Origin Story #5 of 5

Final Thoughts on David Christian’s Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

Like it or not,

        We are now managing an entire biosphere,

        And we can do it well or badly

Our task,

        Is to avoid the crash and get to a good place

        For both humans and the biosphere. (Origin Story, pp 289-90)

In accordance with God’s promise,

        We wait for new heavens and a new earth

        Where righteousness dwells.

So let us grow in the grace and knowledge

        Of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

        To whom be the glory both now and forever Amen. (2Pt 3)

“Modern science,” Christian writes in his final chapters, “captures the universe’s terrifying indifference… But we humans …have goals, and we set out on long journeys to achieve those goals, despite the indifference of the universe.” Despite the “indifference of the universe,” the author now makes his plea for us humans, at this pivotal moment, to save planet Earth by changing our ways and forming a “Utopian world”—a new Garden of Eden.

We have entered a period of “Great Acceleration” which is pushing Earth to the “tipping point”.  Fossil-fuel technologies pumps carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere leading to global warming and putting the biosphere at risk. This is all our own doing. And now, it is up to us to turn things around and save our planet. This is our quest.

Christian believes the United Nations document “Transforming Our World” (2015) points the way to salvation. And, The Paris Accord on Climate Change (adopted 2015) builds on this saving word. Christian urges us to place our hope in science and politics to get us to a new, healthy and sustainable world. It’s a grand vision.

Yet science, mixed with Utopian dreams, has not done well by humanity. Lewis, in his epic poem Dymer, tells a story about a city “which men called in scorn ‘The Perfect City’”. They built the perfect city according to “the master’s dream… and they laid the strong foundations, torturing into stone each bubble that the Academy had blown” (Canto I). In the early twentieth century, when Lewis wrote Dymer, he had Plato’s Republic in mind. Who could have guessed what the remainder of the twentieth century would bring with the utopian dreams of Communism and Nazism. Do we really want a world in which science alone defines our lives and tells us how to live?

I can’t imagine life without that other story about “God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth”. It’s a big wild sprawling story from Abraham to David to Jesus. I don’t mind “modern science’s origin story”; I just don’t want it to be the only story. When it’s the only story, bad things happen. It makes, like most modern stories, too big a claim: To be “a big history of everything”—of everything? I think there’s something more—something bigger than Big History.

I noticed Big History (modern scientific godless and spiritless history) has developed into a big cause. It has its own institution: “The International Big History Association”. With big funding they are presently developing Big History curriculum for our grade schools.

I enjoy science’s Origin Story. It’s breathtaking. What a story, with that hot, dense, smaller than an atom thing that explodes and continues its expansion to this day. Science tells us creation is bigger and more real than we could ever imagine. I like all that. It’s only when we get to the last two chapters of Origin Story that we realize the author’s cause is something other than science—a redemptive, salvatory cause. Such crusades make me nervous.

I fear, this godless and spiritless origin story will be the only one taught—our official state religion. Aren’t there other truths besides scientific observations? Truths like “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Science didn’t give us that truth. It’s not the kind of truth science comes up with. It comes from somewhere else. According to our Declaration of Independence, it comes from our Creator.

Why can’t we honor both stories? Allow them to be what they are. Let’s give our origin stories the freedom to be told, heard and believed. Let them dance about. As the Bible likes to say, “Who know?” I have confidence that our “In the beginning God…” story will hold its own. The Gospel of our Suffering Savior has its own way of cutting to the truth of things.