The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom

Dr. Schroeder reveals the wonders of the origins of our universe in an easy to understand, logical fashion. The Science Of God strengthened my faith and helped me better understand the fascinating complexities of the law of realitivity.

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.

This is a great read for those who wish to balance Genesis and the apparent age of the earth. I'll need to read it again before even being able to explain what's in it. Read this books and you'll be able to discuss the 7 days of creation in ways that will help you and all around you.

Must read if you have questions about what live is all about. Though I am not a total believer in God. Dr. Schoeder handles all topics in plain english and very respectful. I think it would be great to mee him as well as read all his books.

It's an elaborate effort of religious rationalization. He asserts that the Bible is literally true but can't be read literally, that one has to make certain extrapolations to truly understand it. The basic premise is that the universe was created in six 24-hour days as per Genesis, but up until 6000 years ago 24 hours wasn't what we think of as 24 hours. It involves Einstein, relativity, time dilation.

Okee doke.

I give it 3 stars instead of 1 because it has some marginal usefulness as an example of fallacious religious reasoning.

I imagine some of his points are going to strike many who are religiously inclined as odd. He asserts that Adam was created a literal 6000 years ago. Okay there were bipeds before that who looked just like humans but they weren't really people. Further, he asserts the extreme lifespans referred to in the Bible really happened. His explanation? People had slower metabolisms back then. He forgot to cite the extensive medical literature supporting this notion.

That was sarcasm.

An interesting proposition. In the beginning one is attracted by the arguments as presented. After the main points were convincingly covered I was turned off by the insistence of the author to make it appear as if references to all scientific discoveries can be found in the bible. As I was approaching the end of the book I was hoping the author would give me a hint to the obvious question 'how the writer(s) of the bible knew about the Big Bang and its consequences?' Unfortunately this point remains unanswered. You will enjoy the first half of the book and will read the second half only if you always finish books you start.

Good idea using physics to explain God, the Bible and nature, but too technical and I am sure above the heads of many besides me. A real struggle to understand the physics of the cosmos and the complex scientific explanations. I understood the thrust of the book and it certainly made me reflect on all the majesty of God's universe.

Wow! Super thought provoking and engaging. The author makes easily understandable explanations for all the disparities there are between science and the bible. I always figured the truth was somewhere in between science and religion, this book explains it.

The book was well organized and it was easy to understand the authors points. The author didn't just bring forth a theory or his opinion but used lots of laws, facts, logic and sound reasoning to prove his point. He was thorough in his explanations and made it difficult to argue his perspective. I recommend anyone seeking for truth to give this book a try.

I received this book for Christmas but only got round to reading it last night. Thanks to the store's special offers, I also got two other of Schroeder's books ("Genesis and the Big Bang" and "The Hidden Face of God") which I have only skimmed through so far.

My wife thought these books would be useful to contrast with my next book - provisionally titled "Towards a `Final Theory' of Morality, and Justice," or "The Reason Delusion." It builds on themes set out in my book "Freedom v A Tyranny of Rights", and my article "Are We Genetically Programmed by and with the Ten Commandments?"

In these sources I touched upon the `convergence' of science and `religion' (the Scriptures), so it was interesting to read Schroeder's perspective. On the positive side, Schroeder provides a clear and readable analysis of the science which confirmed (to a point) the analysis I had already gleaned from excellent books like Weinberg's "Dreams of a Final Theory," Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos," and Martin Rees' "Just Six Numbers," amongst others (again, all thanks to the store).

However, I did find a few negative aspects to Schroeder's "The Science of God."

First, although it may just be down to Schroeder's style of writing, I detected a streak of condescension towards those Schroeder appears to consider insufficiently `knowledgeable' about science and Torah to make any comment on such subjects, never mind any meaningful contribution to the debate. The book has just too many comments like the following: "To relate these two fields in a meaningful way requires an in-depth understanding of both." [Page 3]; "With a superficial reading of Genesis, and certainly with a superficial reading of the text in translation, we haven't a prayer of understanding the details." [Page 18] This `ignorance' of both the Bible (as Schroeder often calls it) and science, which he clearly regards as prevalent in the population of the world in general, is what he says he " ... intends, at least in part, to correct ..." [Page xiii]

Having explained to the reader the knowledge he has gained from the study of science and Torah, Schroeder then `reveals' what it is all about (and this goes to my second negative which I deal with below). He claims this: "With the stakes so high, life and death, it would seem prudent to make every effort to choose correctly. That takes knowledge, which is fortunately available. We only have to seek it." [Page 182] Which made me wonder where this knowledge is `available' that we may `seek it'? In his books, I guess! Or are we all to become scholars of the Torah and PhD's in physics, chemistry, biology, paleontology and the like? Who then would make the world `go round'?

If I were to be unkind, I might say that Schroeder betrays a degree of `academic arrogance' which, as with the majority of academics, has only been exacerbated by the advent of the web, something they despise and, I suspect, feel threatened by.

But at the heart of Schroeder's arguments concerning the `acquisition' of `knowledge' as a path to `life' lays a fundamental contradiction. The first contradiction relates to Abraham. At pages 141 and following Schroeder sets out what he claims to be the origins of monotheism. Abraham lived, as I found out from the web, at about the time of Hammurabi (of the Hammurabi Code fame) and in the same region. Under Hammurabi's rule there were an abundance of what we would call today scientists, astronomers, philosophers, and a well defined legal Code. And, of course, Hammurabi claimed divine revelation for his Code. Yet, according to Schroeder, Abraham "realized that there must be a supreme ruler, a Creator of the heavens and the Earth who is not limited to the transience of material things. Abraham had discovered God." [Page 142] But notably, according to Schroeder, this `realization' was not some revelation from God ("God was to choose Abraham only long after Abraham had chosen God" - Page 141). Rather, if I understand the situation correctly, it was Abraham himself, going against all the perceived `wisdom' and `knowledge' and `science' of his time, without the aid of Talmud or Bible, who `discovered' it all on his own. So where did this `realization' come from?? That is the theme of my forthcoming book.

And this fundamental defect in Schroeder's argument applies equally to Maimonides and Nahmanides whose commentaries Schroeder so extensively quotes. The whole thrust of Schroeder's argument rests of this statement: "Limiting ourselves to ancient commentators eliminates the possibility of text deliberately bent to match today's scientific understanding of the world." [Page xi]

So if we have Talmud, or the Bible, and we can glean all we need to know from them [as the science revealed in Genesis chapter 1] why the need to study science as well? And then there's the question of whether commentators like Maimonides and Nahmanides had any `revelation' to assist in their understanding of Genesis or, like Abraham, simply came to a `realization' of the meaning `hidden' in the text. By extension, the same applies to the author/s of Genesis - was it divine revelation, access to some science from another long-gone civilization, or simply an Abrahamic-like `realization'?

Schroeder could well have quoted from the Bible, New and Old, to find the answer that could cure this fundamental defect in his argument. Take Psalm 46:10: "BE STILL, and KNOW that I am God." Or if he had gone back a few verses from Deuteronomy 30:19 from which he derives his thesis that `free will' is to choose between life and death, not good and evil [Page 153]. Then he would have read something similar to Psalm 46:10 - "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not HIDDEN from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, ... Neither is it beyond the sea, ...But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy HEART, that thou mayest do it." [Deuteronomy 30:11-14] Or we could take some counsel from Christ: "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is WITHIN YOU." [Luke 17:20,21]

It seems to me then that Schroeder's thesis that `knowledge' is derived from the study of Torah and science is directly contradicted and undermined by the sources he relies on as `evidence'. But then I am not a scientist, nor a theologian, nor a philosopher; neither am I a Jew, nor a Christian, nor Moslem, Buddhist, or indeed much else. And certainly, I am not an atheist. It seems then that I would be disqualified from making any comment or contribution to anything. Is my fate `death'?

And that brings me to the second negative in the book, and it relates to the `conclusion'. I had to read the last few chapters twice to find anything resembling a `punch-line' in the book. Something that would give some guidance as to the import of discovering that there is some convergence between science and Talmud. Something that could be some guidance for everyday behavior - apart from preferring life above death armed with `knowledge'.

But this is all I could find: "The decision-making process [free will] of the human nefesh [animal] now has two sources of information to consider as it strives for PLEASURE [my emphasis]: the desires and needs of the body and the spiritual goals of the neshama [spirit]. How I choose to achieve my PLEASURE [my emphasis] determines the quality of my person." [Page 179] The neshama is explained like this: "But humans have a source of PLEASURE not evident in other animals. It arises from the neshama, our link to an all-encompassing unity that underlies what superficially appears to be a diverse and multifaceted universe. The neshama whispers to us of PLEASURE that transcends our limited physical existence." [Page 179 - emphasis in capitals are mine]

I don't need to study the Talmud, science, Old or New Testament, Buddhism, or anything much else to find something similar to such a `philosophy'. This is pure Jeremy Bentham, as `refined' by the arch Utilitarian John Stuart Mill. Bentham `discovered' that man is `governed' by pleasure and pain, and that the goal in life is maximizing pleasure. Mill refined that ridiculous `discovery' with a more `profound' discovery of his own - some pleasures carry more weight than other pleasures - there are `higher' pleasures and `lower' pleasures. I have dealt with the ridiculous `philosophy' of Bentham in my article "Origins of the Modern Liberal Fundamentalist State" so I won't make further comment on it here other than to quote Kant (and I note that Schroeder does have a quote of his own from Kant at page xvi). But here is my quote: ""It is surprising that men, otherwise acute, can think it possible to distinguish between higher and lower desires, according as the ideas which are connected with the feeling of pleasure have their origin in the senses and understanding; for when we inquire what are the determining grounds of desire, and place them in some expected pleasantness, it is of no consequence whence the idea of this pleasing object is derived, but only how much it pleases." [Remark I of Theorem II]

To be fair, though, I suppose we could distinguish Schroeder's conception of a neshama induced pleasure as a sort of Buddhist nirvana type pleasure, even though nirvana in Buddhism is to shed pleasure to get to some unity - but at least the words neshama and nirvana rhyme.

But the best quote I have seen on pleasure must come from Philo, the great Jewish philosopher, and ironically, referring to Eve eating from the fruit of the tree: "And the serpent is said to have spoken in a human voice, because pleasure employs innumerable champions and defenders who take care to advocate its interests, and who dare to assert that the power over everything, both small and great, does of right belong to it without any exception whatever."

To end this review I should add one final point, and that concerns Nahmanides. It is this. The most important thing any man could write is advice to his own son or daughter. And when Nahmanides did write to his son with an instruction to read it weekly, it focused on one principal theme - HUMILITY, or lack of VANITY. "Through humility you will also come to fear God." So said Nahmanides to his son. If only that were the message of "The Science of God".

Joseph BH McMillan. [email protected]

Dr. Schroeder's book represents a great idea and a lot of scientific research. It's masterfully done. Unfortunately, it is not biblical. His theological research is not so great. In Exodus 20:8-11 God tells us unequivocally that He is using actual 24 hour days in the Genesis creation. This is in the giving of the ten commandments. He tells us to pattern our lives on His example of a 6 day work week with the 7th day reserved for rest. A relative day just doesn't fly.
Gerry

The attempt to prove holy scriptures validity with science
for me is a waste of time. Since holy scriptures were written
interpretations of creation and our relationship with our Creator
and each other, limited to the understandings and knowledge at
the time, it would be more effective to listen to the communication
of the Creator taking place at the present time.

Genesis tells us that the priestly writers of the first story of creation
had the concept that creation is the word of God. "And God said...".

I believe Dr. Schroeder believes what he wrote in this book to be an important step at reconciling some of the "differences" between science and religion, when it comes to offering explanations of the origin of the universe, and specifically the earth. Unfortunately, for me, his methods fell quite short:
1. For example, he attempts to use Psalms 90:4 to explain the difference between 6,000 year old earth(Genesis account) and 15 billion years(scientific account). Doing the math, 365 days per year,each "night" is like 1000 years, 6 days to create the earth we end up with 365x6x1000 = 2 million one hundred ninety thousand years... This is well short of 15 billion....
2. Walcott Burgess shale find. It states (pg. 37) that eyes,gills,limbs,...all appeared simultaneously. Unfortunately Dr. S. does not reference this "fact", but if you do, the evidence is that Mr. Walcott never identified(documented) what layers he found these specimens in(see http://burgess-shale.rom.on.ca/en/history/discoveries/02-walcott.php). From the photos taken and the use of dynamite by Mr. Walcott, the Burgess shale find does not necessarily reveal what Dr. S. wants you to believe.
So on and so on in the book, Dr. S. states things without providing references to how he arrived at those "facts". To me, this was dishonest attempt at promoting personal opinions as "facts" and so the book became hard for me to finish.
Finally, I believe there are times when, in stating our opinion, we should reference it as such. I am wondering how Dr. S. was able to not laugh a little while he wrote this book!

For the past few years I have attempted to keep up with the popular anti-god and pro-God literature. Having consumed such works as The God Delusion,Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion,God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace and numerous works by Bart Ehrman; I balanced this with the The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality,Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ,Greater Than You Think: A Theologian Answers the Atheists About God,Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God and several works by C.S. Lewis includingMere Christianity.

After settling back to digest all of this reading, my instinct would say the atheist are slightly ahead in the race. With the reintroduction of this 1997 book, the spiritual minded can now pull ahead albeit ever so slightly.

Gerald Schroeder's grasp of both science and biblical scholarship is unique and much needed in this ongoing ancient debate. Schroeder's brilliant cleaving into varied topics that have divided religion and science show that modern laboratories and theoretical physics are compatible (and even interdependent!) with our understanding of God and his complex creation.

His explanation of the actual time frame involving the six days of creation, statistics and evolution and his views on free will are all very believable renderings of "how" and "why". It is strange to see both questions answered in the same book. I also greatly appreciated the author's knowledge and application of ancient Hebrew. Knowing the real meaning and intent of this ancient writing greatly assists in grasping the full understanding.

I hope you find this review helpful.

Michael L. Gooch, SPHR

The book started off a little slow, but did pick up. By the end, I wished the book had been a little longer. It is a very easy, quick read. The author has a pleasant writing style. He comes across welcoming and, not knowing him personally, seems like he would be a very patient teacher.

I know very little about Kabalah, which he references often, but at no point does he ever come across as "selling" his faith. He simply uses it as a reference point to his own faith. Being a Christian myself, I at no point felt like I had picked up a conversion book.

For those who aren't interested in Science, this is probably not the book for you. There are many references to numbers, theories, probabilities, etc. that might bore the scientically indifferent.

Overall, I think the main concept of the book is the overwhelming improbability that natural lotteries can continuously be won. From the big bang's production of matter to even the most minute processes we take for granted- such as breadmaking. All of the parameters that must be set, simply to eat a piece of bread. From sun, atmosphere, rain, soil, engineering, intellect, etc.

