Religion Confronting Science
by Donivan Bessinger
Chapter Three
THE COSMOS
Let there be light.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. And God said, ``Let there be light.'' (Gn.1:1-3)
An alternate translation given as a footnote (RSV) reads "When God began to create''. Another possible translation is "It was God who created''. In all of these readings we find one of the most dramatic and profound passages in Scripture, indeed in all religious literature, for it reflects extraordinary insight into the development of human consciousness and into the human relationship to nature and to God. Yet it is also the most commonly quoted basis for a disagreement between science and religion.
However, Genesis is not a scientific document but a very religious one, cherished for its affirmation of the identity of the one who created: It was God. It affirms the power of God to create and control all things; that what God created (everything) is good; that there is a kinship of all things in their origin from one Source; and that God directly communed with mankind in our original, natural harmonious state. Whether we read this passage while figuratively putting ourselves in the divine dimension to look over God's shoulder, so to speak, or as earthbound humans sensing our wholeness with God and all around us, it is a profoundly moving story.
It is also a story of creation sequence, of process over some period of time. However, the text is indefinite about exactly what the period was, and these transcendent themes are not presented in one story but in two. Scholars have pointed to differences in story, style, and the words chosen to name God, but their most obvious difference is their sequencing of creation activity.
The first (Gn.1:1 to 2:4a, attributed by scholars to the Priestly tradition) gives this familiar six-day sequence of "Let there Be'' acts of creation:
(1) Light, and day from night;
(2) The firmament of heaven, separated from the midst of the waters;
(3) Dry land and seas; vegetation;
(4) Lights in the firmament: sun, moon, ``and stars also'';
(5) Living creatures of the waters and the sky;
(6) Living creatures of the land, including humans (adham), male (ish)
and female (ishah);
and then, on the seventh day, God rested.
The second of the stories (Gn.2:4b to 3:24, the Yahwist tradition) tells it this way:
A mist came from the ground to water it;
Man (mankind, adham) is formed from the dust of the ground (adhamah);
A garden is planted in Eden, including trees;
A river is divided into four rivers;
Animals are made; and
Woman (female, ishah) "was taken out of Man'' (male, ish);
and then God walked in the Garden.
In the two different sequences, we are given three different accounts of the duration of creation activity:
Six days (Gn.1:5) in the Priestly story. The root of the Hebrew word yowm relates to being hot; the word day can mean the warm hours, either sunrise to sunset; or the period from one sunset to the next.
Generations (Gn.2:4a), in the closing line of the Priestly story: "These were the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.'' The word toledah (generations) relates to descent of families, and to births, but may also have the derivative meaning of history or account, as translated in the New English Bible and the New International Version.
One day, in the opening line of the Yahwist story (Gn. 2:4b): ``In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens ...''. This is again the word yowm.
Today, we are obliged to wonder how the first three creation days could time out to twenty-four hours, since the lights were not yet put in the firmament, but of course that is not significant to the sacred meaning of either of these accounts. The obvious problems for the literalist do not come as much from conflicts with science as from within the text itself.
As we will show, the Priestly account and current creation accounts from science show more agreement about the sequence of creation than do the two Scriptural texts. Even so, in all of the accounts we find creative logic and sequential process. As we did in interpreting Moses' encounter with the burning bush, we must take discrepancies as signals to look for sacred meanings behind the literal interpretations of the words.
One important contribution of science to this sacred meaning is its help in clarifying the distinction between temporal and eternal. Can we say that an eternal God has existed forever (a time-based concept) when time did not exist before creation? Can we say that God is everlasting (time-scale again) when time is relative to space and motion? Using a time concept for God would require us to think of God as an object in motion, at some speed. To ask at what speed God is everlasting is absurd both scientifically and theologically.
What becomes of the idea of an everlasting God in the face of evidence that the material universe (and thus, time) is "mortal'', with a definite beginning and a prospective eventual end? Philosophically, theologically, and scientifically we must keep separate the concept of the eternal dimension which cannot be defined in space or time, from the temporal (spacetime) dimensions in which the material world exists.
The currently accepted scientific account of the origins of the universe is a story of a Big Bang in which matter, space and time all began in an explosive instant, followed by rapid expansion of the spacetime realm as atoms formed from subatomic particles which collided. In the intervening 15 thousand million years (give or take a few years!), the universe has evolved in accordance with finely balanced basic physical laws. It is now an expanse of stars (supernovae, red giants and brown dwarfs among them), ultra-dense collapsed stars (black holes), and spiral galaxies. Let there be Light, indeed!
