BIG BANG BIG GOD
A universe designed for life?
By Rodney D. Holder
Lion Books. 208 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 0 745 956 268
In this book the author, who has a DPhil in astrophysics and a degree in theology, considers the impact of modern cosmology upon Christian faith.
He provides a well-written and instructive in-depth summary of the issues for those already familiar with the subject matter, but it will probably prove hard going for the uninitiated lay-person. A glossary of technical terms is included at the end of the book but those who need to keep consulting it will, I suspect, struggle after the introductory chapters.
Model of the universe
The first two chapters review the history and success of the ‘big bang’ model of the universe, with its implications of a beginning, while Chapter 3 asks the question ‘Does a beginning require God?’ and Chapter 4 addresses the Christian doctrine of ex nihilo creation. Chapters 5 and 6 consider the ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe (the ‘anthropic principle’) that makes it hospitable to life. Atheists are wont to circumvent fine-tuning (which implies that the cosmos is designed) by appealing to a ‘multiverse’ consisting of a possibly infinite number of individual universes – among which our own just happens to have the right properties to sustain life. Accordingly the author devotes his next two chapters to a detailed and well-researched examination of the multi-verse concept. In Chapter 9 he compares the atheistic and theistic explanations of the cosmos, concluding in Chapter 10 that ‘theism wins’.
The book is marred by off-hand jibes against Intelligent Design (ID) in biology, which the author seriously misrepresents as a ‘God of the gaps’ explanation. He does not seem to realise that atheists will tar his own physical and cosmological arguments for design with the same brush since, like ID, they require the scientific description of the cosmos to be constrained and underpinned by a foundation of divine activity. This reviewer would also dissent from the book’s silent and uncritical adoption of comple-mentarity, which assumes that only science speaks authoritatively concerning the physical world and how it works, while Scripture is authoritative on spiritual matters and why the universe is as it is. This approach removes any conflict between science and revelation, but at the cost of allowing science to trump Scripture in explaining the origins of the physical world.
