Imagine lying on your back in a meadow on a crystal clear night, gazing up at the stars and noticing many more than you had ever seen before—jewels twinkling across eons of space, of diverse colors and distances, and grouped together in different ways. Maybe, as you look outwards, you are filled like me with a sense of wonder and mystery at the vastness and rich diversity of the universe. Questions may flood your mind about the nature of the cosmos and its origin, as well as the nature of strange objects such as red dwarfs, black holes, neutron stars, galaxies (Figure 1), and the Milky Way.
An image of the Andromeda galaxy containing a 100 billion (i.e., a hundred million million) stars (courtesy NASA, public domain).
Other thoughts may occur to you, including our insignificance on this tiny blue dot floating in space. Where is the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in all this? Is this God still necessary in our secular scientific world (Taylor 2007)? Do aspects of traditional belief need to change to accommodate the amazing advances of contemporary astronomy?
The aim then of addressing such questions in the present thematic section of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science is twofold. One object is to give a simple, up-to-date account of our current understanding of the strange nature of the universe and how it came into being. Over the past twenty years, there has been a huge transformation in knowledge because of a feast of observations from space satellites and high-resolution telescopes atop distant mountains in Chile or Hawai‘i. The second object is to go beyond a purely scientific description to raise questions and discuss related underlying theological and philosophical issues that naturally arise from these scientific advances, including questions of meaning, origin, purpose, and design. In this thematic section of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, a dozen of the world’s top experts on these diverse fields come together to bring their complementary insights in a lively and fruitful exchange.
The purpose of this introductory article is to set the scene and introduce some of the exciting discoveries and challenges. The first three articles in the thematic section focus on astronomy, with John Peacock (2025) first describing the Standard Model of cosmology for an expanding and accelerating universe driven by dark energy, in which gravity causes the collapse of matter into stars and galaxies, 15% of the matter being normal matter and 85% dark matter. Then Bernard Schutz and coauthors Tsvi Piran and Patrick Sutton (Schutz, Piran, and Sutton 2025) describe the surprising importance of gravitational waves for the origin of life. The emission of such waves allows pairs of neutron stars spiraling around one another to merge into black holes while producing kilonova explosions in which most of the heavy elements above iron are manufactured. In particular, the decay of the radioactive isotopes 238U and 232Th of uranium and thorium produces heat, which helps maintain plate tectonics, and which in turn has been a major driver in human evolution, in particular human cognition. Jennifer Wiseman (2025) reviews the detection of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system and considers the possibility of life in many of the billions of such planets in our universe.
The next four articles consider philosophical aspects. Marcelo Gleiser (2025) responds to discoveries about exoplanets and the interconnectedness of life on Earth by presenting a biocentric worldview with an ethics of belonging that should help develop a sustainable future. Brian Pitts (2025) suggests that evidence for the existence of God does not necessarily follow from the presence of a Big Bang singularity. Adam Hincks (2025) and Chris Smeenk (2025) then give a theological and a philosophical reaction, respectively, to the amazing property of our universe of appearing “fine tuned,” in the sense that, if the values of many properties, such as electricity and gravity, were only very slightly different, life as we know it would not have been able to evolve.
The final four articles present theological responses. Bernard Carr (2025) stresses that, historically, astronomy and theology have raised questions that have theological aspects, especially when developing an understanding of cosmology and black holes, together with the nature of time and singularities. Rodney Holder (2025) reflects further on the possible explanations for the very special properties possessed by our universe that have led to the evolution of intelligent life, while Nidhal Guessoum (2025) describes the main approaches of Muslim thinkers to cosmology and how they have evolved over time. Finally, David Wilkinson (2025) rounds off the discussion by comparing scientific and Christian views on the likely future of the universe and humanity.
Background
For me personally, as a scientist, I am embarked on an open-ended venture in which ideas continually evolve and change, and a sense of creativity and of wonder are frequent. At any one time, I cannot prove the truth of one of my theories for, say, solar flares; rather, I can only say that it is consistent with current observations. In this way, I remain open to the possibility that future observations may show the theory to be limited or wrong. Similarly, as a person of faith, I cannot prove God’s existence, but I can ask whether it is consistent or not with my experience and my current thinking. For the time being, it is consistent, so I am prepared to live my life under the assumption that God does indeed exist.
Furthermore, when discussing matters of science and faith, we all make background (or so-called “metaphysical”) assumptions about the nature of reality (Ecklund 2017). According to a 2023 report by the Pew Research Center (Alper et al. 2023), 22% of Americans class themselves as “spiritual but not religious (SBNR)” in the sense of believing in a higher power or a deep sense of meaning beyond the material world but not attracted to organized religion. At the same time, 58% class themselves as religious, while 21% of Americans are neither religious nor spiritual. In the United Kingdom, while the 2021 census (Roskams 2022) did not consider the SBNR category, it did find that 46% of the population identified as Christian, a further 10% as belonging to other religions, and 37% as having no religion.
Many scientists separate questions of science from questions of theology and are so-called “metaphysical naturalists,” i.e., they adopt the methods of science when studying scientific questions but recognize that there may be aspects of life that are outside the bounds of science, that are philosophical or religious, such as the nature of love and beauty or questions of purpose and meaning. However, another possibility is to work towards building a theology of science (McCleish 2019) or even a new unification of science and theology (e.g., Priest 2016; McGrath 2023).
A final background point concerns the extremely large and small numbers encountered in astronomy. We are all familiar with numbers as large as ten (10) or a hundred (100) or a thousand (1,000) or even a million (1,000,000), which scientists denote by the notations 10, 102, 103, and 106, since they have one, two, three, and six zeros, respectively. But in astronomy, much larger numbers are common, especially when describing enormous distances or numbers of stars. These include, for example, a billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., 109) or 1022, which represents ten with twenty-two zeros after it! However, very small numbers also arise, especially when considering miniscule times after the Big Bang. For example, a tenth and a hundredth are common in everyday life and are denoted mathematically by 10–1 and 10–2 or one divided by ten or a hundred, respectively. But the numbers we shall meet are very much smaller such as a billionth, represented by or 10–9, or even smaller.
