When I was in tenth grade I went to my first nerd science program at the Weizmann Institute. Our first lecture was about evolution. After the introduction, the lecturer addressed two friends and me and asked us whether we wanted to disagree with what he was teaching. He asked this because we all came from high schools which identify as religious, so naturally he assumed we believed in creation and therefore could not accept the Big Bang Theory. To his surprise, all three of us said no.
On the other hand, my eighth grade science teacher told my class that the chances that the big bang happened were the same as the chances of getting the Bible written by spilling a bottle of ink.
I know a lot of people who can’t reconcile the coexistence of both science and religion. I personally have never had a problem with it. I don’t think it’s necessary to choose between them. Let me explain why.
First, a little math (feel free to skip this paragraph, I promise I won’t go too deep). In math we have the concept of equivalence, where two things can be worth the same thing but not be the same. For example, 4+5 is equivalent to 9. While they clearly look different on the screen, they both return the same value – 9. Still, one is a sum, and the other is a natural number – not the same thing! But you can’t prove that they’re different. Because they’re not, really. They’re just two different representations of the same idea. 3 to the power of 2 is yet another way to represent the number 9. For another example, think about two triangles drawn on paper with the same size, same direction and same angles, but in different places. They’re not the same triangle, but you can’t really tell them apart.
So here’s my idea. Taking the first example from the previous paragraph, let’s use the number 9 to represent the concept of God. There are tons of different ways of approaching it. Everyone relates to it differently, everyone feels differently and imagines differently. But at the end of the day we’ve still reached the number 9.
I was talking to a friend of mine last week and we were discussing how fascinating we both find studying science. There are moments when you learn something new and it’s just mind blowing. What draws us to science are those moments when you feel like “OH MY GOD Nature is frickin’ awesome.” I felt this way when I first saw the proof that i squared equals -1. To get a taste of how awe-inspiring science can be, check out the double-slit experiment from quantum physics.
So scientists get a feeling of awe, and religious people experience spiritual uplifting. My argument is that these two concepts, like 4+5 and 9, are equivalent. Why is it necessary to distinguish between a sense of awe inspired by scientific study and a sense of awe inspired by prayer or belief? Further, is it even possible to distinguish between them? Can one really argue that these two “awes” are fundamentally different, and not just two ways of telling the same story?
You might want to argue that the creation and the big bang theory are contradictory, but I don’t think they are. I don’t see a reason to differentiate between God and the big bang. If you look carefully at Genesis 1, you’ll find that the days of creation line up very nicely with the theory of evolution. Professor Gerald Schroeder takes this idea even further and says that the age of the earth according to creation and according to science are the same!
Set aside for a moment all the traditions and scriptures and whys and hows. I’m not talking about the entire idea of practicing a religion, just about believing in God. When I see a magnificent proof in a math lecture at University, I experience the same kind of uplifting as I have in a moment of prayer, meditation, or creative inspiration. The sense of awe is what drives me to science, just like the sense of awe is what drives people to believe in God. What’s the difference between the double-slit experiment and a miracle? No difference, I think. Two ways of telling the same story.
Liora Sophie 