A must read for the atheist or agnostic who is open to challenging their belief system. Mr. Schroeder lays out a very compelling case that essentially the atheist has more faith in a lottery-winning solar system than the believer who finds creation to be the obvious answer to such a rigged game. You can't roll 7s every time. And the odds in this game are astronomical.

Schroeder makes a good case for interpretating the 6 creation days in light of relativistic physics. Based on how the Bible doesn't use "Earth-time" until after Adam, he argues that the first 6 days are days according to universal time, found by examining remnant radiation from the creation event. He also reviews some of the evidences for design and some of the questions in Darwinism. He briefly touches on the implications of multidimensional physics for the reality of a transcendent creator. A more detailed discussion of the latter can be found in Hugh Ross' "Beyond the Cosmos" (Navpress, 1999, 2nd edition).
Now for the disagreements: Oddly on page 43, he says there is "scant" biblical basis for assigning "epochs" to the creation days (he doesn't attempt to refute or address the more than "scant" evidences put forth by authors like Hugh Ross or Peter Stoner). This is odd because he does just this, ascribe certain periods of time to each creation day. He only looks at through the differing perspectives of Earth and pre-human time. As he says, the creation week is both billions of years and 24hr days, so he is in essence agreeing with other old-earthers.
On page 193, the author claims dinosaurs are mentioned in Gen 1:21. I question this interpretation since the verse is talking about sea life, so while sea dinosaurs may be included, it is unlikely that it means "big reptiles" as the author states. In any case, the Bible doesn't explictly mention dinosaurs, along with many other things (from oranges to black holes).
Another questionable interpretation is on p. 203, in his quote of Psalm 105:8. His version says "commanded to the 1000th generation," implying that there are missing gernerations in the genaologies before Moses. Problem is, every major Bible translation, by scholars around the world, doesn't render it such. Schroeder vaguely links the "missing" generations to cro-magan man. He seems unware that Hebrew tradition allows for the skipping of lesser individuals in the listings (all the more odd since the author comes from such a background). Examples of this can be seen when comparing Matthew 1:8 and 1 Chronicles 3:10-12.
He interprets Gen 4:25 and Gen 5:3 as meaning Adam mated with other bipedals (non-soulish). This is speculation at best and seems to violate the "covenant" of marriage started with Adam and Eve. The author is using this as part of his explanation for the similarity between humans and pre-adam bipedals.
These interpretations are a result of trying to adhere to the @5000 B.C. for Adam's creation and trying to explain the similarities of humans with pre-Adam bipedals. As discussed above, the date can be pushed back. The first "humans" are often defined by those whom first showed spiritual expression, not merely making tools or burying dead (the latter isn't all that uncommon among animals). This takes us to at least 30 000 B.C. if not more (this is not to say other bipedals didn't live at the same time as humans).
The author's reasoning in connecting Adam to bipedals seems speculative at best, and even uses some legends as support. He is trying to reconcile science and the Bible, but there may be a simpler, more factual way. Recent genetic studies reported in journals put the common ancestor of man around 50 000 years ago. If we are related to pre-Adam bipedals, why not millions of years? Similar studies seriously question our relation to neanderthals as well. Science seems to be supporting special creation of man. Further studies will shed more light on this.
This book was a good read and is a valuable resource. I recommend it be read with Hugh Ross' "The Genesis Question." The latter goes into more detail on the events in each creation day and how they fit science and more on the validity of a local flood (which Schroeder only briefly discusses). Their only major disagreements are on the Adam/pre-Adam bipedal issue and Schroeder seems more of a theistic evolutionist, while Ross isn't an evolutionist at all.

The author attempts to square modern scientific evidence with a literal interpretation of the Old Testament. His primary theological sources are the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Nahmanides, "a leading 13th-century kabalistic commentator".

While the pieces fit together almost too perfectly, Schroeder's book is loaded with astounding scientific concepts and facts that make random evolution and random reality seem totally out of the question. Science, just as much as theology, demands a designer's hand.

For example, when discussing the improbability that matter formed at all during the Big Bang, he says,

"For an exotic, still uncertain reason, infinitesimally more matter than antimatter was produced...As the particles and antiparticles annihilated, that one extra particle in ten billion remained. From those rare 'extras,' every galaxy, star, and human is composed..."

He employs unimaginable large and small numbers to defend design with regard to evolution, the origin of life, DNA, and a host of other mysterious physical phenomenon. Bottom line--numbers don't lie. The odds that our DNA took shape by chance is zero, a statistical impossibility.

One of his most interesting explorations is his attempt to reconcile the six days of creation with our understanding that the universe is fifteen billion years old. He bases his argument on the law of relativity. Schroeder argues that for God, existing in a time perspective outside of ours, one day might seem like a billion years from our point of view. While I couldn't follow all his arguments, it seemed rather amazing that he could square the time difference between Genesis and science so perfectly. Still, that time discrepancies between God and man can be explained by relativity is credible, even if the numbers do not fit perfectly.

Schroeder also debunks some common misunderstandings about evolution. According to him, the fossil record indisputably proves that life did not evolve gradually, but that it appeared suddenly and mysteriously.

"These fossils in conjunction with other discoveries indicate that all animal phyla appeared almost simultaneously 530 million years ago in the Cambrian period. All further development was confined to variations within each phylum. One of the great mysteries of animal evolution is why no new phyla have appeared since that Cambrian explosion of life."

That was news to me, along with several other facts about evolution that he discusses along the way.

For the science-challenged (like me), this is a tough read. But I'm glad I read it, because I had no idea how strong the physical evidence for design is, or how much I misunderstood the current outlook on evolutionary theory. If Schroeder is correct about how perfectly the Biblical authors described physical law as we understand it today, that may be the best rational argument of all in favor of God.

The search for the ultimate truth takes on many forms. We all want to know the answers to the questions of How? and Why? For a greater part of documented history there seem to have been two different tracks toward discovering the answers to the innumerable how's and why's. Science, using a process similar to reverse engineering works on these questions and, to date, has only been able to provide us with the how. Theology, on the otherhand, seems to be quite capable of providing the why's but falls short in the how.
In "The Science of God" Dr. Gerald Scroeder presents an ancient book called the Old Testament as the answer to both the how's and why's. His unique ability to present, to the best of his ability, the idea that--if the Bible was in fact divined by God, then it may hold the secrets of how as well as the why--is both captivating and compelling.
Dr. Schroeder maintains that true understanding of the Bible, comes at a price of studying the ancient commentaries as well. This theory makes sense because we can think of biblical scholarship as a long game of broken telephone. The farther away we are from the author of the Bible, the more likely we are to misinterpret the text.
As a student of ancient Biblical commentary, I find that many seemingly ambiguous statements in the Old Testament can actually be clarified with the help of commentaries such as the Kabalah and Mimonedes.
In his book, Dr. Schroeder accurately presents these ancient interpretations, and explains how these commentators help us to find a peaceful coexistance between the accurate interpretation of the bible and current scientific discovery and understanding.
This book is suggested reading material for anyone who is willing to put aside their religious or scientific bias and try to take a look at what Dr. Schroeder suggests is the answer to our How's and Why's.

Gerald Schroeder is a MIT Ph.D. nuclear physics and earth/planetary sciences author who works as a researcher at various institutes and universities in Israel. As an Orthodox Jew, Schroeder has sought to reconcile the young earth creationism Biblical view with old earth scientific model. Published in 1997, "The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom" was his second book dedicated to this goal (he has since published two others books in the same vein).

The cool part about the book was Schroeder's use of physics and relativity to explain the time discrepancy between the six literal days of Genesis and the billions of years promoted by the scientific community.

Allow me to summarize Schroeder's view by first stating his premises:

1. Time itself is not absolute or uniform as it can be slowed or speed up by gravity and/or velocity
* As shown by Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

2. The first six days of Creation are NOT counted in biblical history
* I.E. All dates and time lines start with the age of Adam who was created on day six, effectively leaving out all prior days.

3. Genesis Chapter One shows a viewpoint progression from the extremely large ("In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth") to the small (creation of plants, animals, humanity, etc).

Based upon these three premises, Schroeder makes the following detection (my words, not his):

" Genesis chapter one tells the creation account from the viewpoint of God rather then the viewpoint of humanity."

To elaborate, the six literal days are what God would have seen from a universe wide perspective while on earth (a small outpost among a huge universe) billions of years would have past. Remember the relativity of time?

As the creation story progressed, the viewpoint of time slowly shifts from viewing the entire universe to an earth centric viewpoint focused on God's capital creation, humanity.

While this physic orientated view of creation does not answer all the questions surrounding Genesis One, it does pose a very interesting "solution" to the age of the universe ("solution" is in quotes as I'm not sure if we need a solution - See last weeks post).

On the flip side, there were some parts of Schroeder's book that I found very disconcerting.

Drawing heavily from the Jewish Kabbalah mystic Nachmanides, Schroeder proposes that there were humanoid animals on earth prior to Adam and Eve. The main difference between these humanoid animals (i.e. Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal) was the lack of a soul, which God gave solely to Adam and Eve - thereby creating Homo sapiens.

Personally, I have a very hard time with this proposal as I don't see it in the biblical record or in science. To me, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal men are simply humans like us - not a different `animal'.

Another disconcerting factor within the book is Schroeder promotion of theistic evolution (i.e. God used evolution to create life). While this view is not explicit, it does color his perspective on creationism as a whole.

Note, however, that Schroeder does a fabulous job at showing that pure evolution is mathematically impossible. There is simply no way that life could have evolved with out a guiding hand.

Furthermore, the fossil record does not show a gradual evolution of life. Instead it shows dramatic explosions of fully created life forms with fully functional eye balls, limbs, etc.

In conclusion, I think Schroeder's book "The Science of God" is worth the read due to his discussion of time relativity and his handling of the fossil record. Just keep in mind that some of his reasoning and viewpoints are influence by medieval Jewish mysticism that may or may not be fully compatible with Christianity.

I am not going to get into a shouting match with the Reader from Pennsylvania, who claims Dr. Schreoder doesn't know anything, but here is a little something to think about: Gen. Chapter 17:17 Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, "Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?" Abraham DID laugh!
The person from Pennsylvaina doesn't even know that Abraham laughed too, so his 1-star seems to do little to hurt the credibility of the author. But, even though the person from Penn. didn't research his thoughts, he does make a point; well, several. Shroeder seems to get carried away with his wild antics on a weird humanoid who God puts a soul into. I didn't really try to follow his ideas in that chapter, but I didn't buy it. I think he could have left that whole idea out, as well as some of the others that the guy (or woman) fom Penn. touched on.
What impressed me the most is Schroeder's fomulas and statistics that debunks the common idea of evolution. I am suprised more poeple didn't talk about what is in the book and how it is practically impossible for evolution to have occured in the time allowed by science. That is what the book does for me- it gives me some knowledge of just how crazy evolution is, and also some very interesting facts on just how far an evolutionist will go to KEEP INFORMATION AWAY from the public.
It those slides and drawings discovered in the early 1900's had been presented to the public, evolution wouldn't be the religion it is today. It would be another admited mistake. Instead, now it is an idea that has everyone scratching their heads and wondering if it is real, does the Bible support it, is science lying, and on and on and on......
The theories that are presented by the author are sometimes a little on the unbiblical side, but those are his theories, and some are very interesting if nothing else.
But what made the book so wonderful in my eyes is all the facts and formulas and stats on how wrong evolution is, and how evolutionists have "proved" their case using many tricks, which he explains and then disproves.

Very interesting! It is a study of the first chapter of Genesis in light of recent findings in physics, microbiology, and astrophysics. Something I found intriguing was about our (the Jewish) calendar.

". . . Logically, the calendar should start with the creation of the world. That would be the generations since Adam plus the six preceding days. But such is not the case. Two thousand years ago, long before there was any controversy over hundred-million-year-old dinosaur bones and cosmic ages reaching into the billions of years, the starting date of the biblical calendar was set at the creation of the souls of humankind (Gen. 1: 27), and not at the creation of the universe, the "In the beginning" of Genesis 1: 1." (Page 45)

That is something I intend to ask my rabbi!

The author then goes on to explain how, using cosmic background radiation, it can be shown that all the 16 billion years leading to Adam took place in six days. Since the first chapter of Genesis and science are in agreement as to the order in which events happened, this makes wonderfully good sense. Whether or not I am convinced will depend on what the rabbi says when I ask him about when the calendar begins - or other research to follow!

Another fascinating subject was the mention of the age differences prior to the Flood:

"Prior to the flood at the time of Noah, the life spans of the persons being discussed ranged from 365 years to 969 years, with the average being 840 years. Sexual maturity (the age at which a woman first gives birth) was reached at 65 to 187 years (average 115 years). Both averages are approximately ten times the current values for developed countries, obviously far from today's reality. Whatever one may think of the pre-Noah longevity, by the time of Abraham, just ten generations after Noah, life span had so decreased that the Bible required an explicit miracle for Abraham, age 99, and Sarah, age 89, to conceive a child (to be named Isaac, from the Hebrew word for laugh, as Abraham did when the angel said he and Sarah would be parents the following year; Gen. 17: 17).

"The cause of this dramatic decrease in life expectancy is not stated. However, the actual age data as listed in the Bible are instructive. . . . Prior to Noah there is no strong trend either increasing or decreasing longevity. Following Noah, a trend is clear. Life span becomes shorter through the generations. The biblical concept is that change takes place over time and through generations, just as did the development of the world in the first chapter of Genesis." (Page 15)

I do wish he had gone into more detail as to what he thinks may have caused the decline in age. Was there something that the Flood brought about that changed the environment? Regardless, I did find the book illuminating.

Not one of his best books. I thought the hidden face of God was much better for the money. Schroeder sympathizes with the intelligent design movement and makes a compelling case for his cause from a theological standpoint. For Schroeder, the mind can be converted into energy and energy can then be converted into mass. This is the next great step in physics and is just a few years before discovering the path for this venture. However there is much speculation and little evidence to back up the claims presented. The book is often lax on supportive evidence and testimony.
Schroeder believes physics will drastically change in the following years but his revolutionary view ends with that subject. Schroeder seems to blindly accept many other avenues without fail, such as geological dating, human evolution, and even embryology. Subjects which have much more subjective and questions marks. Further Schroeder's rational for doing so is not much more than simply accepting the status quo. His whole argument, for instance, against YEC and Noah's flood revolve around dated writing tablets. Schroeder argues the flood could not have altered dating schemes because certain writing pieces are dated at 10,000ys old. This is simply flawed reasoning and can be explain by skewed dates produced because of the flood.
There were several chapters were Schroeder went off topic and started going on some tirade. The chapter on free will was interesting but I expected more. His chapter on randomness and how mathematically evolution has many problems was very detailed. I thought that his take on Adam being the first human with a soul was an interesting way of interpreting genesis. A tough topic to cover, but Schroeder does ok.