Black Holes
A black hole is an incredibly dense object, so dense that its gravity is strong enough to prevent anything escaping it, even light. Only recently was it possible to image for the first time the gas swirling around a black hole (Figure 2).
The first ever image of a black hole at the center of galaxy M87, in April 2019 (courtesy Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration).
In order to understand how black holes are formed, we first need to understand something of the nature of ordinary stars. In the center of a normal star, thermonuclear reactions fuse elements together to produce heat. For example, in our sun, hydrogen atoms combine to produce helium, but surprisingly, the mass of the resulting helium atom is less than the sum of the masses of the initial hydrogen atoms. What happens is that some of the initial mass is converted directly into energy, a process Einstein first described with his famous equation that implies that energy (E) and mass (m) are equivalent, that is, E = m c2, where c is the speed of light.
Now, this release of energy creates a huge temperature and pressure in the core of the star, which in turn produces a strong outward pressure force (in the same way a region of high pressure in the Earth’s atmosphere creates a force that drives winds towards low-pressure regions). Most of the time, however, the star just remains calmly in equilibrium, since the outward pressure force is balanced by the enormous force of gravity attracting matter inwards towards the star’s center.
When the thermonuclear fuel has been used up, however, a dramatic event occurs, as the high central temperature and pressure are no longer maintained. Since there is then no pressure force to oppose the inward force of gravity, the star rapidly collapses. The resulting final state depends on the initial mass of the star. When this mass is less than ten times the solar mass, it collapses to a so-called “white dwarf” of a typical radius equal to that of the Earth. When the initial mass lies between ten and thirty times the solar mass, the star collapses instead to a so-called “neutron star.” However, when it exceeds thirty solar masses, the collapse continues all the way to a black hole.
Although suggested in the eighteenth century, the first model to use general relativity was proposed in 1916 by Karl Schwarzschild. Later, Stephen Hawking made several important discoveries about the nature of black holes. He used two fundamental theories about the nature of matter developed in the twentieth century that form the basis of much of modern physics. The first is Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which applies to matter moving at speeds near the speed of light. The second is quantum mechanics, which applies on extremely small scales, comparable with the size of an atom.
Working with Roger Penrose, Hawking used general relativity to understand the ways in which gravitation produces singularities such as black holes. It had been thought that nothing at all can escape from a black hole, but Hawking studied quantum effects near the surface of a black hole and discovered that they produce a new form of radiation called Hawking radiation, which implies they naturally tend to lose mass and energy.
Hawking also applied the ideas about black holes to the whole universe and so investigated the nature of the Big Bang, in which our universe is thought to have originated 13.8 billion years ago (see Peacock (2025) for details). Later, he argued that the universe has no boundary in space and time, so that, before the Big Bang, time did not exist and therefore the concept of a beginning for the universe is meaningless. What place then for a Creator? Later, in 2006, he suggested an even stranger idea, that the universe has many different initial states (called a multiverse), and so the present selects the past from a collection of different possible histories.
Black holes may have a wide range of masses and sizes. Those having a mass of a few solar masses form when very massive stars (bigger than thirty solar masses) collapse at the end of their life. After a black hole has formed, it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, enormous so-called supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may also form, which are present in the centers of most galaxies.
Measurements of the orbits of stars around the center of a galaxy have been used to determine the presence of a black hole and the value of its mass. For example, astronomers have established that the radio source Sagittarius A*, at the core of the Milky Way galaxy, contains a supermassive black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses.
The radius of a black hole depends on its mass. A black hole of a mass ten times the sun has a radius of only thirty kilometers, whereas one of an intermediate mass of say a thousand times the mass of the sun has a radius equal to that of the Earth. On the other hand, “supermassive” black holes have masses between a hundred thousand and ten billion times the sun’s mass and radii between 0.001 and 400 times the distance of the Earth from the sun.
Current Understanding of the Origin and Nature of Our Universe
Our universe is of course enormous and possesses an almost unbelievable number of stars and galaxies. Each galaxy, like the one in Figure 1, typically contains one hundred thousand million stars, but there are one hundred thousand million galaxies in the universe, giving a staggering total of ten thousand million million million stars (in other words, ten with twenty-two zeros after it). The sense of wonder arising from these numbers could remind one of the words of the psalmist:
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars that you have established,
what are humans that you are mindful of them?
Evidence for the Big Bang
Carl Wilhelm Wirtz (1922) discovered that more distant galaxies are receding faster from us than closer ones. A Belgian priest called Georges Lemaître (1927) then concluded that the universe is expanding from an origin at a time now measured to be 13.8 billion years ago. He estimated a value for the ratio between the recessional speed of galaxies and their distance and connected this law with a solution to the Einstein field equations in general relativity for a homogeneous isotropic universe. Two years later, American astronomer Edwin Hubble (1929) calculated a more accurate value for this speed–distance ratio. The observation that galaxies are moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance is now known as the Hubble-Lemaître law. Twenty years later in a radio broadcast, British astronomer Fred Hoyle christened this origin and expansion of the universe “the Big Bang.”
In recent years, much additional evidence has emerged for the Big Bang. First, in 1964, two American radio astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson (1965), were measuring microwaves and discovered a strange hiss, which they soon realized represented the glow from the Big Bang. It led to them being awarded the Nobel Prize. More recently, the fluctuations in the glow, called the cosmic microwave background, which were formed very soon after the initiation of the Big Bang, have been measured and are shown in Figure 3.