Until recently, the galaxies were assumed to be randomly distributed, as would be fragments after an earthbound explosion. Therefore, the work of Margaret Geller and associates, reported in 1989, is especially surprising. They plotted the coordinates for all known objects in a certain sector of sky, then used a computer to view the objects in three dimensions. These images show the galaxies to be spread out in an intricate web of strands separated by ``bubbles''. There is an unexpected ``macroanatomy'' to the universe. Galaxies are not strewn randomly through space.
Exhibit 3. The Cosmic System. Creation is immense. Each expansion of
knowledge by astronomy has represented a very important general expansion of
human consciousness.
Radius: B= billion (i.e. thousand million = 109 ); M= million (106); T= thousand (103); LY= light year; Km= kilometers. One LY= 9.45 MMKm (1012). Data from National Geographic Atlas of the World (6th Ed) 1990. [But note that more recent Hubble telescope observations resulted in a new estimate. The most widely quoted size of the known universe size at the turn of the century is about 15 B LY.]
The immensity and intricacy of these large-scale features has developed from laws governing the behavior of the tiniest known particles of matter. Like the macroscale features, these extremely small features seem quite weird in comparison with the medium-scale (earth-scale) features which we take for granted as the normal "mechanics'' of everyday life. It seems that new findings continue to confirm J. B. S. Haldane's suspicion "that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.''
Consider the time and distance equation. If we know the distance, speed, and starting time of a trip, we can accurately determine the arrival time. Of course, since we cannot perfectly predict traffic conditions and weather, or guarantee the efficiency of airline personnel, we might arrive late. Our predictability of human behavior or the weather is not very good, but the predictability of the formula is perfect: Classical mechanics gets us where we are going on schedule. At the outermost planets, a dozen years away from Earth, the Voyager space probes missed their predicted courses by only minutes and a few kilometers.
However, at the particle level, the quantum level, physics becomes a world of uncertainty. A subatomic particle cannot be accurately predicted, for if one wants to know accurately its position, one cannot know accurately its momentum, and vice versa. At the most elemental level of the manifestation of matter, there is inescapable uncertainty.
Sometimes the most basic "thing'' acts like a particle, and sometimes like a wave. Which it is depends on the type of test that is done. That means the observer's conscious mind determines which it is. Not only is there inescapable uncertainty; there is an inescapable link between consciousness and the nature of material reality.
At the molecular level, chemical theory can accurately predict the outcome of a particular reaction between two substances. The chemist may know both the type of new substance that will be produced, and how much of it. However, quantum theory cannot accurately predict the outcome of the interaction (collision) between two particles. The physicist must rely on probability calculations, but the outcome of the next interaction may not be the most probable one. To paraphrase Einstein, it is as if God is playing dice in an act of new creation.
At the quantum level, our normal concepts of cause and effect do not apply. The physical laws give a particle interaction "permission'' to happen within a certain range of possibilities. However, one event does not cause another in the way a string of cars collides on the freeway. At that level of inquiry, the idea of the First Cause of creation runs into trouble on two grounds: How do we define first in a timeless realm, (i.e. before creation); and how do we define cause in a realm of permissive probabilities?
Even so, the current conditions in the universe are the result of very fine tuning of the physical laws at the initial event. In putting that into perspective, Steven Hawking points toward the importance of human life in the cosmic scheme of things.
Human life is just a chemical scum on the surface of a minor planet orbiting round a very average star in the outer suburbs of one among the ten million million galaxies in the observable universe; yet it is remarkable that the laws of science seem to be chosen very carefully to allow the possibility of life developing. If the laws had been only very slightly different, there would have been no intelligent life to observe the universe and to wonder why it is the way it is.
At ordinary levels of energy and action in the universe, there are four primary physical forces that govern all interactions: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. In its search for a unifying theory of nature and for an understanding of the history of the very early universe, physics has achieved partial ``unification'' of these forces. Once electricity and magnetism were considered separate forces, but later could be demonstrated to be one force. Even more recently, electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force have come to be understood as one electroweak force.
Exhibit 4. The unity of the physical
forces. All that happens
in the material world takes place under the control of the elemental forces.
