Narrowing the Gap
Gerald Schroeder appeared for two fascinating hours on the Dennis Prager Show a few days ago (I’m always a bit late blogging about radio stuff because I time-shift most of my listening with RadioTime).
Schroeder is a nuclear physicist, formerly a professor at MIT, now living in Israel. He reconciles modern scientific understanding with the Biblical creation account. He has been credited, along with Roy Varghese, with helping to convince noted atheist Antony Flew that there is a Creator. This is no small accomplishment, given that Flew regularly attended weekly meetings with C.S. Lewis and “was not persuaded by Lewis’s argument from morality as found in Mere Christianity.”
On the age of the universe, Schroeder reconciles a literal reading of Genesis and scientific understanding this way:
Schroeder starts by noting that the generations of humans starting with Adam and Eve adds up to 5757 years. The biblical “clock” for this purpose starts after the initial six days, a mysterious preliminary period which ancient commentators said contains “all the secrets and ages of the universe.” Before Adam, and especially before the creation of the earth, the Bible speaks of time from the viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to mean at the moment of “quark confinement,” when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of the big bang.
Relativity theory teaches that time passes much more slowly in conditions of great gravitational pressure than it does on earth. Using these familiar principles, Schroeder calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark confinement, when the universe was approximately a million million times smaller and hotter than it is today, is equal to fifteen billion years of earth time.
Schroeder explains that at the time of writing, it was counter-intuitive that it took God as long as six days to create the heavens and the earth and life and man. Why should it take Him more than a moment? This is one of many instances where Schroeder sees information in Genesis that suggests it is of divine rather than of human origin.
Schroeder rejects the argument for intelligent design from irreducible complexity: “Supporters of the intelligent design use this term to refer to biological systems and organs that they believe could not have come about by an incremental series of small changes.” Schroeder says that because we cannot know how the metaphysical, transcendent Creator interacts with the physical world, it takes quite a bit of chutzpa to say that He could not devise a way to create complex biological systems in an incremental or sequential manner. However, he seems more accepting of the argument from specified complexity:
The eye gene has 130 sites. That means there are 20 to the power of 130 possible combinations of amino acids along those 130 sites. Somehow nature has selected the same combination of amino acids for all visual systems in all animals. That fidelity could not have happened by chance. It must have been pre-programmed in lower forms of life. But those lower forms of life, one-celled, did not have eyes. These data have confounded the classic theory of random, independent evolution producing these convergent structures. So totally unsuspected by classical theories of evolution is this similarity that the most prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal in the United States, Science, reported: “The hypothesis that the eye of the cephalopod [mollusk] has evolved by convergence with vertebrate [human] eye is challenged by our recent findings of the Pax-6 [gene] … The concept that the eyes of invertebrates have evolved completely independently from the vertebrate eye has to be reexamined.”
The significance of this statement must not be lost. We are being asked to reexamine the idea that evolution is a free agent. The convergence, the similarity of these genes, is so great that it could not, it did not, happen by chance random reactions.
He doesn’t believe that rationality and scientific inquiry can eliminate the leap of faith required to believe in God. However, he does believe that the gap over which one must leap can be drastically narrowed with increased knowledge of the physical world.
related articles
- Wilson Handles Hitchens (June 12th, 2007)
- An ID Exchange (January 2nd, 2006)
- Wimpy Evolution (December 3rd, 2005)
- The Value of Dissent, and the Price (November 11th, 2005)
- Intelligent Design (August 14th, 2005)
December 14th, 2005 at 9:40 pm
The one problem is reading Genesis as a scientific document when it was written well before our consept of modern scientific theory. Also another problem with a perfent literal reading of Geneis is “light.” Where did light come from, since according to day one there was light but it was not until day four when the sun, moon, and stars were created.
It seems the purpose of Genesis has less to do with “how” the earth and it inhabbitants were created and more to do with “who” created. This would seem to make sense in light of the fact that it was a story given to the Israelites after they had just been freed from 430 years of slavery where the only religion they were exposed too was the Babylonian (pagan) view. So Genesis tells the Israelites who created then — and because humanity is created in the image of God, the Israelites can now know that they are someone special and were created for a greater purpose than just to be someone’s slave.
So, I take Genesis to be narrative theology rather than narrative science.