Fluctuations in the glow emitted less than half a million years after the Big Bang, showing patches that are slightly hotter (red) or colder (blue) than normal (courtesy the Planck collaboration and European Space Agency).
Second, Big Bang theory predicts the amount of hydrogen and helium created during the early stages of the Big Bang, and the observed ratio of these amounts agrees with the prediction. This is important, since most of the hydrogen and helium in the universe is thought to have been created during the Big Bang. Small changes in these amounts are occurring in small stars such as the sun, where hydrogen is being combined (by thermonuclear fusion) into helium. But many of the other common elements have been created in stars more massive than the sun. For example, when atoms of helium are fused together, they can produce oxygen and carbon, or in even hotter stars, carbon can be fused to produce neon, sodium, oxygen, and magnesium, and so on up to the element iron. Many elements heavier than iron were thought to form when stars explode as so-called “supernovae,” but now “kilonova explosions” are regarded as the main source of elements more massive than iron (Schutz et al. 2025).
What Happened after the Big Bang?
When observing distant objects, we are looking back in time, since the light that comes to us travels at the speed of light. Indeed, we often measure distances in so-called “light years,” where one light year is the distance light travels in a year. At 186,000 miles every second (the speed of light), this is six trillion (i.e., six million million) miles. Thus, light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach us, and so, when we observe the sun now, we are really seeing what it was like eight minutes ago. Again, the nearest star is four light years away, since its light takes four years to reach us. Even more distant, the center of the Milky Way galaxy is 25,000 light years away, and the Andromeda galaxy (Figure 1) is two million light years. On the other hand, the edge of the visible universe is very much further, namely, over thirteen billion light years.
The most distant image we have yet obtained in normal light of the universe has come from the Hubble Space Telescope (Figure 4). It was formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, but our mainstream understanding of the evolution of the universe goes back much further than this. We do not know what happened exactly at the Big Bang, since near that time our theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics both fail and we have not yet discovered a theory to replace them, despite nearly a century of trying by the finest physics minds in the world. However, we do have a reasonable understanding of what was happening within an incredibly tiny fraction of a second after the Big Bang, as follows.
An image of nearly 10,000 galaxies at the edge of the visible universe from the Hubble Space Telescope (courtesy NASA, European Space Agency, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the Hubble Ultra Deep Field team).
Our knowledge surprisingly goes back to 10–43 seconds (i.e., one divided by ten with forty-three zeros after it, or one tenth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second) after the Big Bang. Big Bang theory describes how the universe expanded and cooled, how the elements of which we are all composed began to be created, and how the four fundamental forces that surround us today and are familiar to modern physics were fashioned. These are gravity, the strong nuclear force (which binds the cores of atoms together), the weak nuclear force (responsible for radioactivity), and the electromagnetic force (which produces electric and magnetic fields and light waves).
At 10–43 seconds, the size of the universe was only 10–33 centimeters (i.e., one thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a centimeter), there was one unified force and pure energy. As the universe expanded (shown in diagrammatic form in Figure 5), it became less dense and cooled. By 10–12 seconds, the temperature had cooled to 1016 K, and the universe had expanded to a size equal to that of today’s solar system. After 10–6 seconds, the unified force separated out into the four fundamental forces. By one second, the universe was made up of energy and particles called quarks, electrons, and neutrinos. The particles then combined to form the building blocks of atoms, known as protons and neutrons, and by three seconds these had combined to make the cores (or nuclei) of hydrogen and helium.
The initial expansion of the universe up until ten minutes after the Big Bang.
At this stage the universe was opaque, but after 380,000 years, it became transparent when nuclei of hydrogen and helium joined with electrons to form atoms (Figure 6). At this point, radiation could start to escape. Indeed, it is the surface of this expanding, cooling ball we see when we look back in time to the cosmic microwave background glowing at a temperature of 2.7 K (Figure 3).
The later expansion of the universe up to the present day.
After a few hundred million years, the first stars and galaxies formed, inside which carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and so on formed by fusion. Then, after nine billion years (i.e., 4.7 billion years ago), the Earth formed. Finally, very recently in cosmic time, only a few hundred thousand years ago, humans formed, and human consciousness was born.
A key aspect of modern cosmology is the idea of so-called “cosmic inflation” proposed by Alan Guth (1980) to solve many puzzles about the nature of the universe. He suggested that at 10–35 seconds, the universe expanded incredibly rapidly by a factor of 1080 in a tiny fraction of a second. The quantum fluctuations present at the time ultimately became galaxies, and indeed it is the seeds of clusters of galaxies that can be seen in the cosmic microwave background (Figure 4).
Questions about the Big Bang?
The theory for the Big Bang is based on general relativity and suggests that initially space and time were created from nothing, from quantum fluctuations in a vacuum. But general relativity and quantum mechanics break down before 10–43 seconds. So, a key question is what happened before this time. And how can quantum theory and general relativity be combined to answer it?
There are two main candidates at the moment for trying to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics. The first is superstring theory, in which elementary particles are tiny strings (rather than point-like particles) and space has seven extra dimensions. The second is loop quantum gravity, in which space and time are granular rather than continuous.
Was the Big Bang really the beginning, as Big Bang theory suggests, or is a big bounce or an oscillating universe more likely, as some people would prefer?
Is there just one universe or are there many universes (a collection called a multiverse)? Could these other universes be spawned inside black holes or quantum fluctuations?
All of these proposals are highly speculative, with no evidence yet of any of them, but in future, they may be ruled out or perhaps become part of mainstream thought.
What Is the Universe Made Of?
