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A Report on "Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation"
by Dr. Norbert Samuelson
Reported on by Holly Magiera and David Grant
In his lecture, Dr. Norbert M. Samuelson describes the cosmogeny, or account
of the origin of the universe, of the medieval scientist and Jewish philosopher
Gersonides and that of Franz Rosenwig, a Jewish Theologian. He then gives
an account of the physics behind the origin of the universe and ties them
all together in a brief comparison. Though we both found this lecture to
be far beyond our understanding, we will try to portray this lecture in
a simple and precise manner.
The universe to Gersonides is an original, indefinite matter that recieves
from God the definitions by which the universe operates. He says the act
of creation and its actor are indistinguishable. The universe was created
out of our concept of time and has neither a begining nor an end. I then
ask, if the universe is timeless itself, how does anything happen in time?
If God and creation are indistinguishable, wouldnt that mean God is a part
of this earth? My own ignorance and lack of understanding led me to these
last two questions.
Gersonides goes on to call each unit of logical priority a day and that
scripture calls each daygood, pointing to some sort of moral heirarchy.
God, then created and ordered universe with a moral purpose. With the creation
of the first day came what would later constitute the whole universe, the
separate intellects and the material elements. Gersonides notes that scripture
refers to the intellects of the cosmos and the souls of the sublunar world
as light. At this time the earth was encompassed by a ring of water, in
turn encompassed by a ring of air which was further encompassed by a ring
of fire and so on. From this God interceded to distinguish the earth and
the humans.
Gersonides belief that creation is demonstrable, perplexed us both. He believed
that an assumption that the knowledge of creation is beyond human comprehensiuon
to be too strong. I want to ask how humans can uncover such a divine occurance
when we are products of this very occurance? Gersonides maintains that the
sublunar world and the supralunar world are composed out of the same contingent
material objects, therefore inferencdes about one could carry over to the
other. But can we know everything, even with the help of modern technology?
For Rosenzweig, creation is an infinite end-directed process, with an infinitely
remote goal. Reality is the intersection of creation, redemption, and revelation.
This concept is a little tricky, just remember it is the relation between
God, world and human that defines each one. To arrive at his new mode of
thinking, Rosenzweig says he used infitesimal calculus, really unnessecary
to get into for this paper.
Somehow Rosenzweig arrived at his vision of creation through some new form
of metaphilosophical thinking, what emerged was a creation that again does
not take place in time, but is a separate dimension in which events occur.
For Rosenzweig God has an essence, which is not an entity. This is where
I stopped paying attention. God is defined by an infinite flow of an infinite
number of nothings toward general somethings, this is how the relationship
between God and the world is defined. God becomes what he is through the
world, which is endlessly becoming itself, the process continues forever.
Rosenzweig states that God becomes himself by not becoming what the wolrd
is becoming. I have no idea what this could mean. Rosenzweig ends by saying
that theology is based on revelation, which is lived experience, and can
therefore make claims about reality, unlike philosophy. Philosophy can only
choose among possibilities with no lived experience to speak of. Creation
is the subject of both theology and philosophy. indicating a need for their
interrelationship. God and human act on the world, God reveals himself to
the human, who redeems the world. God and human are linked by revelation.
`
The third part of the lecture discussed the myth of creation from the standpoint
of astronomy and physics. The universe begins at time zero with a single
infinitely small amoutn of energy with infinite temperature and density.
Basically we have a small point of hot energy. There are no distinct parts
yet; there is so much energy that any particfle is eimmediately destroyed.
Upon its destruction, the particle emits radiation, which is the primary
source of energy. The energy point begins to disperse and lose density and
heat. The weak and electromagnetic forces come into being and allow the
formation of diverse, separate elementary particles such as photons, leptons
and quarks. The universe continues to cool and the strong force appears.
This allow nuclear particles such as protons and neutrons to form. As the
temperature drops, atoms form and destruciton nof particles no longer is
dominant.
The actual atoms are strange beings. The distance between the particles
of the atom are huge relative to the size of the particles. A proton occupies
less than 2 percent of the nucleus which is only a small portion of the
atom. The space between isnt exdactly empty, it contains an electric field,
which isnt nothing but isnt really a thing either.. Another unusual feature
is that the particles move in waves and the posiotion and momoentum cannot
both be known. We think of atoms as being things at specific places and
times, but htey really are objects in great isolation with indefinite position
and momentum. So, the universe never really become discrete as we think
it is.
The expansion model of the universe is also too simple. We could view the
universe as a balloon expanding continuously with each point on the balloon
a galaxy. The model is problematic though. One, the balloon has interior
and exterior space. We dont know what is a t the edge of the universe, but
we assume that no other universe surroiuinds ours. Second, as the balloon
expnads, the points on it become bigger. While the distance between galaxies
increases, their own size never does. Next, the expansion of the balloon
is caused by external forces and the expansion of the universe is taken
to be the result of somethilng internal to the universe. Lastly, the balloon
analogy makes a clean break between space and time wherweas our universe
has a space-time, in that they depend on each other.
There are many difficulties in trying to picture our universe., The universe
is said to begin at time zero; it isnt clear what exactly this means. There
is also confusion as to what exactly infinitely small means, as well as
infinite temperature and density. It could be said that the origin of our
universe is not real. We can only observe events now, in the middle of the
process, and the idea of infinite points in the past leads to the implication
that time is not unidirectional. These questions cannot currently be answered.
The last section is a comparison of the three described methods. The two
Jewish theologies are very similar. Creation is an insight gained from the
biblical text accepted as divine revelation, expanded on by scientific observbation.
Creation is a single, divine act outside of time and it has moral direction.
The first conflict with physics is about time. Does physics imagine creation
to take place in time? If creation did take place in time, it would be entirely
different than our unidirectional sense of time. Some do believe that time
isnt unidirectional- the past and future are limits on a process of life
in the present. They always remian an ideal- never an actuality. The conclusion
reached is that creation is the origin of time, but that creation does no
occur in time.
Second, Jewish philosphy holds taht the world was created from nothing.
The universe is a set of interconnected processes with an origin in no9thing
and an end in somnething (God). If, according to physics, a thing must have
mass, then the energy in the beginning is not a thing and the world was
created out of nothing.
The final difference is that the Jewish philosophy beleived in a negative
moral ideal at the origin and a positive ideal at the end. Physics makes
no judgement about morality or it says that a morally valued universe is
absurd. This is the area of greatest disparity. Modern science is believed
to be morally neutral, but it really does take a moral stance, as we have
discussed in class. Jewish philosophy holds that the fact that the universe
is good is necessary to u nderstand it, but physics tries to separate the
two. This is true of science in general- it tries to remain objective and
not to make any value judgements. This lecture has many interesting points,
but they were a bit incomprehensible to us.