This is an excellent book for anyone who is interested in both the science & theology behind creation. The author has unique ideas for melding together both the generally accepted theories of evolution and Biblical theory of creation. He believes both theories are right, they are just describing a different perspective. The book is heavy on the science, but the author takes time to explain it at a beginning level. The author uses the Hebrew Bible & Talumd, as well as kabalist writings to explaine the theology. The book doesn't answer all questions, but after reading it, I think he proved his thesis that both the 7 day special creation and the multi-million years evolution are true. He has changed my viewpoint on how our current world came about.

I found this book to be one of the few that has actually changed any pre-conceived notions I have had in regard to religious thought. The book takes a very interesting approach to reconciling biblical writings and interpretations with current scientific theory. His explanations are logical and concise although they are very deep and some scientific background would be helpul. I did not find everything he wrote about easy to take in but many of his points made sense. These points helped me, as a conservative Jew, reconcile my faith with any doubts that I have had with regard to the validity of religion considering what I understand about the history of our universe.
First of all, having read other reviews, people who are looking to find fault with this book will be able to do so. This is mostly due to selective use of interpretations and quotations from the bible. I think it would be impossible to write a book otherwise. If he was not selecting the best points then he should not be trying to convince an audience of his view. He also was upfront about his own preconceived notions.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is willing to have an open mind about science and religious thought. In addiiton, if you are interesting in reconciling your own doubts of how religion can exist within the bounds of science, this book will help to dissipate any doubts you may hold. This book is not perfect, but no science books are. I found it incredibly interesting and, in conjunction with other books on various scientific and religious topics, can help one to reach a personal analysis of scientific and religious convergence.

I bought this book because I had the honor of seeing Dr. Schroeder lecture, and was fascinated by what he had to say. I am a Reform Jew, who believes the Torah was written by human beings. My companion to this lecture was an Orthodox Yeshiva student, who has never questioned the divine nature of the Bible. Incredibly, Dr. Schroeder found things to say which inspired both of us. I felt I had no choice but to buy and read this book.
I will not say that this book revolutionized my views on religion. I did not abandon my Reform doctrines and race to join my friend's Yeshiva. Nevertheless, what Dr. Schroeder writes provokes thought, and, perhaps more importantly, provokes a re-evaluation. It is too easy for me to say, "all this God-stuff is nonsense," just as it was easy for my Yeshiva friend to insist that all science that contradicts Torah is just sophistry.
I do not agree with everything in this book. I am not even sure that the basic premise of it is sound. But I think everyone should read it. I guarantee it will change the way you view both religion and science (for better or worse).

This book has sold a lot of copies and generated a lot of discussion since its publication in 1997, but it really just didn't do it for me. Schroeder's premise is that Bible thumpers and secular scientists need to put their heads together, compromise a little here and there, and realize that the Bible story goes hand-in-hand with 20th-century scientific discovery.

That means the seven-day creation story is true (Einstein's theory of relativity helped us out a little on this topic) by measuring time from God's perspective. The cosmic clock of Genesis is based on the characteristics of cosmic background radiation. The dinosaurs were created on day five, a day that lasted roughly a half billion years. The flood really happened when the Bible says it did, but it wasn't a universal event. Before the flood, people lived extraordinarily long lives, because the climate was less demanding. You get the idea.

I agree with Schroeder that the conditions of our universe and our own little world are incredibly fine-tuned, and thus a bit difficult to explain. Schroeder quotes Weinberg's famous calculation that if the energy of the big bang fifteen billion years ago were different by one part out of 10 to the 120th power, there would be no life anywhere in the universe. It's as if the universe is tuned for life from its inception. There have been a number of thought-provoking responses to Weinberg's conclusion, but it's still difficult for me to put out of my mind the idea that something really special has happened for our benefit ... something quite carefully planned.

It's a puzzle without easy explanation, alright. I just don't get why anyone would choose the Bible's myths as the foundation for their explanation. As carefully as Schroeder has put his theory together, it still just feels contrived and overly complex to me. If Schroeder wants believers and scientists to hold hands and sing Kum Ba Yah, he's going to need to write down to the non-scientist level. But why bother? Don't the earliest Bible stories make a whole lot more sense as theological or political or moral treatises than as history books? Why not let religion be religion and science be science?

Was the universe created in 6 days or in 15 billion years? Both! This was the most fascinating knowledge I found in the book. Within the first few chapters, Schroeder explains how time dilation (time passing at a slower rate in a stronger gravitational field or when an object travels at a greater velocity) and Einstein's Theory of Relativity (the portion dealing with differences in observed phenomenon depending upon the frame of reference of the observer) allows BOTH answers to be correct. He then demonstrates how this dual mapping of time places events in the right time-slots when referencing either "our" time or "cosmological" time (that is, the timing of key events is synchronized whether using a 15-billion-year or a 6-day reference point). Schroeder also discusses the "Science of Free Will'. And what about Dinosaurs - don't they prove the Bible to be incorrect? No - read the book for the reasoning! Other interesting concepts presented include a "latent library" of genetic codes (genes appear to have been present in the first cells eventhough the feature for which they code did not appear until much later) and statistical anaylsis showing the unlikelyhood of certain forms of evolution. Finally, it is worth noting that Dr. Shroeder has credentials that ensure the reader that the information being presented is of high quality.

We live in a world where Science has come to be worshiped, and the facts it reveals accepted as the sole Truth. The corollary to this mindset is the rise of radical Atheism as espoused by the likes of Richard Dawkins which absolutely disparages any spiritual beliefs. Hence we find ourselves in a mirror image of the Medieval Ages when the roles were reversed and Science bewailed the closed mindedness of the Establishment. The more things change, the more they remain they same.

Fortunately there is a movement rising that attacks the certitude of scientific disbeliefs, and they do so from the perspective of science. Gerald Schroeder is at the forefront of this group, and in this book he does a magnificent job of advancing the idea that religion and science are not in fact mutually exclusive at all, but are complementary and in some cases confluent in their revelations. As a nuclear physicist and Biblical scholar he is eminently qualified to show that the dismissal of religious beliefs on the grounds of logic and reason is not only wrong, it is foolish and ultimately harmful to our existence.

Schroeder marshals his arguments succinctly and lucidly, and like others, such as John Polkinghorne , Michael Behe and Francis Collins, makes the case that scientific thought can be shown to be both conducive to religious concepts while also being deficient by itself in explaining the complexities and seeming teleological character of concepts as varied as evolution and cosmology. His distinctive contribution however is in comparing Biblical knowledge with scientific concepts and here he does a masterful job, ranging from a relativistic analysis of the Days of Creation to the timelessness of light as an explanation of God's omniscience.

Unless you are indeed a radical atheist or, on the other end of the spectrum a literal Creationist, this book will make you think. While you may not agree with Schroeder on any given point the argument he makes for reconsidering the absolute and exclusive certainty of Science is erudite, knowledgeable and beautifully presented. Einstein said Science without Religion is lame, religion without science is blind and Schroeder demonstrates why all those who refuse to see the worth of religious teachings and thought are as willfully blind as the Church was 400 years ago in outlawing the newly flowering scientific thought. Hopefully,this book should help to open the eyes of those who do not see.

I've read this book as a Christian, and a homeschooling parent, who was seeking a means of trying to talk to my students (who are also my children!) about Origins; this, after having been stymied by the apparent 'know-nothingism' of most modern 'Scientific Creationists' - and I say this, being a man who once thought Morris 'The Genesis Flood' was the be-all and end-all of scientific research in light of atheist Darwinian evolution! Now that I have read and understand the validity of the 'old-earth' model, I was led to read Schroeder, and what a find!

First off, many, many of the reviews miss the author's astoundingly brilliant analysis of Creation; time/light; the apparent 'contradiction' of the Six Days of Genesis 1&2 with the scientific evidence of billions of years being the 'flip side of the coin', as it were in the eyes of God. Ross and Rana over at Reasons to Believe have sought to do the same from within a decidedly Evangelical Christian framework, but the inherent tacit multicultural paradigm - derived from a false eisogesis (reading into) of Acts 17:26 (and here they are right in line with Ken Ham's/AIG's fallacious 'One Blood' claptrap)- falls short, right at the anthropological point at which the Bible begins- Adam and his posterity, which includes (for Christians) the incarnate Christ.

Schroeder (as a Jew) instead goes right to the heart of the matter, saying more or less what Watson (of DNA fame) said a year or two ago of the modern era, and for which scientific FACT, he subsequently lost his job. [[...] Schroeder points out the historic reality behind the present avoidance. The hominids that lived before Adam (and his 'kind') were NOT related to Adam, nor his seed- indeed they were not 'MEN' at all- hominids, possibly, but 'Men' - no!

The Kirkus review above got the nail on the head, and therefore damned Schroeder with faint praise, merely for saying what the West has long known, but which is now is considered the 'sin of all sins,' in this myopic multicultural age.

"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 obscure in an often intelligent, cogently argued book."

Nope, sorry. Such POV's are neither obscure nor outdated- but their studied avoidance at all costs- is!
It is now clear to me, that only with the advent of 'Adamkind' does our world's great ancient historic civilizations appear- and not in one isolated area, but on the GLOBE. It was not the 'indigenous tribes' that raised up these highly-technical civilizations; it was the advent of Adam's Eden-expelled heirs that brought technology (such as the pyramid's manner of construction that we are STILL in awe of) to the world.

Moreover, since the (biblical) time of Noah's flood also coincides with written records in both Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilization, (and their continuity shows neither empire suffered from a 'world flood', both Whitcomb and Morris, as well as Ham et al. haven't a leg to stand on- whereas Ryan and Pitman's 'Noah's Flood', and Ian Wilson's 'Before the Flood' appear far more tenable; and since the Egyptians showed racial characteristics of their captives, (as well as of themselves) and these racial types existed PRIOR to the flood, the old 'curse of Ham' is pretty much toast as well. Schroeder put it all into perspective for me- it would be less than intellectually honest to deny these facts, and to seek to find some OTHER way to explain how all these multiple civilizations 'evolved'- like Darwin posited of undifferentiated matter, going from fish to Homo Sapiens. There is both purpose as well as design, from the Big Bang, to the Creation of Adamkind... and Schroeder makes it clear from the perspective of a scientist- for once. And that is the greatest recommendation for this book alone!

Moreover, such pre-Davidic civilizations have mythos that speak of fair-haired, golden or red-headed 'gods' visiting the locals, 'giving them culture,' etc. Homer's epics stand at the end of a long line of this sort of literature, but he, too, gave us the images of Olympus that was peopled with fair and gray-eyed Gods -now also under scrutiny from a racial POV- 'The Baltic Homer'. This set of facts, too, I am sure the Kirkus reviewer would say is "strangely outdated and obscure," but there it is; an inconvenient set of corroborative FACTS, that no amount of 'Out of Africa' hype can remove. Think of Cortez, Quetzlcoatl, the clearly Caucasoid busts of Early (vs. late) Egyptian Pharaohs, etc. I'm not making this up, nor am I saying I personally believe it... I'm merely pointing it out.

Where Schroeder does go wrong, however, (for which the Kirkus review is utterly silent- could there be a studied reason?) is attributing this Adamic perfection, this civilizational, created semi-divine status of post-edenic Adamkind to the race Schroeder belongs to- i.e., talmudic Judaism and her adherents. (As Schroeder is quite clear to quote both Talmudic as well as Kabbalistic writers- and to note this fact from the beginning- this observation cannot be construed (or 'mis-construed') as 'anti-semitism'- or else we truly are no longer a free nation, and rational discourse no longer exists.) Since Arthur Koestler demonstrated (in 1976!) that Modern Jewry is not related- ethnically, racially, or historically - to the tribes that come of Abraham, Isaac or Jacob's loins; nor, indeed, not even of the Jews of Christ's day, via his well-received and reprinted book [cf. 'The Thirteenth Tribe'] ...and as Koestler was a Jew himself, he MUST know - I am beginning to think that these two Jewish authors are telling us, the mantle of Schroeder's attribution of such grandeur, such overwhelming intellectual, scientific, artistic, and purely physical beauty on the part of Adam's descendants (and the talmudic 'traditions of the fathers' from which Schroeder garners these insights, collated on this 'semi-divine race' by the talmudic devotees, even if ONLY to be kept in 'custody' for another people ) must therefore inevitably (based on Schroeder's research) fall on another race, a 'lost tribe,' of which Christ is the consummate Second Adam- the Rose of Sharon.

Such knowledge, such insights, of course, are anathema in an Obamanation, and that is why Schroeder's book is not touted by: a) the Evangelical Community- who too often see Zionist interest as equivalent to the Gospel- and/or Hagee as their 'pope' (that, and their bizarre grasping at 'scientific straws,' via the Hamite crowd), or b) the Romans, (now jumping on the 'smear Williamson to make us look good' bandwagon, thus aping 'a') or c) anyone else afflicted with the Multicultural 'we're all one/'hope and change' Mania (which has an uncanny resemblance to Weimar Germany, for some gnawing reason...) - which is merely the secular version of a+b above....

But, as Christ said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the Truth shall set you free." I believe Schroeder's books do just that- they did for me! I sincerely believe his writings need to be more seriously studied by Western Christendom, with an eye to realizing the possibility that the 'Adam' whom Schroeder mentions- as the Culmination of Creation- might be much closer at hand than one may at first realize....as Belloc once noted, "The Faith is Europe; Europe, the Faith."

Here we have one more crusader, a distinguished physicist and Biblical scholar, trying to bridge the gap between religion and science, showing that what might appear as diametrically opposed descriptions of the creation of the universe, of the start of life on Earth, and our human origins, are in fact identical realities viewed from different perspectives. His theological sources are the hewbrew Bible, the Talmud, and the 13th century kabalist Nahmanides.
Schroeder tackles the issue of Darwin's theory of evolution and its flaws ("nature does not make jumps" versus "natures only makes jumps"), quantum uncertainty, relativity, cosmic background radiation, convergent evolution, anthropic argument, and other recent scientific innovations. All of these issues are placed side by side with Biblical and kabalist commentaries.
The result is an amazing tapestry where the six days of creation match scientific description (time dilation), the Biblical "bere'shith" is the beginning of time, matter, and space, quantum mechanics is the graveyard of determinism and confirmation of free will, and the scientific "insufficient caused event" is the age-old Biblical definition of a miracle. There is room for concepts such as: God was to chose Abraham only long after Abraham had chosen God, scientific confirmation that less-than-human creatures with human-like bodies and brains existed before Adam, and pre-programmed DNA.
It is in fact an "Amazing Technicolor Raincoat," weaved by a brilliant mind. Schroeder may be accused for "seeing reality as he assumes it to be," and for far-fetching his Biblical interpretations. It is clear, however, that his honest intentions are not to bring disruptions but rather contribute to the convergence of science and theology. Needless to say, strict believers on each side of the fence will have to open their minds.

