious beings; awareness and freedom must be born together. That is, however, but a minor quibble.)
My greatest concern is with the image of God that emerges from our intellectual efforts. I am sickened by the image that so many of my parishioners carry with them, and that I carry as well! - the omnipotent Potentate ignoring the cries of the tortured. Christ on the cross ("my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?") is not comforting: so God incarnate suffers, too? So more suffering is added to the pot. I generally like Moltmann but the quote you use ("Even Auschwitz is taken up into the grief of the Father, the surrender of the Son, and the power of the Spirit", p. 44 Belief in God...) is perplexing. The problem is not God's suffering, but our suffering. So Auschwitz is "taken up"? So? I want to know - what is 'brought down'?
It is not enough for God to "be there in the darkness" (p. 44, ibid); what is God doing?
I have read your various accounts of God's action in the world - again, I am grateful for your thoughts - but if those accounts are to take hold they must be matched with narrative. The "story" (not that it is untrue, but that it has plot and characters) of Christ's death is indeed a more satisfying response to the "deep existential challenge" (p. 43, ibid) of suffering than dogmatic statements. But I am at a loss - what is the story of the resurrected Christ in Auschwitz?
I will admit that providence works in secret - I would like to think of God working might and main - with God's heart in God's mouth - with anguish and yearning to prevent as much suffering as possible - and yet this work may not be proven to be of God. The hidden God, the Deus Absconditas (as Luther said) works without our recognition.
But why bother with God at all, then? If God's actions are indiscernable - let God work quietly away, and humans work (not so quietly) away, on parallel but distinct paths (one could ask, of course, if parallel lines do eventually meet, still).
Presumably we look to the sacraments (outward and visible signs), the body of Christ (the Spirit active within), and to the promised faithfulness of God in prayer.
Yet I find the value of those gifts pale next to the depth of suffering. What is the eucharist next to the incestuous torture of an 8 year old? What is the body of Christ when so many "Christians" fail to act to prevent Auschwitz? The vagarities of prayer seem to be an insulting response to the needs of a family of an 11 month old with leukemia.
I am afraid I will be leaving the church - not because I can't believe, but because it seems pointless to do so.
Too often the practices of the church seem like a handful of sand thrown in rage - a pitiful and inconsequential gesture in the face of evil.
I suppose what I am asking from you is for more narrative, more story; to make the dry theological bones live; to more fully connect your beautiful and simple theory with the guts and grime of church and life.
I am sorry this is so long, but I wanted to be precise. Any comments, advice, reading suggestions, sermons etc. would be most appreciated. I know you are probably deluged with letters, but I'm rather at the end of my rope. (Is it possible to find a copy of your talk, "Can a Physicist pray?") I'm basically looking for anything to piece a shattered faith together.

Nicholas' Preliminary Response I do feel wholly inadequate - as a lay person - to answer your questions/comments.
What I think we can know is that either life is wholly pointless or that God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (capitalised because of course God is genderless). We obviously don't see things from God's point of view, and even if we did we could never prove that the suffering we observe is really compatible with a Loving Ulitimate Creator, but we can certainly see enough to get a glimpse of why there are no easy answers - and why free will and free process, with all their downsides, are fundamentally necessary to the possibly of learning to chose to love. It is also far from clear that a world without suffering would be preferable to one with the possibility of alleviating, and learning from, suffering. But philisophy never cured toothache - let alone the worse diseases and evils that you mentioned.
To address the points you raised directly:
If we were automata - would we care? No - and surely that is the point. We would not care, we would not love. It is love that matters - freedom is a pre-condition. re omnipotence, the point is that God limits His omnipotence to give us free will and the universe free process. A loving parent does not correct all their child's mistakes. God's redemption is ultimate, not just a kingdom of this world.
What is the eucharist next to the incestuous torture of an 8 year old? Surely the Eucharist and all it implies - repentence, prayer, participation in the life, death and resurrection of Christ - is the only thing that is remotely adequate to the suffering of this broken/fallen world.
What is the body of Christ when so many "Christians" fail to act to prevent Auschwitz? Well it was Christians who defeated Hitler and ended it.
The vagarities of prayer seem to be an insulting response to the needs of a family of an 11 month old with leukemia. Surely prayer plus the best that medicine can provide is the only effective response. Much more effective than either on their own BTW.
I fear that these comments may not help. All our rational concerns are to some extent waves on the deeper spiritual oceans. A retreat would perhaps be more helpful than an email, but sadly an email is all I can do. I'll see what John has to add to this - he will be much wiser than I.

John's Response Thank you for the email message that has been passed to me. The questions that you ask are deep and perplexing and I cannot pretend to have the wisdom to know how to answer them properly. There are just two things I would like to say.
One is that I acknowledge that cool intellectual discussion, though not, I think, valueless, is nevertheless unable to get to the real heart of the matter. You say that thoughts must be matched with narrative. That is right and, for me, the enacted story of the cross of Christ, understood as God's true acceptance of participation in the suffering of the world, is the narrative that affects me most and helps me most in wrestling with these profound difficulties. Of course if that story just ended with the cry of dereliction, it would seem to sombre to carry hope, but there is also the resurrection, even if between the Friday and the Sunday there is the silent grave of Holy Saturday. That leads me to my second point.
The life of this strange and bitter world is not the only story we have. I do not want to evoke a pie-in-the-sky theodicy that tries to appeal to the life to come in order to persuade us to forget the sufferings of this world. But those sufferings would be intolerably more bleak than they are if they were the whole of reality. I am sure you know the argument between Ivan and Alyosha Karamzov in Dostoyevsky's novel. Ivan's story of the child wantonly torn to pieces by the general's hounds is a truly terrible tale, but it seems to me that it would be even more ghastly if the lad had not hope of a life beyond death. I have tried to discuss this aspect of things in a recent book The God of Hope and the End of the World.
I realise that these remarks are likely to be of very limited help. I pray for you and I do beg you to hold on to your faith and hope if you can, in the perplexing darkness in which you find yourself.