Current theory holds that the physical forces evolved from one superforce
as energy levels dropped after the Big Bang. The dates on the left indicate the
historical period in which each step of the "unification" was
achieved. (Data from Davies, 1984). [The expected theory for unification of the
other forces with gravity has not yet been achieved. (Scr.2000)]
As this process of inquiry continued, several Grand Unifying Theories ("GUTs'') developed to explain how the strong and the electroweak forces relate as one. The current push is to unify the GUT force(s) with gravity in a way that "works'' with quantum mechanics. Confirming that would permit explaining the creation of the universe in terms of one superforce. However, to confirm such a theory experimentally currently seems impossible, for it would take concentrated energies very close to those of the Big Bang to demonstrate it.
The development of these theories using various mathematical techniques has led to a view of the universe that is even more weird than the non-causal quantum world of uncertainties. It seems probable that the universe is not limited to the four dimensions of spacetime so familiar at our human scale. One of the best theories that accomodates the unification of the forces and accounts for the constancies in the universe (the conservation of energy, for example), gives a total of eleven dimensions. In addition to the three familiar space dimensions and the one of time, there are seven ``extra'' ones. These are invisible to us (and almost unimaginable), for they are experienced only in the action of the forces and conservation laws.
Exhibit 5. Dimensionality. All ordinary events in spacetime may be
plotted on the familiar coordinates representing the dimensions of space
(x,y,x) and time (t). Yet the physical forces and symmetries (conservation
laws) act on every particle in spacetime. Mathematically, each functions as
another dimension. Physical phenomena in spacetime are governed by a
non-temporal reality existing outside spacetime.
Physical
forces: E=
electromagnetism; W= weak nuclear force; S= strong nuclear force; G= gravity. Physical
symmetries (conservation laws): 1= energy; 2= particle spin; 3= particle
rotation.
Quantum theory has also given us an entirely new concept of reality. For us, the "real world'' is the world of history and ordinary experience. There is a predictable connectedness between cause and effect, forces are diminished over distance, and there is a cosmic speed-limit: the speed of light. This familiar world is said to be based on a local reality, since forces and events are connected and transmitted directly through a field.
However, some quantum experiments led to Bell's Theorem,
which indicates that beyond our reality is a deep non-local reality where the
cause-effect link and cosmic speed-limit do not apply. In the weird quantum
world, correlated events may occur simultaneously, even though separated by
distance. Our world of ordinary phenomena is built into an ultimate reality
which we do not ordinarily perceive. Such an idea is new to science, but of
course is by no means new to religious thought.
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Exhibit 6. Bell's Theorem 1. If ordinary spacetime were the only reality, certain quantum experiments would have to yield a predicted mathematical difference ("Bell's inequality"); 2. The experiments did not give that result; 3. Therefore, spacetime is not the ultimate reality. The ultimate reality is said to be non-local since ordinary time and distance relationships do not apply. Correlated events may happen simultaneously even though separated by great distance. |
Another important concept from quantum physics is that there is no void in the universe. The deep vacuum of space which we had thought of as void, really is not. It is a seething field of energies and potentialities from which very-short-lived virtual particles pop into and out of existence unpredictably and without apparent cause. The vacuum is not empty. Also, as we all have realized since Hiroshima, matter can be converted into energy, and vice versa, according to the theory of relativity.
As we mentioned, one of the uncertainties at the quantum level is that in some experiments a particle looks like matter and in others like a wave of energy. The most fundamental building blocks of creation are "wave packets'' or pulses of energy where the field of forces is especially strong. It is just as valid to say that creation is made of energy as to say that it is made of "things''.
It is a fundamental law of nature that the total energy contained in the
universe is constant, and that is seen in any interaction between particles and
in every other type of transaction or reaction at any level. Of course, since
matter and energy are interconvertible, the total energy includes the energy
"stored'' as matter. Even though every "thing'' changes in the universe,
energy is constant.
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Exhibit 7. Image, Reality, Phenonenon If a physician suspects a brain tumor as the "reality" which must be diagnosed, the patient will be sent to the xray department for a CT (computerized tomographic) scan, or these days, more likely, for MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). The signals received by the machine will be encoded as a complex table of numbers within the computer. If we were to look at a printout of those numbers without knowing the source, the numbers very likely will seem random, or at least irregular and nonsensical. Yet from those numbers a picture is formed on the computer's screen. The brain tumor is said to be "imaged." The computer image is the phenomenon based on the tumor's reality. By turning that concept around, perhaps we can gain some insight into what quantum theory seems to be saying about the relationship between material creation and the deep (nonlocal) reality -- the domain of physical laws and forces and quantum probabilities. The deep reality abstractly contains the image of the universe. Creation's "computer" creates the phenomenon (matter) from the reality of the image. (In quantum theory, the uncertainties of the interactions of subatomic particles may be expressed by Heisenberg's S-matrix, a complex table of numbers.) Thinking at that level, it is
only a small step farther to identify the deep reality of quantum physics
with the religious concepts of image-of-God and with divine nature or providence.
