In his doctoral dissertation, Steven Hawkins demonstrates
that the universe could have begun spontaneously. That is to say, the big bang
could have gone off without being triggered by a divine intelligent being, or
God in the sense of the word as used in the Abrahamic religions. To say that
the universe could have begun in a moment of singularity is not necessarily to
vitiate the deity-concept of all content. In fact, Hawkins’ work may one day
trigger a movement to hem in the concept to the terrain that is distinctly
religious.
Throughout A Theory of
Everything (2014), God as the Creator is depicted in a strict dichotomy
with physics as only one of the two can survive intact. I submit that the
“either/or” choice is unnecessary because it arises from a category mistake
involving religion. In positing God as the first cause or prime mover of a
physical process, we distend the religious domain onto that of the natural
sciences. Characterizing God as the condition of existence, on the other hand,
backs the concept of the deity away from physics, chemistry, and astronomy and
thus avoids the unnecessary dichotomy.
We can go even further still, putting some daylight between
the two domains. Plotinus, a second century Platonist, characterized God as
extending beyond the limits of human cognition and perception. Infinite space
and never-ending time, on the other hand, are within our realm and thus not
particularly divine. Indeed, what we experience as existence is within our
realm rather than transcendent. To claim that God as Creator is the condition
of existence can be interpreted as an attempt to source God beyond the limits
of human cognition and perception unless that condition is taken as the cause
of a sequence of events understandable through any of the natural sciences.My point is simply that theology is not one of the natural
sciences, so the choice between them is unnecessary as it stems from a category
mistake wherein the religious terrain oversteps or encroaches onto that of
physics and chemistry. Pruning back the ancient conception of the Abrahamic
deity to the distinctly religious can save the concept from entanglements that
pit it against scientific investigation. Put another way, to apply such
investigation to God represents a category mistake wherein science oversteps
its innate boundaries. Rather than debate if God is behind the chemical
reactions known as the big bang as is done throughout the film, we might try to
figure out what is distinctly religious or theological in nature.
