Background Voices
Intelligent Design Is Not Always Comforting
A Review by Dan Sakach
Gerald L. Schroeder, “The Science of God”, (New York, 1997)
QUICK SUMMARY:
Here is a book that can blow your mind. The central subject is
there is no conflict between science and religion; there is only a
confusion over words. The convergence of science and religion
becomes clear when we accept the premises that Wisdom comes
from God, Energy comes from Wisdom, and Matter comes from
Energy. With that equation before him, the author sets out to
reconcile Chapter One of Genesis with the twin pillars of
agnostic science, The Big Bang and Evolution.
MIT PROFESSOR RETELLS GENESIS
Mr. Schroeder is a theologian as well as a scientist. In
undertaking this book, he follows the Orthodox Jewish tradition
associated with Maimonides and Nahmanides, two Medieval
Kabalists. Some Christian readers may find this mystical
tradition intimidating, but keep in mind that it is only a slightly
different way of reading familiar stories in the Bible. To read this
book, you must trust the author’s opinion derived from his many
statistical discussions and accept his refined definitions of
subtle Hebrew words without trying to question the veracity of
every detail. This is an exercise in theology more than a treatise
on physics
One statistical argument prevails through out the book, and it
needs to be taken seriously. The universe, as we know it today,
came together quickly by cosmic standards and resulted from
many complicated processes that could not have evolved by
random chance. This implication is that there was a Designer,
and this Designer took his time fine tuning the machinery before
he let things cut loose and run on their own.
At the first moment of creation, roughly 15 billions years ago,
radiation, as light energy, transcended time, and matter had not
yet formed. The universe was too hot to support atoms. At that
moment, God’s benevolent hand reached out and started The Big
Bang. We humans have a limited knowledge of how God did
these things, and ultimately, we must accept this by faith. As Mr.
Schroeder writes:
As a scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology I was convinced I had the information to exclude
Him—or it is Her?—from the grand scheme of life. But with
each step forward in the unfolding mystery of the cosmos, a
subtle yet pervading ingenuity kept shining through, a
contingency that joins all aspects of existence into a coherent
unity
This is a statement of faith more than a demonstration of facts.
This “contingency” present at the Big Bang can be expressed
this way. If the universe had opened up in the beginning either a
second faster or a second slower, it would have either blown
apart or collapsed; in either case we would not exist.
To achieve, the fine tuned universe that we now enjoy, God
must have had a clear objective prior to the first moment on the
first day.
After this, Mr Schroeder provides a day by day description of
origin of Stars and the evolution of Life. As used here, the term
"day" designates any period of time with a beginning, middle,
and end.
That first day lasted about 8 billion years. When it ended,
radiation from subatomic particles had cooled and transformed
into matter. The Great Spiral Galaxies, the stars, the planets were
illumined or in place. These galaxies were not merely
accidents, but carefully crafted masterpieces. Take Andromeda,
for instance. Turning gracefully across the cosmos, you can see
in it what God had in mind. At that time, there was no life and no
consciousness other than God’s own, but yet grandeur and
beauty prevailed.
It could be that these galaxies were made simply for God’s own
amusement. We humans become jealous and insecure when we
think of a Creator who prefers Galaxies to us. According to the
Modern Scientific Model, it took 8 billions earth years to create
the galaxies. None of us were there to witness that glorious
event, and so we can only imagine it through models based on
mathematics. Mr. Schroeder feels comfortable in designating
that process as the first day.
The second day of creation lasted 4 billion years. The Earth as a
planet spun off from the sun, and the immediate development of
liquid water occurred, followed, in a very short time, by one-cell
life forms with a primitive DNA molecule. According to Mr.
Schroeder’s meticulous statistics, the odds are stacked against
the complex DNA evolving by chance in less than one billion
years. Nothing in nature resembled this complex molecule, and
all modern attempts by scientists to generate it in a laboratory
have failed. So, he concludes, it had to have been designed by a
specific Creator, and the origin is thus another expression of
Divine Wisdom.
Soon the third day came and another important development
took place, and this is something we are only beginning to
understand in our age. As the author says:
The first one-celled life sprang into being as soon as water was
present 3.8 billion years ago. One might have expected that
complex multi-cellular organism would then have developed in
orderly successive stages. Such was not the case. Instead of a
gradual steady thrust of life evolving complex structure, 3.2
billions years passed during which life remained confined to
one-celled organism, …
The importance of this is two fold. The primitive DNA appeared
quickly; and even though the one cell creatures who lived in the
sea had no eyes or wings, they developed the genes for eyes and
wings, and many other body parts for which they had no use. The
author piles on the evidence drawn from the genome studies that
supports this powerful argument.
