just poetic speech but concrete certainty. That
dust, however, was not made during the big
bang but long afterward, in the nuclear furnaces of stars that have since died as super-novae. Matter was tediously assembled into life
through an intricate, finely balanced, time-consuming, and I would even say miraculous
dance. Torah’s imagery is not about magical incantations, but about fine craftsmanship; the
world is far more amazing than tradition suggests, and it reveals its treasures through attentive observation and rational inquiry.
On the other hand, for those of us, including
secularists, who recognize the power of science,
the revolution lets us approach Torah freed of the
distracting, dubious baggage of having to provide
satisfying answers to the mystery of origins. Our
knowledge of the world is the fruit of our intellectual efforts, and our relationship with the
world is the domain of our tradition. Torah’s message to the secular is that we are one family, with
responsibility for our fragile garden. Moreover,
confidence in science by no means implies that
we know everything. On the contrary, the mysteries increase in number as our questions become more sophisticated. We have only recently
discovered dark matter and dark energy; they
amount to 95 percent of the essence of our universe and we have no idea what they are.
Scientists are admirably honest about admitting
ignorance; we do not know it all, regardless of
our scriptures or our egos. Science is in a position
curiously reminiscent of the mythical cosmology
in which the earth sits on the back of a giant turtle standing on the back of another turtle. When
asked what the bottom turtle stands on, the
philosopher is reputed to have replied: “It’s turtles all the way down.” Science finds new questions all the way down. Not only does the living
God reveal to us something deeper of these mysteries, secrets that our forebears did not understand, but we also acknowledge that future
discoveries (and puzzles) await our children.
The power of the scientific method is that
every single person will see and hear exactly the
same thing. Mistakes of interpretation will be
found and fixed; cumulative wisdom grows and
as it does we gain in understanding about God’s
“Book of Nature.” In contrast, our relationship
with the holy is communal and personal, and
sanctified. Together our mind and our spirit, and
our shared and our personal experiences of the
Divine, enable us to live in the natural world
both aware of and grateful for its blessings, as
Psalm 92: 6–7 urges. Neither domain of reality
(religion and science) should be denied or ignored; both should be embraced as we attempt
to reach new levels of wonder, gratitude, responsibility, and — perhaps — holiness.
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