The proportions of different kinds of matter in the universe have been measured by instruments on board a series of spacecraft. For example, the Planck Mission is a European Space Agency satellite launched in 2009. It has shown that only 5% of the universe is normal matter, but 27% is dark matter and 68% is dark energy (Figure 7).
The proportions of dark matter, dark energy, and ordinary matter in the universe according to the Planck probe measurements, March 2013 (courtesy NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center).
Something, which we call “dark matter,” is making galaxies rotate more rapidly than we expect and preventing galaxies flying apart. There are several candidates for dark matter, including WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles), axions, and primordial black holes, but as yet, no general agreements of definitive data have emerged on what it might be. Also, it is natural to expect gravity to slow down the outward motion of the universe as it expands, but a big surprise in 1998 was the discovery by Adam Riess and Saul Perlmutter that the expansion is instead accelerating. Again, the cause is as yet unknown, but it has been christened “dark energy.”
Gravitational Waves
These are disturbances in the very fabric of space and time, proposed by Einstein (1916) as a consequence of his general theory of relativity. When a body accelerates rapidly, provided it is not highly symmetric, it generate changes in space and time that propagate at the speed of light. Examples include coalescing black holes or neutron stars.
Teams of international scientists had been setting up unbelievably sensitive instruments for fifty years to try and detect such waves, and I for one was certainly expecting such a first detection to be marginal, barely poking up above the background noise and not producing much astronomical information. However, the first detection when it came was stunning and far exceeded expectations—the discovery of the century. It was announced on February 11, 2016 when the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Collaboration (Figure 8), using the Advanced LIGO detectors, observed gravitational waves coming from a pair of black holes that were spiraling inwards and merging to form a single black hole (Figure 9). The black holes were located 1.4 billion light years away and possessed masses of thirty-six and twenty-nine solar masses. The resulting coalesced black hole was only sixty-two solar masses, so three solar masses had been converted into the energy of outwardly propagating gravitational waves. More on the importance and consequences of gravitational waves is described in the article in this section by one the leaders in the field, Bernard Schutz, together with two coauthors, Tsvi Piran and Patrick J. Sutton (Schutz, Piran, and Sutton 2025).
The northern arm of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory interferometer on the Hanford reservation, which produced the first direct detection of a gravitational wave (public domain).
The first detection of gravitational waves by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, showing how the frequency of the waves increased in time as the black holes spiraled inwards (courtesy United States National Science Foundation).
The event lasted 0.2 seconds, and the waves reached Earth as a ripple in space-time that changed the length of a four-kilometer LIGO arm by a thousandth of the width of a proton, equivalent to changing the distance (four light years) to the nearest star by one hair’s width. The energy carried by the waves was immense, equivalent to the energy of the three lost solar masses, and, in the final twenty milliseconds, reaching a power fifty times greater than the light radiated by all the stars in the observable universe.
By March 2025, 290 gravitational wave events had been observed, most of which originated from collisions of black holes, whereas others involved neutron star collisions or collisions of neutron stars with black holes. For this amazing discovery, the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish.
Philosophical and Theological Questions of Origin, Purpose, and Design
I begin by describing the arguments Alister McGrath (2023) has presented for a retrieval of the ancient ideas of natural philosophy before focusing in the following subsections on particular issues that arise in astronomy.
A Retrieval of Natural Philosophy
In his book on Natural Philosophy, McGrath (2023) first describes the history of the development of the idea of natural philosophy and its disintegration in the nineteenth century and then gives reasons for a retrieval of the concept.
The Tradition of Natural Philosophy
As far as its origins are concerned, natural philosophy emerged in Greece in the fourth century BCE with Aristotle’s observations of fish and his explanation of their migratory patterns. It was regarded as a systematic inquiry about nature that led to an understanding of causes and relations different from simple knowledge. Here, theoria was a mental viewing of the natural world by philosophers Plato regarded as intellectual ambassadors who journey to seek truth in a divine world. Aristotle attentively observed plants, animals, and stars with the aim of identifying arche, the first principles behind nature, so that science mirrors reality and theory coheres with observations. In particular, Aristotle used a process of induction, whereby particular observations led to general principles. These ideas were absorbed and developed by the Islamic world and later rediscovered in Western Europe.
During the Middle Ages from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries, Aristotle’s natural philosophy dominated Western attempts to make sense of the world. However, the foundation of universities meant a relocation of theology from monasteries, so it was no longer under church control. Furthermore, this involved a separation into faculties of philosophy and theology in medieval universities such as Paris. For example, the Parisian theologian Albertus Magnus distinguished realms that are natural (for natural philosophy) from those that are supernatural (for theology). His successor, Thomas Aquinas, regarded these realms as using different methods and norms but reaching similar conclusions. In the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor had regarded nature and the Bible as God’s two books for understanding and wisdom. The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw a decline of Aristotelian natural philosophy as voyages across the world displayed its limitations. The sixteenth century also brought new empirical approaches and an experimental method, which loosened the connections to Aristotle and led to a golden age of natural philosophy beginning with Kepler, in which making more accurate observations was seen as a way of expanding knowledge empirically.
Ptolemy in Alexandria had suggested in the second century that the observed motions of planets could be explained as a set of nested circular orbits around the Earth. In 1543, Copernicus reevaluated the data on planetary motions and suggested instead that the sun is stationary while the Earth and the other five known planets move around it. Then, in 1572, Tycho Brahe observed a new star in Cassiopeia, which cast doubt on Aristotle’s claim that the “fixed” stars are perfect. He made many new observations that improved the accuracy of calculations of planetary positions, especially Mars, and moved to Prague, where he was joined by a young Kepler. After Tycho’s death in 1601, Kepler used Tycho’s observations to suggest that Mars orbits the sun in an ellipse rather than a circle due to a force of some kind from the sun. He later proposed three laws of planetary motion: all the planets move in elliptical orbits with the sun at a focus; the line joining the sun and a planet moves at such a speed that it sweeps out equal areas in equal times; the square of the orbital period is proportional to the cube of the orbital semi-major axis. Kepler regarded God as the source of the harmony present in music, mathematics, and astronomy and thought that, since the human mind is the image of God, it is sensitive to patterns in creation.