The most glaring example is the whale. The whale is a seafaring
mammal. This is not because it is related to other mammals by
some common ancestor, but rather because it acquired mammal
body parts from a gene that converged with mammals in a prior
generation of one-cell life forms.
The eye of squid and the eye of mammals provides another
example of this. Both eyes evolved from a common gene found in
an eyeless one-cell animal. Many other structures were
designed in the oceans long before they had any body in which
to function. These are the miracles that happened on the second
day, and remained unknown until the third day. Similar
theoretical thinking arises among advocates of Intelligent
Design today.
The third day of Creation lasted 2 billion years. During this time,
another precise event unfolded. After oxygen had become more
plentiful in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Cambrian Explosion
happened in a very short time. As the author says:
Approximately 530 million years ago the basic anatomies of
all currently existing animals, from sponges to vertebrates
appeared simultaneously. Because all the phyla appeared
suddenly and simultaneously, the different phyla do not
share a common genetic history above the level of protozoans.
They separated at their inception 530 millions years ago. This
complete separation allows us to calculate the statistical
likelihood that analogous organs in different phyla evolved
independently…
In plain English, given enough oxygen and sunlight, the
animals and plants bloomed out of genes that had developed for
3.5 billion years in one cell organism. Creatures of all manner
came ashore in startling migratory waves. This went on for about
one million years, and when it ended, the Earth was a differen.
Since that time, life has not changed excessively. New variants,
of course, evolved out of the old; and many creatures, like the
trilobites, fell to extinction through natural selection,
but the variety of species has actually decreased since the
Cambrian Explosion. The end of the Cambrian Explosion
corresponds to the end of the third day. At that time, God stepped
back and the evolutionary processes of adaptation and survival
took hold.
On the fourth day, as you may have already surmised, the period
of time for a each successive day contracted by the same
increment as if calibrated by the value of 2.71827, “a sequence
that never ends, never repeats, and never exceeds 2.71828.”
This sequential number is found in nature in such things as the
graceful curve of the Nautilus sea shell as well as the sprawling
arms of most spiral galaxies. According to the Kabala, the
number itself has mystical properties. Therefore, it is appropriate
in this variable length six day model.
On fourth day, the Sun and Moon were not created but rather
broke through the clouded atmosphere. On the fifth day,
dinosaurs came and went only to replaced by the more docile
mammals. On the sixth day, hominoids emerged, and earth-time,
as we know it today, drew near as the human consciousness
made its appearance. All this happened in 530 million years.
Taken as a mixture of two parts religion and one part science,
Mr. Schroeder’s arguments are fascinating, but they raise many
obvious question. Why, for instance, does Mankind need such a
grandiose universe? Though many pages are devoted to
explaining this, it remains unresolved. The inference, as I
understood it while reading this book, is the Creator had His own
agenda, and had seeded the universe with other living creatures
on other planets. If this is true, our tiny corner appears
expendable and unimportant.
In such a case, although the Creator has the attributes of eternal
love, this love is not necessarily focused on mankind. Anyway
you look at it, such a sweeping thesis brings us back once more
to the old pagan model of a cyclical universe. While the Genesis
story exalts man to the highest level of importance, this scientific
model buries him in a tiny isolated corner where his desolate
life may drag out to a purposeless end. The two models do not
easily converge. This discrepancy results from the sheer size of
the Modern Universe, and its lack of a central place for Mankind.
When we make a rigorous assessment of this Intelligent Design
Model, we would have to admit that the Universe is big, old, and
out there; but it is more violent than comforting. True, the
Creator inspires our awe and gratitude, but when we attempt to
draw near to Him, He eludes us amid His billions of galaxies.
Nevertheless, Mr. Schroeder’s thesis provides an imaginative and
rewarding way to interpret that beautiful flat earth story
preserved in the first chapter of Genesis. Maybe the truth is
encrypted there in the subtle way he says, but I doubt it. Our
belief in the goodness of God remains a matter of faith, not
scientific fact. Maybe the human mind is too small to figure all
this out. Perhaps the truth cannot be found in the stars, but in
that still, small realm of "background voices"--the atoms.
