By Eitan Zeira
How does one who identifies as Jewish, which implies some relation or intimation of a God, participate in the scientific process? How does a person reconcile faith with evidence-based explorations? These are questions I suspect many have struggled and tossed in their minds as they pursue both. To say I believe in anything is considered nonscientific. The people of the Renaissance period began a journey that sought the pursuit of the understanding of God through the scientific methods. With DaVinci and Copernicus leading the way, they tackled that dilemma by stating that they would prove the existence of God through verifiable methods.
Five hundred years later we still struggle with the same epitaph. Using the scientific method we have made tremendous headway in understanding the mechanisms that compel our universe. We know of gravity and magnetism, atoms and quarks, galaxies and black holes. We discovered photosynthesis and Krebs cycle, genetics and epigenetics. And what of evolution? How does it stand in the face of descriptions in Genesis?
Throughout history there have been numerous scientists who were Jewish: some were quite famous.
Maimonides (1138-1204), In the introduction to his Guide of the Perplexed, argues that Torah must be grounded in reason and that divine science (metaphysics) can only be successfully undertaken after studying the natural sciences (physics). Among the natural sciences, he favored medicine, as his own medical practice and extensive writings testify.
Baruch Spinoza, a 17th-century philosopher. said God is not the traditional theistic God who intervenes in the world, but rather an embodiment of nature itself. In Spinoza’s philosophy, God and nature are essentially one and the same (Nadler, 2001). Spinoza rejected the notion of a transcendent, personal God and instead identified God with the laws of nature and the universe.
Albert Einstein was quoted as saying “A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”
Einstein did not believe in a God that intervened in the affairs of humanity. Rather, he was fascinated by the mysteries of existence and spoke of “God” in a way that conveyed his deep respect for the unknown aspects of the universe.
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me that can be called religious, then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it” (Einstein, 1954).
Einstein’s admiration for the “orderly harmony” of the universe aligns with Spinoza’s pantheistic view—the idea that God is synonymous with the natural laws that govern existence. For Einstein, God was not a personal being who created the world and judged human behavior but rather the intricate and rational structure underlying the universe. He often spoke of the “harmony of nature” as the closest thing to divinity that he could conceive of, and this is why he found Spinoza’s conception of God so compelling.
The beauty of the interconnectedness of everything we see and touch. The sublime signals of awareness in all the beauty of creation, the super genius of the master plan that derives everything we see and touch emerging from a few simple natural laws such as gravity, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. To be a scientist is to participate in the awe of creation from a technical level of understanding, to peer into God’s mind so to speak, to see how the intricate balance of forces creates the universe we all experience. It is an amalgamation of awe, admiration and humility.
To look at a rose and appreciate its beauty and simultaneously understand the electromagnetic spectrum that causes it to appear red and the photosynthetic process that brings it into being is to advance the aspirations of a scientist. To endeavor comprehension of the state of being is to attempt to combine beauty with understanding.
So the Jewish scientist is not living an internal dichotomy but is rather an observer of creation. And what of evolution? Some Rabbis contend that Adam and Eve could have had tails. It was their Neshama; soul that was given in Eden and evolution is a part of the natural plan of creation and the continued flow of emanation that sustains our world. There are also a couple of publications that parallel what we understand today in physics to the six days of creation. It contends that as the universe expands, time slows down, so the first day was actually 13.8 billion years ago when space and matter came into being. Accordingly, the fifth day (that of the “large reptiles”) was 65 million years ago. There are certainly holes in our understanding of the chronology, but something to continue to contemplate.
Maybe you could try it?