A key effect of the Reformation in Europe was that both Lutheranism and Calvinism were hospitable to Kepler’s natural philosophy. For example, Calvinists distinguished between natural knowledge and revealed knowledge, both being from God, while Lutherans such as Melanchthon distinguished between truths from revelation and those from natural inquiry. After the Dutch invention of telescopes, Galileo made his own in 1620 and observed that the surface of the Moon is rough, that Jupiter possesses four orbiting moons, and that Venus has changing phases that imply an orbit around the sun. Like Kepler, Galileo felt the book of scripture is open to anyone, but understanding the book of nature is open only to those who are mathematically literate, since mathematics is the language of nature.
The seventeenth century was a golden age for the experimental natural philosophy that emerged in England with the work of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Dominant was a belief in God as creator of an ordered universe, which the human mind can grasp and so gain understanding as well as make moral and spiritual advances. After the Civil War, Charles II inaugurated a new era of intellectual progress, with, for example, a charter being granted in 1660 to the Royal Society, whose aim was to employ the new physico-mathematical experimental natural philosophy proposed by Bacon. For Bacon, understanding natural processes could lead to human improvement, but natural philosophy and religion are complementary and so should be kept separate. His natural philosophy involved using particular observations and experiments to produce general explanations for nature’s patterns by a process of induction, in which the explanations then led to new experiments to confirm or develop the understanding. Some experiments were aimed at understanding causes, while others yielded practical outcomes.
Boyle helped gradually replace Aristotle’s ideas with a mechanical natural philosophy for the motion of particles, in which careful and detailed observations were more important than preconceived interpretations and the world is God’s creation and so a worthy object of scientific study. For Boyle, it was important to tolerate disagreement and favor human reason over the ambiguities of biblical interpretation. He felt an empirical understanding of God’s world would reveal God’s purposes and transcend sectarianism. Applying the methods of natural philosophy to theology was described from about 1690 as “physico-theology.” Boyle marked a transition from a view that the natural world was created for human benefit to one in which a realization of the vastness of the universe offered a more expansive view of God’s works.
Newton further developed natural philosophy in his Principia Mathematica by emphasizing the role of mathematics. He preferred experimental natural philosophy to speculative ideas such as René Descartes’s vortex theory for planetary motion, which was not grounded in observation. Robert Hooke had begun to describe elliptical orbits in terms of inertia and gravity, but Newton’s theory of the motion of bodies under the inverse square law of universal gravitational attraction was expressed mathematically and explained the origin of Kepler’s three laws. He also extended the scope of his theory for the motion of bodies under gravitation by suggesting they applied throughout the universe of his day. His emphasis on regularity and order was later misinterpreted as producing a clockwork universe with God as the watchmaker.
Physico-theology with its clear connection between nature and religion gave a motivation for study, and the natural philosopher was privileged to observe the beauty and complexity of the universe, which led to reverence and respect. In comparison, deism (which came later) focuses on God as creator and lawgiver, but it arose from rationalism rather than natural philosophy. Newton’s approach allowed us to see harmony and order beneath the surface, which restored coherence to a world John Donne had seen as in disarray in 1611. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, Newton’s universe seemed to be autonomous, with no need for God. Indeed, the Newton–Boyle synthesis had begun to fragment in the eighteenth century and fall apart completely in the nineteenth.
The nineteenth century saw a move away from theistic approaches to nature and a bifurcation of natural philosophy into science and philosophy, with a loss of moral focus. William Whewell suggested the term “natural philosopher” be replaced by “scientist.” Also, during the Enlightenment, David Hume criticized natural theology and distinguished fact from value, claiming that studying the natural world cannot generate moral values. Others referred to science in the singular as a field that employed a “scientific method,” overlooking the existence of many sciences that have their own methods. Newton began to be seen as the founder of a secular scientific modernity, while Blake believed the natural world had been impoverished by what he saw as a reductionist agenda and a mechanical world view. John Ruskin criticized a cold materialistic science in which objectivity had produced a disengaged account of nature. These moves stimulated a transition from theistic science, in which nature was grounded in a divine act of creation, to a naturalistic approach to science, such as Darwinism.
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, natural philosophy came to be regarded as outdated and faded into obscurity, as distinct sciences evolved and became professionalized. An agnostic Thomas Huxley made a clear distinction between philosophy and science, the former addressing the question “what can I know?” and the latter addressing “what do I know?”
Retrieving the Concept of Natural Philosophy
McGrath (2023) suggests there is a need to reconceive natural philosophy in ways that link attentiveness to the natural world with quests for understanding, wisdom, and wellbeing. This would respond to an instinct to preserve, respect, and appreciate the complexity of nature by assessing what was important in the concept of natural philosophy in the past and seeking a holistic view of science rather than being trapped in its current artificial divisions.
There are several reasons for a need to retrieve natural philosophy. First, in early modern times, it had a moral dimension that is currently absent from science but was in harmony with nature and focused on the art of living well. Second, engaging with the natural world corrects limitations in the philosophy of human reason; thus, Bacon suggested that collecting observations can counter human errors and lead to an awareness of the beauty of nature. Third, it used to enable humans to flourish in the world and respect nature; Boyle regarded the natural philosopher as a priest in the temple of nature, while American wilderness authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau instilled a holistic view of humanity’s relation with nature. Fourth, an urge to understand is often an urge for unity; the poet William Allingham compares a cold scientific mentality that breaks a whole into pieces with poetic imagination that reconstructs and reveals completeness and beauty. Finally, there is a need for a fresh relationship between philosophy and natural science in which, like for Kepler and Newton, the universe can be regarded as a coherent whole.
