Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

Quentin Smith objects to the theistic implications of Big Bang cosmology as follows:

If God intends to create a universe that contains living beings at some stage in it history, then there is no reason for him to begin the universe with an inherently unpredictable singularity. Indeed, it is positively irrational. It is a sign of incompetent planning to create as the first natural state something that requires immediate supernatural intervention to ensure that it leads to the desired result. The rational thing to do is to create some state that by its own lawful nature leads to a life-producing universe. (The Improbability of God, 47)

Smith’s mistake is two-fold. In the first place he assumes that it is possible to seed a singularity that “by its own lawful nature” leads to the right kind of mature universe. It is contended precisely that created nature is not as potent and creative in its own right as God is creative. Smith shows no sign of recognizing the possibility that the natures of the initial singularity (or whatever the beginning of the universe consisted in) and of all of its states subsequent to expansion are so much removed from the nature of God that their power, unlike God’s, is fundamentally and inescapably limited. This limitation is one of the things enumerated under the rubric of “metaphysical evil,” which covers finitude and its consequences, as opposed to the infinity of God.

But what nature alone cannot do, nature assisted by grace might. Grace in it numerous manifestations is essentially creation of information, imparting a form, defining things, eliminating chaos and formlessness in favor of definiteness and even beauty. Since the singularity is assumed by Smith to be utterly chaotic, with maximum entropy allowed by it, it was, like prime matter for the Schoolmen, “pure potentiality,” formless void susceptible to being informed or made into something, into anything. And doing that was God’s job. Just as a sculptor does not go around looking for a lump of clay that can by itself transform itself into a precisely chiseled statue (an impossible quest anyway, if I am right), so God does not go around looking for a universe that can make itself. Rather, he wants matter which, though it has its own mind, He can guide, by actualizing some possibilities and setting aside others even without expending any energy, towards His chosen goal; matter which can be intelligently designed into a form.

Imparting grace is not therefore “intervention” in the sense of a miracle. God does not move around particles of matter; He manipulates possibilities, allowing some event to happen and precluding every other event. He “chooses between.” It is not that the “inherently unpredictable singularity” wanted, according to some natural law, to do X, and God violently stopped it from happening. On the contrary, the universe was in principle undetermined, capable of resulting in X but also in Y, Z, etc. Even if X was the one desired result among millions of undesirable ones, guiding the evolution of natural laws, stars and the solar system, animals and humans, does not irrational God make, any more than sculpting an initially cubical piece of marble into a bust of Smith makes the sculptor irrational, because through his actions he has prevented any other form from being attached to the matter of marble.

In other words, it is eminently rational go and get oneself some matter, potential to any form, and then hew at it and chip at it in such a way as to create something definite and beautiful. And no one will deny that this world seems beautiful sometimes.

See also: William Dembski, The Design Revolution, Ch. 20, “Nature’s Receptivity to Information.”