The Storied Night

A Review of The Story of the Cosmos, How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God, Paul M. Gould & Daniel Ray, general editors

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. —Psalm 19:1

The night sky is the last great frontier. From a dark, country site, away from the lights of towns and cities, the full grandeur of the starry heaven can be enjoyed. It melts even the hardest heart, and fills us with awe as we contemplate its vast size, its teeming multitude of effulgent hosts, and its great, preternatural beauty. But for the biblical King David, the night sky also presented powerful evidence that a Creator had fashioned it all. As an avid stargazer from my youth and a committed Christian, I have always regarded the majesty of the night sky as a grand expression of the created order.

That's why my curiosity was piqued when I came across a new book, The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God (Harvest House Publishers, 2019), edited by Daniel Ray, a former schoolteacher and amateur astronomer, and Paul M. Gould, a philosopher and apologist. Ray and Gould have assembled a stellar line-up of some of the finest Christian minds from across a multitude of disciplines—the sciences, the arts, philosophy, and theology—who are united in their conviction that the universe displays the unmistakable hallmarks of order, design, and foresight, from the microscopic realm of the sub-atomic to the macroscopic world of stars and galaxies. All of it, they believe, is the handiwork of an all-powerful God, the God of the Bible.

Profound Questions Addressed

The Story of the Cosmos comes at an especially exciting time, when Darwinian ideology is being toppled by an avalanche of new science. The origin of life is as mysterious as ever; the more we probe into it, the more complex it becomes. So, too, is the nature of human consciousness. The book draws upon an exceptionally rich repository of intellectual thought, from Aristotle, Plato, and St. Augustine in the ancient world, to C. S. Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, John Lennox, and others in the modern era, who have all formulated the same answer to an age-old question: Why is the cosmos intelligible, rational, and ordered? Their answer, arrived at using various philosophical approaches, is that the universe is that way because its Creator is also rational, and human beings, made in the image of God, are to some degree capable, as Johannes Kepler put it, of "thinking God's thoughts after him."

Three chapters in Part I of the book, written respectively by distinguished scientists Guy Consolmagno, Guillermo Gonzalez, and David Bradstreet, explore another, related question: What was God's purpose in creating a cosmos that is intelligible to humankind? Their answer is that God has allowed us to be active participants in unravelling the mysteries of his creation and that he delights in humans figuring things out through the dual methods of deep, logical thought and scientific experimentation. Our God has poured his grace upon humankind in such a way that it encourages us to explore the riches of the universe and to delight in learning new things.

Planetary scientist Guy Consolmagno imagines himself studying the precious meteorites in lock-step with his Creator, who he imagines is "sitting across from him" in his laboratory, watching as he stumbles onto some new insight. Astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez describes in fascinating detail how our planet, far from being an ordinary world lost in the immensity of space, shows all the hallmarks of having been designed by a super-intelligence not only for life in general, but for human beings in particular. He offers fascinating insights into things few other people would even consider. Why can we see the stars? Why is the Earth just right for launching probes into space? Why are we located on the outskirts of an enormous spiral galaxy, where the night sky is dark and transparent? The answer, as Gonzalez explains so eloquently, is that our Creator had it in mind all along to allow humans to come to some understanding of the great power, majesty, and glory of his creation.

Hence, when we express awe for the beauty of the night sky, we are, in a certain sense, offering up a prayer to the Almighty. This same kind of enthusiasm is conveyed by astronomer David Bradstreet, who describes how studying the complex light curves of variable stars is an exciting way to unravel the machinery of God's creation.

It is not only through the disciplines of science, philosophy, and theology that humans have reacted to the created order. Artists, too, have responded with their delicate brush strokes. In a wonderful essay by Terry Glaspey, we learn how the great outdoors and the beauty of the night sky inspired artists throughout history to see both the terrestrial and extra-terrestrial realms as a "grand cathedral" wherein the presence of God is palpable.

Resisting Solid Evidence

But all of this naturally raises other questions; for instance: What happens when scientists do not pursue the evidence wherever it leads? That fascinating question is answered by astrophysicist Sarah Salviander, who describes in considerable detail the consequences of abandoning Judeo-Christian ways of thinking. Salviander showcases the disputes that arose between the astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington and his brilliant Indian graduate student, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Chandra). Although Eddington admired Chandra's theoretical achievements, he refused to accept where Chandra's conclusions concerning the fate of massive stars (neutron stars and black holes in particular) would lead him. Salviander writes:

. . . Eddington fell victim to some combination of the four primordial barriers to understanding that are constantly at work in the mind of every person: limited perspective, misleading emotions, intellectual inertia, and excessive pride. . . . Longstanding and popular ideas are often difficult to overcome even when compelling evidence like Chandra's is presented. And, sometimes people like Eddington experience a lapse in humility that causes them to use their authority to oppose an idea they just don't like. (pp. 94–95)

The distinguished nuclear physicist Robert J. Oppenheimer fell victim to the same kind of cognitive dissonance:

A close friend of Oppenheimer's, the Nobel laureate physicist Isidor Isaac Rabi, believed that Oppenheimer's abilities as a physicist suffered as a result of his turning away from the beliefs of the Old Testament in favour of the literature of Hindu mysticism. According to Rabi, Oppenheimer was scientifically blinded by an exaggerated sense of mystery and the boundary between the known and the unknown and became incapable of following the laws of physics to the very end. (p. 95)

The same resistance to accepting wholly rational and reasonable conclusions about the nature of reality is explored by Christian apologist William Lane Craig, who discusses the mindset of atheist cosmologists like Lawrence Krauss, who expects his readers to believe that the universe came into existence out of nothing, with no material cause or need for a Creator. In particular, Craig focuses on what Krauss attempts to pass off as "nothing" and convincingly concludes, citing rebuttals by Krauss's own scientific peers, that Krauss's concept of nothing is in fact, a whole lot of "something."

The Superior Worldview

Physicists Luke Barnes and Allen Hainline, who take a decidedly neutral stance on Christian theism in the book, similarly debunk ill-thought-through statements made by Darwin-thumping atheists such as Richard Dawkins, who famously declared, "The Universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares; DNA just is. And we dance to its music."

Unlike Dawkins, whose expertise is in zoology, Barnes and Hainline are actually qualified to comment on the notion of cosmic fine-tuning, and they observe that, at every conceivable level, our universe provides compelling evidence of being very special indeed. Why? Because if Dawkins's statement were actually true, our universe would simply not harbor life, certainly not conscious human life.

Given the overwhelming evidence for design and purpose in the universe, how should the atheist or agnostic best respond to it? That question is explored in a thought-provoking essay by Paul M. Gould, who sets out a robust argument for theism based on the reasonable premise that naturalism cannot account for the flourishing of human life. Gould highlights the significant weaknesses of the so-called neo-Humean synthesis, which asserts that all of physical reality can be reduced to its microphysical parts, and shows how the Aristotelian-Christian worldview, as he calls it, much more robustly accounts for the properties of the universe we humans actually observe and experience.

Timely & Beautiful

It was a great pleasure to read this work of Christian literature. It is timely, beautifully written and illustrated, reverent, and inspiring, with great apologetic appeal. The Story of the Cosmos is a refreshing oasis for the human soul, and it deserves a special place in the libraries of all Christians, sky-gazers, and curious agnostics alike.