Gospel Healings The Gospels recorded several events when Jesus healed blind, paralysed people miracally. My problem is not on the authenticity of miracle healing, but on the possibility of immediate recovery. Medical reports show that even if a blind person has his sight function again, he cannot know what the light and color means. He needs a very long time to know which colors refer to which object. Similarly, even if a paralysed patient has his legs function again, he'll need a considerable amount of time to learn how to control the muscle and keep balance. Someone said the gospels are not real stories. I am really in doubt.

Preliminary Response: two possible explanations of your difficulty spring to mind. The first is that the people healed were in an atypical condition: for example the optic nerve etc.. may have been functioning but the patient was unaware of his vision. The second possibility is that God may have caused the muscles/neurons to re-generate and re-programme as well as the immediate obstacle to walking/sight to be removed. Note that in the healing miracles God is doing things quickly that He often does, but slowly: they are not conjoring tricks but signs of God's presence, concentrated in Jesus to an un-precedented degree. And as John points out in Science & Theology (p92-3) "Theology can borrow from science the concept of a regime, a domain of experience charaterised in some intrinsically significant way. It is a familiar fact that a change of regime can produce dramatic changes in behaviour, as in the transition in metals from the conucting state to the superconducting state, resulting in the total vanishing of electrical resistance...The laws of nature do not change at these transition points but their consequences do dramatically...Miracles are not to be interpreted as divine acts against the laws of nature...but as more profound revelations of the character of the divine relationship to creation". John says "nothing to add to [this] judicious reply"

Creationsim v Darwinism I would love to learn more about his views on creationism v. Darwinism, as we are often asked to consult with state officials on the proper curriculum for middle and high school students.

Preliminary Response Scientific Darwinism is completely compatible with the Christian understanding of Creation - and indeed it is clear from the fact that the 2 creation stories in Genesis differ in detail that the precise details are not meant to be taken literally. Of course some people falsely claim that scientific Darwinism implies a metaphysical 'Darwinism' (Darwinolatory) which says that there is Nothing But natural selection (driven by 'blind, meaningless' chance) - and others falsely claim that the Bible is a kind of scientific textbook, thereby sadly giving credence to the Darwinolatrists. Dennis Alexander is v good on this in Rebuilding the Matrix. John says "nothing to add to [this] judicious reply"

Hartle-Hawking & Tegmark I have a question about the Hartle-Hawking equation and the work of Max Tegmark (all possible worlds exist). In both cases, it seems to me (not knowing the subjects or the mathematics in depth) that the equations used are interesting feats of mathematical "self-indulgence". What I mean is that neither, it seems to me, has an experimental basis nor does either give rise to experimental predictions that can be tested. It seems that each is designed to be a bit of cleverness to prove a point -- in the case of Hawking that you can have a universe without a "beginning" and for Tegmark that you could have quantum laws such that "every possible universe exists". To me these seem only more sophisticated versions of the proof that all books have the same author. Is this an accurate account of these equations or is it uncharitable? Are there other examples of what you might consider essentially tendentious models or equations in physics/cosmology?

Preliminary ResponseThis is really beyond my expertise. But as far as I can see: a. The Hartle-Hawking proposal is designed to get round some problems in the Open Inflation models of the universe - mainly that the Initial Conditions are fine-tuned and "subject to the unusal handwaving". The idea is that, if space has a certain topology (S3) and given some assumptions about the laws of physics, you can (allegedly) define the initial conditions by means of a Feynman Path Integral with some assumptions about the lower limit of the Integral. (see here for source material if you are interested). If you then insert the fact that we are in an anthropic universe to get the probabilities right, you seem to get (with a set of rather heroic approximations) a power spectrum for the Cosmic Background Raditaion which is in the right ballpark. This proposal seems interesting but there are significant difficulties and it is all pretty speculative. It is (of course) an abuse of language to suggest that this proposal does away with the boundary conditions or with anthropic fine-tuning. But it's not just Mathematical Legerdemain either - it's as testable as most theories of basic cosmology.
As far as I can see thinking has moved on to "Branes" and away from H-H. This is partly because Branes are currently the most promising route to a Unified Theory and partly because (see here) the H-H proposals suffer from a number of technical problems (Real time is important, the initial state of the H-H universe is not well-defined and the model tends to favour an empty Universe - without applying the Anthropic Principle). But as Turok says "Daring is called for .. Disasters are instructive" and these highly speculative flights of fancy are not in any sense scientific results, just work in progress.
Tegmark's proposal that all possible worlds exist is, of course, interesting because it implies the existence of God. But his actual work is not by any means content free - although it is of course highly speculative. His v interesting paper submitted to Phys Rev D Jan 22 2001 proposes a programme of trying to account for the data by not assuming that the Einstein Field Equations hold. As an illustration, a model-independent analysis of 92 type Ia supernovae demonstrates that the curve giving the expansion history has the wrong shape to be explained without some form of dark energy or modi ed gravity. We discuss how upcoming lensing, galaxy clustering, cosmic microwave background and Ly forest observations can be combined to carry though this program, and forecast the accuracy that the proposed SNAP satellite can attain.
He also says (quite fairly from what I understand): "Modern cosmology is in a somewhat equivocal state of affairs. The good news is that a recent avalanche of high-quality data are well fit by an emerging "standard model" whose roughly ten free parameters are being constrained with increasing precision. The bad news is that this emerging model is more complicated than anticipated. There is not one kind of dark matter, but three: ...Moreover, problems involving small-scale clustering have triggered increasingly complicated models for the dark matter... This perceived profusion of bells and whistles has caused unease among some cosmologists and prompted concern that these complicated dark matter flavors constitute a modern form of epicycles."