For whatever that is worth.
Intersting that this guy helped Anthony Flew towards theism. I have read some of Flew’s writtings and he was a pretty hardened atheist.
December 14th, 2005 at 11:34 pm
That’s not a problem, it is a wonderful, awe-inspiring mystery. Schroeder’s point is precisely that Genesis can be read to contain scientific truths which could not have been known at the time — which for Schroeder is evidence of its divine origin.
Schroeder adheres to the principle that when Torah and natural science seem to conflict, one or the other is being incorrectly interpreted. He cites Maimonides.
In his article on the age of the universe he writes:
Read the whole article. There are worthy insights to be gained if you don’t just dismiss the notion that Genesis has something to say about science. That robs it and makes it one-dimensional.
December 15th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Rex, you said:
“Where did light come from, since according to day one there was light but it was not until day four when the sun, moon, and stars were created.”
Or for that matter, since we calculate days by the passing of the sun, is it not illogical to conclude that Genesis is speaking of “days” as 24 hour periods defined by the passing of the sun, when the sun was not yet in existence?
I have always had a problem with literalists who read this as 7, 24 hour periods, and this is my main problem with it…
December 15th, 2005 at 1:35 pm
Yes, I am not a literalist either.
December 15th, 2005 at 9:32 pm
I still basically hold a non-literalist view of the creation account in Genesis. I have always held that it is a narrative which, while not precise in detail, nevertheless contains capital “T” Truth.
However, as I learn more about the original Hebrew from the likes of Hugh Ross and now Schroeder, I am more impressed every day with the growing convergence between the Genesis account and what is known through science. Genesis, as it turns out, is a many layered book and the fact that many are still about the business of unpacking its messages and plumbing the depth of its mysteries is a testimony to its sophistication and depth.
Great post and food for thought.
December 15th, 2005 at 10:02 pm
Just in case I am confusing. Let me reassure that while I do not take the Genesis cretion narrative to be a literal account, I do believe the theology it teaches is true.
December 16th, 2005 at 7:47 am
There is more to it than just “literalist” or “not literalist.” What Schroeder is saying is that God is certainly capable of communicating on multiple levels through His word. Schroeder appears to argue that Genesis contains “literal” scientific truth about the physical world folded into the text in such a way that its depth and coherence could not have been constructed by mere human intellect at the time — and could only be fully understood later.
I agree that is certainly possible and am fascinated by the notion that it might be true. I’m troubled by the notion that we should just say it’s not literal and then stop thinking about how to harmonize it with scientific truth. I prefer a view that keeps us, as Mike said, “about the business of unpacking its messages and plumbing the depth of its mysteries.”
December 16th, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Here is the problem I have with reading:
“scientific truth about the physical world folded into the text… [that] could only be fully understood later.”
In seminary, we are taught (and correctly I believe) in exegesis that scripture had to make sense to the original audience in order for it to be a word from God to that particular audience — hence that is why we seek to exeget scripture in its historical / gramatical context and setting to the best of our ability (which sometime is still lacking).
That being said, I do not see how a text laden with science would have made sense to a non-scientific world. I am cautious about doing eisegesis (reading our modern views back into scripture).
After this weekend is up, I will be finished with finals and papers — so I will go back and carefully read the original post and the links.
December 16th, 2005 at 12:54 pm
Rex– I don’t think anybody’s saying that Genesis contains secret “scientific” messages that would have been concealed to the original readers, only that when the Hebrew is properly understood, the description of creation and the cosmos conveyed there does not conflict with truths which have since been ascertained through the scientific method (and indeed, that science increasingly confirms many details of the Genesis account).
To wit: Many have chuckled at the notion of a real Adam and Eve, but ongoing research in mitochondrial DNA continues to confirm in an ever-increasing way the truth that there was an original “pair” of humans. Furthermore, when migration patterns are traced backwards, this pair is thought more and more to have resided in the Middle East rather than in Africa. The site I linked above has some articles as well as whole books detailing such research.
Genesis first and foremost is a faith narrative and we must always be careful to not base our belief in it on whether or not the latest and greatest science “confirms” it. However, I do sense a growing convergence of Genesis with what can be known through science, so much so that I’m having to rethink by strictly “non-literalist” position to some degree.