Author Description

An astrophysicist draws upon religion and science in his search for evidence of God. The word "God" shows up increasingly in popular works about modern physics. Some scientists piously see God as a key to deciphering further mysteries of the universe. Others aver that science offers a surer path to God than religion. Arnold Benz, an astrophysicist and a Christian, believes that science and religion, if one takes them seriously, resist seamless integration and harmonization. They are two different approaches to experiencing reality, two different planes that do not intersect, yet it is possible for an observer informed about both planes of inquiry to reflect on how they might relate. Mediating between these two planes of perception, which could be described as the greatest intellectual adventure of our time, requires taking both realms fully in earnest. Arguing that it is senseless to seek God in the first moments of the Big Bang, as though creation were some once-for-all event in the distant past, Benz finds creation occurring throughout the entire development of the cosmos, here and now as well as in the distant future. In the foreground stands the decisive question: What might we expect, and what might we hope for, from the future: chance, chaos, or God?>