Creation/evolution I am very interested in the Creation-evolution debate. If anything I prefer the evolution side and I find frustratingly that so much of the arguing seems to be over interpretation of evidence. I have been talking to a ceationist who says that the oxygen content of pre-Cambrian rocks in Lewis and in Greenland shows that there could at most only have been 10,000 years or so when there was no photo-synthesis on Earth. I know it's not a physics or maths problem, but I would like to know if it is one you have come across and have any thoughts on. I find it extremely difficult to find people who are really knowledgeable on both sides of the 'argument' (which seems very easily to sink into a slanging match anyway).

Preliminary Response: I don't think there is any substance in this "oxygen content" business. Probably the world's leading expert on pre-cambrian in Greenland in Simon Conway Morris, a highly intelligent Christian and Prof of Evolutionary Paleo-biology at Cambridge. If there were any such evidence to refute evolution he would know about it. There isn't.
I haven't been able to locate the source of this suggestion. There is a paper that looks pretty credible here though I am not an expert in this area. As all sensible people know, scientific Evolution is completely compatible with Christianity: so is Gravity, Relativlty (and the rest of Physics, Chemistry and Biology for that matter). People have made metaphysical claims based on alleged extrapolation of the results of science and falsely suggested that these are established by the science. Certainly metaphysical Evolutionism (Darwinolatory) is not compatible with Christianity - nor is the idolatory of money or sex (remember how Freud used to be regarded with even more awe that Darwin?). To be fair, Darwin and Huxley were always crystal clear about this. They were agnostics and evolutionist scientists, but had close colleagues who were Christians and evolutionists. So does Stephen Jay Gould - whose Rocks of Ages is pretty helpful (although I don't think John would go all the way with the Non-Overlapping Magisterium ("NOMA") principle Gould advocates, except as a first approximation).

PS I have now finished Rocks of Ages. It starts well - suggesting a "NOMA" principle, that Science should not dictate to Religion or vice-versa but that their Magisteria (domains of applicability) are of equal status, don't overlap, but "interdigitate...at every fractal scale of self-similarity" (p65). But at the end he seems to go off the rails. He appears to argue that, because there are "hundreds of millions [of species] that have graced the history of our planet ... Homo Sapiens ranks as...a wildly improbably evolutionary event, not the nub of universal purpose" (pp202-206). But under NOMA such facts as the number of species cannot logically dictate the validity of a religious hypothesis. He also completely misunderstands the kinds of argument that Physicist Theologians are advocating. He dismisses Stannard's analogies between wave/particle duality and God/Man as a claim that "the status of Jesus...must be factually true" (p216) and the Anthropic Principle with "if the laws of nature were just a tad different...some other configuraton...would then exist, and the universe would present just as interesting a construction... So what." (p219) He sounds here like an old-fashioned biologist who is not very numerate: ironic since modern genetics and taxonomy leans heavily on statistical approaches. The point of the Anthropic fine-tuning argument is that tiny changes in the fundamental constants would produce a pretty sterile universe. This provides (in statistical terms) strong support for the likelihood of an 'hypothesis' that intelligent life is an intended consequence of the initial conditions rather than an accidental by-product.

Follow-up question I've found the answer to my first question, about Creation, very helpful, and encouraging. I've been doing more research, because of the 'Creation Science workshops' our local children will be having. I would be very interested, if you or perhaps even other readers have come across the latest direction their thoughts are taking. It is based on the work of H. Ohmoto of Pennsylvania State University, about the fact that paleosols contain so much oxygen (or iron affected by it), that there must have been more 02 in the early atmosphere than was thought. I cannot find what Ohmoto's conclusions are--but the Creationist interpretation is that it proves earth never had a reducing atmosphere...so life could not have started the way scientists say...so no evolution. This sounds very simple, but that is what our children are going to be taught in the summer. I have been finding it very frustrating but am very re-assured and encouraged to find that I am not alone. Look forward to hearing, and I'm glad I found the site.

Follow-up response Ohomoto seems to be a good scientist, and if you look here you will see that his conclusion is "These data are inconsistent with the conventional model of chemical and biological evolution, but they are consistent with a model postulating the development of globally oxygenated and sulfate-rich oceans and of the emergence of SRB, cyanobacteria and methanotrophs prior to 3.5 Ga."
No-one with the slightest knowledge of biology can doubt that evolution is a major principle in the development of life on earth, and that all living creatures are releated genetically (apart from anything else, genomes of different creatures are amazingly similar. Striking illustration - a paper in this week's Nature sheds light on mood control in manic depression through the interaction of drugs on Slime Mold!). Clearly the details of how this works are still poorly understood - and were not at all understood by Darwin who knew nothing of genetics. However this does not and can not mean that God is not at work as Creator, through Evolution and all the other physical laws. No-one now seriously believes that evolution determines what happens - there is too much chance involved.