The development of discipline specialties has led to a fragmentation of knowledge and an impoverished compartmentalization with a layer-cake model of reality, which is not held together in a broad vision. By comparison, Stephen Jay Gould (2003) feels the many disciplines in the sciences and humanities should all be respected and valued and proposes they be “quilted together to produce a beautiful and integrated coat of many colors.” In a similar way, I have put forward an integrated view of the sciences and humanities as fields that merge into one another and are part of a whole in which wonder, reason, meaning, beauty, and creativity all play a role (Priest 2016; Figure 10).
An integrated view of the sciences and humanities as a mixture of subjects (greys) that merge continuously into one another (Priest 2016).
Mary Midgley (2005) suggests that the complexity of the world can be addressed with multiple maps having their own methods, so that natural philosophy can superimpose or weave together these interconnected maps to create a unity. On the other hand, Karl Popper (1968) conceives of three worlds, namely, of physical objects, of subjective mental states, and of creative thought, which can be held together and help create a retrieved natural philosophy.
McGrath (2023) emphasizes that an important aspect of this retrieval is found in the original Greek term theoria, which included the sense of gaining a deeper understanding by contemplating the natural world, and which C. P. Snow (1965) feels could lead to a sense of coherence and beauty, while Iris Murdoch (1992) shows how what initially seems to be disconnected can often be recognized as correlated and unified. Furthermore, the current conflicting approaches to nature given by the sciences and humanities can be reconciled by seeing the world and interpreting it in new ways that unify the modern separation of theory and observation (Gadamer 1998).
For McGrath, the new natural philosophy is a disciplinary “imaginary” that achieves an integration of apparently disconnected experiences (Licitra Rosa 2021). Thus, new imaginaries can be built and inhabited that offer a framework for organizing our experience of the world and that constitute a domain extending across present disciplinary boundaries (Taylor 2004; Lennon 2015). In other words, Popper’s world three is able to connect his worlds one and two.
In Popper’s world one, the quest for objectivity is a central aspect of contemporary sciences, since it points to knowledge that is universal and independent of culture or personal opinion. Bacon regarded experiments as a gateway to objectivity, but for Boyle and Newton, experimental results are provisional. However, the division between the objective and subjective is artificial, since scientific discoveries often use imagination to propose hypotheses, as well as invoke beauty to decide between competing theories. Thus, wonder is often what starts a journey of discovery. Thomas Nagel (1986) has discussed the limits of objectivity, emphasizing that a human quest for reality involves both objective and subjective paths, with a subjective view being inevitable, since the world appears different to different people and there is a cultural element to thinking.
Popper’s world two acknowledges the importance of subjective accounts of human experience, which go beyond objective notions of space and time to include history, memory, and belonging, so that the subjective and objective need to be integrated to give a deeper understanding of our world. Indeed, wonder draws us into the beauty of nature to experience a new way of seeing and valuing it. Paul Dirac (1954), for instance, stresses the need for a physical theory to be beautiful. Although objective accounts may be expressed in the language of poetry, subjective descriptions may be helped by poetry, and these may be woven together to help see the whole (McGilchrist 2012; McLeish 2019).
The new vision for reimagining natural philosophy proposed by McGrath (2023) involves weaving Popper’s three worlds into a coherent whole. The Enlightenment aim of intellectual unity failed due to the fragmentation of disciplines, while biologist Curtis Wilson’s (1968) manifesto for unity suffers from an unsatisfactory reduction of all knowledge to physics. Instead, McGrath seeks a voluntary confederation of disciplines that work together to understand human interaction with the world cognitively, emotionally, aesthetically, and morally.
The notion of a disciplinary imaginary can hold together the multilayered nature of reality revealed by a variety of disciplines, which represent different lenses on the natural world, namely: an impersonal scientific eye that concerns the laws of nature; an aesthetic eye that appreciates beauty and wonder; an ethical eye that seeks moral responsibility; and a spiritual eye that offers a religious perspective. One approach to retrieving natural philosophy is by recovering the approach of a polymath who holds the views from multiple windows together in a coherent unity (Lewis 1992). Another is a communal approach in which wisdom is shared across interconnected disciplinary boundaries so that the whole is seen and a grander vision revealed by transcending the parts.
Particularly important is attentiveness towards nature in which complexity and beauty are appreciated. Examples of writers who exemplify this approach are Henry Miller (1964), who said, “The moment one gives close attention to anything, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself,” and Iris Murdoch (1970), who describes how great art can enable such attentiveness. In addition, there is a moral dimension to our proper respectfulness for nature (Murdoch 1992). Arising from this is a sense of humanity being responsible for preserving and valuing nature, not in order to serve human needs but rather as an object of beauty and harmony in its own right.
In his conclusion, McGrath stresses that Aristotle was key in promoting an engagement with nature that evolved into “natural philosophy” and that Kepler and Newton encouraged the cultivation of understanding by mathematically demonstrating the coherence of the world. We also need wisdom in discerning the place and responsibility of humanity within nature. A new vision of natural philosophy will include precision and objectivity as well as the delight and joy that come from an expanded encounter with nature while attending to the ultimate questions embedded in our lives.
Astronomy and Theology
When comparing astronomy and religion, many questions arise. These are discussed in detail in the articles that follow, and so I only touch on some of them briefly here.
What is the relation between a theological and a scientific account of the origin of the universe?
Does modern astronomical cosmology support a religious doctrine of creation out of nothing (or Creation ex Nihilo)?
Does the Big Bang prove or disprove the existence of God?