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In religious terms, to speak of that which is utterly constant in a changing universe is to speak of the divine. In making that correlation we can begin to see that energy is a description at the physical level of the same concept which religion has called spirit. To say that all creation is energy at work is essentially the same as to say that creation is the work of spirit. For those who identify creation with creator, all existence and all action occur as participation in divine spirit.
All of these concepts give us a perspective that is very different from the one we have traditionally used to interpret the Biblical story of creation. There have been twenty-six or so centuries since the Biblical story was probably assembled into its current form, yet, in view of the explosive growth of human knowledge since then, it is surprising how little rearrangement of events is really necessary to upgrade the Priestly account into the modern one. Of course, we have to be willing to accept considerable elasticity in our definition of day!
There is still a great deal of scientific work to be done before there is a consensus on the mechanisms at work in the very early universe, say, up to the time that it was one or two seconds old. However there is already a broad consensus about later events. It is an interesting exercise to compare the Priestly and the modern cosmological accounts. We will number the "days'' according to the Priestly account, and put in brackets those elements that are listed in a new order.
"These were the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created'', as seen in the current cosmology:
(1) Light: In the beginning was the superforce. Space was concentrated into an exceedingly small point. The force field was a special condition of vacuum known as an activated or false vacuum, in which the incredibly dense energy values were negative. The negative energy represented a repulsive (repelling) force causing expansion. In a process known as inflation, the earliest expansion explosively recruited (generated) more energy to constitute the Big Bang, with the finely balanced expansion Hawking mentioned above. This event was the beginning of the time dimension. Particles were created in the energized field. The very high energy levels dispersed as spacetime itself expanded, with the superforce evolving into the four discrete forces conventionally known.
[4. Lights in the firmament: sun, moon, ``and stars also''] Cosmic evolution followed the Big Bang as particles coalesced into hydrogen and helium; other atoms evolved in the thermonuclear processes of stars. Galaxies formed, and our sun and solar system.
(2) The firmament of heaven, separated from the midst of the waters: It is hard to understand in modern language just what the "firmament of heaven'' means. In the Biblical account, it existed before "lights'' were put in it. Still, this may be an apt description for the period of earth cooling and early atmosphere formation.
(3) Dry land and seas; vegetation: Earth's land masses became separated by the condensing of atmospheric water into oceans. The continents separated along volcanic fault lines and continued to move as the earth cooled. (Subsequently, they converged into the supercontinent Pangaea and later separated into the current configuration.) Early life became established at the edge of the seas and in swamps.
(5) Living creatures of the waters: Aquatic life forms followed, and amphibians.
(6) Living creatures of the land [and (5) the sky]: Insects and their kind; and reptiles, birds, mammals; and humans with development of consciousness.
The minor rearrangement of the Priestly sequence to accomodate the scientific generations of creation is necessary primarily because our current scientific worldview is not an anthropocentric or geocentric one. In the Biblical account, earliest creation seems to be formed around the earth, and stars seem almost an afterthought. Now we know that we are not the center of everything. Still, the consciousness which was given such emphasis in the Yahwist account assumes a special importance in its interactions with the quantum level, and is being seen more and more in physics to be a particularly significant part of the created whole.
Viewed in this way, we find in the scientific account of creation the majesty and mystery of the universe that underlies religious experience, and we come to be in touch with the "cosmic religious feeling'' expressed by Einstein. Both the scientific and Biblical accounts affirm the existence of a primal power to create and control all things, and we see in even greater detail the kinship of all things in their origin from one Source. What the Biblical account adds is this central affirmation: "It was God!'' who IS that creative power.
[ Exhibit 3. The cosmic system ]
[ Exhibit 4. The unity of the physical forces ]
[ Exhibit 5. Dimensionality]
[ Exhibit 6. Bell's Theorem]
[ Exhibit 7. Image, reality, phenomenon ]
[ Notes and References ] , [
Glossary ]
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