reincarnation Hi, For as long as I can remember I have been searching for meaning. I had a pretty standard upbringing, Christian but not really practicing. My sister's family is a strongly Christan one, and a fine example of a family practicing Christian values. Although from time to time I have read some of the bible I would hardly call myself well-versed in the detail. I have read many books about "life the universe and all that" and I am quite convinced that there is more to life than the mundane material life of the senses. Just what more there is, and what form it takes, is another matter altogether. I must ponder this for some period every other day ! Just one example of my musings is the following. I believe one of the tenets of Christian belief is that there is no reincarnation, that this life is all the time we have to prove our suitability for the "life ever lasting". If everybody lived for the same length of time and had the same opportunities for doing good (or evil) then we could all be judged fairly on our performance. This, of course, is not the case, and it seems to me that a "ticket to heaven" could be more readily obtained by a new-born infant dying, sin-free, soon after birth, rather than living to a ripe old age with the possibilty of accumulating significant sinful baggage. Apparently our life on earth is to allow us to learn about love and to how to be "good" spirits. If we only get one crack at it but the circumstances vary so widely (sin-free infant dying at birth versus wizened-oldie sinner) then it doesn't seem to me a very fair and equitable system. I think reincarnation logically has to be part of the paradigm. What do you think ?

Preliminary Response It'd be very unfair if we were doing the judging, but God knows all the 'mitigating circumstances' and can fully take them into account. One big problem with re-incarnation is that it justifies appalling treatment of other people on the grounds that the reason they are an "untouchable" or (often) a woman is that they had "bad karma". Jesus is clear that life is immensely serious and God offers the free gift of eternal life - ie life in union with God - to all.

How the resurrection happened (Dr Henry Pang (medical) Australian Catholic University Australia) How did a dead body move out of a sealed tomb? How did a dead body with bloody wounds walk and speak to others? Given no astronaut nor any space device with cameras in space, has yet reported any life like activity in space beyond the outer reaches of the solar system, where did the person who is said to ascend go? Since there were no reports of Saturn rockets 2000 years ago, how did this person having regained life, ascend into the upper skys? My approach to these issues is to apply hyperspace theory, particularly cosmology and higher dimensions theory. I do not suggest proof. I do provide interessting descriptions of the transition from dead to life applying higher dimensions theory. Many extraordinary events can be explained when dimensions higher than the 4D of our universe are applied. If the ascended person had access to a black hole/wormhole system within our Milky Way, it is relatively easy to suggest travel between universes, which would conveniently account for that ascended person vanishing from our earthly view. If the ascended person has access to astronomical energies as equated by Einstein as e = mc2, it would not be at all surprising for ascending person to proceed wherever without Saturn rockets. In short, I think hyperspace theory is suitable for considering aspects of resurrection needed by non-believers if they are to take any interest in our religion.

Preliminary Response We don't know the physics of Christ's resurrection - and we almost certainly never will. By definition this is a unique event in a unique regime and thus not subject to experiment. Our current understanding of physics is far from complete, for example it seems that most of the matter in the Universe is "dark matter" and we don't know what this is composed of - nor do we really understand the mysterious observer/observation distinction that lies at the heart of Quantum Mechanics. But based on what little we do know we now understand that the notion of 'confinement' is not as simple as "you're in and you can't get out" so it is never strictly true to say that an object 'tunelling' through a barrier is 'impossible', merely highly unlikely. With apologies to Schrodinger, it is tempting to suggest that, in a sealed tomb, the system goes into a linear superposition of two 'entangled' states psi|dead + psi|resurrected and God does an observation which forces the system into psi|resurrected. But this is enormously speculative, and not really saying anything very much except it is not impossible. (Remember that superconductivity was "impossible" for over 50 years after it was discovered, and High Temperature Superconductivity is still poorly understood.) As for the Ascension - it is clear that heaven is not "up" in any physical sense: it is a state of perfect union with God and thus not localised in the universe. If Jesus did rise into the air, as seems probable, this was an enacted parable. The use of higher dimensions seems quite fasionable at the moment (in 'brane theory') and it is quite possible that the next version of physics will involve additional dimensions, but at present this is all speculative.

The Flood Is there any evidence of the global flood which Noah and his family survived?

Nicholas' Response approved by John It is known that the Black Sea was once dry land and was flooded by the sea coming through the Hellespont. This may well be the flood that is referred to in the Noah story. Of course this flood did not cover the whole planet but may well have covered the whole inhabited area known to the storyteller (which is another reading of the word translated as 'earth').
It seems clear that the details of the Noah story, like most of the details in the early part of Genesis are there to convey the spiritual essence of the situation rather than to give what a robot might have seen. It is now clearer than ever that all animal life on this planet is in an important sense entrusted to our care by God and is fragile and subject to the risk of mass extinctions - either from natural causes or human failure to obey God's word or a combination of both. This is conveyed much more truthfully by the language of the Bible than by the measured tones in which Archeologists would tend to relate the events that may have originally given rise to the text.

