Yartseit: Science and Religion

Rabbi David Eidensohn

Tonight, Tuesday, December 13, 2005, is the Yartseit, the anniversary of Father's passing. I have just lit the Yartseit candle, but it occurred to me to honor his memory with a piece on science. After all, Father, Samuel Eidensohn of blessed memory, was America's leading battery scientist, and the family he left behind is deeply Orthodox Jewish. Two of his sons, besides having medical doctorates, are bearded Talmudic scholars. So much confusion exists about science and religion; in our family we have discussions intertwining Kabbala and string theory. How can anyone find a conflict between science and religion? Of course, I have to back that sentence up, which I intend to do.

I got the idea for this from an article by New York Time's writer Jim Holt (December 11, 2005)  entitled, "Madness about a Method." He begins, "Americans on the whole do not seem to care greatly for science." He says, "Nearly half, according to a recent survey, seem to believe that G-d created man in his present form within the last 10,000 years." Holt says that whereas 90% of Americans believe in a personal G-d, only 40% of scientists do. Ninety-five percent of biologists deny G-d.

This is amazing. American children attend public school and colleges where they are brainwashed for decades against religion. Despite this, and despite the depravity of the entertainment culture, which is surely anti-religious, ninety percent of Americans believe in a personal G-d, and half believe in Creation, in utter defiance of science. How did that happen?

One might answer that the abilities of the churches was responsible. But few Americans are big believers in their religion's theologies. One study, mentioned by Editor David Kupelian in World Net Daily, has ninety percent of the Christian clergy doubting the theology. When the Pope declared the Iraq war immoral, did any Catholic soldier refuse to serve? This despite the theology of Rome that the Pope's statements are infallible, in both religious and secular matters. Obviously, a nation that does not believe in its religion's theology is not going to deny science because of the church.

I can understand why Americans reject science, especially the modern kind. Twentieth century quantum theory is so weird that Einstein refused to accept it, even though he was left behind in  scientific history. Einstein himself believed in science, but he realized that something was lacking, so he also believed in beauty and mystery. But nameless and faceless mystery is just as  weird as quantum physics. Quantum theory is the surrender of mortals to computers that crank out numbers and perspectives, regardless of intuitive beauty. But I am not complaining. Those computers produced The Anthropic Theory, the belief by English physicists, and ultimately most physicists, that physic's numbers are so precise and delicate that the universe is designed for people. Obviously, this infers a Designer.

To sum up, "In this corner, science, weird and unintuitive, pointing to a Designer. In this corner, religion, the Designer, morality, right and wrong." Who will win?

As a child when I went outside with my yarmulka head covering, did I catch it. Grown men ripped into me with such anger, not because I threatened them, but because they were so concerned that I was acting foolishly and self-destructing. "David, you don't believe that people come from monkeys?" they would ask, with real pity. When that didn't help, they went after my parents, even my grandmother. How could a family ruin a child in this day and age, and let him be religious?

Colleges and cultural resources are controlled by those who are still foaming at the mouth against serious religion. Despite this, Americans believe in G-d, and don't extol science. Could it be that Einstein's science that leads to and is based upon mystery, (the Big Bang came from nothing, which is mystery, not science) convinced people to find that mystery? Could it be that the only thing human beings find to relate to in the computer-age of science is the results, the Anthropic Principle? If science is the Anthropic Principle, isn't family important? But religion, not science, talks about family, unless we deal with medical statistics about a good family life and reduced incidents of heart attacks.

Father was a great scientist. For doubling the American submarine fleet's cruising capacity with one invention, Father received the highest Navy civilian award. He later was the Chief Battery Scientist at Exide Battery. But family was first. People tried to persuade him to go to night school to get ahead in his profession. But Samuel Eidensohn wanted to get ahead with a family. Anyone who grows up in a family where family is first, knows what that means. Anyone who grows up in a family where family is not first, knows what that means, unfortunately.

Father went to college in the early part of the century, at a time when intellectuals flocked to Communism. His professors poured on the pressure to read about the glories of Stalin and Lenin. Uncle Barney told me how one day he saw his brother, Father, burning some books. "What in the world are you doing, Sam?" said Uncle Barney. "Those books are expensive." Father was burning books about Communism. Even as a youth, Father was able to discern the horror of Communism, in an age where hardly any other scientist or intellectual did.

 Even when Stalin murdered millions of people, scientists were still enamored of Communism, and they, together with prominent intellectuals, hated America and loved Russia.

How can anybody today trust scientists and secular intellectuals after that? But let us return to pure science, and modern physics.

Can anyone believe that a tiny dot emerged from nothing to become the Big Bang? Doesn't physics teach that matter cannot be created or destroyed?

Can anyone believe that the tiny dot, containing the entire universe expanded? Doesn't Einstein teach that a large amount of matter compressed into a small space freezes all matter and energy into it, so that even light cannot escape? The tiny dot of the Big Bang was the ultimate Black Hole, and it could never expand because of its almost infinite gravitational charge. Thus, the Big Bang could never produce our cosmos.

Does anyone believe that the tiny dot of the Big Bang expanded into a simple plasma which cooled and became complex molecular structure? Doesn't the principle of entropy teach us that a closed system cannot become more complex without an outside force and work? Where was the outside force in the advance of the cosmos from simple to complex molecular structure? Was it G-d? Really.

Does anyone believe that this boiling, roiling plasma became rocks racing at incredible speeds through the universe, bathed in radioactive oceans, crashing into each other or coming close to stars that are really enormous hydrogen bombs, and yet turned into rabbits and canaries?

Does anyone who studies the incredible systems of genes and the growth of cells, the human body and its hormones, believe we came about accidentally from the primal slime and monkeys?

Has anyone forgotten that Hitler thrived in a world where the scientists and intellectuals believed in Darwin and embraced eugenics in order to "control" the quality of genes? Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes, in Buck versus Bell,  upheld compulsory sterilization of the "inferior" in Virginia. He commended "taking life in hand," controlling it by destroying inferior people. This was somewhat different than Hitler's application of Haeckel's social Darwinism, but the science was the same. The New York Times recently featured an article about American people, alive today, whose parents brought them to institutions to isolate them from their family and the rest of the world, because the children lacked intelligence or for some other genetic failure.

Does anyone believe it when science says, "Give us more time, we will seek truth, and find it"?

Perhaps science is in my genes, so I sought out the company of prominent scientists. One was a mathematical genius Joe, who said, "Science can never prove anything, because geometry is based upon axioms. Can anyone ever prove that two parallel lines will never touch?"

Joe, maybe science cannot prove math, but it sure can prove the Designer. And what did the Designer want? I heard that from Father, when at the Passover Seder,  as from generation to generation, we received from father to son, mother to daughter, the Ten Commandments, the history of our Exodus from Egypt, and the Law from Sinai, when the Creator spoke to all of Israel and gave them the Torah.

The Creator is still speaking. But today He speaks through science.