Is Hawking correct that “physics alone created the universe, so the existence of God is not necessary” and that “when we have a unified theory of quantum and gravitational effects, we shall know the mind of God”?
Should the theology of creation be updated to take account of modern scientific advances?
Cosmology, the science of the origin and development of the universe, has a long history as part of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but relatively recently, it has also become part of modern science (essentially since 1929, when Hubble discovered the universe is expanding). But questions about the beginning and end of the universe, the existence of intelligent life, and why there is a cosmos were familiar to medieval theologians and philosophers.
Does modern astronomical cosmology support a traditional religious doctrine of creation out of nothing (or Creation ex Nihilo)? Clearly, the Big Bang is consistent with the theological idea, but it does not prove the existence of God. Indeed, in general, we need to beware of the danger of a so-called “God of the gaps,” in which God is invoked to explain any currently unexplained scientific fact, since a future scientific explanation may appear, making God redundant.
However, talk of “creation out of nothing” raises other questions. For example, how can we make sense of this phrase, since “nothing” may imply that before the act of creation there was no space and no time, when creation is normally a process in time? Again, what is the difference between a scientific notion of causality (of one event causing another) in the early universe and a theological view of causality in the doctrine of creation?
The belief (of Newton, for example) that the laws of physics govern the universe led to a growth of deism, with God creating the universe and then leaving it to its own devices, but this is not what is commonly meant by a Christian God. The Judeo-Christian God creates from nothing but also sustains the universe in being, supporting and caring for life by providence (benevolent intervention, such as acts of guidance and miracles). Indeed, in my view, God may well be at the root of all creative acts, whether recognized or not.
With a complete theory for the Big Bang, we would certainly have great insights into the nature of the universe God has created and how this occurred, but God is very much greater than that, and so we certainly would not know, in my view, the mind of God. Tiny glimpses of God are so much greater and more mysterious than the concept Hawking appears to have.
The complementary nature of different questions, in particular the difference between “how?” and “why?”, are important here. If the development Hawking advocates does indeed turn out to lead to a unified theory of relativity and quantum theory, scientists may be able in future to say how the universe started, but they still will not be able to answer why. It is possible God sets up and maintains all the laws of physics, including gravity, and allows them to work in such a way that the Big Bang occurs spontaneously and, ultimately, life is created. In other words, explaining the Big Bang in terms of physics is not inconsistent with there being a role for God.
Many of the questions most crucial to us as human beings are not addressed adequately by science, such as the nature of beauty and love and how to live one’s life—often, philosophy or history or theology are better suited to help answer them, which is why we have gathered the group of international experts in astronomy, philosophy, and theology to contribute to this interdisciplinary section of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.
Compare an atheistic world view with a religious one. If there were no God, it would be difficult to account for moral realism, free will, rationality, and fine tuning. If, on the other hand there were a God, it would not be surprising to find a universe fine-tuned for life, containing free, rational, and moral creatures with a sense of the divine.
Fine Tuning
Martin Rees (2000) in his book Just Six Numbers proposes that six of the fundamental physical constants that are a key part of modern physics could in principle have a wide range of values, but extremely small changes in the values they possess would mean there could be no life as we know it. In other words, our universe is fine-tuned for the building blocks of life to be present.
Two of those constants determine the fundamental interactions of physics. One is the ratio of the size of electrical to gravitational forces. If this ratio were only 1% larger, the sun would have exploded and so life on Earth would not have evolved. Another constant is the fraction of mass converted to energy when hydrogen fuses to form helium. If thiswere 2% bigger, all the hydrogen in the universe would have been used up within a few minutes of the Big Bang. Another constant is the ratio of the mass of a neutron to that of a proton. If it were different, then carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen would never have been created. A fourth constant is the number of spatial dimensions in our world, namely, three. The final constants determine the size, age, and expansion of the universe and include the density of the universe and the nature of a vacuum.
In their accompanying articles here, Chris Smeenk (2025) and Adam Hincks (2025) address philosophical and theological implications of fine tuning. The fundamental constants are just right for life. So, is this a proof of God? Certainly not, but it is consistent with God’s existence as creator in some sense.
We have four choices in response to the existence of fine tuning:
One is to follow Hawking (1988) and say that it is just happenstance—there is no need for a Creator, since there is nothing for him to do.
Another is to say that it is an expression of our ignorance, that in future we may develop a theory that naturally produces the fine-tuning values.
A third possibility is that it is the workings of providence, of God, and that it is consistent with God’s work as designer and creator.
A final possibility is that our universe is part of a vaster multiverse of unconnected universes, spontaneously created out of nothing, containing different sets of laws of physics, such that we exist in the one universe with the right combination of fundamental constants for life.
A Universe or a Multiverse?
Is there likely to be a single universe? If so, we need an explanation for fine tuning. Or is there, on the other hand, a multiverse of unconnected universes? These would be spontaneously created out of nothing and contain different sets of laws of physics and the different logically possible combinations of fundamental constants, such that we exist in the universe that has the right combination for life.
Is the existence of a multiverse scientifically provable or does it lie more in the realm of philosophy as an alternative hypothesis to God? Some have suggested the idea of a multiverse is unscientific, since there is unlikely to be observational evidence for or against it. The existence of a multiverse, however, does not rule out the need for God to exist.
Where Did the Laws of Physics Come From?
Religion and science use different types of explanations. The sciences use the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and so on to provide explanations at different levels. Perhaps all these levels, together with philosophy and theology, are needed for a complete explanation?
However, what is the origin of the laws of physics? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is the world intelligible? According to Einstein, “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.”
Is there meaning and purpose in the universe? Is the universe divinely determined? For the Hebrew Bible, everything comes from God’s will to create; it is good in His eyes. But is this consistent with a scientific approach?