Many have attempted to reconcile the apparent disparities between science's account of the big bang/evolution and the creation story in Genesis. Schroeder presents an interesting approach that works within the framework of both paradigms.

Schroeder analyzes the original Hebrew wording of the Genesis account to identify subtle meanings which lend insight into how the Genesis account may be compatible with modern scientific knowledge. He applies Einstein's concepts of relativity of time and space and suggests that the "six days" of creation may refer to a sort of cosmological time instead of 24-hour-day earth time, because in the big bang mass and gravity were concentrated (and gravity bends light and therefore dilates time). Lending support is his observation that there were four "days" in the Genesis account that occurred before the sun (the basis for our 24-hour solar day) was created. Schroeder suggests that these four pre-solar days may have encapsulated the periods of stellar expansion and evolution occurring after the big bang and before the ignition of our sun. Schroeder also goes on to suggest that proto-humans such as the Neanderthal, etc. were part of the physical process of creation, after which "Adam" developed and became a "living soul." After the creation of Adam on the sixth day, according to Schroeder, the Bible begins marking time according to 24-hour solar days.

I am not an expert in these areas but I feel that Schroeder presents some very interesting perspectives on this topic that provide a fertile ground for further pondering and investigation. I would even suggest that Schroeder's work has the potential to do for creationism what Carl Sagan's "COSMOS" series did for the public understanding of cosmology.

Critics of this book remind me of those that insisted the world was flat. Or perhaps those that forced retractions to the then new "We travel around the Sun, proofs". Mathmatics is a wonderful thing, it attempts to show such things as infinity, limits, and non-real things. Physics uses math in the same way. Schroeder's book presents some real grasps (albeit faint ones with respect to the Eternal) on what no time looks like.
Our finite minds cannot understand the Mysteries of the Creator; however, we can see shadows, momentary events, finite happenings which suggest matter to be a real phenom, while at the same time realizing that there is an infinite amount of space between the smallest amount of observable distance. That is the essence of infinity.
This guy is a genius. He shows you a glimpse into the meaning of time and attempts to reconcile 6 days to 15 billion years. It's all relative and reasonable. I can't remember a book that was as revelatory, other than the bible. It absolutely mesmorized me and caused me to go sleepless thinking about what it presented. If you don't want to think too hard, don't buy this book. On the other hand, if you're searching for something that will absolute invoke a reaction, this is it.
Cons: Not enough discussion on the Natrual Log, it's definition, ramifications, usuages, etc. More math would be nice. In fact a whole book on the natural log would be perfect. There's something very mystical about the natural log.

This book is written by an MIT physicist who seems to be an evangelical or non-denominational. He goes through some fascinating aspects of the bible and science. For example, he explains how time is relative to where you are and that there is a certain way to look at the days of creation so that they last 15 billion years from one POV and 6 days from another. It doesn't seem contrived, and it is very interesting. He also discusses quantum mechanics and a scientific argument against determinism. This is definitely a great read for those who are interested in the question of science vs. religion.

Schroeder's work is the most readable and fascinating work yet on the many "coincidences" that made it possible for life to exist in the Universe. The reasoning is tightly constructed and some readers may want to backtrack to understand some of the key points more thoroughly. Others will want to read the book a scond time -as I did- simply for the sheer pleasure of the author's company. He makes some of the most profound ideas in cosmology, quantum mechanics and other areas of scientific enquiry accessible and, more importantly, enjoyable. This is a book that will change the way many readers see the Universe and the way that they contemplate the mystery of existence. This is a must-read!

I've heard some of Dr. Schroeder's awesome lectures in Isreal and the book was just as good. I've noticed though, that some people have specific critiscisms against the book, and I would like to address these.
*Firstly: This book is *not* apolegetic or all about trying to fit the Bible into science. In fact, that's specificly what it isn't. The Bible commentaries that Dr. Schroeder draws on predate modern science and its theories, so how could they have been apologetic or self-editing to fit science? Also, Dr. Schroeder is an Orthodox Jew. In effect, science could suddenly change its mind (however unlikely this may seem, this has occured in the past), this entire theory and book could become worthless, and Dr. Schroeder would still believe the Bible! This is an important point.
* Secondly, the author is an Orthodox Jew. So for those of you who are upset that he didn't include Christian/Catholic/Muslim/ect. sources, why would he? If you want such a book I'm sure they exist, so go ahead. That doesn't make this book incomplete to everyone, only to you. Also, please realize that Islam and Christianity both have their origins in Judaism. So it makes sense that a book on their theology or their philosophy and relationship with science will include the Torah, but a Jewish/Biblical (which to an Orthodox Jew will, yes, mean only the so-called Old Testament) perspective doesn't have to include theirs.
*Thirdly, whether you agree with the book's premise or not, it will certainly make you think!
I hope you all enjoy this incredible book!

Having been raised both Catholic and skeptical, I enjoyed reading this book. I was impressed with the way that Schroeder thouroughly explained his points and took into consideration the opposing arguments. I was especially intrigued by the chapter referring to the origin of life coinciding with the existence of water, and the stop/start nature of evolution. However, the part that prevents me from giving a full 5 stars is the chapter regarding free will and why "bad" things happen. Schroeder's argument for free will within certain parameters does not come as strongly as his thories for the big bang, but is interesting nontheless as it at least addresses the obvious duallity of all nature.

An iconoclast is defined in Wikipedia as someone who engages in the destruction of established dogma or conventions. Oh boy, Dr. Schroeder sure does that in this book. Are you an atheist? Dr. Schroeder smashes your idols, an evolutionist, more smashing, a Christian fundamentalist? More smashing.

Yes, the criticisms are correct. Sometimes Dr. Schroeder plays hard and fast with the facts -- sometimes stretching things a bit too far. But he is always evocative and always challenging.

Interesting stuff by Mister Schroeder...does not believe the bible is literal or even inspired by God, hard to tell what he really believes...long day stuff related to Genesis and a variety of other interesting concepts. He appears to be a kabbalist and certainly non Christian. He lost me at the start by quoting Maimonides who was a jewish/muslim/aristotelist. So confusing. He clearly does not get the significance of Genesis 3: 3-5 and what it means to "surely die" which sets the tone for the struggle with Lucifer's control in the world and how you can opt out of this world and "live forever". He does not understand the final covenant and the only one that matters. I guess there is some sort of plus here in the sense that he appears to not be an athiest or agnostic and believes in God; is not a fan of Darwin ++...you can buy this and read if you want...proceed with caution.

While this book is categorized as a science book, it is, in essence, a theology book that uses the scientific literature to back his arguments (which he includes as references, which I think helps a lot). The main theme of the book is that the conflict between science and religion is essentially nonexistent, since science, contrary to popular opinion, is not on a mission to disprove the existence of a Creator. Instead, when comparing certain scientific articles with not only the Bible, but also theological opinions that pre-date Darwinism, the two sides actually complement, not contradict, one another. Some of the more interesting examples include showing that the Genesis "seven-day" creation actually correlates with the timeframe of the Big-bang, as well as a very interesting theory about how Adam and Eve got along with other species of man.
While the physics presented in some of the chapters will go over the heads of those without a science background, he does occasionally warn the reader when this may occur and suggests where they may what to skip ahead to. I think it's a particular must read for those that like to argue religion with friends or coworkers ("Well, I was reading this book by this guy Schroeder, and HE thinks. . .") as well as those who just on occassion find themselves wondering about our place in this great big universe.

Schroeder's book presents clear arguments that the Bible's explanations of the beginning can be explained with modern science particularly the physical and cosmological views. His arguments on the biological are good but to me were not as compelling. He shows in reason detail the parallels and backs up his arguments with numerous other sources, in particular the works of other scientists of today and many Biblical scholars. I found the references to the Torah, the Hebrew translations and the many Rabbis of great interest. I believe that any one who is interested in the Bible and if or how modern science can be used to explain the beginning will find this a valuable read.

Schroeder's book does a superb job of evoking new thought on this subject and ongoing debate of exactly how God created the earth. There are many theories, such as Day-Age, Gap, Flood and Literal-24 Hour Day. But, Schroeder brings another idea into the equation, that of Einstein's relativity. A very interesting read.

While Schroeder's scientific approach is novel, his theological sources are suspect. Maimonides, a 13th century Jewish philosopher, was one of his major sources for theology. Conservative Christian teachings of all congregations today would disagree with these ideas. Nahmanides, also from the 13th century, was a Jewish Biblical commentator and kabbalist. His ideas are closer to today's beliefs, but both of these sources were in a theological no-man's land of time. They were far removed from the authors, the cultural/linguistic aspects behind the Torah of Scripture and they did not benefit from the scholarship of the past 150 years. While these are good sources of reading, they are not the place to rest ideas of theology regarding Creation because of these issues.

Schroeder brings up a SUPERB observation regarding those involved in the debate of Creationism versus Atheistic Macro-Evolution. Very few people involved in the debate are highly knowledgeable regarding both sides of the argument. Most scientists have a "high-school level" or lower understanding of theology and most supporters of Biblical Creationism have the same level of understanding of science. Very few are well-versed in both.

Schroeder delves deep into scientific discussion supporting Creation and Biblical accounts. This is interesting and is much too deep for those not trained in science. There is some superb theory put forth, but this is really for graduate level study.

This is not the book to start an investigation in the theories of Creation and Evolution, but after much reading, this could be an interesting book to read to get deeper inputs.

Schroeder has a very unique approach to many things and relies on ancient mysticism (kabalah)to explain difficult biblical topics. However, there are some gigantic holes in his presentations. One: he discounts God's warning that on the day Adam eats of the tree of knowledge he will die. Since Adam lived to be 930 years old and did not die the instant he bit the "apple" God must have made a mistake in the text and Schroeder feels this to be an intentional contradiction designed to make us look deeper into the text. Posh! Schroeder should understand that this was the fall of mankind that God referred to, not Adams physical death. Another good example of his biblical expertice is on page 15 when he claimed that Abraham laughed when God told him that Sarah (should be Sari) would have a child. Sari was the one who laughed, not Abraham. Further, according to my study, Jesus was the creator not God the Father (John 1:1). So when Schroeder keeps complaining that God kept saying "It is good" and follows this with why didn't God know it was good all along. Well, God also said at Jesus' baptism, "This is my son in whom I am well pleased," --- didn't God know all along that Jesus was good. This seemed to be Schroeders basis for evolution, that is, evolution is ok since God did it, and then God found out later it was "good". Another hole: Schroeder very expertly creates the background for his 6 days of creation using Einstein's theory and procedes to actually designate the exact length of each of the six days of creation. Later he insists that evolution is correct and relies on random acts of nature to produce life. How can you present truely random acts within days which have very set and specific limits of time? The assignment of time limits to each day destroys the concept of random acts for creation. Schroeder also fails to realize that the first four days are not 24 hour days regardless if the earth is approaching the speed of light or not. The purpose of the first light "let there be light" was to "separate the light from the dark" only as clearly stated in Genesis. The mechanism for measuring the days, nights, seasons, and years did not happen until creation day four, when God set the sun and moon its its place. The biggest bobo is when Schroeder claims that other people lived around Eden and God selected one of the males to be Adam and breathed a soul into him. Then came Eve, but where did she come from? Obviously there was none good enough in the nieghborhood to be upgraded, so Schroeder would have to rely on what the Bible says -- that God tood a rib from Adam and created Eve. So we are to believe that Adam was an upgrade and Eve was created as a result of an immaculate creation??? Why would Adam have taken millions of mutations and millions of years to create when God created Eve momentairly from a rib??? A truely appalling concept occurs on page 141 wherein Schroeder claims that Adam and Eve separated and Adam had sex for 130 years with the local gals in the neighborhood (those without souls). After 130 years, Schroeder claims that since Adam again knew his wife, he had sex with her again and produced Seth. Bunk. This is pure fantasy. There are many more examples of "accomodation" in this book and it is my opinion that a person beginning his/her Christian walk should not be swayed by the deceptions within it. Although expertly written, the Bible warns us not to "run ahead" of scripture and Schroeder seems to be on a fast paced marathon well ahead of the Bible. As Phillip E. Johnson, author of Defeating Darwinism, stated, "Scientific theories rely on elaborate reasoning and rest on assumptions that are difficult or impossible to prove." Schroeder does just this and, in some areas, relys upon mysticism to clarify and support his ideas. In summary- read and believe the Holy Bible and rely on the Holy Spirit to lead you to all truth.

Dr. Schroeder presents an easily readable treatise which should go a long way toward reducing the acrimony in the long-standing debate on origins. His ideas regarding the age of the universe are well worth contemplating by any serious scientist or theologian.
Before deciding to purchase this book in hardcover for my own library, I found myself copying extensive passages for future reference. Perhaps once every ten years I encounter a book that makes me re-think everything I have always believed. This was just such a book.

Schroeder does an outstanding job of synthesizing Biblical and extra-biblical Jewish texts in relation to modern scientific discoveries, particularly as they relate to the Big Bang and evolution. His understanding of astrophysics, quantum mechanics and the present state of evolutionary biology seem solid. He has a keen understanding of Biblical texts (see his discussion in the appendix on 'dinosaurs in the Bible!'). Theologically, I find the only drawback to be an apparent equal weight given to the Kabalah as to Torah and the prophets, with little distinction between the wisdom of sages and divine inspiration of the texts. Overall, the book is quite excellent and I have recommended it to many already.

Schroeder's writing is wonderfully clear and there is a light hearted quality to some very heavy information which makes the book a pleasure as well as a treasure of elucidation, on a sometimes challenged, cross disciplinary truth seeking. No book has more confirmed my conviction that the truth is ONE, and can be found if sought. The science is trustworthy and the illumination of elements resting below the surface of the Biblical text invaluable. Personally, I count this book second, only to the Bible, in trying to understand the construct into which I was born.

The author is right: there is no war between science and religion, and he rightly lays fault on religious leaders for creating such a war. But there is a war between biblical authority (and its followers) and science, again mostly because biblical adherents fanatically assert this book as some Holy Grail. Actually, as the author notes on many occasions (p127 & 131 for example) even among Bible believers, there is widespread disagreement.
This trait of vehemence or righteousness, is common to all people, even scientists who religiously assert the dominance of their beliefs. But there is an added arrogance in those following the bible, perhaps because these religions co-created the culture that decimated and dominated the world.
He continually criticizes scientists for having and adhering to preconceived notions and archaic beliefs. I find this absurdly ironic. The essence of science is to overcome the limitations of human nature by continually allowing new evidence to smash, albeit slowly, conventional theories and/or facts.
One of his main tenets is the authority of a book that claims humans have neshama, or soul. This is why Adam can go out and have sex with other `creatures' who look human but are lacking a soul. Am I crazy or do I see the roots of dehumanizing that leads to genocide? One of my Jewish friends even remarked that the Old Testament tells how Hebrews killed man, woman and child of their enemies. And of course God said it was okay. Mankind's history is filled with groups using religion and God to justify dehumanizing atrocities.
I get the impression that Schroeder's `God' is more a book than a deity.

