Soon Jews will celebrate Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year. This year will be 5775 in the Jewish calendar.
Rosh HaShanah, is sometimes called the ““>Torah. There we read “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” if you have the familiar King James translation, or perhaps “When God began to create heaven and earth . . .,” if your text follows the grammar of the great medieval rabbi, “>Dr. Gerald Schroeder, you try to conflate both stories, the scientific and the biblical. Schroeder is a Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained physicist, now living in Israel, who has authored numerous books and articles on Judaism and science.
In The Science of God (“TSOG”) (Rev. Ed. 2009), Schroeder argues that billions of years of cosmic evolution and six biblical days of creation actually occurred simultaneously. It’s an argument that relies on concepts like time dilation and day aging. Significantly, Schroeder promises that he will make his case without bending the Bible to science or science to the Bible. (TSOG, at 19.) He commits to providing “pure, peer-reviewed physics and traditional Genesis.” (TSOG, at 54.)
Unfortunately, what we get includes statements about science for which there are no references and, worse, no basis other than a theological bias. So, for instance, Schroeder claims that the “second law of thermodynamics tell us that all non-managed or random, systems always pass to a state of greater disorder.” (TSOG, at 101.) And, “(t)his move toward order from chaos” in the universe, from hot energy to simple life and then humanity “is not impossible provided the system had direction.” (TSOG, at 101-02. Emphasis in original.)
The fatal science flaw in this kind of argument, as physicist Sean Carroll points out, is that the Second Law does not say what Schroeder says it does. Rather, it “says that entropy always increases (or stays constant) in a closed system . . . .” (Carroll, From Eternity to Here (2010), at 191. Emphasis supplied.) Living organisms on our planet, indeed the biosphere itself, are functioning in an open system. (Id.; see also, Dawkins, The Greatest Show On Earth (2009), at 413-16.)
And Schroeder’s “traditional” biblical analysis is largely dependent on a medieval rabbi who, in addition to believing the universe was once a speck, also thought that it consisted initially of four elements—air, water, earth and fire. (See Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (1994), at 137.) That was not an unusual view for the time, but it indicates no consistently insightful mind either.
Indeed, despite his academic and employment credentials, Schroeder’s approach is replete with and seemingly dependent on misleading statements, over-statements, incomplete statements, unsupported statements, omissions, and fuzzy mathematics, among other problems. (For details, see “>here.) Ultimately, all of these errors of omission and commission undercut and then accumulate and finally overwhelm the claim that he is trying to prove. And, so, Schroeder fails to meet the tests he himself established. Instead, he has bent the Bible to meet science and science to meet the Bible. This is not too surprising. After all, the manipulation of time dilation and day aging can go only so far.
One final question remains, though. Despite all of his methodological flaws, his over-statements and misleading references, his curious selectivity of data and his omissions, do Schroeder’s results nevertheless demonstrate a convergence of science and the Bible?
The atheist physicist Victor Stenger would doubt it. After an exceedingly brief and stilted review of the origin of the universe, Stenger “see(s) little resemblance in Genesis to the picture drawn by contemporary science. All these facts can lead to only one conclusion: the biblical version of creation is dead wrong.” (See Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis (2008), at 175.)
Schroeder, though, invites us to “compare day by day the fidelity by which the events of Genesis map onto the corresponding discoveries of science.” (TSOG, at 61.) Let’s do just that. Let’s look at Schroeder’s comparison as contained in TSOG (at 70-74), adjusted for his revised timeline discussed at “>http://aarweb.org/syllabus/syllabi/g/gier/306/commoncosmos.htm.
With a good deal of evidence, science teaches that the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago, as relatively small objects, planetesimals, coalesced into a fuller scale planet. (See Weinberg, above, at 26.) The science of the origin of water on Earth, however, is less precise. A variety of processes, including but not limited to outgassing in a cooling environment and asteroid bombardment, appear to have contributed to the creation and retention of liquid water.
Moreover, according to studies published in “Nature” in 2001, oceans may even have existed on Earth 4.4 billion years ago, i.e., within a relatively short time after the planet itself was formed. The studies report that mineral grains or crystals called zircons (zirconium silicate), found in granite rock formations in Western Australia, have been dated to 4.4 to 4.3 billion years old. The existence of granite implies that continents existed at that time, and the presence of zircons implies that sufficient water was available to allow for the incorporation of the crystals into rocks then being formed. (See “>Greenberg Hurdle.
Does that mean that Genesis is “dead wrong,” as professor Stenger would have it, bearing “little resemblance” to what science teaches? Not quite. The story presented is one of developing order and differentiation, if not detailed Darwinian evolution. And that is sufficient for the purpose for which the story is offered, as the setting of the stage for the greater story to come.
Stenger may or may not care for that greater story either, but in his literalness, he is forgetting the nature of literature. Moreover, he is avoiding the real uniqueness, even genius of the biblical creation story. Instead of sun gods and sea gods and serpent gods, as we find in other Near Eastern creation stories, here we have essentially demythologized nature, without magic or rituals. We find nature dependent on a single powerful force. Some might even call it a unified field theory of creation.
As cosmology, as evolution, as modern science, the Torah text fails. But as a perspective, a point of view, an orientation regarding that which surrounds us, it seems quite valuable, even if not fully prescient about contemporary discoveries. It evidences an intuitive understanding of the development of existence from universal and grand to earthy and particular, from water to life, stationary objects to ones in motion, simpler forms to those more complex, plants then lower animals then humanity itself. Not bad at all for about two thousand five hundred years ago, give or take.
Ironically, Schroeder falls into to the same trap which snared Stenger, the view that the Genesis creation story is literally accurate and intended as science. When Schroeder takes this epic story and tries to make more of it than there is, when he seeks to imbue it with a modern scientific foundation that does not exist, he does a true disservice to the story itself.
Centuries past, ” target=”_blank”>www.judaismandscience.com.
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