If you’re one of those people who has trouble finding your car keys, it looks like things are only going to get worse. We all knew the universe was expanding, but now that the smoke has cleared from this year’s Nobel Prizes (there was smoke, wasn’t there?) it is now common knowledge that instead of slowing down, the expansion is actually accelerating. Kind of makes you wonder who’s driving. Being somewhat of a science news junkie, I already knew of the increasing rate of expansion, but seeing it in the news again made me ponder the theological implications of it all (despite not being a theologian). Where do we locate Heaven in a rapidly expanding universe that is ripping itself apart? Why didn’t the prophets in the Bible see this coming? What is anybody doing about it?

Physicists have had to postulate a new culprit in this unexpected scenario. Dark energy must be driving the expansion and the universe most be mostly composed of dark matter. Besides apparently being the substance between the ears of Tea Partiers and certain public officials, nobody really knows what dark matter is. The darkness of the name here is to be understood as “unknown.” We can’t see it or sense it, but it can be weighed—at least on a universal scale. Not only are we not the center of God’s universe, we are vastly outnumbered by something that we can’t even see.

Of course, it will only be a matter of time before some religious specialist suggests that God is the dark matter or the dark energy of the universe. Classic god-of-the-gaps thinking. If we can’t explain it, it must be God. That God, however, suffers the embarrassing phenomenon of shrinkage. At one time that Gog (God-o’gaps) was in control of the weather, until NOAA came along. At one time that deity held the nucleus of atoms together, until the strong and weak nuclear forces were discovered. At one time that God knocked off the dinosaurs. Well, maybe the jury’s still out on that one. The danger of conflating God with science is the inevitable effacement of divinity. Our universe has proven unfriendly to deities. Depending on how medieval we’d like to get, we might suggest that dark matter must be all those angels dancing on the heads of pins. While you ponder that one, I’m going to look for my car keys while I still can.

There it goes...