The book is a fascinating study on how hard science can agree with biblical teachings. This book will definately not be welcomed in certain quarters, both in the religious and especially the scientific communities. As a scientist myself I commend Mr. Schroeder on his methods of research. Whether you agree or disagree with the premise, you should take the time to pick up the book. It WILL make you think and that's the most important thing any book can do.

I admit that I have been skeptical about evolution since the 1980s, simply on the grounds that it was just bad science, lacking proof. Schroeder's book addresses the discrepancies in evolutionary theory and touches upon the art of Biblical analysis in away that is easy to understand and it makes for intriguing cocktail chatter. Even those most convinced of evolution have been drawn into at least questioning their facts. If you've ever looked at the magical symmetry of our natural world and questioned how such design could be the result of "randomness," you will love this read!

This is a must read for any serious student of the Bible over 21. While the author harbors no hesitation in conjecture, he leaves readers without doubt that relativistic time is at the root of THE ANSWER. It is also a facinating summary of the Creation and Science debate of the past century. Given that, some of his conjectures seem "out there", EG Identifying "Tinshemet" with archeopteryx, (when the relevance of the verses depends on the fact that the Tinshemet is contemporary). Also, he asserts that the photon experiments prove that experiments can be indeterminate. They do nothing of the sort. Though they produce unexpected results, even he argues that those results are always the same. He also discusses the speed of light and time dilation and a parable, imperfect albeit, for understanding a Divinity beyond the bounds of time. This has been misunderstood by many reviewers, but IMHO, it fits well with the rest of the book.
Still, even if the details are only conjectural (EG fudging the exact exponent for relative time), the central thesis is revolutionary. He adequately rejects (respectfully) the "Divine testing us with fossils" and "Geology and Noah's Flood" dodges in favor of a really thought provoking, science-oriented thesis. And the author can take credit for bravery in discussing the undiscussable.

I began this book one evening and couldn't put it down until it was finished about four or five in the morning. Page after page I was dazzled by logic and reason that defied everything I knew about literal Creationism, and scientific evolution. What happened was, the layers of comfortable acceptance of traditional views were peeled back, and I realized for the first time that in my heart, they had been merely ideas, accepted because "they" told me so.

Schroeder's book scared me. For the first time in my life I suddenly *knew* that the biblical creation account was true. It was no longer just a because-the-Bible-says-so acceptance.

Far too many religious people shun scientific examination of their faith, locking themselves in ivory towers where even facts and evidence can "go to hell", if it disagrees with their traditional understanding. Scientists really have found evidence of a universe billions of years old though. Do we just shove our heads in the sand and ignore it?

We no longer need to. Gerald Shroeder's book makes perfect sense of both science and religion, without detracting from the purity and truth of either of them. He doesn't have to; the truth is, God really did create in six days the universe scientists now understand to be billions of years old, and the Genesis account describes this creation to the letter. There is no contradiction. It's enough to make you cry.

Both science-oriented readers and believers will be shaken up by this book, because ultimately it gives honour to God who created all science. It's essentially a search for the whole truth, and that's something we should all respect.

The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom by Gerald L. Schroeder is a book written by a biblical scholar and attempts to bring together the Genesis account of creation with present scientific knowledge about the cradle of life. It's a great book if you don't mind his biblical interpretations which are completely drawn from the Jewish tradition. There are a few strange theories in the book that some may find difficult to swallow.

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Are you a spiritual retard, or are you on the path to ENLIGHTENMENT?
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"The Science of God" is a scientifically sound and well-written text on the deeper levels of compatibility between legitimate academic science & Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy). Dr. Schroeder is not a religious fundamentalist nor someone wishing to convince you of anything, but rather an MIT physicist who also happens to have a good knowledge of Torah, Talmud, & Rabbinic Commentary.

Because of his unique intellectual background, Schroeder gives a perspective largely lacking in the Creationism vs Bing Bang/Evolution debate. He doesn't twist the science to match the religious texts, and he readily admits when something doesn't quite match up. Basically it's very intellectually honest yet convincing.

The ultimate point of this book, however, is not whether God or Nature created the universe; rather Schroeder explains that the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. In the end science can't provide for an explanation of a "Beginner", just a "Beginning". And since deep research into Bible & ancient commentary yield similar conclusions to those of modern physics, the reader -- whether Creationist, skeptic, or somewhere in between -- should come away with a bit more respect for each side's argument.

I highly recommend this book to those who are open-mindedly seeking to learn more about these fascinating issues.

I have to agree with others that this book does little in convincing or even reconciling any disparate views between science and religion. Obviously Mr. Schroeder is a man of strong faith, but possibly even stronger scientific beliefs. He seems to be trying to prove to himself that they can both reside peacefully in his mind.

His book deals only with a few aspects of the Hebrew bible, mainly the book of Genesis, (ie; the creation of the universe in 6 "days" and of creation of man (Adam)). As well there is a philosopical explanation of the nature of God, a paleontologic explanation of Adam (and Eve?) with respect to Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man, a biologic and quantum mechanical explanation of free will, and on it goes.

"Proven" scientific facts are never disputed and even the theory of evolution (albeit modified) is admitted to. But unlike other enlightened scientists Mr Shroeder appears to take the Bible literallly at it's word, no allegory or parables here. Hence he goes on to show how Adam was "created" 6000 years ago (by Bible estimates) and how that relates to known facts of early hominids (150,000-40,000 b.c.e.) and evolution. How the 400 to 900 year ages of early biblical figures are actual. And although he admits the account of Noah and the flood has problems he does not discredit it.

There is a LOT of interesting physics and mathematics in the book, although I must admit it was way over my head, so he could have proven to me that the earth was flat. And a lot of just plain good scientific research (he knows a lot about a lot). But in the end it just didn't gel into a believable "scientific" theory of God, just a slew of interesting assumptions.

A couple of far reaching assumptions made me question the authors reasoning. One was a reference to archaeopteryx (a reptile/bird evolutionary link of the late Jurassic period) which he states is mentioned in the book of Leviticus as "tinshemet" in a list of animals that are considered ritually pure or impure. I wondered why an animal which had been extinct for 100 million years would be mentioned as fit or unfit for sacrifice. And second was his quantum (pun intended) leap of deduction that a single word in the Hebrew writing of the book of Genesis can be shown to be a round-a-bout proof that dinosaurs are mentioned in the story of creation.

Long and short is that the book is interesting, not authoritative by any means in my opinion, and that Mr. Schroeder should be commended for being among that group of scientists and theologians with wide open minds, of which we need so many more. Now if I could just get a quantum mechanical explanation of how Jonah made it through those 3 days in the belly of the great fish.........

For many, the answer to the above question is "no" but for me as a Christian, I've never found them to be so separate in focus so as to need a reconcilitation. True religion and proven science harmonize very well, and Schroeder has written an interesting, thought-provoking book about the seeming parallels between what the Bible states and the findings of biochemists, astrophysicists, and even paleontologists. His explanation of the six creative days of Genesis was fascinating.

Science or the Literal Bible? Most people see these two alternative as mutually exclusive.
And indeed, it seems "obvious" that both cannot be correct: The Universe cannot be both 6000 years old and 15 billion years old. The Universe cannot be bounded by the laws of physics while humans retain their free will. And there are dozens of more examples of this kind.
In his book, Gerald Schroeder challanges these "obvious facts": Using relativistic time dilation he attempts to prove that billions of years can be squeezed into six days. The paradox of free will is also neatly explained away by the 'fuzzy' laws of Quantum Mechanics.
The attempt is commendable and Schroeder does make quite a few good points. But when you go down to the details, the book is plagued with scientific errors.
To begin with, his time dilation calculations are totally at fault. The factor of one million million he uses is totally arbitery (nothing really special happened at z=1 million million). His redshift/blueshift calculations are also wrong: The background temperature (and the redshift) changed by less than 10% in the last billion years. Nowhere near the rate needed to slow down from a 500 million year per day (Day 5, according to Schreoder) to 24 hours per day.
Another serious mistake appears in his coverage of evolution: He says the the evolution from chimpanzees to humans requires a million point mutations because the difference in the active DNA between human and chimps is 1,000,000 bases.
This is simply false. Schroeder himself says that the number of changes needed is no more than 70,000. In most cases a single point mutation is enough to complete a change.
It would have been better if Schreoder, as a nuclear physicist, asked an expert biologist before writing his chapters about evolution...
The bottom line:
Despite the errors and inaccuracies, is still recommend this book.
I recommend the book because it would open your mind to a totally new way of seeing both science and the Bible. Reading it would enlighten you, as long as you take the scientific details with a large grain of salt.

I just referenced this book on one of the the store forums that asked about science and religion, so I'm hoping it leads readers to this page. Please don't be deterred by negative reviews; just buy and read this book with an open mind. I'm married to and the mother of doctors/scientists, and know that learned people can hold fast to their very different opinions and theories. I'm not a scientist, but I am a "doubting Thomas" Catholic convert who is continuously searching for data to back up -- or even disprove -- my faith. Just the way my brain works. I bought this book on a whim years ago after finding it in the science section of a mega-book store. I love Dr. Schroeder's writing style: it's not presented as a text-book, so it draws you in like a good novel. On my first reading I had to skip over the more advanced scientific formulas and explanations, but still got a lot out of the book. Most importantly, it helped me offer answers to my four kids' questions when they were younger. This is one of my favorite books, and it gave me a very firm foundation in my faith. I don't know that all of it is "true," but then again, what is? I just love the way Dr. Schroeder presents his theories, and they make good sense to me.

I read The Hidden Face of God first and now The Science of God. Beyond an amazingly well researched exposition of a very compelling argument for the existence of God and Intelligent Design, it is a great read. Amazing page turner! I would read this one first and then The Hidden Face of God immediately after (couldn't put the first one down and had to go to the next one right after I finished the last page.)

Amazing job by Gerald L. Schroeder

I finished reading The Science of God last night (Alister McGrath has a book by the same title, but it reads altogether differently). I like the way the book is organized and how it does a fairly good job of explaining some scientific concepts, such as the two-slit experiment. But I can't help but feel like he fudges both science and the Bible to come up with interpretations that he feels result in harmonization of interpretations of both. In this way he reminds me of a kabalistic Hugh Ross, [...]

Some of his science is just plain wrong. There are several facts he mentions that as far as I know have no scientific basis, like the idea that algae have more information in their DNA (a latent library) than any other life forms. On page 188 he says `Only 3 percent of the human genome appears to actively code for genes'. The genome does not code for genes, the genes code for proteins. He goes on to say that even if the entire genome was active, there would not be enough coded information to make a human or any other mammal. What is the scientific basis for this argument? The fact is that the whole process of building a body is driven by genetic information.

Schroeder's equating of the collapse of the quantum mechanical wave function with providing the basis for our decision making process (on page 173) has no basis in fact. Although the evidence for QM clearly shows that the old Laplacian ideas of determinism are dead, using QM as a mechanism for our choices is unfounded. Free will rules, but not because QM is scientifically factual.

His idea of using Einstein's relativistic framework to explain the difference in time duration is a mathematical sleight of hand. For his time model to work, light would actually have to slow down as the universe expands. What slows down is the frequency of the wave lengths of the cosmic background radiation, not the speed. Schroeder is also guilty of conflating the Anthropic Principle with fine-tuning, a common misconception. His use of statistics to prove that the eye could not evolve convergently is also misplaced. He does not take into account that the same genetic architecture subject to similar environmental pressures in different phyla would respond in similar ways. There were several other opinions that I questioned, and in some cases they may have been just opinions with little basis in science.

Schroeder's theology also stretches conventional interpretation. Being Jewish, he clearly does not believe in a triune God. When God says `Let us make man in our image', Schroeder on page 140 says `us' refers to the spiritual and material composition of man - a fair stretch of hermeneutics. His reliance on the medieval writing of Nahmanides to interpret the Bible results in an interpretation of an interpretation. For example, he uses the Talmudic idea that other females morphologically similar to humans but without souls existed at the time of Adam. These potential spouses for Adam represented a threat to Eve after she had sinned, causing her to induce Adam to also sin so that he too would be mortal. Such speculation contributes nothing to either science or theology.

Schroeder's strongest contribution to the debate however is his philosophical acceptance of the truth of empirical science and his willingness and effort to integrate this into his faith-based worldview.

Modern scientific data points to a Universe billions of years old, while the Bible says that creation took six days.
Until recently, people assumed that they must choose between these two mutually exclusive options. A variaty of philosophies existed on both sides, but the bottom line was that only one of the two timeframes can be true.
Gerald Schroeder, in his amazing book, shows that both timelines can be genuinely and literaly true.
The idea is absolutely brilliant: Using the idea of relativistic time dilation, Schroeder proposes that the time scientists measure as billion of years was indeed precieved as six days from the Universal viewpoint.
After he is done with the six days of Genesis, he continues to tackle other difficult issues like free will vs. determinism, and the problem of evil. All in all, a very deep coverage of the usual questions typically asked by skeptics.
Now, for the critical part of my review:
While Schroeder excels in philosophy and theology, he makes quite a few grave mistakes when it comes to the science of his ideas.
The most important one is that his physical implementation of the six days of Genesis is totally at fault. This is even hinted in the book, as Schroeder correctly states the relation of universal time dilation to the background temperature. The dinosaurs would have to suffer the heat of billions of degrees, for their entire era to be compressed to one day. (In reality, the cosmological dilation associated with the age of dinosaurs is about 1%).
Normally, if I see such a mistake in a science book, I would throw it immediately into the trash. But in this case, the case Schroeder presents remains incredibly strong even after removing all the relativity calculations.
So strong, in fact, that I've only deducted one star from my rating because of it.
My recommendation:
Buy the book. Read it. And whenever Schroeder mentions time dilation calculations, ignore it. Don't let this major goof spoil an otherwise uplifting experience.

The Bible and Science are not at extreme odds as some may claim. The Bible teaches the re-formation of the earth took 6 days. Very little was actually "Created" in the 6 days... (days 5 and 6 were full of actual creations) The Heaven and Earth were "Created" in Genesis 1:1, prior to the famous "6-days".
There are distinct Hebrew differences with creating something from nothing, forming something from a pre-existing something, and re-fashioning something.
Read Genesis 1 without all the dogma and assumptions you have been spoon fed... Read it with a strongs concordance or a study guide. You may be suprised just how long the earth has been around. There is no room to argue with the age of man... we are clearly told that the first HUMAN man is Adam and he existed roughly 6,000 years ago. What we were not told was that the Earth was CREATED for the first time in 6 days, only 6k years ago. The earth was re-formed in 6 days because it was without form and void from Lucifer, his followers, and his time on the earth after his fall from Heaven. After all, the serpent was in Eden when Adam was in the Garden.
You didn't think the fall of Lucifer occured why Adam was in the garden did you?
luke

As a science-oriented person who also believes in a sole Creator with all my heart and soul, my MIND continued to struggle with the scientific "facts" that suggest the universe might actually be more than ten BILLION years old. Schroeder's book offers mind-altering scientific theories and explanations as to how and why the universe actually MUST have been created, in a non-preaching fashion that allows readers to decide for themselves based on the information presented. Thank you, Dr. Schroeder, for providing the EXACT information I have been searching for my entire life. Sum Tertius!

