According to an article in LifeScience.com and featured by Yahoo! News, theoretical cosmologist Sean Carroll at California Institute of Technology is insisting that contemporary physics and cosmology will eventually explain away all the mysteries of the origin and evolution of the universe, leaving no room for supernatural intervention. “As we learn more about the universe, there’s less and less need to look outside it for help,” explained Carroll in a recent scientific journal.
For example, theorists have long studied the “Big Bang” model of cosmology, in which the universe expanded from a dense, hot mass to its current state over billions of years, but they have yet to determine how the action actually began; theologists have named God as the initiator. But Carroll says the universe could be eternal, simply expanding and contracting under its own power without a beginning, eliminating the need for God’s participation. Even if time did begin at the Big Bang, Carroll writes, “Nothing in the fact that there is a first moment of time, in other words, necessitates that an external something is required to bring the universe about at that moment.”
In another example, theorists have acknowledged that the physical constants in the universe seem “designed” to support life and therefore imply the existence of an intelligent creator. But Carroll points to the theory of parallel universes (referred to in collection as the “multiverse”) that represents the full gamut of physical possibilities, only a few of which are capable of supporting stars, planets, and life as we know it.
“Most scientists … suspect that the search for ultimate explanations eventually terminates in some final theory of the world, along with the phrase ‘and that’s just how it is,'” Carroll wrote. People who find this unsatisfying are failing to treat the entire universe as something unique—”something for which a different set of standards is appropriate.”
Discussion Starter: Do you think science will eventually rule out the possibility of God? How would you respond to Carroll?
Read the entire article here.
