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W.R. STOEGER S.J.
69
1 (2008) 64-77
after the Big Bang – the electromagnetic interaction separated from the weak nuclear
interaction, and the differentiation of the laws of physics as we know them was completed.
You see that physics was indeed much simpler at the point of the Big Bang – only
one interaction instead of four! And then quite quickly physics became more complicated!
But not as complicated as biology.
Even with the completed separation of all the physical interactions, the universe will
still too hot for the formation of protons and neutrons, the basic components of atoms.
There was only a “sea” of quarks and leptons. At about 1013 K, for the first time the
quarks begin to condense in protons and neutrons – 3 quarks to each such nucleon.
And then the universe continued to cool, and other transitions we have already considered
became possible – the nucleosynthesis of helium and deuterium and a little bit of
lithium at a temperature of about a billion degrees (109 K) – 3 minutes after the Big
Bang – and much later the decoupling of radiation from matter and the beginning of
structure formation at 4000 K (300,000 years after the Big Bang). Much later, of course,
we have actually formation of stars and the manufacture of the heavier elements, as I
have already indicated above.
This gives us a very brief summary of the principal epochs of cosmic evolution,
which prepare the universe for complexity, for hundreds of millions of different chemical
possibilities and for enumerable types of living organisms. Before continuing on, it is
worth pointing out that the Big Bang itself, from which all this issues, is not at all well
understood or modelled by physics. It may become better described and explained with
advances in quantum gravity (superstring theory, for instance) and in quantum cosmology.
However, it is very clear that it should not be considered the creation event itself,
and that, despite some scientists referring to physical mechanisms which purport to
explain it from “nothing”, physics will always need something – fields, manifolds, some
regularities or laws, and some energy or space – from which to begin the explanation.
Physics will never be able to explain why there is something, rather than nothing, or
why that something is ordered in this way, rather in some other way. Much less will
physics or any of the natural sciences ever be able to explain ultimately why the universe
has been “fine tuned” for life (“the anthropic principle”).
This is where philosophy and theology begin to complement the sciences – this is
where God is essential, not only to provide existence and order, but also to sustain all
that is in existence and in activity. And thus in beholding the wonders and vast reaches
in time and space of cosmological evolution and to where it has brought the universe,
we are seeing God at work in the transitions, in the novelty, in the interactions, struggling
to bring about a cosmos from which life and consciousness, person and community,
love and self-giving can emerge – created images of God’s own life and being.
2. The Emergence of Life and Biological Evolution
We are surrounded and embraced by an amazingly fertile world and by an incredibly
vast and delicately structured universe which gave birth to that world. It is within
this womb that we have come into being – through a long a very intricate series of