Copyright by Dan Sakach (December, 2006)
All rights reserved. If interested in reprinting this, please
contact me at:
dan@backgroundvoices.com
A Review by Dan Sakach
Gerald L. Schroeder, “The Science of God”, (New York, 1997)
QUICK SUMMARY:
Here is a book that can blow your mind. The central subject is
there is no conflict between science and religion; there is only a
confusion over words. The convergence of science and religion
becomes clear when we accept the premises that Wisdom comes
from God, Energy comes from Wisdom, and Matter comes from
Energy. With that equation before him, the author sets out to
reconcile Chapter One of Genesis with the twin pillars of
agnostic science, The Big Bang and Evolution.
MIT PROFESSOR RETELLS GENESIS
Mr. Schroeder is a theologian as well as a scientist. In
undertaking this book, he follows the Orthodox Jewish tradition
associated with Maimonides and Nahmanides, two Medieval
Kabalists. Some Christian readers may find this mystical
tradition intimidating, but keep in mind that it is only a slightly
different way of reading familiar stories in the Bible. To read this
book, you must trust the author’s opinion derived from his many
statistical discussions and accept his refined definitions of
subtle Hebrew words without trying to question the veracity of
every detail. This is an exercise in theology more than a treatise
on physics
One statistical argument prevails through out the book, and it
needs to be taken seriously. The universe, as we know it today,
came together quickly by cosmic standards and resulted from
many complicated processes that could not have evolved by
random chance. This implication is that there was a Designer,
and this Designer took his time fine tuning the machinery before
he let things cut loose and run on their own.
At the first moment of creation, roughly 15 billions years ago,
radiation, as light energy, transcended time, and matter had not
yet formed. The universe was too hot to support atoms. At that
moment, God’s benevolent hand reached out and started The Big
Bang. We humans have a limited knowledge of how God did
these things, and ultimately, we must accept this by faith. As Mr.
Schroeder writes:
As a scientist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology I was convinced I had the information to exclude
Him—or it is Her?—from the grand scheme of life. But with
each step forward in the unfolding mystery of the cosmos, a
subtle yet pervading ingenuity kept shining through, a
contingency that joins all aspects of existence into a coherent
unity
This is a statement of faith more than a demonstration of facts.
This “contingency” present at the Big Bang can be expressed
this way. If the universe had opened up in the beginning either a
second faster or a second slower, it would have either blown
apart or collapsed; in either case we would not exist.
To achieve, the fine tuned universe that we now enjoy, God
must have had a clear objective prior to the first moment on the
first day.
After this, Mr Schroeder provides a day by day description of
origin of Stars and the evolution of Life. As used here, the term
"day" designates any period of time with a beginning, middle,
and end.
That first day lasted about 8 billion years. When it ended,
radiation from subatomic particles had cooled and transformed
into matter. The Great Spiral Galaxies, the stars, the planets were
illumined or in place. These galaxies were not merely
accidents, but carefully crafted masterpieces. Take Andromeda,
for instance. Turning gracefully across the cosmos, you can see
in it what God had in mind. At that time, there was no life and no
consciousness other than God’s own, but yet grandeur and
beauty prevailed.
It could be that these galaxies were made simply for God’s own
amusement. We humans become jealous and insecure when we
think of a Creator who prefers Galaxies to us. According to the
Modern Scientific Model, it took 8 billions earth years to create
the galaxies. None of us were there to witness that glorious
event, and so we can only imagine it through models based on
mathematics. Mr. Schroeder feels comfortable in designating
that process as the first day.
The second day of creation lasted 4 billion years. The Earth as a
planet spun off from the sun, and the immediate development of
liquid water occurred, followed, in a very short time, by one-cell
life forms with a primitive DNA molecule. According to Mr.
Schroeder’s meticulous statistics, the odds are stacked against
the complex DNA evolving by chance in less than one billion
years. Nothing in nature resembled this complex molecule, and
all modern attempts by scientists to generate it in a laboratory
have failed. So, he concludes, it had to have been designed by a
specific Creator, and the origin is thus another expression of
Divine Wisdom.
Soon the third day came and another important development
took place, and this is something we are only beginning to
understand in our age. As the author says:
The first one-celled life sprang into being as soon as water was
present 3.8 billion years ago. One might have expected that
complex multi-cellular organism would then have developed in
orderly successive stages. Such was not the case. Instead of a
gradual steady thrust of life evolving complex structure, 3.2
billions years passed during which life remained confined to
one-celled organism, …
The importance of this is two fold. The primitive DNA appeared
quickly; and even though the one cell creatures who lived in the
sea had no eyes or wings, they developed the genes for eyes and
wings, and many other body parts for which they had no use. The
author piles on the evidence drawn from the genome studies that
supports this powerful argument.