Pain and Death? I am currently a student at L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland, and have engaged myself in a study involving the relationship between science and religion. My study focuses specifically on the question of natural evil which arises in an evolutionary model of creation. I am interested in how scholars such as yourself address the apparent contradiction involved in this issue: simply put, if the physical pain and death from which humans suffer is of the same nature as that from which animals suffer, then it would have presumably existed before humans, i.e., pre-fall, and therefore have been part of God's 'good' creation; and yet, the Bible indicates that God intends to redeem the faithful from it, thus justifying it's 'evil' label. I am aware that there is a plethora of literature available on the subject, including much of your own authorship, so I considered it worthwhile to consult one of the most highly respected scholars in this field for direction as to which of your own publications, or any others, you feel would be most helpful in addressing this issue. I myself am a former Christian trained in anthropology, and am very respectful of and am seriously considering the beliefs of those such as yourself. Yours sincerely, Brad Thames

Nicholas' Preliminary Reply: Although there are clearly continuities at the neurological level between human pain and animal pain, there are also fundamental differences between human and animal consciousness. There is no evil in feeling un-conscious pain. Equally, in this world, the ability to feel pain is fundamental to survival - this in this world a reasonable level of pain is part of God's good creation. Similar comments apply to death, with the important addition that death is the essential gateway to Eternal Life. But in the new creation we don't need to feel pain, and we don't need to die to enter Eternal Life. To use a weak analogy - living entirely on milk is very good for a new baby, and very bad for a middle-aged man. To 'redeem' a grown man from drinking nothing but milk does not negate the fact that milk is good - for a baby.

Follow-up (quote - questioner's comment - Nicholas' response).. There is no evil in feeling un-conscious pain. By unconscious pain, I assume you mean non-emotional pain, the pain that would result from touching a hot stove for instance. No - I mean pain that is not consciously perceived, eg while under anaesthetic. However, the Bible seems to indicate that this type of pain resulted at least in part from the fall: e.g., "Your pains in childbirth will multiply" (Gen 3:16) speaks of a physical, bodily pain, one which is of the same nature as the hot-stove pain in that it results from the corruptability of our body, yet evidently was not part of God's original 'good' creation since he imposed it after the fall. Yet this pain is inherent from the physical characterisics of a woman's body. Are we then forced to believe that God in effect altered the genetic structure of a woman in order to cause greater pain?
It is well known that the effect of pain on people is a function of their state of mind. Soliders in battle can suffer appalling wounds and scarecely notice them (clear evolutionary value in this) and there is a lot of evidence that people with deep religious commitment can bear pain with enormous fortitude. So it may be that at least one aspect of this is that, once people have lost their total trust in God, all forms of biological pain are far more painful mentally.
Also, are we then unjustified to expect that in the future redeemed world there is still the absense of pain? If pain is not an evil, then there is no need to be redeemed from it, and therefore this expectation would in fact be unjustifiable it seems. Yet my reading of scripture does not seem to allow for the existance of the excruciating pain we all have experienced at one time or another. Are we then forced to draw some arbitrary line between that which is justifiable pain from which there is no need for redemption, and that which has resulted from evil?
I think we can distinguish between (a) biological pain, (b) tolerable pain and (c) intolerable pain. For example, I am training for the Marathon at the moment and distance running can be quite painful - but I tolerate, and to some extent embrace, the pain because of the greater good of achievement, fitness, cameraderie etc.. Now the only form of pain that I think we can say is evil is (c) and it is this that we are redeemed from.
Equally, in this world, the ability to feel pain is fundamental to survival - this in this world a reasonable level of pain is part of God's good creation. Again, judging between what level is resonable and what level is not seems arbitrary, since it all results from the corruptability of our bodies and the existance of fixed natural laws in the universe.
Similar comments apply to death, with the important addition that death is the essential gateway to Eternal Life. But in the new creation we don't need to feel pain, and we don't need to die to enter Eternal Life. This seems to imply that from the beginning of creation God intended this world to be only temporary, that he originally intended all to die and enter into another existance. This requires the belief that death, in and of itself, is not evil. Again, I don't find that to be consistant with what scripture says about death. Likewise, there is no need to believe in an acutal, bodily resurrection, since if was not Christ's physical death which was evil, then his physical resurrection was unnecessary for the 'victory over death'. This sort of theology is quite problamatic for the Christian.
Well clearly biological death predates the first fully conscious humans (designated as Adam and Eve) so biological death in this world is part of God's good creation. Indeed without it evolution is pretty difficult, and so is resurrection. So I think God always intended us to graduate from this world to the next, just as we graduate from the womb to the earth. (I'd love to write a dialogue between a sceptical and a beliving twin about life after birth). It is of course quite possible that sinless humans might have been bodily assumed into heaven - the stories of Elijah and Enoch seem to suggest this and this is what the doctrine of the Assumption seems to be about - but I'm very unsure about this. Whether Jesus' physical resurrection was "necessary" is speculative - the fact of His physical resurrection is, to my mind, abundantly clear. (After all, if His body was in the tomb then the authorities could have produced it and killed Christianity stone dead, and if His disciples removed it then they would not have believed in it so feircely).
To use a weak analogy - living entirely on milk is very good for a new baby, and very bad for a middle-aged man. To 'redeem' a grown man from drinking nothing but milk does not negate the fact that milk is good - for a baby. There is certainly nothing unnatural about a baby growing up to be a man, so the need to redeem would be perfectly in accord with a harmonous world. Yet sin certainly is unnatural, and by it's very definition is a disharmony in God's created order. The implications that follow from a belief that God created man with an inherent need for redemption (as opposed to sustination) certainly would be nothing a Christian would like to admit to--God redeeming us from himself?
The possibility of sin is inherent in the existence of freewill which is essential for love. We could, in theory, never have sinned, but the whole plan of redemption was inherent in God's creation - which is why it is "very good"
As for your question--why am I a former Christian, of course I could (and have) written pages describing all the factors that led to this, so my answer here will be a bit simplistic. I also should mention that I have not blatently rejected Christianity in favor of another world view. Rather, at present I find myself simply unable to bring myself to an honest and comfortable acceptance of the truths of Christianity. The main contributions to this has been reflection on the significant problems with Christian theology (some of the primary ones I'm sure you can figure out), in which I find very little coherence (a solution to one problem leads to a problem in another area, for instance); Any deep true understanding of the world tends to have paradoxes - consider Quantum Theory and Relativity. I don't think Christian theology is any worse than that. a rejection of the uniqueness of Christianity in the area of religious experience, based on the untrustworthiness of my own alleged experiences in the past, the similarities with the experiences of practitioners of other religion, and the similarity with non-religious experiences, and thus a rejection of the claim that religious experiences confirms the truths of Christianity and the existance of God; Well no supporting evidence can be conclusive, but the fact that some religious experiences are mistaken does not prove that they all are. and an exposure from science and anthropology to the possibilities (however improbable) of human behaviour, religion, and the universe itself as having evolved naturalistically.
Any comments on anthropic fine-tuning?
As I mentioned, I don't find the alternative world-view (naturalism) to be compelling enough to embrace without a thorough search for the trustworthiness of Christianity, in which I am still engaged. I recognize that human reason has limits, and the implications of a naturalistic world-view, which is in large part the reason I haven't yet embraced it. I also am turning to obviously brilliant minds such as Polkinghorne who I can assume have considered the problems I find, and yet are still able to accept Christianity. I suppose, to sum up, my approach to Christinity in the past has led me to disbelief, and so now I am trying to find an approach that can lead to belief.

