The God of Hope and the End of the World

Yale University Press

Chapter One

As a prologue to our theological consideration of eschatology, we shall see what resources are available to us from culture in general and from science in particular. Because what is to come is related to what has been, we shall begin by considering science'saccount of the cosmic past and then its prognostications of the cosmic future.

EVOLVING FRUITFULNESS

The universe as we know it today emerged from the fiery singularity of the big bang, some fifteen billion years ago. Initially that world was extremely simple, being no more than an almost uniform expanding ball of energy. In the course of its long evolutionary history, the universe has become structured and diversified to a very high degree. The first generation of stars and galaxies condensed through the effects of gravity,which enhanced the small fluctuations of density present in the initial state of the cosmos. Within the interior nuclear furnaces of these first generation stars, many new chemical elements were formed, supplementing the hydrogen and helium that had constituted the primordial matter of the cosmos after the first three minutes of its bewilderingly rapid transformations of matter/energy. These chemical raw materials were then scattered abroad, and further augmented in their variety, through the effect of supernova explosions. When a second generation of stars and planets came into being, there was then available the appropriate chemical context within which carbon-based life could develop, here on Earth and perhaps on many other planets. Eventually the shuffling explorations of potentiality working through terrestrial biological evolution led to the appearance of self-conscious beings, the most astonishing development that we know about in all those fifteen billion years of cosmic history. In humanity, the universe had become aware of itself. As a corollary, science became a possibility, so that we are able to tell the story of our origins within the long history of the universe.

Although the universe appears to have been lifeless for the first eleven billion years of its existence, there is a real sense in which it was pregnant with the possibility of life from the very beginning. Only because the balance between the fundamental forces of gravity and electromagnetism is what it is and no different, have stars been able to burn for the billions of years that are necessary if they are to be able to fuel the development of life on one of their planets. Only because the laws of nuclear physics are what they are and no different, has the range of chemical elements necessary for carbon-based life been produced by the stars, from whose dead ashes we andall other living creatures here on Earth are made. This remarkable collection of scientific insights into the 'finely tuned' specificity of a biologically generative universe has been called the Anthropic Principle. Of course, it is the generality of carbon-based life rather than the particularity of homo sapiens that is the real concern of the Principle.

Evolutionary history seems to unfold through the interplay of two contrasting tendencies: 'chance' (by which is meant the particularity of historical contingency, that this happens rather than that), and 'necessity' (by which is meant the generality of the lawfully regular environment within which the process is played out, the reliability of the world). No one supposes that the early universe was pregnant with the genus homo, but if natural necessity had not taken the form it actually does, then the chance explorations of contingent possibility would have been quite unable of themselves to bring about the fruitfulness of life as we know it. There would have been no carbon-based life because there would have been no carbon.

The scientific facts on which the Anthropic Principle is based are not open to doubt. Much contention, however, relates to what deeper metaphysical significance might or might not be attributed to these remarkable insights. Such finely tuned potentiality might be held to indicate that there was a purpose being fulfilled in cosmic history, but those who (like the author) take that view have to be prepared to consider anumber of other scientific insights of a rather different character, relating both to past events and to future expectations.

THREAT

Sixty-five million years ago an asteroid at least ten kilometres in diameter struck the Earth. The hundred million megatons of energy generated by its impact brought about catastrophic consequences for the terrestrial environment, eliminating the dinosaurs which for more than one hundred and fifty million years had dominated life on Earth. Thereby the little furry mammals, who are our ancestors, were given their evolutionary opportunity. Here was 'chance' operating on a grand scale to influence the development of life.

Events of this magnitude may be expected to occur on average at intervals of the order of a hundred million years. Lesser, but still very destructive, incidents occur more frequently. In 1908 a meteorite only fifty metres or so in diameter exploded over a remote region of Siberia, devastating an area at least two thousand square kilometres in extent. Had the explosion occurred over a big city, all of it would have been destroyed. Very considerable technological effort and accuracy would be needed to provide artificial protection against the recurrence of catastrophes of even this more limited and localised kind. In 1994 watchers on our planet were given a ringside seat to observe the kind of consequences that could flow from a collision with circulating debris. Over a period of six days, twenty-one fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into Jupiter. None was larger than seven hundred metres in diameter, but they produced scars on the Jovian atmosphere some of which were larger than the size of the Earth and whichpersisted for more than a year. The solar system is a dangerous environment, full of threats.

Other external dangers to our life on Earth, unpredictable in their onset, could arise from distant events such as a supernova explosion in our part of the galaxy, or the collision of two neutron stars to form a black hole. Either occurrence could deluge our planet with highly damaging radiation. Perhaps we give comparatively little attention to these external threats because of their largely unpredictable character and because the timescales within which they are likely to happen are very long compared with a human generation, or even with recorded human history.

Further threats to life originate within the planet itself, for example from viral or bacterial mutations, of which the impact of the HIV virus is an anticipatory experience. Some can arise from human hubris or carelessness, as anxieties about nuclear war and global pollution illustrate clearly enough. The continuing increase of the world's population serves to enhance the likelihood of disasters of this latter kind.

Many of these home-grown catastrophes could be very destructive but it is unlikely that they would wipe out human or animal life completely. However that life itself, in its intrinsic nature, is not inherently stable, for the average biological lifetime of a species is only a few million years before evolution may be expected to produce its successor. It is hard to know what this general fact implies for the future of human life, for in our case the...