God and The New Science

Natural theology looks for traces of God within the natural world, reaching its height of popularity in the nineteenth century. But it was guilty, as many accused it, of seeing the gaps in science as evidence for God, and when science closed those gaps, natural theology was discredited and discarded.

The last three to four decades have seen the reverse. The scientific explanation of “favorable adaptations plus eons of time” used to explain everything from the start of life to the rise of consciousness, sounds more and more like magic, particularly with the discovery that eons of time did not exist.

The 2016 discovery of stromatolite fossils, 3.8 billion years old, has changed everything. The earliest that earth could sustain life was 3.8 billion years ago, which means life emerged immediately.

Nicholas Wade, science writer for The New York Times, explains the significance:
Life is so complex it seems to need many millions of years to evolve. Yet evidence for the earliest life dates
to 3.8 billion years ago, as if it emerged almost the minute the [asteroid] bombardment ceased.