by Eric Alexander

Our conception of the Universe has changed since Biblical times. If God is the Creator of the Universe, is it time we changed our conception of Him?

The old cosmology

Before Newton, the answer to the question why things on Earth fall downwards was obvious: Earth is at the centre of the Universe. Similarly it didn’t require much thought to work out where the sun goes at night: it passes under Earth.

So we have a picture of a Universe rotating around the Earth, refined in the light of planetary motion to the idea of a series of transparent, concentric spheres each containing one or more heavenly bodies.

The outermost sphere contains the “fixed” stars. It can’t be all that far away, a few hundred miles probably. Otherwise how fast would it have to move to complete a revolution in 24 hours?

The old theology

So the Universe is quite small, small enough for God to communicate across it to his creatures.

And where is God? Up in Heaven, beyond the outermost sphere. There’s plenty of room up there for Him and all His angels, plus the souls of the departed that He deems suitable for sharing His space.

When you die, your soul hasn’t far to go to its final resting place. A few people – Moses, Elijah, Jesus, Mahomet – have managed to make the trip without actually dying.

So, if you find yourself the highest life-form on a planet at the centre of Universe, it’s easy enough to believe that God has created the Universe for your benefit; that God has made you in His image; that some text has been written at His bidding; that He wants to be worshipped in a particular way; that a particular group of people are His Chosen.

The Copernican challenge

The challenge Copernicus posed to the old cosmology was easy enough to refute at first. If Earth is merely a planet revolving round the sun, the passage of a day represents rotation around its own axis. But if the earth rotates, things won’t fall down. On the contrary, by the process we now call centrifugal force, everything not held down will fly off into space. So we needn’t worry about Copernicus.

Gravity

Newton turned the whole cosmology upside down. He showed why things don’t fly off into space when the planet rotates. He showed that the force that pulls things towards the ground is the same one that keeps the planets in orbit round the sun: gravity.

To achieve this, he first looked at force in a scientific manner. If you want an object to move, you apply a force to it. If you go on applying this force, it will move faster and faster, accelerating indefinitely unless there is another force pushing in the opposite direction. The more massive the object, the bigger force you need to apply to make it accelerate by the same amount: hence the mathematical relationship between force, mass and acceleration.

Newton’s other innovation was the invention of a new sort of mathematics, differential calculus, to show the relationship between the path of an object and the forces acting on it. From this he derived a gravitational equation, showing that attraction between two objects is directly proportional to their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This equation perfectly fits the planetary orbits.

The significance of tides

Newton’s method confirmed the Copernican view of the Universe, but why should his contemporaries be convinced? The mathematics was beyond most of them.

But there was one phenomenon that Newton’s theory explained, for which the old cosmology offered no explanation whatsoever: tides.

It had been observed for centuries that the movement of tides was related to the passage of the moon through the sky. Nobody considered the theological implications: why should they? Early believers in this sort of God were concentrated around the Mediterranean, where tidal movement is small. Even when mariners ventured into the Atlantic and beyond, they thought the movement of the tides was one of God’s mysteries. Why bother to unravel it?

By showing that tidal movement is the effect of the gravitational pull of the moon on the oceans, Newton effectively killed off the old cosmology.

How big is the Universe?

Even before Newton, Galileo’s observations with his telescope suggested that the Universe was a lot bigger than implied by the old cosmology. Jupiter’s moons! What else was out there?

Modern astronomy gives a pretty clear answer. It takes a year for a space probe to reach the surface of Mars, the next planet after Earth in distance from the sun. In cosmological terms that’s peanuts. To travel to the farthest part of the Universe seen so far would take millions of lifetimes. And all that Space is riddled with stars and other celestial objects. What are they there for?

Implications for theology

If you believe in a God who created the Universe, these celestial objects must be there because He wanted them there.

But if God created the Universe for the benefit of mankind, what function can these objects serve? Even on the planet, there are well-established natural phenomena of no conceivable benefit to mankind. How does mankind benefit from the migrations of caribou, wildebeest, or Arctic terns?

God’s purpose is something else, incomprehensible to the small mind of the most developed species on the planet. Can you go on believing that you are made in God’s image, that one particular text is His Word, that He wants to be worshipped in your way, that you are one of His Chosen People?

The old cosmology is dead. Is it appropriate that the old theology should survive?

by Eric Alexander