John's Response (John had seen the questioner's remarks above but my replies in italics were inserted afterwards and John has not seen them) The problems you raise are serious and not ones that can adequately be responded to in a few lines. I hope therefore you will not mind my referring you to some of my books where I say what I can at some length. On evil generally, see ch 5 of Science and Providence, on the Fall see pp63-5 of Science and Theology for life of the new creation and its relation to the present world, see ch 9 of Science and Christian Belief. Part of the mystery of evil and suffering is not that they exist at all but the scale on which they exist. The central Christian insight is that in the cross of Christ we see God sharing to the full in the travail of creation, truly a 'fellow sufferer who understands'.

Why are you an Anglican? I am a lifelong Anglican, and I have often said that I can't imagine myself being otherwise. So I was disconcerted recently when I was asked why I was an Anglican. It's such a part of me that I rarely consider the why of it. But I began to think: Why Anglican? Why not Roman Catholic like my husband, or Methodist like my best friend, and so on?
I have always enjoyed reading your books, particularly The Faith of a Physicist, and I hoped that you would not mind my asking you the same question: Why are you an Anglican? If you have time to reply, I would be very grateful to hear from you.
P.S. I am particularly interested in the question of time as it relates to God, and whether our perceptions of time are merely subjective or actually objective. Do you think you will ever write a book on this?

Nicholas' Preliminary Response Well I'll try and give my preliminary answer but 'cos this is rather personal John's may be totally different or he may not answer at all.
I was born an Anglican (as I believe John was) and thus one would need a good reason to change. However I do think that Anglicans have historically been right about most major issues (eg Catholic + Reformed, Worship in a tongue understood of the people, communion in both kinds, reason+scripture+tradition) and indeed until about 1980 there were enough serious objections to RC positions on these matters to make me very glad indeed not to be an RC - they have now largely converged on where we historically stood but they still have the serious baggage of infallability and Vatican Control, and some particularly unsavoury historical episodes. There is also no doubt in my mind that Queen Elizabeth I was a divinely inspired leader and that much of the best of the 'western' democratic tradition is due to her long-term influence. So at least at that point in history and God wanted the Anglican 'side' to win - and we did.
Admittedly since c.1980 the Anglicans have become an enormously broad church, some of whose bishops (Spong springs to mind) have been a disgrace to the faith in the doctrines they preach. But, just as any test will have false negatives and false positives, so a Church will either have members who should not be there or exclude people who should. Generally speaking, Anglicans err on the side of inclusion, RCs of exclusion. It is clear to me which side Jesus 'erred' on.
Finally, the Anglican Communion seems to me to be a microcosm of the whole Church of God - a unity in which Catholics, Evangelicals, Liberals, Traditionalists, Modernists and many others rub along together despite our disagreements.

re your PS - John'srecent co-edited book The End of the World and the Ends of God addresses topics related to this - you might want to check it out.
I hope this is some help - I'll see what John has to say.

Universalism (NC) In the chapter entitled 'Evil' in 'Science And Providence', the statement is made that the only satisfactory conclusion to the problem of evil is if eventually everything is well. Am I right to presume that this is a statement made in support of Universalism?

Nicholas' Preliminary Response John further amplifies his position in Science and Christian Belief [=Faith of a Physicist in the US]. (p171) "I cannot believe that God will ever foreclose on His loving offer of mercy, but equally I do not believe He will override the human freedom to refuse. If there is a hell, its doors, as the preachers say, are locked on the inside. Those who are there are there by choice." He refers with approval to CS Lewis's wonderful allegory on the subject, The Great Divorce.

