How do Christians deal with scientific theories, like we came from monkeys and the big bang?

This question is follow up from what ifscience contradicts scripture

Question
I've got two questions for you. A) How do we deal with the idea that we came from Monkeys? B) How do we deal with the idea that the universe just appeared?


AnswerA) How do we deal with the idea we came from Monkeys?

By in large, there is alot of resistance to the idea of "Macroevolution" -that is, whole new species coming from other species. Christians have no problem with 'micro evolution'- like that all dogs from chihuahuas to huskies can trace their genetic heritage to wolves.

But again, this is Science, so you can believe in Macroevolution if you like.

But Humans have an immortal nature which is different from monkeys or other animals. So you pretty much have to assume that if our bodies did evolve, then at some point God stepped in, and did something particular.

The requirement from the Church is that we have to believe in a first set of parents- at some point, there were 2 primates who were human, and thus capable of sin, and they did sin. we don't have to believe that they were named asdam and Eve, spoke to a talking snake, and ate a fruit. (see how that part sounds like myth?)

They did something that forever changed human nature, started original sin, and made us need a saviour. This is how the church accounts fro suffering and sin in the world- this part is very linked to the whole church teaching.

Fortunately, so far, science seems to support the idea that we are all decended from one mother, and to a lesser degree, one father, and that these lived in Africa.

B) That the universe just appeared is problematic for scientists. One of the traditional proofs for the existence of God, is that everything is caused by something else, but there must have been an original 'uncaused cause'. (The opposite of this is called 'infinite regress'- the idea that you can go back for eternity saying what caused that?, what caused that?) It's kinda like at camp when kids go "Who mad God?" At some point there has to be someone or something that was not made by anything else.

This, as St Tomas Aquinas says, is God. God is "existence"- that's why he said his name is "I AM". God is the only thing that by it's very nature has to exist, because God is existence. Someone once asked the question, what would happen if God ceased to exist... well, the question does not make sense since what we mean by God is existence. What would happen if existence ceased to exist? See the problem?

The big bang theory was first proposed (but not called that) by Georges Lemaître in 1927. The other popular theory was 'steady state'- that the universe had always been the same size, and was in fact itself the uncaused cause. Since that time, science has demonstrated that the universe is in fact expanding, and the general concensus is that there was at some point a big bang.

But this does not eliminate the need for a God to start it. As they say "I believe in the big bang. God said it, bang, it happened." If the Big Bang theory is correct- and Catholics have no problem with that- then what caused it? Unfortunately all the laws of physics break down when the mass opf the entire universe is condensed into a single point the size of a pin point- called a singularity- so we can only speculate about what was happening before the big bang. The theory is basically that the singularity was under so much pressure from gravity pulling it in, that eventually the pressure was so great that the singularity exploded- roughly 14 billion years ago. And it is still expanding. Some say it will one day start contracting again, and eventually form a second singularity, and start all over again...

So anyway, there could be a cycle of big bangs and big crunches, but again we end up with infinite regress! What started it all?

I should point out that many of the greatest physicists do think it is possible to eliminate the need for God to explain the universe. Fair enough. But Catholics have no problem believing in the big Bang, we would just say that God caused it. What is debated is to what degree God is guiding the development of the universe!

Again the problem for 'empirical scinetists' is that by definition (empirical means measure) they can only deal with things they can measure. Since God cannot be measured, they can't place God in the equation. So, they have to come up with theories that exclude God. But just because they do and are limmited to them, it does not thus follow that God does not exist. Their whole discipline makes the non existence of God a foregone conclusion, because he can't be a factor.

Imagine if God manipulated everything that happened, and was totally arbitrary about it. It would be impossible to posit a 'law' of physics, since things would never happen the same way twice! As Einstein said, The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I suspect that God deliberatley made science possible, for the same reason that a parent builds a playground. God wanted us to be able to play! I find it more blievable that an intelligent mind made a universe that intelligent minds could understand, than that a series of accidents resulted in beings that could actually figure out where they came from. But that's just my opinion- others would, and do, disagree.