You mention in your last letter about an article you read to the effect that science and faith are at loggerheads and cannot be reconciled. You mention an article written by a professor at the University of Chicago where he claims that religion holds science back and is something that needs to be removed as an obstacle to scientific progress. He claims that religion has not had even one contribution to make to the advancement of science. This is a classic example of someone speaking about a topic he knows little about. To say that religion has not had a positive impact on the development of science is to speak from ignorance.

Every culture and civilization has the same access to nature but it is not only this access that is important but also the context, the philosophical world view that is important in interpreting the universe. Only one culture had the necessary philosophical basis for initiating and developing science.

The first major contribution made by the faith was in the concept of time. The predominant view was that time is circular without any direction or goal. The biblical inheritance introduced the idea of linear time and the importance of history. In other words, cosmic history goes somewhere and is not just a circular repetition of events.

Another important contribution by biblical faith was the fact that the creator and creation are separate entities and with this came a new appreciation of matter. Matter was demoted from being divine but it was seen as being good and a blessing from the creator. Coupled with this is the idea that the world is contingent – in other words it is dependent and could be other than it is. The world could be different from the way it is and this means that the best way to understand the world is through interaction with the world and this paved the way for introducing the concept of experimentation. Nature’s properties must be discovered rather than deduced from the principles of logic or mathematics alone.

The biblical concept was of a God who is loving and caring and not capricious as taught by paganism. Because of the dependability and constancy of this God – as expressed through covenants – nature came to be seen as not chaotic but orderly and open to rational description.

There was another point that came through the monotheism of the Bible. For paganism, with its polytheistic beliefs, the universe would be expected to be more chaotic since different gods would have different impacts in various areas. But, in monotheism, because God is one, the structure and laws of the universe must be consistent and unitary and hence, we have the term universe. We are therefore in the position of studying the whole of the universe – not just in our local area of the cosmos – since the laws of the cosmos are unitary and the same.

In 1826, the German astronomer, Heinrich Olbers, asked a deceptively simple question: why is the night sky dark? This came to be known as Olbers Paradox. This was a troubling question because the scientists of the day, almost unanimously, saw the universe as static and eternal and infinite. Since the universe was thought to be infinite, therefore the number of stars was considered as infinite and the time of the universe was infinite. (Ah, the troubles we run into when we play with infinities!). Now, if all of this is true, then the night sky should be lit up since wherever we look, we would see light because of the infinite number of stars and this light had an infinite amount of time to get to us.

Some claimed that the answer to the paradox was the existence of intervening gas and particle clouds in the universe which would then block out much of the starlight coming from far away. But, closer consideration of this proposal showed that with time these obstructions would themselves start to glow and we would be back to where we started from.

It was Hubble who eventually solved the paradox in the twentieth century. Simply put, there is no paradox since the universe is neither infinite in dimensions nor infinite in time. In fact, the dark night that we see at night is evidence that the universe had a beginning and is limited in its size and its duration. Many, including Einstein, found the idea of a universe that was dynamic and with a beginning, repugnant. But it was the Jesuit priest, Le Maître, who convinced Einstein that the evidence for the universe having a beginning was simply too strong to be denied or ignored. But all along, it was religion that postulated a beginning for the cosmos, in spite of the loud protests from scientists to the contrary. Here is another example of how religion helped to correct some of the misconceptions held by scientists.

There is another interesting side line to Olbers Paradox. Because the universe is not infinite and timeless, this enables us to study the universe and to talk about its history. A lot of information that astronomers gather comes from the study of stars and other bodies and if the night sky were totally illuminated, then we would have lost an important tool for our learning more about the cosmos.

It seems that creation is such that it invites and enables us to study it. When you stop and think about it, it is truly amazing that we know so much about this huge universe of ours. And if we consider the equations that are used to describe the operations of various aspects of the universe, we are struck by how simple they are in their structure. Eugene Wigner, Nobel Prize winner in physics, famously spoke about the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in studying the universe and its laws. But the qualifier – unreasonable – applies only if we make the assumption, that the universe is not underwritten by reason, by the Logos. Wigner was struck by the fact that the mathematics needed to describe the operations of the universe are ‘simple’ enough for us to grapple with them and to make sense of them. In the book, by Steiner, The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, gives detailed examples of the deep connection and almost uncanny predictive power of pure mathematics as applied to the laws of nature.

What I am trying to show you is that there is no conflict between religion and science and there can be none because science is very limited in what it can consider. There are those who make all kinds of outlandish claims in this sphere – and very often, they are totally ignorant about theology but they still plow ahead as if training in physics or biology is sufficient. It is not.

It is a strange and mysterious world that we call the universe and although we have learned much, there is still so much more that awaits discovery. But, underlying all of this, is the sense of awe and wonder and I will give you one illustration about how strange the universe is, and yet, how we are looked after.

On August 27, 1998, for 5 minutes, the earth was bombarded by X-rays and gamma rays. This is the lethal radiation that is generated in nuclear explosions and is deadly to all biological forms. Seven satellites were recording extremely high levels of radiation and two of them were shut down to protect them. The radiation penetrated to within 35 kilometers of the Earth’s surface and then it was absorbed by the atmosphere. If our planet had not protected us this radiation could have caused a lot of trouble to biological species such as we. What caused all of this?

About twenty thousand light years away, a magnetar exploded. A magnetar is a neutron star. This star is only 30 kilometers in diameter but its weight is many times more than that of our sun. A thimble-full of matter of this star would weigh about 100 million tons, and when this star exploded it spewed out a tremendous amount of energy in the form of radiation which in 1998 threatened life on earth. The universe is magnificently strange and often violent, and yet, we survive as if under the care of someone. There are many violent processes that take place in the cosmos and it is a wonder about which we are slowly learning.

There are those who claim that we are a mere accident in the history of the universe and there is nothing special about us or about our planet. This view used to be called the Copernican Principle but even more disparagingly, it is now referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity. This principle is often brought forward to support the view that the universe has no purpose and we are just cosmic accidents. There is nothing special about our star, the sun, there is nothing special about our location in the galaxy. But, this is not the whole story and it will be addressed at some point in the future.

I hope that you now realize that science and our faith are compatible and both are important for us as humans. Much more could be written, but space does not allow a deeper consideration of this topic.

Sincerely,
Bar-Abbas