-About the author (Wikipedia)
-Author's Official Website
-Dr. Schroeder speaking on cosmology: a 30 min. clip from the documentary, "Has Science Discovered God?"
Watch This! It's long, and poor video quality, but worth it.
"The Creator had and has a stake in the universe. We can assume that from the fact that the universe exists.What the stake is, however, we don't know. We get some hints, though, from interactions that have occurred between the Creator and the universe. Traditional theology maintains that had the creator wished to form the universe in a single act, then the Creator could have done so. From the biblical narrative, it is clear that the plan was not to bring the ready made universe into existence in a single stroke. For some reason a gradual unfolding was chosen as the method" (48)
"The parallel between the opinion of present day cosmological theory and the biblical tradition that predates it by over a thousand years is striking, almost unnerving. In view of the radical departure from our conception of reality, it is not surprising that even a Nobel laureate, such as Steven Weinberg, would think that unaided human perception is incapable of having any inkling of these occurrences that marked the evolution of our early universe.
The question we face is, from what source came the aid in perception? I think that we can relay on our understanding of history. Ancient biblical scholars did not have the aid of radio-astronomy or spectroscopy. So how did they have the insight, a thousand years ago, to form an account of the Big Bang so strikingly similar to our modern theories? How could these early teachers have known of our origins within a speck of space, of the expansion of space that has led to our universe, of the transition from an ethereal non substance to tangible matter, and, even more precisely, that this transition from formlessness to matter with form accompanied the expansion of the universe?
When the writers of the Cosmos series claimed that without the modern equipment available to those involved in cosmic research we would not suspect that the universe is expanding, that we would have no inkling that the universe probably expanded from a primordial state of high density, that is, we would not have discovered the phenomena of the big Bang - they were, of course, correct. Discovering the phenomena related to the original Big Bang required sophisticated radio and optical telescopes and all the technology related to high-energy particle accelerators. These became available only in the last 50 years or so. Data had to be gathered and correlated and inferences had to be drawn. Nahmanides and Maimonides were not in the business of discovering. For them, all could be derived from the revelation associated with the Bible. As Nahmanides stated, "What other source would be used?"
Consider the position of a teacher of natural sciences a thousand years ago suggesting that in the beginning all that is now our universe was contained within a single location no larger than a grain of mustard. A skeptic places before the teacher a glass of water and asks the teacher to compress it to half its size. Impossible, in human experience. How much less probable is the compression of all the contents of the Earth and then of the universe into a space the size of a grain of mustard? The response to the skeptic is not one of proof. It must be one of faith; faith in the accuracy of revelation even when it precedes the advances of science that eventually come to confirm it.
Revelation, at least as we have it today, did not provide details. At normal temperatures and pressure, matter is arranged in molecules. As pressures increase, the molecular structure is destroyed and individual atoms remain. Increasing the pressure even more destroys atomic structure until only atomic nuclei and free electrons exist. Finally, even the nuclei are pressed so tightly together that they break. When the compression finally results in temperatures that exceed the rest energy of these particles, that is, when the E is greater than the corresponding mc2, the particles freely transform from their mass form into energy.
Mankind, formed from the primeval energy of the Big Bang, can discover the details of physics just as he could receive them from biblical revelation." (67-8)
"Shortly following the Big Bang, the matter of the universe existed as a single massive nebula. The development from this nebula to the formation of stars and galaxies took time. How long it took for the first stars to form in anybody's guess. But we know it took not less than billions of years. And still the newly formed elements were locked within the stars. When the nuclear fuel of a star, the hydrogen and helium within it, is consumed, having been fused into heavier elements, the release of energy ceases. This energy had supported the outer layers of the star, and without this support, the star collapses. The plunge of the entire mass of the star toward its core releases a burst of energy that rebounds from the center as a massive shock wave. The outer layers of the star are shattered. They spew their supple of newly formed elements into space. Over eons, these elements form once again into new stellar systems, recycling the matter of space. Our solar system is one example of this recycling. We are made of recycled star dust. There is no other way - consistent with our understanding of cosmological processes - to account for the abundance of elements heavier than helium in our universe.
If we proceed according to the laws of physics and chemistry as they exist in our world, then preparing the elements of our solar system took many billions of years in the universe-based reference frame of time or into the third day of God's reference frame. All this time the universe was expanding. By the time the universe was ready for our solar system with its supply of life-essential light and heavy elements, it was already very big and very old.
As Rabbi Abahu, a fifth-century Hebrew sage taught, "From this ( the fact that the sun appeared on the fourth day) we learn that during the first three days the Holy One...used to create and destroy worlds." Remember, these commentaries were not composed in response to cosmological discoveries as attempts to force agreement between theology and cosmology. These commentaries, which are now paralleled so closely by the findings of astrophysics, stand as unchanging markers in biblical scholarship's view of our early universe. Before radioastronomy and spectrophotometry, could you expect Rabbi Abahu to talk of recycling of helium in stellar cores? Of course not. The language of science had not yet caught up with the language of man." (91-2)
"The Bible talks in the language of man, the average man. The sages had to dig to get the deeper meanings.
" ...and there was evening and there was morning... "
The Hebrew word for "evening" is erev. This is the literal meaning of the word, although the root of erev carries with it implications far beyond that of a setting Sun. What is the visual sensation of evening? Darkness begins. Objects become obscure, blurred. The root of erev means just that, "mixed-up, stirred together, disorderly."
The Hebrew for "morning" is boker. Its meaning is quite the opposite of erev. Morning brings the first light. Objects, visually mingled by the dark of night, become distinct entities and this is the root meaning of boker, "discernible, able to be distinguished, orderly."
Had the text said " and there was morning and there was evening, " our concept of a day might have been better satisfied. The sequence would have at least included the light of day. But had the text followed this human logic, it would have forfeited its cosmic message. The text is telling us something crucial about the flow of matter in this universe, something that can only happen to a subsystem contained within, and in contact with, a larger system. The phenomenon was so important that it was identified six times a the flow from evening to morning. We are being told that within this parcel of space where mankind was to stake his first roots, there was a systematic flow from disorder - chaos or "evening" - to order - cosmos or "morning." (97-8)
"In the Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides makes a remarkable comment. In the time of Adam, he writes, there coexisted animals that appeared as humans in shape and also in intelligence but lacked the "image" that makes man uniquely different from other animals, being as the "image" of God.
Nahmanides (on Gen. 2:7) observes that mankind developed through three distinct stages. The material of Adam's body was initially in the form of inert matter ( the dust of the earth, Gen. 2:7). In the first stage of growth, there was a force that produced growth, "like that in a plant." Then, with further Divine input, man was able to move, first as the fish and then as the land animals. Here Nahmanides, still commenting on Genesis 2:7, refers to Genesis 1:20 and 1:24. These two verses describe the sequential first appearances of aquatic life and then terrestrial animal life. Prior to attaining the unique attribute of mankind, Nahmanides continues, the animal that was to become man had both the physical structure and the power of perception of a human. Only when this was accomplished was the spirit of God, the neshamah, breathed into him. Nahmanides concludes this discussion with the observation that the grammatical construction of this verse (Gen. 2:7) indicates that reasoning, speech, and all the other capabilities of mankind, while not being a part of the spirit, are subject to the spirit that was given to mankind alone among all the animals. God's direct and newly created contribution of spirit came to man only after the material part was intact. This contribution had no physical attribute. This neshamah, placed in mankind by God, was the last act in the making and the creating of mankind." (151)
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