Universal Salvation According to your Q and A section, your position of the apocatastisis is roughly that given by C.S. Lewis in "The Great Divorce." I wonder how that can satisfy someone who believes in the love, wisdom and power of God?
I like "The Great Divorce", but feel Lewis was a bit dishonest in putting into the mouth of George MacDonald sentiments which were close to the opposite of those he espoused. MacDonald did not believe God would fail with any at the last. Nor did his friend, F.D. Maurice, whose work I assume you know. Though Maurice was loath to come out with a theory of universal salvation, he wrote in a letter, "I cannot believe that He will fail with any at last; if the work was in any other hands it might be wasted; but His will must surely be done, however long it may be resisted."
Of course, many Christians have espoused universalism, from Origen down to Jurgen Moltmann in today's theological world. I mention Maurice because he was such a careful thinker and such a dedicated, honest man.
If God is really love, if he really has infinite wisdom, it is hard to imagine that his yes will not be stronger than men's nos. I need not tell you how some of the hardest hearts have been made so by circumstances beyond their control or how much the pressures of our world weigh on us all. In both "The Great Divorce" and "The Screwtape Letters", salvation seems to hang by a thread. But surely this is not so if God is greater than "the Devil"?
My faith, as I stated in my first question, is so weak as not to be worthy of the name. Still, the only God I could believe in would never give one of us up. What do you say?

Nicholas' Preliminary Response - with John's comments in purple I don't think God gives up on any one of us but He has to give us the option of rejecting Him, otherwise we are back into the realm of compulsory salvation. By the way, I don't think it is quite fair of you to criticise Lewis for have MacDonald think things in Heaven that he did not think on earth. Dante clearly does the same to Virgil. Anyone who thinks (s)he will not get some theological suprises in Heaven is in for a very big suprise when (s)he gets there. St Paul knew better.
God wills all to be saved but no one will be carried willy nilly into the kingdom of Heaven against his or her will.
PS apocatastisis threw me - it's not in Webster's online but my SOED gives "apocatastasis" (rare) as "restoration, re-establishment."
this was used by Origen and others in the sense of salvation for all (even the Devil!)

Response Sure, I will be glad of any futher comments from either you or Dr. Polkinghorne and I will wait for the same. I would like to clarify a couple of points first, however. Either I did not make my email on universal salvation clear enough, or you did not read it carefully enough, or both. Nowhere do I say I believe in compulsory salvation. What I would expect is that if there is an infinitely wise and loving God, he would find a way to draw to himself the whole creation. And, yes, if there is a heaven, there will surely be many surprises there--as you say. What if one if them is that, indeed, God has found a way to redeem each creature and that "hell", after all, is empty. Then the intimations St. Paul had about the eager longing and waiting of the whole groaning creation will have be answered gloriously.
that is possible. If its doors are locked, they are locked from the inside

Animal Suffering I am confused in reading some of your answers in the Q and A section of your web site. I am an agnostic, who has longed to believe in the God called by William Law an "infinite fathomless depth of never-ceasing love" but who, because of the suffering I see about me, have been unable to so believe. Perhaps there is some "sin" involved in this unbelief on my part, I do not know, still I find myself in deep doubt. I am confused because in at least one of your books, you say that you do not believe in eternal life for animals, but in the Q and A section referred to above, you speak of the redemption of the whole creation. The suffering of animals, which is terrible, is one of the major reasons why I find it so difficult to believe in a God of love. We humans have caused a great deal of our own suffering (and certainly that of the animals), but these sentient, vulnerable creatures have obviously simply done what their instincts prompt them to do. Will you please comment?

Nicholas' Preliminary Response - with John's comments in purple Only God understands the different kinds of consciousness and awareness that the different animal species have. From our perspective it seems that there is pretty much a continuity with animals like Great Apes, Elephants and Dolphins having a great deal more than, say Nematode Worms and fruit-flies, and then a discontinuity with Homo Sapiens having enormously more. (Even on the most optimistic assessment the most highly trained chimp has a vocabulary of a few hundred words, and there is a lot of evidence that they do not have any concept of basic causality - see eg "Basic Physics for Chimps" [sorry I meant Folk Physics for Apes]). Clearly God will redeem as much of creation as can be redeemed and if some animals are part of that then this would be wonderful - but it may well be that animals are fundamentally part of this world and do not have the strange 'amphibious' properties of humans.
Animal suffering is also difficult to evaluate because we must respect the nature of the animals and not anthropomorphise or Disney-fy them. To the extent that response to pain is merely an adaptive response of the nervous system, pain is not an evil - it only becomes an evil when it is felt consciously and not transcended. So Russell's famous gibe about the cruely of wasps who lay their eggs in Aphids is certainly misconceived. Higher animals almost certainly also have the kind of pain supressor mechanisms that make eg soldiers in battle able to receive terrible wounds without greatly noticing them, so much of the suffering of hunted animals may be mitigated in that kind of way.
Nevertheless, some animals do suffer at least some of the time, and the main reason for this is that this world of 'free processes' is essential to allow the emergence of beings who can freely choose to love. This is the whole wonderful purpose of creation, transcending the limitations of matter to eternal glory. And God does not look on the evil and suffering that are the inevitable by-products in the way a chemist would on a chemical reaction - He takes all the evil and suffering there ever was upon Himself and redeems it on the Cross. This is not a Disney cartoon but, truly, the greatest story ever told.
I find it difficult to believe that there will be no animals in the new creation or that every bacteria that ever lived will be there too. There must be some middle course that God, in His divine wisdom, will choose.

Reply from questioner I appreciate, very much, your taking the time and effort to give a thoughtful and detailed answer to my question on animal suffering. If, however, my "emergence as a being who can freely love" must be purchased at the expense of the unredeemed suffering of any, I would prefer, like Dostoyevski's Ivan, to respectfully return my ticket.

