Kirsty asked:

What would you say is the Christian understanding of the creation of the world, both past and
present? Do you think religion is pre-scientific when it talks about creation?

============

The Christian understanding of creation has its origins in the book of Genesis. There are a number of
key points to draw out of this; taken alongside what such Christian philosophers as Augustine and
Aquinas have said on the subject, you will have a reasonable picture of the Christian position on
creation.

The first and perhaps most important point is that the universe was created ex nihilo— out of nothing.
Augustine talks about that, and this is clearly where the world came from in the Genesis myth. That is
to say that God did not create the world out of pre-existing recalcitrant matter. Plato had held that he
did — that the imperfections of the world are due to the limitations that this already existing 'stuff'
placed on God. This might be said to place constraints on God's omnipotence however and this to the
Christian is unacceptable.

The fact that the world was created 'ex nihilo' also suggests that the world is contingent — it might not
have been; God on the other hand is necessary. Yet God created the world for us — man has
pre-eminence among the animals and has been made in God's image. You get this idea in Genesis
when God sees that creation is good.

But an important element of the doctrine of creation that also needs to be brought out is the idea of
continuing creation — creatio continuaas its called. This is the idea that the important thing about
creation is not what God was up to in the beginning but what he has been up to since — the idea that
he has directed or steered creation and that creation is heading somewhere purposefully. From a
theological point of view, one needs to decide whether one thinks God is timeless or not; if he is
timeless then it makes no sense to talk of what God did before or since anything. Creation is simply
one act of God and one that is purposive. Aquinas and Augustine certainly had this conception of
God and this is the most philosophically attractive in my view.

But more modern theologians (see Ward, Polkinghorne and others) have preferred to emphasize that
there is both a timeless and a temporal aspect to God's nature; in order for mortals to have a
relationship with God (which the Genesis story surely suggests is supposed to happen) God needs to
have some kind of temporal aspect to his nature. God is seen as involved in time and the progress of
our universe; so, roughly, classical Christian philosophy emphasizes the ex nihilo part of the Genesis
myth while modern protestant thinking is more geared towards creatio continua.

What both hold to is that the exact "how" of creation is theologically uninteresting; so I think you are
quite right to suggest that from an academic standpoint, the creation story is pre-scientific. I would
have thought that it was supposed to be that way, concerning itself with a picturesque myth about
humankind and why the world is as it is and not a scientific cosmology. It is only fairly recently that
people have thought that the Genesis story is literally true. Augustine et al weren't worried or
threatened by the possibility that it might not be. So the Christian religion does not conflict with
science on that score.

The real problem in this debate is with the idea that the world has purpose in the sense that Christian
philosophy supposes; it simply isn't clear from a Darwinian standpoint that one can claim that
evolution is purposeful. Most biologists think it isn't; at the very least however the physical conditions
necessary for the development of this kind of world are very contingent in that they are improbable
given the large number of other possible ways the world could be (unless there are laws we don't
know about that make the world the way it is).

So you might think that you have to consider whether it is more probable that the world was created
by a God or whether the universe is simply an empty void and provides no grounds for supposing that
there were a God; but if one takes that line, then one has to consider separately how likely it is that
there should be such a being as God (that is a principle of inductive reasoning) The postulation of a
God may make the evidence more likely, the evidence may even make the likelihood of there being a
God more than it would have been otherwise, but its not clear that it makes the existence of God
more likely than not.

Given our experience of the world, how likely is it that there is an all loving, all knowing, all powerful
being? I would have to say I don't think it all that likely at all.

Adam Gatward