Resumen

DREYER, Johan; VAN DER WALT, Kobus  y  DENTON, Rudy. The origin of everything: "And there was evening and there was morning". Tydskr. geesteswet. [online]. 2023, vol.63, n.2, pp.192-210. ISSN 2224-7912.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2023/v63n2a2.

Darwin's 18th century theory of evolution was an elegant, sensible, and logical explanation of observed data. It was embraced by the scientific community of the time since it offered an alternative to the creation narrative in the Bible. Proponents of the theory were convinced that the origin and multitude of life on earth could be fully explained by evolution and natural selection. Over time, the theory of evolution acquired normative status, which led to the totality of human knowledge being interpreted through a filter of random chance. Opponents of this materialistic view were in many cases branded as fringe figures. Subsequently, however, science and technology have developed dramatically, and new observations have led to a growing number of questions that cannot be explained by an unguided, random process. In this article (the first in a series of four on this topic), a few examples of such contemporary observations are presented. These include: • Origin of the universe Seminal work by scholars such as Slipher, Hubble, Lemaïtre, Einstein and others indicate that the universe came into being at a specific moment. This was contrary to the idea of a perpetual universe, as believed by e.g., classical Greek scholars. The implication ofa moment of creation is that there must have been a "cause of creation" (Creator) that is not bounded by, or subject to, matter, energy, space, or time, because none of these existed before the moment of creation. • Fine-tuning of the universe Since the 1950's, numerous scientific discoveries indicate that life depends on a highly unlikely combination of forces, characteristics, and balances in the universe, such as e.g., fundamental forces that have exactly the right magnitudes, contingent properties that exhibit exactly the right characteristics, as well as the initial configuration of matter and energy perfectly tuned to allow for anything to exist. These life-permitting properties of the universe fall within highly improbable, precise boundaries, commonly referred to as "anthropic contingencies" by materialist scientists. If any one of these properties were changed even in an infinitesimal way, the life-promoting conditions, found in the universe would not exist. Not only is the observed simultaneous, conditional accuracy highly improbable, but there appears to be no conceivable physical cause (reason) or philosophical necessity why these parameters exhibit the particular values they do. Contrary to scientists with a materialistic worldview, who attribute the fine-tuning to a happy accident (a random accident of physics), a growing number of scientists and philosophers conclude that the universe was designed with great care by a Creator who transcends time, matter, space, and energy in order to have achieved the fine-tuning of conditions before the moment of creation. • Age of the universe The age of the universe extends from the time of the Big Bang, which is currently calculated to have occurred 13.8 billion years ago (±0.020 billion years), according to the Lambda Cold Dark Matter (ACDM) model. Contemporary empirical evidence indicates that the universe consists of approximately 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter and only 5% matter. This means that although the ACDM theory has a thorough scientific basis, it still represents imperfect knowledge of only approximately 5% of everything that exists. • Origin of the earth The conditions necessary for the earth to form have been determined before the moment of creation. A literal understanding of the narrative in Genesis is problematic since the sun and the moon were only created on day four. To summarily interpret the first 3 "days" of creation as 24-hour days is therefore without any justification, because the heavenly bodies that are responsible for 24-hour days as we know them, did not yet exist. From this it can be deduced that a 24-hour-a-day interpretation of the days of creation, is at most a human construct and that the repeated use of the words, "and there was evening, and there was morning", should rather be seen as a delimitation of events. • Age of the earth Pre-scientific thinking about the age of the earth was dominated by a fundamentalist, biblical paradigm. This included calculating the age of the earth according to generations given in the Bible, which resulted in general consensus that the earth was created on "the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October [...] the year before Christ 4004". Geological and paleontological evidence however made it clear that well over 6,000 years must have passed in the formation of the earth. This empirical evidence was ultimately the cause of the literal understanding of Genesis' six days of creation being openly questioned. Immanent scientists such as Newton (1687), Hutton (1788) and Lyell (1830-1833) took a uniformitarian paradigm as point of departure in their calculations about the age of the earth. Contemporary evidence indicates that the earth's age is approximately 4,6 billion years. • Origin and age of life The origin and age of humankind has been central in debates about evolution since the publication of the theory almost 200 years ago. Currently, however, sources of information such as genetics and genetically based studies (e.g., Ontogeny, Phylogeny and Evolutionary Biology) have, together with developments in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis since the early 1970's, substantially added to the knowledge obtained from the fossil record. A vast volume of data must have been generated to account for the multitude of life observed (including humankind). The visible range and depth of information, as well as the survival rate within the time available, make "coincidence" as a method of gathering the information, logically impossible. Only one out of every hundred species that could mutate survived, which means that to obtain the correct DNA information the mutation rate would have had to be 99% higher, or the period 99% longer than observed in natural science. The only plausible origin of such information is an intelligent designer. In conclusion, the central theoretical premise of this article series is that contemporary observations in all disciplines of natural science are best explained by the existence and involvement of God in creation. Academic integrity requires that scholars depart from a normative materialistic interpretation of empirical data (i.e., the a-priori exclusion of any metaphysical interpretations), which is currently still widely adhered to. The authors 'point of departure is a Reformed³ understanding of reality. The four articles all have the same structure, namely a problem statement, a natural science discussion, an exploration of what information the Bible offers on the various topics, closed by a conclusion. The article series is supposed to provide a broad, critical overview of the topic of normative materialism in the natural sciences and no new research results per se are presented. However, the insights reached in the respective conclusions are unique, and the authors are of the opinion that they contribute to the existing knowledge about the relationship between faith and science.

Palabras clave : creation; creationism; normative materialism; unguided process; random process; intelligent design; God; evolution; chance; Big Bang; universe; life; science and religion.

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