Review Essay: New Proofs for the Existence of God
At a meeting in Leningrad in December 1948, Soviet astronomers affirmed the need to fight against the “reactionary-idealistic” theory of a “primeval atom.” Support for this theory, later dubbed the “Big Bang” by one of its fiercest critics, would, the Soviets claimed, help clericalism.1 While such a...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2011
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2011, Volume: 104, Issue: 2, Pages: 255-262 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | At a meeting in Leningrad in December 1948, Soviet astronomers affirmed the need to fight against the “reactionary-idealistic” theory of a “primeval atom.” Support for this theory, later dubbed the “Big Bang” by one of its fiercest critics, would, the Soviets claimed, help clericalism.1 While such anxieties might seem astonishing today, they may have seemed plausible in the 1940s, especially since the theory had first been proposed by a Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaître. Furthermore, while Lemaître himself was careful to avoid drawing theological inferences, the association of his theory with the religious doctrine of Creation, especially by Pope Pius XII in 1951, helped to motivate the search for alternative approaches such as the “steady-state” theory.2 In recent years, by contrast, the perception has been growing that the Big Bang theory has ceased to be offensive to atheist sensibilities. It is claimed that the Big Bang can now be accommodated safely within a self-sufficient system of natural causes, possibly by embedding the universe within an infinitely larger and eternal “multiverse.” Indeed, just a few months ago, the media reported with enthusiasm the assertions made by Stephen Hawking in his latest book, that contemporary physics has solved the mysteries of the Big Bang making recourse to God obsolete.3 |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816011000186 |