There is something innate within the human mind, something restless, curious, searching, that wants to know how, why and who. That spirit is apparent in every human being to some degree or other, as no man is satisfied living as only an animal -- eating, sleeping and multiplying.
We see evidence of that mental restlessness in the Bible, or more specifically in the Midrash. According to the Midrash, the first truly restless man, who questioned the ?wisdom? of his elders and who asked not how this world was created, as do scientists today, but who created this world and why, was Abraham.
Abraham was born in 1948, 3,815 years ago. He was the first theologian-scientist-logician. By the force of his tremendous intellect, he concluded that the sun, the moon, the earth -- all that he wondered in awe at -- could not have been here forever, that they must have been created at some point in time and by an Extra-Natural Being, and that Being must be good and that He desired to bestow His goodness on his ?createes?.
About 800 years ago the great Kabbalist Nachmanides (the Ramban), taking his cue from the Bible, declared that in the beginning of time (Bereishit) G-d created the universe from nothing in an act of divine kindness called ?tsimtzum?, in which He gave of his unknowable being to create the first grain of matter. The universe grew from the size of a mustard seed to its present size, said Nachmanides. Thus, he was effectively the discoverer of the Big Bang Theory, predating modern science by nearly a millennium.
Today, science has come essentially to the same conclusion: ?before? the Beginning there was absolutely nothing; not a vacuum, but N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Out of nothing, somehow, enormous energy was created in one unique event. Later, the energy cooled into matter and the process continued until stars, planets and galaxies filled the expanding universe. Thus, cosmologists today are really scientific historians trying to come closer and closer to the first three minutes, three seconds and time zero of creation. But no modern scientist today denies that there was a beginning in which the universe was created.
If there was a creation was there no Creator? Here the hubris of man gets in his way, and in a fit of irrational obstinacy many physicists refuse to acknowledge that a force outside the universe, ?an exogenous force?, must have created the universe. Instead they try to explain this ?miracle? in scientific terms. Good luck. Creation will be studied as long as man will be in the universe and he will never solve the problem. For by solving the problem, man will be G-d and that will never be.
Biologists, being involved in studies of life, which are much further away from the point of the creation, are even more adamant in denying that G-d is the source of all life.
Yet, especially today, after the mapping of the human genome, humanity should not be ensnared in the hubristic trap that began with the scientific revolution and the so-called ?enlightenment?. Rather, after mapping the human genome, humanity should realize that the super-complex being that we are could not possibly have evolved randomly -- that the finger of G-d is guiding the progress of life.
There are only two possibilities to the creation of the universe -- by random or by design. To expect science to prove either possibility in the past is asking too much, just as science cannot prove any event in the future -- not even that the sun will rise tomorrow. That event is expected with a degree of certainty that is very close to 1, but cannot be proven logically. Likewise, creation by G-d cannot be proven by science -- or disproved, for that matter. But, like the sun rising tomorrow, we can state that the probability of the creation by random of a leaf, a snail, a mammal, the human brain, is so minuscule that it is ?virtually? impossible. And that it is as ?certain? as the sun rising tomorrow, that G-d created the universe.
Put another way, the fact that I sit and write these words, and that you, the reader, read them, using a brain that can also create thoughts out of nothing; that you can imagine and reason and feel in a brain that has billions of cells connected in billions of connections -- that?s the proof. That?s the miracle of creation by G-d.
Descartes said ?I think, therefore, I am.? It?s time for all mankind to proclaim ?I think therefore He is.?
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Harry W. Weber is a political commentator whose articles appear in the Hatzofeh newspaper.
We see evidence of that mental restlessness in the Bible, or more specifically in the Midrash. According to the Midrash, the first truly restless man, who questioned the ?wisdom? of his elders and who asked not how this world was created, as do scientists today, but who created this world and why, was Abraham.
Abraham was born in 1948, 3,815 years ago. He was the first theologian-scientist-logician. By the force of his tremendous intellect, he concluded that the sun, the moon, the earth -- all that he wondered in awe at -- could not have been here forever, that they must have been created at some point in time and by an Extra-Natural Being, and that Being must be good and that He desired to bestow His goodness on his ?createes?.
About 800 years ago the great Kabbalist Nachmanides (the Ramban), taking his cue from the Bible, declared that in the beginning of time (Bereishit) G-d created the universe from nothing in an act of divine kindness called ?tsimtzum?, in which He gave of his unknowable being to create the first grain of matter. The universe grew from the size of a mustard seed to its present size, said Nachmanides. Thus, he was effectively the discoverer of the Big Bang Theory, predating modern science by nearly a millennium.
Today, science has come essentially to the same conclusion: ?before? the Beginning there was absolutely nothing; not a vacuum, but N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Out of nothing, somehow, enormous energy was created in one unique event. Later, the energy cooled into matter and the process continued until stars, planets and galaxies filled the expanding universe. Thus, cosmologists today are really scientific historians trying to come closer and closer to the first three minutes, three seconds and time zero of creation. But no modern scientist today denies that there was a beginning in which the universe was created.
If there was a creation was there no Creator? Here the hubris of man gets in his way, and in a fit of irrational obstinacy many physicists refuse to acknowledge that a force outside the universe, ?an exogenous force?, must have created the universe. Instead they try to explain this ?miracle? in scientific terms. Good luck. Creation will be studied as long as man will be in the universe and he will never solve the problem. For by solving the problem, man will be G-d and that will never be.
Biologists, being involved in studies of life, which are much further away from the point of the creation, are even more adamant in denying that G-d is the source of all life.
Yet, especially today, after the mapping of the human genome, humanity should not be ensnared in the hubristic trap that began with the scientific revolution and the so-called ?enlightenment?. Rather, after mapping the human genome, humanity should realize that the super-complex being that we are could not possibly have evolved randomly -- that the finger of G-d is guiding the progress of life.
There are only two possibilities to the creation of the universe -- by random or by design. To expect science to prove either possibility in the past is asking too much, just as science cannot prove any event in the future -- not even that the sun will rise tomorrow. That event is expected with a degree of certainty that is very close to 1, but cannot be proven logically. Likewise, creation by G-d cannot be proven by science -- or disproved, for that matter. But, like the sun rising tomorrow, we can state that the probability of the creation by random of a leaf, a snail, a mammal, the human brain, is so minuscule that it is ?virtually? impossible. And that it is as ?certain? as the sun rising tomorrow, that G-d created the universe.
Put another way, the fact that I sit and write these words, and that you, the reader, read them, using a brain that can also create thoughts out of nothing; that you can imagine and reason and feel in a brain that has billions of cells connected in billions of connections -- that?s the proof. That?s the miracle of creation by G-d.
Descartes said ?I think, therefore, I am.? It?s time for all mankind to proclaim ?I think therefore He is.?
--------------------------------------------------------
Harry W. Weber is a political commentator whose articles appear in the Hatzofeh newspaper.