For the readers of The Language of God, another instant classic from “a sophisticated and original scholar” (Kirkus Reviews) that disputes the idea that science is contrary to religion.
In The Science of God, distinguished physicist and Biblical scholar Gerald L. Schroeder demonstrates the surprising parallels between a variety of Biblical teachings and the findings of biochemists, paleontologists, astrophysicists, and quantum physicists.
In a brilliant and wide-ranging discussion of key topics that have divided science and religion—
- free will,
- the development of the universe,
- the origin of life,
- and the origin of man
—Schroeder argues that the latest science and a close reading of the Bible are not just compatible but interdependent.
This timely reissue of The Science of God features a brand-new preface by Schroeder and a compelling appendix that addresses the highly publicized experiment in 2008 in which scientists attempted to re-create the chemical composition of the cosmos immediately after the Big Bang. It also details Schroeder’s lucid explanations of complex scientific and religious concepts, such as—
- the theory of relativity,
- the passage of time,
- and the definitions of crucial Hebrew words in the Bible.
Religious skeptics, Biblical literalists, scientists, students, and physicists alike will be riveted by Schroeder’s remarkable contribution to the raging debate between science and religion.
CONTENTS
- Has Science replaced the Bible? The Great Debate
- The New Convergence: Science, Scientists, and the Bible
- The Age of our Universe: Six Days and Fifteen Billion Years
- The Six Days of Genesis
- The Nature of God: Biblical Expectations for an Infinite yet Immanent Creator
- Life: Its Origins and Its Evolution
- Evolution: Statistics Versus Random Mutations
- The Watchmaker and the Watch
- The Origin of Humankind
- The Science of Free Will]
- Why Band (and Good) Things Happen
- Bread from the Earth: A Universe Tuned for Life
- Epilogue: Well, What about Dinosaurs?
Even the Appendix is inviting:
- Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) as a Universal Clock
- Problems in Estimating the Age of the Universe
- The Logic of Having a Biblical Calendar
- The Long Life Spans at the Time of Adam and Eve
- Genesis Day Three
- The Flood at the Time of Noah
- A Letter and a Reply: Why God and the God Particles are NOT at Odds
- What is the Wisdom of Creation?
While we’d like to type out the whole book, we will only share the PREFACE and hope your curiosity is piqued enough to get a copy, it is worth the read. [Kindle edition downloadable from amazon.com]
In Moses Maimonides’ seminal work, Guide for the Perplexed (1190), the philosopher-theologian summarized what in his opinion was the only path to understanding God’s actions in this world. “We need to form a conception of the existence of the Creator according to our abilities. That is we must have knowledge of madah Elokut (madah meaning ‘the science of’ and Elokut meaning God), the Science of God, which can only be acquired after a study of madah teva (teva being the Hebrew word for nature), the science of nature. For the science of nature is closely related to the science of God and must precede it in the course of study. For that reason God commenced the Bible with a description of creation.”
The science of God is what we seek in this book. We’ll study nature, especially as it coincides with the Bible—primarily Genesis, chapter one. Both nature and the inner meanings of the biblical story are multifaceted and complex, but two sources of knowledge will suffice: the discoveries of modern science and the commentaries of the ancient sages who reached beyond the superficial meanings of the text. Limiting ourselves to ancient commentators eliminates the possibility of text deliberately bent to match today’s scientific understanding of the world.
To understand in depth the significance of any one passage of the Bible, it is assumed that the reader knows the entire Bible thoroughly. In the context of this book, it means being acquainted with all 187 chapters of the Five Books of Moses, the Torah. The often misunderstood demand for “an eye for an eye” (Ex. 21:24) sounds brutal or at least highly primitive. When read in context with later elaborations (Lev. 24:17 and Num. 35:30, 31), however, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, and burn for burn describe monetary compensations in accord with the context of the wound. Only for murder is there no compensation since all life is of supreme value. The revolution in this very ancient code is that the law was the same for citizen and for stranger (Lev. 24:22). In fact, this passage signifies that dawn had broken over the darkness of the pagan world.
Similarly, when Genesis chapter one, the “creation” chapter, records a six-day period from the creation of the universe to the creation of the soul of Adam (Gen. 1:27), this seems a totally naïve understanding of the universe and its age, let alone the origin of humans. As we will discover, the ancient scholars were anything but naïve. Commentators’ rigorous study of the wording of Genesis’s opening chapters neatly folds the multiple of billions of years into six twenty-four-hour days, even as the days remain twenty-four hours long and the years remain 365 days long.
A simplistic reading of the Torah places our human origins at less than six thousand years in the past. Yet fossils of Homo sapiens extend back sixty thousand years. Neither source of knowledge need alter its view. Nahmanides, seven hundred years ago, Maimonides over eight hundred years ago, and the Talmud, dating back some sixteen hundred years, discuss the existence of beings living before and alongside Adam. They were described as human in shape and intelligence but lacking the soul, the neshama, to make them human. There is no trickery here.
The problem that so many of us have with a host of issues that touch on both the Bible and science—dinosaurs, prehuman humans or hominids, the age of the universe—is that our understanding of the Bible is often one gained as children. Yet our scientific understanding grows—even if we only get that science from newspapers of the Web. Obviously when the Bible is juxtaposed with science, it seems simplistic. We intend, at least in part, to correct that error.
Why would God have described our cosmic history in the Bible in terms that seem to contradict the workings of the universe? The Bible was as accountable to its earliest audience, a largely uneducated population of recently freed slaves, as it would be to scholars through the ages. So it works on a number of levels and is filled with subtle hints of much deeper truths confirmed by the underlying truths of nature.
When we look at the vast variety of life we wonder why a Creator would bother: who needs this fantastic web of life? The earth’s ecology would balance just as well without multicolored fish off the coasts of Eilat Akaba. It’s almost as if God had given nature the opportunity to invent itself. This is very nearly the case.
God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, informs us that in the act of creation, He willingly withdraws a portion of Divine control and allows events to proceed unhindered. Humans call it free will. When events veer too far off the desired course, God steps in and redirects the way.
Noah’s flood is a classic biblical example of God pressing the reset button on society. Was the demise of the dinosaurs, 65 million years before Adam in our time perspective, a Divine resetting of the earth’s ecology?
God runs this world, our world, as the Divine perspective sees fit. Hence we are told explicitly,
I will be that which I will be . . .
(Ex. 3:14).
The God of the Bible is a dynamic Force, known by Its acts, not the static God described by the erroneous translation of King James, I am that I am. We cannot pigeonhole God, as God told Job. There are aspects of the Divine that we can never rationalize.
These limits not withstanding, the opening word of Genesis, Be’rai’sheet, the very first word of the Bible, contains meaning far beyond the simplistic “In the beginning” or “With a beginning” or “From a beginning.” In 1090, Rashi, commentator par excellence, gave us the actual meaning of that evocative opening. Based on the Jerusalem translation of the Bible from Hebrew to Aramaic, some two millennia ago, Rashi quotes from Proverbs 8:
“I am wisdom….
God made me as the beginning of his way,
the first of his works of old.”
Image from www.theencouragementhaven.com
The first of the creations was not the big bang creation of our universe. The first Divine creation was wisdom. And from that Divine source, the physical universe emerged. The evocative opening sentence of Genesis is best translated.
“With wisdom of God created the heavens and the earth.”
Wisdom is the substrate of all existence and is found in its every aspect.
Let’s use what we can of the wisdom to explore the workings of God in our magnificent universe. That is the science of God.
GERALD SCHROEDER, AUGUST 2008
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