How can one explain cosmic evolution?
Review of Küng’s Der Anfang aller Dinge, section D, part 6.
4. Why a life friendly cosmos? (WARNING, THIS SECTION IS FASCINATING)
In looking at the astonishing fact that 13.7 million years of cosmic evolution has led to incredibly developed and complex life, even ‘life with spirit’, Küng asks: ‘Is everything really chance? Is pure chance an explanation?’ (165)
What about science? Could this discipline one day clarify how human life came to be on this planet as it is? ‘Perhaps one day’, says Küng, it would be difficult to principally exclude any such possibility. But what of Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem (‘a finite system of axioms always contains formulas that within this system can neither be proven nor disproved`, 33)? Surely that makes things more than just a little problematic!
So, if science doesn’t give us a final explanation (and Küng isn’t holding his breath for the day it may do) what does explain the development of life on earth?
What about an anthropic principle? Well, possibly, says Küng, if the principle is understood in its weak sense. But how could a meta-nature law be proven?
In fact, Küng has already laid the epistemological foundations of his thinking in section A (cf. his reliance on Kant), and this excludes the possibility that science could one day provide a ‘final solution’ in the language of meta-empirical law. Rather, for such meta-matters as this, philosophy and religion is responsible, not science.
Now this brings one back to the question: While the development of life cannot be scientifically demonstrated to be ‘goal-orientated’ or more than chance, our view of reality can inspire philosophical/religious thoughts in a direction – namely that it is difficult to believe that ‘the great cosmic development is only a meaningless drama played before empty seats’ (169).
What does all of this reasoning suggest?
- Religion can interpret evolution as creation.
- Science can make the creation a concrete evolutionary process.
- Religion can give evolution a meaning which science cannot. Science cannot read meaning off of (or into) the evolutionary process, and at best can only suggest it.