Genesis & the Big Bang

"Conflict between Science and religion is impossible." - Albert Einstein

Science and Religion; Genesis and the Big Bang. Many thoughtful people, whether of the 3 major religions or the atheist professor at your local university, have pondered the issue of Science and Religion. Are they compatible? And if so, how? On a basic level, as Einstein stated above, there cannot be conflict since Science comes to explain the how and what, whereas Religion explains why. A step deeper, science can actually complement and vitalize religious and spiritual thinking and vice versa, as Max Planck, a Nobel Prize Laureate in physics, once said: "It is certainly not by chance that the great thinkers throughout the generations had a deep religious feeling." So what seems to be the problem, the schism?

One problem throughout history, is the religious belief that the universe was created ex nihilo, from nothing (G-d Willing, we will explore the other issues some people have in upcoming email posts). There are 3 major theories recently explaining how our universe came into being: The steady state theory, the oscillating model, and the standard model, all theories that focus on the universe being eternal; it was always here with no beginning. Perhaps one of the motives for this hypothesis of a universe that always was, was fueled by a desire for scientists to refute the notion of the Torah and Genesis story, of a beginning point of creation. Because of the limited scope of this email, suffice it to say that the steady state theory has pretty much been refuted. Besides for no real evidence found, cosmological findings show that galaxies are moving apart from each other at a fixed speed from a central point and the further they are from that point the faster they go. These findings led to the standard model, according to which the Big Bang theory came about, which today is the accepted theory of the scientific community (unlike the oscillating model, the Big Bang was a one time gigantic explosion, as opposed to many).

With these recent discoveries, Science was now pointing toward a story that was written thousands of years earlier in Bereishit - Genesis! This must have made a few scientists quite uneasy, as Dr. Stephen Hawking said in 1988: "For many people it is difficult to accept the fact that time had a beginning, probably because it points to supernatural intervention in the universe." How the matter of this universe came into existence from pure energy, is a question that Albert Einstein helped explain with his famous theory of e=mc2. Besides for the completely illogical original explosion of that ball of energy (the law of inertia states that every body seeks to remain at rest forever unless an outside force acts upon it), the real question is where did this ball of energy come from? Ironic as it is to say, the Scientific community has accepted the creation of the world as an accepted fact through the Big Bang theory!

We haven't even begun to discuss how that original energy came to form our universe. If there was a bomb set off at a large scrap yard of metal parts, and a complete Boeing 747 with control panel and leather seats came into being, that would be nothing compared to our universe resulting from the explosion of the Big Bang, without a guiding hand. May we continue to further our Jewish and spiritual observance, while continuing to explore the nature of our universe, for rather than contradicting, they compliment. As Maimonides taught, to really feel a love and appreciation for G-d, one must study his intricate and incredible universe. Wishing you and yours a Shabbat Shalom!

-Rabbi Daniel