It's so refreshing to read a scientist who even believes in God. Schroeder in his 4 major books about God, Science and Creation goes so much farther. He does several important things. He enables believers to read their own Torah or Bible without the blinders we adopted early on. He helps us see what the Bible actually says. Then he points out so clearly, from an informed and exceptional physicist point of view, how the Bible and modern science agree on the basics of the universe's birth and development. I'm so impressed. This book is the best book I've read since The Hiroshima Agenda by Robert Clemons. That novel actually seems to be based on much of the science expressed and explained in Schroeder's books. Thank you Dr. Schroeder for opening the eyes of so many believers and atheists.

Gerald Schroeder took upon himself a very ambitious (and important) mission: to unite the findings of modern science with the foundation of Biblical faith. This, by itself, is sufficient grounds to praise Schroeder's book.
Unfortunately, Schroeder did not do his "homework" in the areas of science outside his own area of expertise. And the result is a book full of factual inaccuracies and errors, which greatly damage the overall quality of the work.
The further Schroeder ventures from his own area of expertise (nuclear physics), the more mistakes he make: His discussion of free will and quantum mechanics (which is closely related to his work) is superb. Things get abit unpolished when he starts talking about Big Bang cosmology, and the chapters about biology and evolution are simply a farce. It is quite obvious that the author did not seek advice from the experts in the relevant fields, before writing his book...
Another problem with the book is its internal inconsistencies: For example, in one chapter Schroeder postulates that the dinosaurs appeared on Day 5, yet in another chapter he gives a timeline which clearly imples that the age of dinosaurs (210 to 65 million years ago) happened on Day 6. The only way to explain this embarassing contradiction is simple oversight: apperantly, the author forgot the first statement when he made the second... Not a good thing, in a book that trys to convey a well-thought world view.
So should you buy this book?
That depends on what your needs are. If you are looking for a new refreshing perspective on science and religion, than this book is for you. But if you want a book which gets the science right, you'll be far better off with the more standard popular science books (such as books by Timothy Ferris, John Gribbin and Stephen Hawking).
If you want a book which has both... then just wait a few years. After Schroeder has paved the way, it is only a matter of time until someone (perhaps even Schroeder himself) writes an appropriately researched book on the matter.

Leon makes the error (a common error) of projecting dinosaur time forward
to our time. In such a forwarding projection the time change is indeed about
one per cent. But that direction of projection is totally erroneous. The
Torah projects the data related to the first six days back (not forward) to
the moment just after the beginning (as I detail in the book). And that is
the huge compression of time that occurs. The dino's were around on earth
for 185 billion years, from about 250 million years ago to 65 million years
ago. That 185 million years when viewed from the perspective of the Bible,
that is looking forward from the beginning, would be vastly shorter. BUT
this change in perspctive has absolutely nothing to do with the temperature
that the dino's experienced. The years and the temperatures that the
dinosaurs experienced were the years and temperatures of the earth at their
time, not the projected view of the Torah.What we are talking about here is
red shift and blue shift, concepts used in astronomy dozens of times a
night. I perceive a red star. But if I want to know what the true color of
the star is, I must project the light frequency back to the moment when the
light was emitted from the star. In that backward projection, space
compresses and the longer red wavelength compresses to the shorter blue
wave, the blue shift. I just applied this well known principle to the age of
the universe.

Schroeder does a brilliant work of compressing time to 6 literal days. Too bad he forget to reckon with "0" (zero) in the numerical count. Too bad he cannot use religion to prove "purpose" in the universe or universes.
But he succumbs to the same scotoma by which he judges unbelieving fellow-scientists. He relies on old, inscrutible indisputable, and non-changing documents and ideas to make his points; in so doing he negates "the change of mind" that he is so eager to expect and extract from other scientists. It's indeed a good thing that Science questions everything, and has no sacred holybooks or theories that cannot be challenged and overthrown.
In the author's reach to prove "purpose" (in creation and the universe) this scotoma is most obvious. He tells us, approvingly, that a prosecutor once said he would have tried Cain (Cain and Abel story in Genesis) for murder one (meaning, in the First Degree) on the spot. If this prosecutor is accusing Cain and bringing him to trial for murder in the death of Abel, he is not only predictable, but is also either stupid or lazy. Even to a lay and objective person, there is no premeditation or anger towards his brother on the side of Cain. On the other hand, if the prosecutor is going to get God for this heinous crime, he is truly on the right track. Compared to Cain, God had more of the means, the motivation and more opportunity to set up Cain, as much as to prevent the unnecessary death of Abel. God is the suspect and even the guilty one here, if justice must be done. And since the author mentioned it briefly, the choice and power over 6 million hapless Jews during the holocaust is less of Hitler and his Nazi regime's than of God's.
If there is "purpose" to the universe and to existence, you cannot prove it by defending and using the image and persona of the God of Genesis, as Schroeder does, regardles of which version--the Torah, the Old testament or whatever, and regardless of whose interpretation--the Talmud or Billy Graham's. Well, unless you want to show the pathological co-dependent relationship between a Bully-God and his captive human slaves as "purpose." This is a relationship that immediately exonerates God from right choices and prudent exercise of power and immediately places blame on hapless humanity--"the usual suspects." This is a typical bully-bullied relationship. This is "the purpose" that religion is trying to prove.
(For the record, Jesus rejected the above, and thought and taught otherwise; for this, his teachings were rejected by traditionalist Judaism and adulterated into antithetical doctrines by Christianity).
The only hope of finding "purpose" in existence, if "purpose" exists, lies Science, not religion. So, I strongly disagree with Schroeder.

Gerald Schroder is both a man of science and an Orthodox Jew. The MIT educated scientist feel that he needs to be loyal to both the world of science and his orthodox Jewish faith.
His latest book is an attempt to demonstrate that there is no contradiction between these two seemingly contradictory worlds.
His first point is probably accepted by most people nowadays. The bible is not physics textbook neither can science answer our fundamental questions about life.
He then goes on to show weaknesses in the present theory of evolution.
Schroder is a man with a problem .He can neither forsake his religious faith or his scientific education. Therefore he must reconcile them. He uses Einstein's relativity to justify the biblical six days of creation and takes advantage of quantum mechanics to justify the Jewish philosophy from the middle ages of free will.
Schroder is part of a long tradition of over 1000 years that tries to live in the world of science and traditional religion .He finds himself in good company. But does it help?
I don't think his present volume will raise more than a smile from the committed non believing scientist or layman . His approach seems to be too selective. Schroeder's great awe at the workings of the universe proves nothing. The atheist simply accepts that that's the way it is. His work is based mostly on Jewish sources that may cause problems for the general reader.
In summary I don't think anyone will change his position due to this book. In the age we live in a better education in science is surely a prerequisite for all. However, we ignore ancient traditions at our peril and they are still part of our lives even if they can't fully explain the universe.

this book was an excellent change of pace from many books which unlike this, attempt to prove the existence of God. Schroeder, instead of doing the scientifically impossible, and theologically irrational, in trying to "prove" God, rather simply provides a reassuring insight into how modern science does not contradict, or disprove God, and that it is possible to be both a good scientist and believe in God. his physics are a bit complex, but the scientific community seems to be the intended audience, and yet even a high school student would be able to understand the basic concepts of his arguments. over all i think that this is a wonderful book that finally expresses my longstanding sentiment that if the church and science would simply take a while to listen to one another, they would see that there need be no conflict.

Gerald Schroder has written a compelling, intelligent and ambitious work which bolsters the creationists, as opposed to literalists, side of the evolutionary debate. Genisis, the first six days, and the BIG BANG,explained as epochs, understood in terms of a process of events, is one of the best explantions of the 24-hour day conundrum I have read.

Gerald Schroeder combines physics, physical chemistry, statistics, paleontology, biochemistry & other scientific fields of knowledge in an analysis of the Bible & cosmology in what should bring any atheist to an epiphany. Applying the the theories of the most widely renowned & greatest physicist of our time, (Relativity/Einstein and the big bang/Hawking) and the results of the Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer Satellite mission by NASA, he shows that Genesis and the timeline of the big bang and the fossil record match to an accuracy of one part in a million million (unheard of accuracy in modern scientific experimentation). Also in a statistical analysis of the DNA of the eye alone, the likelyhood of a Darwinian evolutionary formation is smaller than 1 part per all particles in the universe! And of course this lucky and unlikely occurence in some primordial soup had to happen 5 different times for each basic life form in nature that uses the basic structure of the eye . This is truly a strange occurence in a universe in which entropy is always increasing. And of course there are the well kept secrets that not one missing link of any kind has ever been found in the fossil record and that all life at various epochs appeared on the scene essentially at the same time without the chance or time for evolution between species. It is clear that Darwin was a dogmatic atheist that had a very negative attitude toward religion, not leaving the door open to the possibility that his theory may be wrong. This dogmatic attitude permeates our popular culture and has been an essential component of the agenda of those who wish to undermine the judeo-christian foundations of the country in order to pursue greater licence under the guise of greater individual freedom. I ask atheists who profess to having an open enough mind to entertain that evolution explains away the existence of God and give up said beliefs to also have an open enough mind to read this book and entertain that all the previously mentioned theories are an important proof of the likelyhood of the existence of God. Thanks to this book it is clear that evolution should be relegated to ash heap of history & science. With reliance on the most flawless scientific theories of our time, it is clear that creationism must be taught along side of evolution in all schools and universities. I can only imagine the shiver going down the spine of a non-believer as he/she may entertain the previously ridiculous notion that the Bible may truly be the Word of God.

This book is far from perfect. It has some reasoning that is a bit ad-hoc. However, as a whole it is filled w/great information. It is an especially good book for atheists who believe they have it all figured out. From reading some of the negative reviews that accused Schroeder of being a bad scientist for believing in God, I must question their reason for reading the book in the first place (if they did, in fact read it). Also, it seems to me that people who are so narrow minded are doing nothing more than manipulating the terms. In other words, to them, being a good scientist = being an atheist. Even if your theories are incoherent & non-sensical, you're still a great scientist so long as you disbelieve in God. (Richard Dawkins would be a great representative of this motif). On the other hand, being a believer = being a bad scientist (or pseudo scientist). Even if you make revolutionary insights into the nature of the universe, but believe in God (Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton would be examples of this), you are STILL bad scientists - by default. Now, if one rids oneself of silly pre-suppositions such as this, he might just learn something from Schroeder's book. If not, then there is no reason to read it. Furthermore, there is no reason to read any book as it means that the individual who subscribes to such an absurd set of "rules" has closed his mind to reason. One of the things this book does quite well is dis-inter so much "embarrasing" data that the august "scientific community" has decided to sweep under the rug. The Wistar Institute is a great example of this. Contrary to popular belief, science is hardly an "objective enterprise seeking the truth." To the contrary, metaphysical pre-suppositions run amok & theories are often based on them more than the data itself. Any philosopher of science knows this all too well. Thoughtful people who choose to read this book may find out as much for themselves.

This book is surprisingly different than most other creation/evolution books I have read, as, instead of arguing for one or the other, Schroeder actually gives a case for both theories. His topics range from using quantum mechanics to mold the scientific dates and the Genesis dates of the Bible to the same frame of reference.
By far the best part of this work is when Schroeder presents his theory that Adam and Eve weren't necessarily the first of their kind, only the first to actually become human beings, in the sense that we are today.
The reason I give four stars (would be four and a half)is because the book begins to lag down prematurely, as the final chapters begin to cut away from the main theme of the novel. However, the appendices are quite interesting.

There are some issues described in this book and others that I do not agree to, other than the book was well written. It seemed to explain using Einstein's relativity that 6 days could equal 15.75 billion years, it shows that Evolution is not contradictory to the Bible. I recommend this book to anyone not knowing if they should accept Darwinism or the Big Bang, or any anyone or has thought the only conclusion from these is atheism, which it is definately not.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book from start to finish. It took me several weeks to read because of all the material I had to digest. I will say now that no I did not agree with 100% of Mr. Schroeder's views, however, it opened up my mind to some of the answers I had been looking for. As with any book I read, some of it you discard and some of it you retain in your mind as another piece of the puzzle. Rarely does anyone read a book on God and completely agree with it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is searching for answers about God and creation. It helped bridge the gap between science and my faith in a personal God.

This was an interesting book. Not that any of his ideas have been picked up after reading this, but I appreciate the different points of view and they were refreshing to read. His attempts to reconcile the so-called rift between the Old Testament and modern science is nothing if it isn't tidy.

Schroeder makes a noble attempt to combine science with Christianity, but he messed up both the science and the Christianity. Be wary of any of any of his explanations.

His use of relativity is completely erroneous, and so is his use of probability. There are several instances where he makes extremely elementary mistakes in his calculations and use of theories. He has great ideas, but they are supported by erroneous science. If you wish to see an explanation of this, just read any secular review of the book.

His interpretation of the bible is also in error. He refers to ancient "scholars," but most people in the biblical scholars community have never heard of them. Their views were not widely accepted in their time, and for good reason. Their views stretch what the bible says to its farthest limit and have little to no support in the actual biblical text.

Schroeder also frequently misquotes the bible, and his discussion of the neshama in particular is in no way supported by the actual text. One should be very wary when he uses the translations of three obscure extremists rather than the translations of every other biblical scholar in history.

I am both a Christian and studying to be a physicist, so I must say that this book is an embarrassment to both parties. What he is trying to do is great - the realm of physics needs more Christians who are willing to speak out - but if you're going to do it, do it right.

Schroeder's discussion of the birth of our universe from the seemingly contrasting viewpoints of the science and theology fascinates and provokes interest in further study of both fields. Each side has much to learn about the other, and Dr. Schroeder presents and picks apart several theories from both sides for the reader to consider. A wonderful learning experience for anyone, and marvelously fascinating at the very least.

In the beginning God created.... Everything after that is arguing about how. Science is the theology of our discovering God's methods and laws. The Bible was written by men inspired by God's presence in terms of their understanding at a time in history. We've moved deeper in that understanding, but God continues in the center of it all.

The second book by G. Schroeder contains a few good passages, but also some egregious errors, which are puzzling when made by a PhD in Physics. For example, G. Schroeder completely misinterprets the experiments with particles moving through openings, invents some odd concept of heat diluting in enlarged volumes, misrepresents the story of photoelectric effect, etc . One striking feature of this book is that Schroeder suggests in it the chronological data , which completely contradict his own data on the same subject, given in his first book, without a word of explanation why he changed those data. A useless book.

