The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom - Review

By Gerald L. Schroeder. The Free Press, New York and London, 1997. ISBN 0 684-83736-6. 226 pp. Hardcover, $25.

How can both the Bible and science be right? Physicist Gerald Schroeder of the Weizmann Institute in Israel says he can show us how. Let's start with cosmology. The Bible says God created the universe in six days and indicates the passage of only about 6,000 years since then. Science currently estimates the visible universe to be about 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion. Schroeder reconciles the two, explaining that the six days of the Bible refer to a different measure of time. He explains: "There is no possible way for those first six days to have an Earth-based perspective simply because for the first two of those six days there was no Earth" (51).

Instead, time during this six-day period was measured on a cosmic clock. And what else could be used for that clock but the vibrations of light (electromagnetic waves)? Today the light from creation appears as the cosmic microwave background. This is now redshifted by a factor of a trillion ([10.sup.12]) from the period of "quark confinement" when matter as we know it first began to form. Thus the cosmic clock at that epoch ran off a trillion days for each of our modern days. The six cosmic days of creation thus took about 15 billion years Earth time, give or take a few billion. So, according to the author, Genesis is not only consistent with cosmology, it gives the correct age of the universe!

Each of the six days in Schroeder's Genesis actually takes a different length of Earth time. Cosmic day one is 8 billion Earth years long and you divide by two to get the duration of each succeeding cosmic day. The universe begins 15.75 billion Earth years ago and during the first "day" light breaks free, as electrons bind to atomic nuclei, and galaxies begin to form. This is described in Gen. 1:1-5 as the creation followed by light separating from the darkness.

Cosmic day two starts 7.75 billion Earth years ago and lasts four billion Earth years. During this period the stars are born. This corresponds to Gen. 1:6-8, the formation of the heavenly firmament.

Cosmic day three starts 3.75 billion Earth years ago. During two billion Earth years, Earth cools, water appears, and the first life forms appear. In Gen. 1:9-13, vegetation first appears during the third day.

Cosmic day four starts 1.75 billion Earth years ago and lasts a billion Earth years. Earth's atmosphere becomes transparent and photosynthesis produces an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Schroeder says that this corresponds to Gen. 1:14-19 when "the Sun, Moon, and stars become visible in the heavens" (67).

Cosmic day five starts 750 million Earth years ago and lasts 500 million Earth years. During this period, the first multicellular animals appear and the oceans swarm with life. Gen. 1:20-23 says the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and "birds fly above the Earth" (94).

Cosmic day six starts 250 million years ago and ends at the time of Adam. During this period we have a massive extinction in which 90 percent of life is destroyed and then repopulated with humanoids and humans. This, Schroeder says, corresponds to what is described in Gen. 1:24-31.

Technically, Schroeder's formula gives the present as the end of the sixth day. However, it could just as well have ended a few thousand years ago and not affect the rest of the calculation where things are rounded off at hundreds of millions of years. Schroeder argues that after the six cosmic days of creation, Genesis switches its focus over to humanity and starts measuring time in human terms. The rest of the Bible concerns itself with the 6,000 Earth years since Adam and Eve, estimated from the Bible in Bishop Ussher fashion.

Schroeder does not deny the existence of hominid creatures before Adam. He talks about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, and accepts that they had developed tools, pottery, and many human-like qualities. In Lev. 11:33 the Bible talks about pottery. But Schroeder argues that since it never mentions the invention of pottery, that event must have pre-dated Adam (130).

According to Schroeder, the Bible has no interest in these pre-Adam hominids because they were not yet fully human and had no souls. Thus they are never mentioned. Adam represents the quantitative change to a large brain, but more important, the qualitative change that makes us different from all other forms of life: "our soul of human spirituality" (133). God breathed this into Adam, the first real human, 6,000 years ago.

Schroeder's attempt to connect thirty-one lines of Genesis to Big Bang cosmology and Earth paleontology makes entertaining reading, but will convince no one who is not already convinced or totally lacks critical faculties.

Let us return to the beginning. Schroeder's use of quark confinement as the defining moment for his cosmic time scale is completely arbitrary. He seems to have chosen it for no better reason than it gives the answer he wants. The redshift from quark confinement to the present is of the order of [10.sup.12]. Multiplying this by six days gives 15 billion years, which is consistent with our current estimate for the age of the universe.