Because for many astronomers, to be an athiest means that you have uncovered evidence that there is no God at work anywhere in nature. Given all of the remaining unknowns we are still scrabbeling over, I cannot imagine astronomy ever getting to the point where it could rule-out a divine creator. Even Carl Sagan admits that the best he can muster is to be agnostic. I think many astronomers feel the same way, although religion is something that we never talk about among ourselves. I know several astronomers who are devout Catholics. I personally know of no astronomers who are athiests, contrary to what the general public might believe about astronomers.
It is true that astronomers do not see 'God' in the motions of the planets around the Sun, or in the evolution of the stars. But we do wonder long and hard at the mystery of how the BIG PICTURE came to pass. Why have the laws of nature, and the choices of the fundamental constants in nature coincided with just those possibilities that allow organic life to form, and sentient life to follow? Why, among all the ghastly possibilities that could have emerged from the Big Bang, did a space-time of 4 dimensions, with certain SPECIFIC symmetries emerge?
It is hard to imagine some intelligence moving about in the background making this all happen. After all, if 'it' was somehow part of space and time, It must have come into existence with the Big Bang itself, which is hardly what we imagine for a true Creator. If, however, God is aloof from time and space, then He/She must already know the destiny of everything, unless there are things that even God cannot do, which is incompatible with our idea that He/She is all-knowing.
Copyright (C) 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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