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Table of contents

Renewing his critique of classical natural theology he argues that these by their very nature leads to a unitarian and deistic concept of God, completely foreign to the God who is revealed in Christ and Scripture. Furthermore, in the doctrine of the image of God, especially as developed in the works of the great patristic theologians Athanasius and Augustine, Christianity asserts the human being as a point of contact and congruence with God.

Yet as fallen this capacity must be renewed in Christ in order to be effective and so natural theology, understood as a process of discernment, cannot be abstracted from Christ or the Trinitarian economy of salvation. Moreover in recognising the fallenness both of man and of the created order such a Trinitarian natural theology recognises the ambivalence of the created order — a crucial aspect of the reality we experience, but something which was glossed over by classical natural theology.

In chapter 7, looking towards the second part of his work, McGrath poses a number of questions about anthropic phenomena and their framework of explanation. In probing such surprising facts McGrath advocates the importance of counterfactual thinking — the construction by imagination of alternative possibilities to those which in fact obtain.

Such counterfactual thinking, he suggests, is crucial in buttressing the inference to the best explanation characteristic of the new natural theology. For in the imagination of alternative realities it allows us to see our own reality more clearly. This he finds in the specific form of Trinitarian theology promoted by Augustine of Hippo.

In contemporary terms the advantage of this is in linking a scientific understanding of embedded causalities in nature and evolutionary development to a theological model of providence. In this way the theory of seminal reasons provides an important heuristic for the new approach to natural theology. In the second part McGrath considers the scientific evidence for the fine-tuning of the universe and its possible interpretations. In chapter 9 he focusses attention on cosmology and the origin of life. As McGrath explains, the standard model of cosmology suggests that the evolution of the universe has been determined by a number of basic physical constants.

If these were minutely different the universe as we know it and life in particular could not exist.

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To many this suggests the fine-tuning of these constants and raises questions of design and intention. While some physicists invoke the multiverse as a way of avoiding such design implications, McGrath points out both that this theory is speculative and that it is not per se inconsistent with theism. His conclusion is that under any interpretation the fine-tuning phenomena provide an important empirical fit with Christian theism. Indeed, he argues that the picture of unfolding potentialities suggested by modern cosmology is highly consonant with the Augustinian paradigm of seminal reasons implanted in creation.

In chapters 10 and 11 McGrath turns to the fine-tuning evidence surrounding life and its origins. Referring to cosmology again he points out that stellar nucleosynthesis of the essential elements for life requires incredibly fine-tuning of atomic resonance levels. In similar vein he highlights the highly specific physical and chemical properties of carbon atoms and water molecules necessary for the evolution of life.

Such scientific facts he suggests are legitimately open to anthropic interpretation — the chemical properties of carbon and water were designed this way in order to support life.

Indeed, McGrath suggests that the usual argument raised against such anthropic interpretation — that nature tunes itself through a process of natural selection — simply begs the question of how such potentialities were intrinsic to nature in the first place. This is a point that he reiterates in chapter 12 in his examination of the chemical constraints of biological evolution.

A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology - The Gifford Lectures

Here McGrath points out that transition metals like manganese could not play their role in catalysing biochemical reactions crucial for life were it not for the extreme fine-tuning of their quantum mechanical properties. The fact that biological evolution is chemically constrained means that questions of fine-tuning cannot be avoided. From a theistic perspective of course this fine-tuning provides no problems and once again McGrath argues that the Augustinian notion of seminal reasons provides a fruitful heuristic for understanding the interplay of intrinsic potentialities and their external activation.

In chapters 13 and 14 McGrath turns finally to consider evidence for the fine-tuning of biological evolution in terms of both its mechanism and its directionality.

Key to the Science of Theology

While natural selection is often invoked to explain away anthropic considerations in evolution McGrath argues that this misses the point in failing to offer any explanation as to how this capacity of self-shaping arose in the first place. To view this site, you must enable JavaScript or upgrade to a JavaScript-capable browser. Add to Cart. Details Back.

This book was originally used as a missionary tract. It was designed as an introduction to the first principles of spiritual philosophy, religion, law and government, as delivered by the ancients, and as restored in this age, for the final development of universal peace, truth and knowledge. Pratt reveals keys to the mysteries of the godhead, initiations, miracles, dreams, and spirits; making us aware that God is the greatest scientist of all: "[Man,] an intelligent being, in the image of God, possesses every organ, attribute, sense, sympathy, affection, of will, wisdom, love, power and gift, which is possessed by God Himself.


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