I would have to place this work on my top-five list for thought provoking books. The author does an excellent job weaving modern scientific thought with ancient biblical commentary. It is done in such a way that the reader finds the connection between the two topics to be much stronger than would be shown by other contemporary views on the topic.

As with other books like this, I would encourage the reader to approach with an open mind as well as a bit of skepticism. The author presents some very interesting ideas, some of which seem highly plausible and some of which are a bit far-fetched. I think the phrase "don't miss the forest for the trees" would be applicable. One could easily get wrapped up in a particular detail while missing the overarching theme.

The only reason that this isn't a ten is so that I can always have an ace, just in case the book to end all books is published. Dr. Schroeder gives answers to questions that I always felt were and would be unanswerable. He shows us not only how man, the universe, earth, etc. were created, but why they were created. This book has broadened my mind and given my life meaning. I will never read the torah (the bible) the same way again.

now, i'm no scholar, i'm only 18 for crying out loud, but i found this book to be absolutely amazing. all i ever knew growing up was what they taught in church, and they certainly don't teach this! but i found no contradictions between the bible and evolution. i particularly found the part about adam interesting, the whole neshama thing. i liked it so much that i bought his following book, the hidden face of god. i recommend this to anyone wanting to "broaden their horizons". the scientific jargon was sometimes hard for me to follow, but i blame that on me being young and well.. not a scientist. but for the most part it was easy to read and absolutely fascinating. makes you wonder how far the rabbit hole really goes...

Finally, someone has come up with a plausible and fascinating argument for how the Bible depiction of creation (6 days) and the evidential age and order of the universe's creation (billions of years)tie together. The book resonates well, and I look forward to updates.
Judith Virta, author of Sheol Has Opened.

Instead of testing deduced hypotheses against data, the author looked for patterns in the infinite mess of reality that sort of fit the template provided by the Bible. Maybe I missed something, but this isn't satisfactory in science. The book is still fun to read, in the same way that it's fun to read horoscopes.

This book is certainly not a "easy read," but it is one of my all time favorites! Gerald Schroeder has helped me reconcile faith and science. He's helped me keep believing in a God without having to shut off my brain! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! While learning all sorts of scientific facts I simultaneously worshiped. That aren't many book like that around!

I respect the author's intent, which is quite admirable and amazing. He does a good job of chastising the religious and scientific communities for their rigid and sometimes dishonest inability to accomodate findings and facts that disprove or call into question their "beliefs".

BUT, his utter reliance on Hebrew mystics disqualifies him from creating a true argument for HIS "beliefs". Why would they have a monopoly on universal insights and truths?

Still, I enjoyed reading this book, and 3 stars or 3.5 stars is appropriate.

I must admit that this review is from reading the 1997 edition of the book, but I'm fairly confident that the author hasn't revised his basic arguments much. I can sum up The Science of God in two words, special pleading. The author, Gerald Schroeder believes the Bible to be true, but in a coded way that isn't directly obvious. He also believes that he understands part of the code. That being said, he also stated that the Bible needs to be read on its own terms. This is where special pleading comes in. Replace the Bible in that statement with the papers on cold fusion, or a politician's testimony. Can we afford to give one document in the world all of the benefits of the doubt and none of the scrutiny? His claims need to be analyzed individually.

Let's see if I can summarize Gerald Schroeder's claims here. The Bible is true but coded. The world was created in just six literal days because of relativity and God's perspective on the matter. The creation of man really started with the creation of man's spirit which happened to Adam around the time of the first writing. Prior to that time nobody had souls. God allows a lot to happen through natural means, but when he does effect something it is also through natural means. We have free choice due to quantum uncertainty. Darwin didn't base his theory on fossils. Our current state of evolution would be impossible if based on random mutations, and thus, evolution happened, but was directed by God. The universe is fine-tuned for our existence. God is outside of time. God is unlimited.

Now the first three claims are pretty strongly based on his notion that the six literal days of creation correspond with the perspective of the entire universe. This and his idea about the creation of man's soul being the beginning of creation are pretty much Schroeder's only contributions here. The rest are ideas that have been advocated several times before and thoroughly debunked. Schroeder gives credit where it is due, which is good. The six days notion that he portrays is an impressive idea, and a testament to Schroeder's cognitive abilities that he could imagine such a scenario and do the related math to support it. However, much of the rest of the book is filled with various edge of science and thoroughly debunked claims trying to support his main presumption, the truth of the Bible.

If the six days in the Bible were from the perspective of the universe, and only seem like 13.7 billion years [...] from our perspective, then how were those "days" defined? Was a day a single rotation of the earth, the modern 24 hours? There was no sun for the first day. Schroeder used a logarithmic scale to fit major events in the creation of the universe to the six days mentioned in the Bible. This is rather arbitrary. Using different scales, I can match up pretty much anything quantitative with anything else quantitative. It is evidence of nothing.

Schroeder associates the first day of creation with the period from the big bang to galaxies starting to form. The second day was associated with the disk of the Milky Way forming and the formation of the sun. Day three was supposedly the the time between the earth cooling and the first forms of photosynthetic algae. Day four was the beginning of earth's atmosphere turning transparent and getting an oxygenated atmosphere. Day five marks the first multicellular animals and the beginning of winged insects. Day six marked the most massive extinction in earths history all the way to humans. Schroeder admits that this doesn't even match up perfectly with the Biblical description, even using his logarithmic scale. It's an impressive attempt at shoehorning science into the Bible, but it is hard to believe that the winged creatures mentioned in Genesis refer to insects. The Bible has been known to describe beetles in the same category as grasshoppers as having "legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth" Leviticus 11:21. Now either they are describing beetles as leaping or as having four legs. Either way, it is hard to assume that the descriptions are accurate. Unless the Bible was referring to the leaping beetles of New Caledonia, this doesn't make much sense. Most beetles do not leap.

Schroeder impressed me with the math that he used to come up with his logarithmic six days of creation. It is a testament to his brilliance, but this is a brilliance wasted on what is essentially a conspiracy theory. Kepler, the scientist who discovered the laws of planetary motion, became obsessed with the question of why there were six planets in the solar system. He thought that it was significant. When I learned the planets, there were nine bodies described as planets revolving around our sun. Today there are only eight. Schroeder obsesses over the supposed link between the Bibles six days of creation and connections with our known history, but doesn't even consider that they may not exist.

Dr. Schroeder claims that the Bible does discuss dinosaurs in Genesis. This is a different argument from the one that many creationists use. Many creationists like to claim that the Behemoth, the Leviathan or the dragons mentioned in the Bible are in fact dinosaurs. Schroeder instead claims that the dinosaurs are mentioned as being large creatures which the Bible uses the same word for reptiles. I can't help but ask whether or not the Bible had a good taxonomy of animal life to be sure that we are interpreting this correctly. Reptile is a broad and non-cladistic category. I doubt that all people would necessarily group a lizard with a turtle. One could argue that dinosaurs are reptiles the same way that mammals and birds are. Schroeder acknowledged that birds are dinosaurs, but seems to think that Genesis describes them dinosaurs as giant reptiles.

When Dr. Schroeder tried to claim that archeopteryx, the prehistoric bird and one of the best examples of transitional forms, is actually mentioned in Leviticus he loses even more credibility. I can see how one could make the assumptions that he made, but archeopteryx was extinct far before humans ever walked the earth. Schroeder is cutting himself with Occam's Razor here since he is introducing far more questions than he is answering with his suggestion. Why would Leviticus, the book dedicated to the rules for the Hebrew priesthood, be a timeless book about things before the time of man, like Genesis? For what reason would the archeopteryx be mentioned, but not the dinosaurs? If the Behemoth or Leviathan truly were prehistoric beasts, why were they mentioned if already extinct? Here's an even better question. Why doesn't Schroeder, who recognized that whales with legs had been discovered in fossils, not recognize this as a change in kind? Is a change of kind then recognized as a change in class? Dr. Schroeder does not seem to understand that the taxonomic system for describing organisms and the phylogenetic tree or bush are not one and the same.

Schroeder sees the Bible as the basis of Western civilization. I agree that there are many things that entered our culture from the Bible, but there are many things that entered our culture from misinterpreting the Bible, and many more that entered our culture and the Bible from Greek and Roman and other Mediterranean sources.

The Science of God claims that,"Kabalah is logic not mysticism, but logic so deep that it might seem mystical to the uninitiated." It is this kind of logic that drove many Jewish people to follow a false prophet with bipolar disorder as the Messiah. Their Messiah eventually converted to Islam. Even if Kabalah were logic, the premises are important as to whether or not it is true. Science is good at checking premises.

The author denies that there is any indication that God is limited, even though the Bible indicates that God's decisions were influenced by people. The author failed to explain this away adequately. Schroeder argued that the Bible does not contradict itself and is true but coded. When Schroeder mentioned something that seemed powerfully contradictory, like God telling Adam that if he were to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil that he would die that very day, he would follow it up with the claim that we just don't understand it. He then proceeded to not explain it. This doesn't work, but I'll explain why.

I'm a major fan of the work of Stephen Jay Gould. He's been my intellectual hero since I was about eighteen. Schroeder, like many of Gould's adversaries and like many creationists, likes to quote Gould or take his words out of context. I know that Stephen Jay Gould was wrong about some things, but I didn't always think that way. If I were to adopt a view that Gould's work is perfect and unassailable, I would say that even though Stephen Jay Gould may seem to have been wrong due to comparisons with more recent data, or even with Dr. Schroeder's ideas, that was just our misunderstanding of the complex coding that Dr. Gould put into each of his works. The same argument could be made for pretty much anything. It looks wrong, but it really isn't. It's just too complicated for you to understand. You can't point out limitations of science but write off inconsistencies in the Bible as hidden information. I would be more willing to believe that Dr. Gould would have come up with such a magnificent piece of coding than the authors of the Bible, and sometimes people are just really good at seeing patterns when they aren't there.

Dr. Schroeder sees the universe as fine tuned for the existence of life and for ourselves. Daniel Dennett did a presentation on how things that appear to have been intelligently designed can be formed by completely natural processes, and how it is difficult to tell whether something has been designed or not. Schroeder used the Paley argument that we know that a watch was intelligently designed due to its complexity. I would argue that this is not true. I would argue that people know that a watch is intelligently designed because we know that people have designed similar things. If we were unaware of this fact, we might think that a watch were some kind of living creature that had parents going all the way back to the beginning.

Schroeder attributed the fine tuning arguments to Paul Davies. Paul Davies wrote "The Mind of God", which I read as well. Davies very eloquently explained many aspects of the universe and of physics. It was a wonderful read, until near the end where it veered off into his own personal ideas on the fine tuning of the universe. Davies is yet another physicist who doesn't understand enough of other sciences to have a good grasp on our place in the cosmos. Mark Twain once famously stated. "Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of paint on the pinnacle-knob at its summit would represent man's share of that age; & anybody would perceive that that skin was what the tower was built for. I reckon they would. I dunno." [...]

The fine-tuning notion can be easily turned on its head. Was the universe fine-tuned for our existence, or did we evolve due to the universe being the way that it was? The author seemed to think that the universe had to be this way, otherwise it would have no meaning, since there would be nobody to appreciate it. That's really, really magical thinking. That's like believing that you literally can't die because you have children to support. I agree that the universe wouldn't have meaning without someone to appreciate it, but that's a far cry from claiming that the universe requires meaning to exist.

There is also a large chasm between the conditions necessary for life and the conditions necessary for humans to exist. The universe is largely empty space, inhospitable for life. Nearly all of life was decimated in the Permian extinction, yet the author sees this not as evidence that the universe may not have been fine-tuned for our existence, but rather evidence that it was being directed toward our existence. He seems to think that no asteroids will demolish our planet as long as we're in God's good graces.

The author claims that Darwin never had fossil evidence that evolution really took place, and that it should have been found after 200 years. If 200 years should have been long enough to find the evidence for which Charles Darwin was searching, then surely 6,000 years should be long enough to find evidence that a god performed miracles. Even more so, 2,000 years should have been long enough to have a messiah return or even show up for the first time. Furthermore, many fossils that Charles Darwin actually did base his ideas upon have just been uncovered recently. Darwin's ideas were based on fossils. Transitional forms are far from, totally absent from the fossil record". The transition between one phylum and another is rare, because our definition of phyla is imperfect and most phyla diverged early on in evolution.

Dr. Schroeder learned a lot about biology wrong. It's as if he were trained wrong as a joke. I won't claim that there was never a textbook that taught things the way he learned them. There are many terrible textbooks. However, he supposedly learned evolution moved up from simple organisms up through annelids and then to mollusks before moving on to evolving toward humanity. In the 1960's it was known that the branches of annelids and mollusks were separate from the branch from which humans eventually emerged. This misunderstanding is probably what led the Dr. to think that macro-evolution refers to evolution between phyla or classes.

Schroeder's misunderstanding of biology becomes clear when he refers to humans as a "top of the line creature". He also referred to the fine tuning necessary to create a world with creatures able to "meet the challenges of nature". In modern biology, it is understood that humans are not "top of the line" creatures. We have an intellect that allows us to adapt to our surroundings under more circumstances than many. However, beetles may out live us. I could argue that neither John Lennon nor Jesus are bigger than the beetles, which have an over abundance of different species, many of which can survive circumstances that no human could. There is no need for the universe to provide creatures that can survive it. Schroeder's argument has too many unstated assumptions to even clarify at times.

Although Dr. Schroeder correctly points out the difference between the notion of an evolutionary tree with a long trunk from which groups split off and the more modern notion of an evolutionary bush with many trunks and branches all coming from the same root, he seems to have ignored much of what Stephen Jay Gould explained concerning this. Creationists like to claim that macro-evolution is the change between species or alternatively genus. Creationists like to confuse the meaning of either species or genus and the Biblical "kind". The Bible does not define the term "kind" in a scientific manner, and the people who used the term had no knowledge of modern taxonomy.

Schroeder seems to think that micro-evolution is the kind that happens within species or families, but macro-evolution is reserved for evolution between phyla and classes. There were no classifications as complex as these back when the Bible was written. There is not Biblical definition of "kind". Macro-evolution is not evolution from one body plan to another. It is often defined as evolution from one species to another, although, many non-biologists would lump any physically similar animals and plants into the same kind, there is no scientific reason to do so.

I was impressed that the author knew about the protostome deuterostome split and how the gene for the development of eyes is shared between protostomes (including flies) and deuterostomes (including humans). However, learning this piece of information was world shattering for me. When I had first learned this fact, a year after his book was published, but from entirely different sources, it was awe inspiring to me. I had been a creationist until I had taken a class in zoology in 1996. After that class, I had a better understanding of evolution and generally accepted it. I had previously designed my own notion that evolution between protostomes and deuterostomes was impossible.