The most glaring example is the whale. The whale is a seafaring
mammal. This is not because it is related to other mammals by
some common ancestor, but rather because it acquired mammal
body parts from a gene that converged with mammals in a prior
generation of one-cell life forms.
The eye of squid and the eye of mammals provides another
example of this. Both eyes evolved from a common gene found in
an eyeless one-cell animal. Many other structures were
designed in the oceans long before they had any body in which
to function. These are the miracles that happened on the second
day, and remained unknown until the third day. Similar
theoretical thinking arises among advocates of Intelligent
Design today.
The third day of Creation lasted 2 billion years. During this time,
another precise event unfolded. After oxygen had become more
plentiful in the Earth’s atmosphere, the Cambrian Explosion
happened in a very short time. As the author says:
Approximately 530 million years ago the basic anatomies of
all currently existing animals, from sponges to vertebrates
appeared simultaneously. Because all the phyla appeared
suddenly and simultaneously, the different phyla do not
share a common genetic history above the level of protozoans.
They separated at their inception 530 millions years ago. This
complete separation allows us to calculate the statistical
likelihood that analogous organs in different phyla evolved
independently…
In plain English, given enough oxygen and sunlight, the
animals and plants bloomed out of genes that had developed for
3.5 billion years in one cell organism. Creatures of all manner
came ashore in startling migratory waves. This went on for about
one million years, and when it ended, the Earth was a differen.
Since that time, life has not changed excessively. New variants,
of course, evolved out of the old; and many creatures, like the
trilobites, fell to extinction through natural selection,
but the variety of species has actually decreased since the
Cambrian Explosion. The end of the Cambrian Explosion
corresponds to the end of the third day. At that time, God stepped
back and the evolutionary processes of adaptation and survival
took hold.
On the fourth day, as you may have already surmised, the period
of time for a each successive day contracted by the same
increment as if calibrated by the value of 2.71827, “a sequence
that never ends, never repeats, and never exceeds 2.71828.”
This sequential number is found in nature in such things as the
graceful curve of the Nautilus sea shell as well as the sprawling
arms of most spiral galaxies. According to the Kabala, the
number itself has mystical properties. Therefore, it is appropriate
in this variable length six day model.
On fourth day, the Sun and Moon were not created but rather
broke through the clouded atmosphere. On the fifth day,
dinosaurs came and went only to replaced by the more docile
mammals. On the sixth day, hominoids emerged, and earth-time,
as we know it today, drew near as the human consciousness
made its appearance. All this happened in 530 million years.
Taken as a mixture of two parts religion and one part science,
Mr. Schroeder’s arguments are fascinating, but they raise many
obvious question. Why, for instance, does Mankind need such a
grandiose universe? Though many pages are devoted to
explaining this, it remains unresolved. The inference, as I
understood it while reading this book, is the Creator had His own
agenda, and had seeded the universe with other living creatures
on other planets. If this is true, our tiny corner appears
expendable and unimportant.
In such a case, although the Creator has the attributes of eternal
love, this love is not necessarily focused on mankind. Anyway
you look at it, such a sweeping thesis brings us back once more
to the old pagan model of a cyclical universe. While the Genesis
story exalts man to the highest level of importance, this scientific
model buries him in a tiny isolated corner where his desolate
life may drag out to a purposeless end. The two models do not
easily converge. This discrepancy results from the sheer size of
the Modern Universe, and its lack of a central place for Mankind.
When we make a rigorous assessment of this Intelligent Design
Model, we would have to admit that the Universe is big, old, and
out there; but it is more violent than comforting. True, the
Creator inspires our awe and gratitude, but when we attempt to
draw near to Him, He eludes us amid His billions of galaxies.
Nevertheless, Mr. Schroeder’s thesis provides an imaginative and
rewarding way to interpret that beautiful flat earth story
preserved in the first chapter of Genesis. Maybe the truth is
encrypted there in the subtle way he says, but I doubt it. Our
belief in the goodness of God remains a matter of faith, not
scientific fact. Maybe the human mind is too small to figure all
this out. Perhaps the truth cannot be found in the stars, but in
that still, small realm of "background voices"--the atoms.
Copyright by Dan Sakach (December, 2006)
All rights reserved. If interested in reprinting this, please
contact me at:
dan@backgroundvoices.com
The Science of God Reloaded
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