Reconciling Science and God

There are three longstanding myths held by non-believers, atheists, and outsiders regarding the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilization. That these three myths are accepted almost universally by outsiders of the two religions is the source of tremendous misunderstanding in the debate over God and science. That the three myths are also nearly universally accepted from within the two religions, Judaism and Christianity themselves, only complicates the matter further and clouds any attempt to understand the role science has played with respect to the two religions.

Myth Number 1: Christianity sprung from Judaism.

That the Jesus described in the New Testament was Jewish is little in doubt. That the Gospel writers tried to link Jesus with Hebrew Bible prophecy is also little questioned. The fundamental error made from these observations is to conclude that Christianity emerged from Judaism with the life and death of Jesus. No Orthodox Christian believes this though it gets hidden by the accounts of Jesus life as a Jewish teacher.

In Christian doctrine Christianity pre-dates Judaism. Christ “always was.” He existed in Heaven prior to descending to Earth to fulfill the mission of salvation crucial to the faith. Judaism was merely an offshoot from within God’s “plan.” The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans, called it a failed offshoot. The Jews failed in their mission but this was merely a side act in the overall drama. The real story of humanity is God creating the world, including man. This is followed by man’s fall from grace and God sending a redeemer in the form of his Son. If the Jews did anything, they simply helped provide details of God’s plan from within their scriptures.

Myth Number 2: There is only one God.

The God of the Jews was formless and indescribable. Even his name was not to be mentioned. It is certainly unclear from early passages in the Hebrew Bible whether they were entirely monotheistic, worshiping the only God or just the God of the Jews. Gradually the Priests would settle on the former.

The Jews understood that they made a contract (covenant) to be loyal and obedient to God. In return, God would use the Jewish people, from whom he was contracted, to demonstrate his will to humanity. In this way, the Jewish people were to be his model humans. The Hebrew Bible is basically the record of the Jewish people failing to live up to their part of the contract.

The one aspect that was unmistakable about the Hebrew God is that he was omnipresent and indivisible. He was everywhere and complete. That there could exist a “Son of God” is contradicted by the supposition that God is omnipotent and omnipresent. If he is everywhere and all knowing, he can only be one entity.

Of course, within Christianity God is in trinitarian form. Christ, God’s son, always existed, as did the Holy Spirit. To even conceive that God would favor just one select group is to misunderstand God himself. A God that would be just “the God of the Jews” could not be a universal creator. A fair treatment of his creation could not involve favoring one group to the exclusion of all others. For Christians God is universal. He cares no more for the Jews than he does any other of his people, although this notion would change radically when Protestantism entered the stage.

Myth Number 3: Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Jews clearly do not believe this to be true. The Jewish vision of the Messiah was always of a human, anointed by God, that would lead the Jewish people to a place of honor and conquest in the world. Jesus did none of this. Even the Christian description of what Christ would do upon his return generally does not involve placing Jews and the pinnacle of mankind.

When the Apostle Paul was explaining who Christ was he was not using the Jewish Messianic vision as his description. Paul’s assertion was that Jesus was the Messiah but that the Jewish version of what the messiah was supposed to be and do was wrong. The real mission of the Messiah was to offer redemption (salvation) from the bondage of sin that all men inherited from Adam.

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Once it is recognized that Christianity is not the stepchild of Judaism; that the God of Christianity is conceived of differently from the manner in which Jews conceive him; and that Jesus messiahship claims are not based on ancient Hebrew beliefs, a different picture of Christianity emerges. The first point worth noting is the dependence of Christianity on the literal story of Genesis. Within Judaism, the creation narrative can be allegorical. In fact, Jews understand that the creation narrative should not be read literally. They understand that the different descriptions of the creation of man in Genesis 1 and 2 have contradictory elements revealing that the stories were told by different people at different times. What is important for Jews is that the creation and the results are entirely the work of God. Man, acquiring knowledge in spite of God’s command, earned free will to do good or evil. This is the story Genesis tells. The details are meant to highlight the meaning rather than to be interpreted literally.

Within Christian doctrine there is no such luxury of allegorical interpretation. The original sin of Adam did not result in human free will. For Christianity, the result was exactly the opposite. Humanity was doomed to live in a state of sin. Humans could do nothing but sin. Humanity had no hope for redemption; no human “messiah” to save them, and no chance of being reunited with God. Man was in a permanent state of alienation from God with no capability of pleasing the creator.

This is the Christian description of humanity and it is derived from Adam’s disobedience. As the New Testament Gospel According to John eloquently states, God sent his Son as a lifeline for humanity. Anyone that believes in him shall be reunited within God’s grace. Death, the ultimate ramification of Adam’s sin, is removed from those who believe.

Within Christianity we find a much different approach to the Genesis story. It is real. It has to be real. It must be understood literally; at least the part of man’s creation and surrender to temptation. Christ’s mission is pointless if Genesis is an allegory. Salvation is only relevant if someone needs saving. The account of Genesis has further important implication. In Paul’s letter to the Romans Paul writes that “the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life...” Before Adam’s sin there was no death.

However one is going to try and reconcile science with Christianity one needs to overcome the message of the Apostle Paul. If there was no death prior to a human’s disobedient act the very concept of the Earth is nothing like how science understands it to be. Oil as a fossil fuel produced from dead plants under intense heat and pressure for a long period of time must be thought of differently. A Jurassic period that was hospitable to large reptiles must be discarded as a notion if there was no death prior to Adam.

Within the Christian belief system the time frame of Earth’s existence, let alone the time frame of the Universe’s existence, must be condensed to a few thousand years. The reason for this is simple. The Bible details the genealogy of Adam’s descendants. Even allowing for life spans far beyond today’s, there is no way to place the time when death commenced much beyond a few thousand years. Either the Apostle Paul’s assertion that death is the result of human sin is wrong, or all science is wrong. It is impossible to have it both ways.

A straightforward example is the study of ice core samples. The scientific theory is very simple. Ice sheets are layered. Each year the new layer covers and compacts the previous. Changes from one layer to another through a sample core hold in time the changes in the Earth’s atmosphere for every year. It is possible to count these layers back in time. Deep drilling in Antarctica has allowed scientists to count back nearly eight hundred thousand years.

If Pauline Christianity is correct, everything beyond the top few thousand layers must have been laid down in one singular effort. However; there is no evidence to support this. There is no theory developed that even produces this hypothesis.

Christianity and a scientific understanding of geology and astronomy are mutually exclusive. It is not evolution that rules out the Biblical explanation of the world. It is geology. Certainly evolutionary theory provides an alternative “creation” story that has near universal acceptance among the scientific community. However; if any high school text books should receive warning labels from fundamentalist Christian boards of education, it should be geology or Earth Sciences text books.

Paradoxically, if one wants to reconcile a monotheistic divine creation with the scientific evidence, one must go back to the Jewish version of God and the Jewish version of the creation narrative. In their version a literal interpretation is discarded, man’s free will accepted, and death prior to mankind not ruled out. Judaism does not depend on the notion of original sin. Judaism does not depend on human action ushering death into the universe. Only Christianity needs all this because the Genesis narrative is viewed much differently by Christians. Science does not rule out the possibility of God, just the Christian version.