A God More Clever

Jun 02

"In the Speaking of Faith program, "Quarks and Creation," physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne says that he believes in a God who did something "more clever" than create a ready-made world, a clockwork universe. Instead, he believes in a God who created a world that could make itself." (Read more about the program here.)

Joe and I caught part of the Quarks and Creation program on our way to church yesterday: one of the most balanced, insightful comments on spirituality that I've ever heard (on NPR and or anywhere). I love NPR, even though I disagree with much of what they say (or imply) and I hear an often obvious slant in coverage. People like Polkinghorne are why I keep listening. Real people, real stories that I would never have heard about in the newspaper, on Fox radio or tv, on any local news channel. (I admit that I rarely read the newspaper or don't get any local channels, so I also get major news stories from NPR.)

I don't know much about Polkinghorne but I will be reading his book Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity as soon as the library gets it for me (or as soon as I go to Borders again, which is a dangerous thing) and I'll post a review after I read it.

What I have learned through random internet information (which we must always take with a grain of rock salt) is this:

There's a bit of a problem here, between two quotes: Polkinghorne says that "The physical fabric of the world had to be such as to enable that ten billion year preliminary evolution to produce the raw materials of life. Without it there would not have been the chemical materials to allow life to evolve here on earth," and also says "After all, the universe required ten billion years of evolution before life was even possible; the evolution of the stars and the evolving of new chemical elements in the nuclear furnaces of the stars were indispensable prerequisites for the generation of life." My problem is not in the evolutionary belief he apparently holds; though I don't agree, I understand that it is a common belief in our culture so I take it in stride. This next quote from Polkinghorne is where I take issue: "Bottom up thinkers try to start from experience and move from experience to understanding. They don't start with certain general principles they think beforehand are likely to be true; they just hope to find out what reality is like." I don't know the context of the statements, so perhaps he is discrediting bottom up thinkers, but that is not the way it sounds. And if Polkinghorne is presenting himself as a bottom up thinker, then he needs to re-examine his certain general principles involving ten billion years of evolution.
"Quantum theory also tells us that the world is not simply objective; somehow it's something more subtle than that. In some sense it is veiled from us, but it has a structure that we can understand," Polkinghorne says. "If the experience of science teaches anything, it's that the world is very strange and surprising. The many revolutions in science have certainly shown that." What a great thing for a scientist to acknowledge: we don't know everything. In fact, we've made many assumptions that have been proven wrong about the universe and the way it operates. There are many mysteries. The more we discover, the less we know for certain, because we see that the complexity is greater than we imagined. Yet there is "a structure that we can understand." And, says Polkinghorne, "I'm a very passionate believer in the unity of knowledge. There is one world of reality - one world of our experience that we're seeking to describe."

I am fascinated, even though my understanding of quantum physics is less than negligible. Perhaps I can increase that understanding by reading Polkinghorne's book. I think it was C.S. Lewis and his Space Trilogy that first made all this science/nature of the universe talk seem much more intriguing, important, and spiritual than I had ever thought before.