Sir Angus Stirling "Why Me?" talk for the 12th March, 2023 - Third Sunday of Lent

Good evening, my friends.
I was fortunate enough to have been asked by Fr Peter to give a WHY ME talk as part of the he first series in 2015.

It is a real privilege to be invited here this evening to give a second talk. I realise that a principal purpose of these talks is to give an account of the way in which our Faith and belief in God the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit has shaped and affected our lives. This I set out to do in my first talk.
Tonight, I am going to try and explain a wider question, though it is of course not possible without the underlying convictions as strong as ever.

I would like to reflect on why I believe that God created the Universe Preparing for this evening I was reminded of the person who said: “ I went to a talk about a Comet. It went straight over my head.”
It was not long before I grasped what a formidable topic this is. But it is central to In the context of what is to follow, I would like above all to reafirm my belief in the Love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. It has been
wonderful to hear the Bishop Michael Marshall giving his Lent presentations at St George’s.

The literature on this subject is enormous internationally, on both sides of the debate. But I suggest that we do not require any more than the Bible to reassure us:
Psalm 19- “ The heavens declare the Glory of God: and the firmament showeth His handiwork.”
As I hope to show you, “handiwork” is a superb translation for what comes next.
I also have a wonderful book by the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, on the creative relationship between Religion and Science.

Since I was a child I have been interested in Astronomy. I remember my father holding me up when I was small to wonder at the full moon out of the window of our London house, and watching the glory of the heavens on a dark December night I the Cuillin Hills on Skye Every Christmas I used to ask for an astronomical telescope. Eventually I acquired a small one. We have had much pleasure from using it in the
Quantock Hills and North Yorkshire, picking out the constellations and the distant Galaxies, beyond the Milky Way, in Orion and Andromeda. More about them in a minute. It is not surprising that the stars on a dark night have been a matter of wonder and awe since the beginning of human intelligence.

Aristotle, who died nearly 3,000 years ago, first discovered that Earth is a sphere, not flat. He observed
this by watching a Lunar eclipse of the Sun. describe the Universe entirely in mathematical terms with no
reference to God. I have just read Max Tegmark’s “Our Mathematical Universe” .It provides a description of
mind-bending complexity with no reference to God. The greatest astrophysicist of modern times is surely Albert Einstein. He died in 1955. He is best known for developing the theory of Relativity. It rests on the definition of an everexpanding Universe. It has the vital credence in a negative as well as positive understanding of the life of the Universe.

I think it is true that the more present day science discovers, the harder becomes the question: where is God’s hand in creation? Some of you may be avid watchers, as I am, of the now regular television programmes on the Universe. These are often presented by the eloquent, persuasive Professor Brian Cox. Not long ago he told us that not even the most sophisticated telescopes had revealed of recognisable life
beyond `Earth. That has changed, changed beyond imagination. Modern telescopes are perhaps the most extraordinary scientific developments of our time. The so called Kepler scope (named after the great astronomer of the 18thc), the Hubble, sent out far into the depths of space have all made astounding new discoveries. Very recently Kepler has identified, to scientists amazement, that many stars in our own Milky Way have their own planets. So far 2,600 planets orbiting their own stars have been discovered. And, to make the question of life beyond our own even more vivid, some of them contain water – though all of it frozen solid. And as we know where there is water, life is possible. This is also true of the so far discovered moons of Uranus, Jupiter and Saturn. For example, Uranus has 27 moons, named after characters in Shakespeare and Alexander Added to these discoveries, scientists have identified that the entire Universe itself has a certain density. This should, for permanent existence, remain fixed at a certain level.

It has been discovered to be hovering just below that critical llevel as will, according to many scientists,
the entire Universe – a scene presented few weeks ago on Television Entitled the Birth and the Death of the Universe. God was not mentioned. Already, however, that presentation seems to belong to another age. Last week Professor Cox gave a talk entitled The Milky Way, our own Galaxy in which the Sun is a moderate sized star. What I am about to tell you cannot be anything but apocalyptic. The most recent
science has identified that the Milky Way is one of a “local” group of seven different Galaxies, at varying distances from each other. One of these is the Galaxy in Andromeda, already mentioned as easily visible
with a modest telescope. The Andromeda Galaxy is moving towards the Milky Way. The speed of travel is
about 460,000 km per hour.That is roughly the same as one circu;ation around our globe. Science now concludes that Andromeda will eventually collide with and completely overwhelm the entire Milky Way. This is estimated to take place in 5 billion years time. That is roughly the same as the lifetime of our own Sun.

May I conclude by saying that I do not think we should be surprised that most writers on the Universe do not embrace divine intervention in the Creation. A distinguished exception is The Rev. John Polkinghorne, who died aged 90 recently. He was a great Christian authority on our relationship between science and religion. But I am going to close with reference to a remarkable new book called “Why the
Universe is As It Is.” Published recently by the Canadian astrophysicist Hugh Ross, this book looks at all
aspects of the science (density, gravity dark matter, black holes, dying stars), I am going to end by reading a passage which for me is the authoritative confirmation of my Faith in Creation by the Will of God. I should add that our great recent Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has written several books affirming his own profound convictions on this question, they are not always easy to follow.

Here is The Rev Hugh Ross:
“Like the Moon, Earth’s Planetary companions provide critical protection for life here.
If the giant gas planets – Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, were any greater, smaller, more distant, or less numerous Earth would be pelted from space more frequently and disastrously for life. On the other hand, if the gravitational pull were too great as a result of their being closer or more massive, or if the gas planets’ relevant positions produced more powerful gravitational resonances, the result would be a disturbance to the life-critical orbit of the Earth. Remarkably, Mars, Venus and Mercury are exquisitely
positioned to break up such resonances. Thus, the Solar System’s planets are fine-tuned in two
ways:
First, they maximise the observational capabilities of the Earth’s inhabitants.And secondly, they provide
essential protection for all life.
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And so how lovely it is that we often sing:
“ The Spacious Firmament on High, with all the blue etherial Sky, and Spangled Heavens Shining Frame, Their Great Original Proclaim.”