Mathematics
The universe is incredibly structured, ordered, and beautiful, with a uniformity, regularity, and intelligibility characterized by mathematical simplicity and elegance. Thus, the symmetry and elegance of mathematics appear to underpin the universe. Mathematics has an uncanny ability to mirror the patterns of nature.
Mathematical truth, however, is not human invention at all; rather, it is there, and its existence is gradually uncovered. Mathematics describes the deep reality behind the world. So, does this reflect the divine mind? It certainly seems consistent with a divine creator and a rational heart to the universe.
Why then are there mathematical laws at all? Why does mathematics describe world?
Perhaps because it taps into the mind that made it all.
The Nature of Space, Time, and Matter
Space and time may be much stranger than we think (Rovelli 2018; Hobson 2017). We feel time is flowing in space and that space and time are continuous, with events in space determined in time.
In the seventeenth century, the idea of a clockwork, mechanistic universe was in vogue. Once it was set up, all subsequent behavior seemed to be determined. Now, however, we realize the universe is highly complex, changing, and evolving, and that there is a mixture of smooth and random behavior. On a quantum level, reality has a statistical nature, but on large scales we find chaotic and turbulent behavior, so that, for example, we are unlikely to ever be able to predict the weather for more than a week or so ahead.
Quantum mechanics is used by physicists in a highly effective manner to solve practical problems, but its implications about the underlying nature of reality are not well understood. Perhaps reality does not consist of things located continuously in space and time, as we tend to believe, but all physical reality consists of quantum waves, with space and time emerging in a granular manner out of a deeper reality. These are tricky aspects currently being tackled by theoretical physicists.
The Relationship between God and the Universe?
This leads on to related theological questions concerning the relationship between God and the universe. Saint Augustine (400) realized that God is outside time and so thought that we cannot speak of a time before Creation. Time is likely, therefore, to be contingent, i.e., to depend on God. It is also irreversible, since it appears to flow forwards, for several reasons, one of which concerns the physics of thermodynamics and its claim that disorder increases in time.
If God is outside time, how does God interact with it? What about free will? Is God partly in and partly outside time? Does God exist in other dimensions of time? Does God know the general trends of the future but not the details?
What is our role in Creation? Is it as co-creators? Is it to care for, conserve, and develop God’s creation? Is it to appreciate the beauty and wonder all around us?
What Future Can We Predict for Humanity and for the Universe?
Rees (2018) in his book entitled On the Future: Prospects for Humanity stresses that the world is unsettled, rapidly changing, and facing global problems, such as climate change, mass loss of species, forest felling, and the acidification of oceans. Since 1950, the number of floods across the world has increased by fifteen times, extreme temperature events by twenty times, and wildfires seven-fold. Topsoil is being lost ten to forty times faster than it is being replenished by natural processes. However, our approach to the future is often characterized by short-term thinking, polarizing debates, alarmist rhetoric, and pessimism. A very different approach is needed from now on if we are to halt these trends.
Rees points out that this century is special, since it is the first one when our species is so empowered that it has the planet’s future in its hands. He suggests we can harness science and technology to address the challenges, provided we think rationally, globally, collectively, and optimistically. If advances in biotechnology, cybertechnology, robotics, and artificial intelligence are applied wisely, they could overcome the threats to humanity from climate change, poverty, disease, and nuclear war.
In the long term, however, a scientific view of the future of the solar system is bleak. Radiation from the sun will steadily increase, so that after about 600 million years, all plant life and most animal life will have died away due to a fall in carbon dioxide. After four billion (109) years, the Earth’s surface will melt, and all life will cease. After about five billion years, the sun will run out of hydrogen and grow into a red giant star, whose radius will stretch right out to the Earth, which will be absorbed by the sun. Later, the sun will collapse to a tiny star, called a white dwarf. By that time, some form of intelligence may possibly have spread from Earth far out into the Milky Way galaxy, or even to other galaxies.
In the much more distant future, when the universe is 1012 years old, there will be no hydrogen left, stars will cease to form, and all massive stars will have become neutron stars and black holes. After 1014 years, small stars will have become white dwarfs, and the universe will be a cold, uninteresting place composed of dead stars and black holes.
Theologian David Wilkinson (2025), however, brings biblical themes into dialogue with scientific insights and draws a connection between physical and biblical ideas about the end of time. For the Christian who believes in a Creator God of Love, there is hope in the return of Christ to inaugurate a new creation, a new heaven, and a new Earth. The idea of God as Creator, not just at the Big Bang but continually at work, is another source of hope. When we adopt a model of God’s guidance that unites Creation and new creation, it gives a different perspective on time and the end of the story.
Conclusion
The sense of wonder and humility that comes from gazing at the stars is a common response to pondering the amazingly beautiful and surprising nature of modern science and its unexpected discoveries. Indeed, creativity, imagination, and a feeling of being carried along on a voyage of discovery are central to what it means to be a scientist—they lie right at the core of scientific thought and are much more akin than most people realize to creative acts in the arts, when composing a piece of music, say, or painting a landscape.
One could go further and say that such an open attitude to being led into new directions in a non-judgmental and welcoming manner is central to being a human person, whether talking about our relationships with each other or about a being engaged on a scientific or artistic venture. But both rationality and creativity are needed, since, without rationality the danger is to lose touch with reality, whereas, without creativity, the path of discovery soon grinds to a halt.
There are clear parallels here with an open attitude to religious experience and theological thought, where opening ourselves in wonder and humility characterize much religious worship, and are also central to meditation and thought on Holy Scriptures. These common aspects of the sciences, the arts and theology in turn suggest that the common polarized, divisive approach of the past 150 years to science, arts, and faith is a misguided aberration and that we should seek to build a more unified approach. What can unite this approach is the central common role of a search for understanding that combines reason and imagination.
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