Why I dislike many of the Science and Torah combination books.

I’m involved in a science contest which is studying astronomy. We did the section on cosmology and the Big Bang. Traditionally there are two ways to approach the Big Bang 1. It’s false and made up by G-dless scientists or 2. It’s proof of G-d.
What struck me was the discussion of the horizon and flatness paradox. Basically the horizon paradox is that there is no reason for space at the opposite ends of the galaxy to be the same and the flatness problem is why is space so perfectly flat. Of course in a Torah and Science book these would be seized upon as extraordinary coincidences which require G-d. Some figure would be given of the chances of it occuring randomly which would be at around 1 in 10^20 for each one. It seems such a precarious way to rest all your proofs because our theories seem to explain more and more of these coincidences as natural outgrowths from the universe’s creation.

On a separate note the previous chapter had the coolest thing I’ve ever heard of in astronomy. Astronomers believed that they had found a double quasar. However, they found it was one quasar which was diffracted by a dark galaxy in its way. The real cool thing is that the two quasar images we see are at different distances from the Earth. So if we see something happening on one image we see the same thing happenning on the other image a few days later.

Update: It was late when I wrote this so I left out the most important part. Science doesn’t like amazing coincidences unlike these books which welcome them. Coincidence is used as proof of G-d while in science it indicates that the theory isn’t done well enough. The mindset of the reconcilliation books leads to know progress because they are willing to accept amazing coincidences as part of their theory of the world.


2 Responses to Why I dislike many of the Science and Torah combination books.

  1. Tobie says:

    Excellent point. I always think it’s an error to go for the G-d of the gaps, since gaps have a way of shrinking and disappearing- I personally prefer the G-d of the rules- because those get larger and larger and cooler and cooler the more we discover.

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