[excerpted
from the article "The
Instant Universe: And God Said:
"Let there have been a big bang"]
The Common Ground
of Science and Genesis
“Another source of conviction in the
existence of God…follows from the extreme difficulty or
rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe,
including man…as the result of blind chance or
necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause
having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man…” — Charles Darwin[3]
Humans exist now, but scientific research indicates they, and life in general, did not always exist on this
planet. The scientific quest for human origins therefore seeks a model which
allows for life arising where there previously had been none, basically to
account for the emergence of humans from the inorganic (“the dust of the earth”) solely via the laws of nature. The
theory of the big bang[4] coupled with that of
evolution provides a scientifically satisfying hypothetical model for this.[5] By design, science does not
deal with that which cannot be objectively and universally observed by
scientists, and so does not deal with the soul. Thus
religious claims that a soul exists do not contradict what is known by science. Also, the inability of the present-day scientific theories to
account for the soul should not be viewed
by believers in the soul as being a weakness of science as a program (that it
does not achieve what it does not desire to achieve is not a flaw of the
method).[6] Analogously, since science does not concern itself with
whether or not the origin of existence and of the laws of nature lies in a
creator or not, the thesis of Divine Creation does not compete with it. [7]
From a point of view
which dovetails with Genesis and does not contradict what is known in science, the creation
account can in the above context be read as
describing God’s infusion of a soul—and perhaps a mind as well—into a humanoid emerging from “the dust of the earth,” as detailed by evolutionary theory,
in a universe which developed from a big bang created by God.
Free Will
Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man:[8]
I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who
maintain that of all the differences between men and the lower animals, the
moral sense or conscience is the most important.
In a created universe,
and specifically a universe of the type described in Genesis where the created entities
are to be morally responsible for their
actions, these beings must possess a certain order of
intelligence, an intrinsically free-willed consciousness, and a moral sense.[9] In Genesis it is free-willed
consciousness and the moral sense
which distinguish humanity from the
animals. In this sense, and in the Biblical
idiom, humans were created in the image of
God.
Both the scientific and traditional
origin accounts follow from their respective implicit fundamental assumptions, and so the differing conclusions of science
and tradition on when the universe began are to be expected. As the assumptions
of one system are not provable within the realm of the other, the validity of
one of these accounts should not be considered as negating the validity of the
other.
Atheists believe axiomatically that only the 'natural' exists.
Science does not make this assumption, but it does limit itself to dealing only
with what can be objectively observed. The scientific axiom is that all that is
objectively observed can be explained naturalistically, and the scientific
origin theory follows from this axiom. From the religious point of view, not only is there no logical dissonance in accepting the
validity of the scientific origin theory,
but it could even be considered as one of the ways of
describing God’s creation of the universe and therefore as one of the
traditional 70 facets of the Creation account.
“I want to know how God created the
universe. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon…I
want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.” — Albert Einstein[1]
Do the details of creation follow from the underlying
thoughts of God? Tradition—comprising the Genesis Creation account, the Talmud, Kabbala, and other sources—teaches us about the method and procedure of the creation
of the universe, as well as about God’s program or purpose for creation. Combining various
traditional sources suggests that the Torah assumes
something like the following Creation Axiom:
In a free-willed act an all-powerful being designed and
created a natural universe containing entities morally responsible for their
choices.
One can show that the essential feature sof
the creation account in Genesis follow from this ‘axiom’ just as the origin theories of science follow from the axioms of science.
..............
[1] Cited in Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and
Times (World Publishing Company, 1971) p. 19.
Esther Salaman in “A Talk with Einstein” in The
Listener (8 Sep 1955).
[3] Cited in Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the
Problem of Creation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979)
p. 141. According to Gillespie, this citation is from
Autobiography
of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters. This book was issued by W.W.
Norton in 1993 as The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 (Nora
Barlow, ed.).
[4] Cosmology and astrophysics are required for theories
of the emergence of life, e.g., the atoms in our bodies originate in the hearts
of stars which later exploded.
[5] For excellent presentations of the logic behind
evolutionary theory see, e.g., The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount
Improbable and other books by Richard Dawkins. Cf the writings of Stephen J. Gould.
[6] Science also does not as yet deal even with mind (as
opposed to brain, which is heavily studied).
[7] occasional interventions by God into the physical universe such as
miracles, or subtle (but far-reaching in effect) divine interventions in the path
of evolution. are not the concern of science.
[8] Charles Darwin, The
Descent of Man (Prometheus Books, 1997) p. 70. Available online at
http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man
[9] See for example Sforno on “kidmusenu” (“after our likeness”).