The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 240 pages
• Published by: Broadway Books October 20, 1998
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 076790303X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0767903035
• Book Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Weighs: 8 ounces

From Library Journal
Schroeder (Genesis and the Big Bang, LJ 9/15/90) is an Israeli physicist and scholar of Genesis who maintains that a properly understood Bible and a properly understood science provide consistent sets of data. In recent decades, scientific discoveries in cosmology, paleontology, and quantum physics do not demonstrate or prove the activity of God, but they do remove conflict with that activity. Rapprochement occurs when believers read the Bible on the Bible's terms, avoiding literalism, and when scientists realize that science is powerless to pronounce on a purpose for life. Schroeder is very lucid in explaining difficult scientific concepts, such as the passage of time according to the theory of relativity, and religious data, such as the original Hebrew words. Schroeder's careful and responsible handling of the data on origins from science and Genesis 1, combined with a fresh, judicious correlation between the two, is compelling. Highly recommended.?Eugene O. Bowser, Univ. of Northern Colorado, Greeley
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews
This account of creation is the latest entry in the current endeavor to drag science and religion within shouting distance of each other. Schroeder, a physicist and Bible scholar (Genesis and the Big Bang, 1990), attempts to reconcile the Genesis account of creation with current scientific knowledge about the origin of life. No doubt he is well versed in both the Bible and biology; he's also a skilled pedagogue, explaining abstract or counterintuitive concepts in lay terms. But this book will fail to convince many readers because the author so relentlessly seeks to persuade the reader of the validity of some strange theories, and because his biblical interpretations draw on an exclusively Jewish tradition, including Kabbalah, Maimonedes, and selected passages from the Talmud, which he claims ``anticipated'' later scientific discoveries. Admittedly, some of his arguments (for instance, that the sequence of Genesis creation is congruent with evolution's progression from prokaryotic to human life) are compelling. But elsewhere Schroeder less convincingly rejects the notion of random, mutation-driven evolution, arguing instead that evolution is ``channeled'' toward an outcome preprogrammed into existing DNA. Schroeder's other theories include an odd insistence upon a pre-Adamic, soulless hominid ancestor. It's important to Schroeder that the literal Adam be the first ensouled human being, and since Genesis chronology (almost 6,000 years since Adam) doesn't mesh with what science tells us of the age of humankind, Schroeder sets out to prove that the Bible only picks up the story near the close of human development. Such hermeneutical gymnastics seem strangely outdated and unusual in an often intelligent, cogently argued book. Though respectful of both science and faith, this book is unlikely to convince either scientist or theologian. (b&w illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
Certainly this is a well written book on an extremely important and difficult topic. Schroeder has the ability to bring difficult concepts to words graspable. However, after reading his theory of reconciling science with the Old Testament, it remains less than persuasive to me. I relate with this Kirkus Review comment: "Though respectful of both science and faith, this book is unlikely to convince either scientist or theologian." Far more able to speak on the theological level, I find many of his interpretations manipulated to his own cause, e.g. Gen. 1:12 which he interprets: "and the earth brought forth life." A more reliable interpretation of the text renders: "and the earth(or land) brought forth vegetation." Further, he cites no credible Hebrew scholar who agrees with his interpretation of day for order and night for chaos. He relies much more for his case on the mystical kabbalah, especially Nahmanides, which can only be explained at best as "opinion." This leaves him in positions which do not square with all of inspired Scripture. Science as well will not accept all of Schroeder's thinking. With a fossil record so sparse and incomplete, it seems very tenuous to draw the conclusions that he makes with any assurance. As one writer put it, "What we need are more compotent fossils. We have enough compotent anthopologists." When one realizes the move from a fragment of a jaw to what the skull and skeleton looked like, it decreases any confidence in the decisiveness which these scientists make. The press relays this as scientific fact, rather than the reality of opinion which it is in fact. There is no fossil or Biblical evidence for preadamites. This is only a modern version of the Gap Theory continuted to be played out cloaked with this physics idea of differing time. For the exact opposite view of Schroeder's key thesis: clocks ticking faster at the center and slow at the edge of the cosmos--- see D. Russell Humphreys book "Starlight and Time." Humphreys even contends he has communicated with Schroeder and other physicists and no one has refuted his scientific computations which seriously challenges Schroeder's. However, I much appreciate the fact that a scientist finds the historical evolutionary argument to be untenable scientifically as well as Biblically. Evidence for a Creator is to be applauded.