Response Thank you for your speedy response. I don't think you need to return the ticket just yet. On the Cross Jesus takes on Himself, and redeems, all the sin and suffering and evil there ever was and ever will be: there is no unredeemed suffering in the universe. The only creatures of God's present creation that will not be redeemed in the new creation are:
(a) those which by their nature are incapable of participating in it - we don't know exactly where this dividing line comes and it is quite possible that higher animals might be included but equally it is possible that they are not, and we must respect their true natures.
(b) those that by their deliberate choice have finally rejected God's offer - because otherwise the gifts of freewill and love are illusions. We can hope and pray that this set will be very small, but you cannot 'return your ticket' if the world is such that salvation is compusory. Again, let's wait to see what John adds to these responses before we go any further.
There is a necessary cost of freedom. What would be repellent would be suffering that is gratuitous, unnecessary if the Creator took more trouble. I do not believe that is the case.

Question (DP): I am a seminary student. I am currently in the process of writing a paper on the issue of theistic evolution. I am intrigued with the idea that God is creating the Universe through the process of evolution. I have sufficient scientific evidence, but I do have one question. Where does Adam come into the picture as being the first human? Please respond as soon as possible as my paper is due next month. I sincerely appreciate your knowledge and time. By the way, I just finished reading your book entitled Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity: Questions to Science and Religion. I enjoyed it thoroughly! I just picked up The Way the World Is and The Faith of a Physicist. I look forward to beginning. Thank you and God bless!

Nicholas' preliminary response: From the beginning we can see that God’s loving act of creation has involved the Universe developing according to its God-given nature which we perceive as scientific laws.  The two accounts in Genesis make this clear, whilst their divergence on points of detail makes it equally clear that they are not to be taken as a literal account of the precise order and timing of events.  As far as we can understand, and our understanding is inevitably very limited, He has done this because:
(a) it is the most beautiful way and
(b) it provides His children with real freedom, so that we can freely choose to love.
The processes by which living systems progressively emerge, which we call Evolution, are just one example of this.

As for Adam and Eve, there must clearly have been a point in this process where the first fully human being emerged, with the freewill and responsibility to be able to chose, in a morally responsible way, between Good and Evil (t_E), and there must logically have been a time before He/She/They made the wrong choice (t_F).  It seems only too plausible that the time between t_E and t_F was well within the lifetime of a human being, and highly plausible, but rather wonderful in a way (see  Paradise Lost [esp end of Ch 8]) that once the first wrong choice had been made, other humans would participate in this wrong choice.  Thus not only does the story about the Fall in Genesis express the deepest truths about the human condition, there is no reason to doubt its veracity, even though the details are clearly not meant to be ‘taken literally’ any more than the details of the Creation accounts to which they belong.  This is not, of course, to suggest that the details in the Bible are there to deceive or that the accounts would be ‘better’ without them: the details provided, whilst almost certainly ‘symbolic’ allow the deep realities to be communicated in a realm where only symbols can speak.

John's Comment: Your reply was excellent. You might just possibly suggest he looked at what I have written about the Fall in Science and Theology pp63-65

John's Answer:  Of the writing of introductory books on QM there is no end.  I am not up to date with the most recent offerings but one that is not too old and which looks satisfactory is Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (quite expensive I'm afraid)
 A hardy classic is Quantum Mechanics by Schiff {NB but this is only in Hardback in the US}
Nicholas Beale Adds: Both of these books are very expensive.  You might also want to try this one by Linus Pauling et al. I'll try to ask John about it.

Nicholas' Preliminary Response: I have forwarded your EMail to John and I hope he will be able to reply (but I think he’s away for a bit - he’s speaking at the AAAS conference on Science & Religion) . For what little it’s worth, can I offer you my comments as a fellow-pilgrim?
Periods of doubt and tiredness are a vital part of the spiritual journey.  CS Lewis is very good on this in the Screwtape Letters, and at a deeper level this is what St John of the Cross is talking about. "Let us go to Jerusalem and die with Him" is a wonderful example to us all.
Of course there are hugely compelling arguments against Dawkins’ reductionism – apart from anything else his science is deeply flawed – but it is clearly conceivable that there is no God - it’s just terribly unlikely.  God has created the Universe that way so that we have freewill about whether we believe in Him or not.  But I understand that you don’t need yet more apologetics at the moment!
A site I find helpful for Christian discussion is www.churchnet.org.uk

Question(GWC) I am an astronomer and a Christian, although I have some problems with "traditional" Christian responses to certain issues. I find myself "resonating" with many of your views, but I am uncomfortable with many aspects of using contemporary scientific findings to argue for a specific religious paradigm (and the converse). For example,
(0) the "Anthropic Principle" has been used, ad nauseum, by religious people and atheists alike, to support their philosophical viewpoints. I think the "Anthropic Principle" is the "God of the Gaps" all over again. We don't currently understand the apparent fine-tuning of the Universe scientifically, so some assign this to God. To me, this is like saying that everything science can't currently explain must be due to God, and, conversely, everything that science CAN explain doesn't require God. The God I believe in isn't the "God of the Gaps" -- I believe in an active God who works through the laws of physics. I am an observer, and I trust my senses and observations to help reveal "truth" in nature, which I firmly believe reflects the "personality" (for lack of a better word) of God.
This brings me to some problems I have accepting the "complete" Christian worldview: In parti