The body plans of protostomes and deuterostomes are the most diametrically opposed of any body plans in the animal kingdom. I thought that a special creation or alien seeding would have been necessary for a protostome (creature whose original opening is near the mouth and nerve chord is near the belly) to become a protostome (creature whose original opening is near the anus and nerve chord is toward the back). However, when I visited the Michigan State University (MSU) campus biology department as part of a course from Lansing Community College, I learned that the fruit flies the MSU campus were studying had the same genes for eye formation that humans did. This was enough evidence to me that we shared a common ancestor, and that ancestor may even have had eyes. Many textbooks of the time listed trilobites as the first creatures to have eyes, since trilobites had eyes with lenses composed of calcium carbonate, the same substance as limestone, which preserves quite well. I later learned that there were several non-far fetched ways in which the protostomes could have evolved into deuterostome body plans. It was disheartening to see someone misconstrue this evidence as support for intelligent design.

The author also proposed that DNA does not gain any new information via evolution, but rather loses it. If he were to do some quick calculations involving the number of mutations we accrue and how much DNA we have, I'm pretty sure that he would realize that the original organisms did not have all of the possible DNA necessary to create all organisms. It seems easy enough to test. Why don't we just check microbes today and see whether or not they have all of the genes necessary for producing people? It seems that some of them may have genes for multicellularity, but not all do.

The author asked, why aren't there any new body plans? Evolution uses what already works without re-inventing the wheel. Unless all life more complex than unicellular life were to be wiped off of the face of the earth, the competition between multicellular organisms prevents new body plans from forming. Even 90% of all life being wiped out is not enough to open up the niches to produce new phyla. It's like the old question of why life isn't forming spontaneously all over the planet. Once life took hold, it consumed the raw materials necessary to produce more life, and organisms became competitive. Any new life would be ill-equipped to compete among the old-timers on the scene.

Gerald Schroeder, believes that spiritual truth and scientific truth are two equally indispensable pieces of reality. However, he also believes that the Bible is true, and evidently doesn't need the scrutiny of other religious and mythological belief systems. He spent more than a chapter on how the biblical creation story is supposed to be completely compatible with our modern understanding of biological evolution and life's origins, yet he ignores the uncanny similarities between say, sun worshiping religions and our modern understanding of photosynthesis and the food cycle, or how the double helix of Hermes's caduceus seemed to be prescient for the discovery of the structure of DNA. By devoting his time to trying to prove that the Bible is consistent with science, he doesn't question other possibilities. This is a complete disregard for the scientific method.

I was impressed that Schroeder was aware of the theory of evolution by natural selection and how it varied between random mutation and selection. However, the author then seemed to completely ignore the role of selection in the process. The confusion between random mutation and the theory of evolution by natural selection is common among the lay community, as is the confusion between biological evolution and the theories of abiogenesis. However, Dr. Schroeder seems to throw these all into the same basket and argue that abiogenesis is impossible based on random mutations and that evolution is directed, and therefore intelligently designed. Both parts of his argument are due to neglecting the role of selection in both the beginning of life and in biological evolution. Biological evolution is not random. The mutations may be random (although not necessarily), but the selection most certainly is not. The environment in which organisms live is the directional force of evolution. I feel like I'm kicking a dead horse in explaining this, but a random mutation will or will not survive based on the environment, only those that survived the last strain on the population will be available for the next round of mutations. It's an elimination round strategy. Just as in boxing or other sports, it doesn't guarantee the best fighter is left. The best fighter/organism may have been unlucky and had a really rare weakness against an overly specialized fighter early on. Had the fighter/organism had a chance beyond that it may have beaten all the rest, but this environment doesn't give second chances.

In abiogenesis or the theory of life from non-life, the concept is not that random molecular changes produced a cell. It is closer to the notion that random molecular changes caused more stable organic molecules to exist for a longer period of time in our planet's early environment. Among these more stable molecules at some point a molecule or group of molecules caused one of the molecules to be able to synthesize another. This molecule would be a replicator. This may have even happened several times before life as we know it took off. We now know that the polymerase chain reaction or PCR requires alternating periods of heating and cooling in order for DNA molecules to reproduce themselves. An early environment involving such heating and cooling cycles, which nature produces in abundance, could allow any such chance formation to thrive.

Dr. Schroeder seems to think that there is something too close to be chance between the eyes of cephalopods and humans. He suggests that this is due to directed evolution and contrasts this with randomness and chance. He fails to comprehend how a similar environment could direct genes toward a similar end. The author already mentioned the soul of an animal vs. the soul of a human being early on, yet suggests that animal evolution was directed as was ours, even animals that were not our ancestors. If a human eye was evolved due to God's involvement, and an octopus's eye was evolved due to God's involvement, the notion of a God that mad man in it's own image conjures up images of Cthulhu. Eyes having the same origin for all animals is evidence of common origins of animals, not pre-planted genes and intelligent design. The author needs to read Leonard Mlodinov's book, The Drunkard's Walk.

Also, he describes the God of the Bible in a way that has the opposite effect of what he might have intended. His description of God is one in which God appears to be fairly malevolent. He might be good on a cosmic level, but on the human level, his will doesn't line up with what we would call good. He allows free will to reign, by allowing all kinds of natural atrocities to happen. The author doesn't see this as an example of a limitation of God's, but a truly unlimited God would not have to compromise free will to prevent natural disasters.

In describing why humans have decreased in longevity from the hundreds of years described Biblically, he argued that it was a natural process giving the example of people breeding animals for shorter length of life for the purposes of bringing them to slaughter more quickly. For a proponent of a book that has sprouted more doomsday cults than any other, I'm rather surprised that he used this example. Considering his views, I'm also rather surprised that he didn't run with it.

Part of Schroeder's argument is that the world is only about six thousand years old counting from when humans gained souls. Using Schroeder's own technique of taking a statement very literally and seeing what that means for the rest of the world, this means that no people who were not directly imbued with a soul by Adam or one of his converted, had a soul. What would this mean for the world? Well, one could argue that the aboriginal people of the Americas and Australia were soul-less since they reached those lands far before Adam was given a soul, and neither of them had written language. Well, one could argue that God had given souls out via different vectors, but that would mean that other creation myths were true as well. That would lend more support to the Book of Mormon, than to the Bible proper.

Schroeder claims that God's creation of man on the sixth day does not contradict evolutionary biology because the creation was a spiritual one, which gave man a soul even though he had evolved from previous lower species. Other bodies that we have uncovered were soulless creatures, that merely looked human. This is something that philosophers have discussed. The notion of a zombie that acts just like a regular human being, but has no soul or subjective experience. To assume that others have no subjective experience is probably a good indicator of being a sociopath. It is the opposite of empathy. There is no reason to think that it would be the case. From what psychologists have been able to gather, our behavior influences our internal state. "We become what we pretend to be" [...] If this is the case, then why would anyone think that those who act just like anyone else, is not in fact like anyone else?

Schroeder believes wholeheartedly in his hypothesis. He stated that, "Science has also confirmed the biblical assertion that less-than-human creatures with human-like bodies and brains existed before Adam." This was in the same book that had previously blown off the question of "Why didn't the biblical calendar become earth-based on day three, when earth appeared?", with an answer ending in, "We are not here to rewrite the Bible. We are trying to understand it as it is." The Bible doesn't mention the brains of the people or creatures. The authors evidently didn't know modern neuroscience.

Also, the calendar as calculated by Biblical scholars is determined by counting the generations listed in the Bible. These generations are assumed to be in there for a deeper purpose. Using Biblical citation of ages of people and generations to determine the age of the universe is like doing physics research based on undocumented cases of perpetual motion machines.

Schroeder argues that you can judge evolution based on looking at merely an end product and a beginning product and trying to look at statistics and probability. This calls for a little story from my teenage years. When I was sophomore in high school I was given a problem involving two trains. One was accelerating but slowly, while the other was decelerating but going faster. Given their distance from each other going the same way on the same track, we were asked whether or not the trains collided.

I submitted my answer, which was that the trains had collided, and the teacher marked me wrong. She had figured out a point ahead of where the trains would have potentially collided and calculated which train would be ahead of the other and had come to the conclusion that the trains had not collided. She figured that the trains could not have collided if they ended up in the same order in which they had started. I thought about it and realized that the model didn't take into account whether or not the trains had actually collided. It assumed that they wouldn't and one could estimate where the train would be at a given time in the future assuming that it hadn't hit anything. I estimated where the trains could have collided and put the time into the calculations. The trains were very close together. I adjusted my estimate, and the train that was behind ended up ahead. I had to argue my point in front of the class. I didn't know how to prove my point algebraically, but a fellow classmate graphed it proving that I was right. What does this all mean? You have to take the nature of the items that you are modeling into consideration. What happens in the middle can effect the outcome. It can even effect the overall range of possible outcomes. Ignoring what happens in the middle seems like a large flaw for a physicist to make. Part of the problem that Gerald Schroeder has understanding biological evolution has to do with the fact that he is a physicist. It is entirely possible to become a physicist without knowing about cells, evolution, mating strategies or Mendelian genetics. It is also entirely possible to become a biologist without knowing about Newton's laws of motion, general relativity, induction or any part of quantum theory. Dr. Schroeder basically equated all of science with physics. One cannot learn about mating behavior or even cells by studying atoms or quarks. Dr. Schroeder has a rather limited understanding of biology. He puts it out for all to see, and for those who haven't read on the matter much of their lives it would be impressive. However, his understanding is not on par with his claims.

The most prestigious work in physics is not entirely theoretical. Only math is actually further from direct physical experiment in study. This may be partially why Schroeder clings to the outdated if ever accepted notion that theories become laws once they have been proven. Not even the law of gravity can be said to be proven. It has merely been excessively tested with positive results. The same thing can be said of the theory of evolution by natural selection.

For all intents and purposes, Dr. Schroeder is brilliant. I don't deny this. He has a more nuanced notion of theology than many creationists, and he certainly has thought about the issues he presents. His problem is that he is too specialized. He knows about physics and has a deep belief in and respect for the Bible. He doesn't know enough biology, philosophy, neuroscience, computer science, etc. to have a better grasp of the big picture. I know a little bit about a lot of topics. Some of the most insightful scientists had a specialty, but were well informed on a plethora of topics. Examples of these well-rounded individuals include: Carl Sagan, Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. Sagan was an astronomer. Gould was a paleontologist specializing in mollusk shells and Dawkins studied animal behavior, yet they were all well-versed in each others' work and in science in general. Schroeder used Shakespeare quotes prominently in his work, similar to Gould and Dawkins, but (unlike the others) Schroeder tended to cite scientists, such as Paul Davies, Roger Penrose and Michael Behe, who were on what Michael Shermer would call the fringe of science.

If your goal is to prove that something is true, without questioning whether or not it is true, you are not doing science. Trying to prove such a notion is antithetical to faith as well. This puts "The Science of God" in the same category as creationism, beautifully imaginative, but far from searching for truth and reality.

/// 6 days stretching to the 13.5-to-16.4 billion years by cosmic background radiation's [CBR] frequency as clock of the universe (CBR frequency related to CBR temperature - see next) (Schroeder notes the large numbers are estimates) pages 57-58, 61-62, 65-67, Appendix A part a.
/// 6 days / (365 days / year) x 10^12 = 16.4 billion years;
where 10^12 approximately equals "ratio of ... cosmic background radiation [CBR] ... temperature ... at the moment of quark confinement [into protons and neutrons] ... to [CBR temperature - with CBR temperature related to CBR frequency per Schroeder] now", Schroeder, p65
/// Schroeder (MIT) seems well-received by Reasons to Believe "The scientific content of 'Genesis and the Big Bang' reflects scholarly integrity, as does that of Schroeder's more recent book, 'The Science of God'. Schroeder's creation theology seems sound for the most part. Our only point of significant disagreement is the time frame for the creation chronology." Note that Schroeder defends his time frame on page 65: "Bible's perspective is one that looks forward from the beginning...."
/// Schroeder has this multiplication and division from 13.5-to-16.4 billion years to 6 days taking an exponential 'path' through time [p.65; table p.67] [A=A0 x e^(-Lt)] (whatever time really is) to get from 13.5-to-16.4 billion years down to 6 days. A former Rocketdyne engineer said (time) seems to be to (the absence of gravity) - as - (not spoiling of food) is to the (temperature) : (less gravity) more (time); (less temperature) more (unspoiled food).
/// If you have something or come on anything about these topics also I'd like to know at [[email protected]]

Schroeder's theories are invaluable for anyone with strong ties to both the physical sciences and the veracity of the Bible. Without his books I would have been content to think about Bible for Bible and science for science. With his books, each one enriches and enhances the other. Science of God is his most important book, but the nitty-gritty of his time dilation theory is better-explained in Genesis and the Big Bang. Must-read.

For anyone is not sure that there's a God, or even if you are pretty sure of what you believe, this is the book to read. I needed to plow through the probabilities sections, but I got the message anyway. I now have pictures in my mind of creation, the placement of the earth, and the beginning of life, rather than just words. The author brought these concepts into conjunction with the Biblical days of creation convincingly, and included information I had never heard from another source. I have bought another book for my grandchildren, and I'll probably buy more.

This book is a scholarly study of the parallels between the Biblical account of creation and the evidence from recent scientific discoveries which support the Biblical account. It also reveals
that the creation without a purpose or designer is irrational.

I was intrigued by the title, but agitated by the contents. The entire book is filled with completely preposterous assumptions and conclusions. After reading such a book, I begin to question why someone, such as Gerald Schroeder, view themselves as scientists.

He explaination of Schroeder making a mistake actaully stated it exactly as it happened according to the book. At the center of the universe, time was moving much slower due to the intense gravitational forces after the big bang. Time on "earth" was moving much faster yeilding the millions and millions of years for the directed evolution. Viewed from the center of the universe, a day had passed on earth, but on earth, millions of years were passing.

I read this book years ago, but I still think it is the best book I've ever read. This book is very interesting. I'm not sure that I agree with everything in it, but the point seems to be to get you thinking outside of our current time. This book is very much outside of the box and I loved it! I recommend this book to everyone.

As a physicist, Schroeder presents convincing arguments about how belief in the Bible can complement modern scientific thought. It will make you appreciate Scripture in a deeper level and marvel at the natural laws working to keep our universe the way it is. Hopefully, it will answer your questions such as "Are dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible?"

I found the author's theories interesting. But trying to fit square science into round scripture was sometimes annoying. More research needed to be done in areas other than the author's expertise. The book was also weakened by too much reliance on one ancient scripture to back up his theories. All in all it was enjoyable and made me think.

Awesome, unapologetic look into the truly converging worlds of Science and God, where one does not need to close one's eyes to shut out what can be seen, and at the same token, not compromise a single aspect of religious belief. As a technical science buff who is also religious, I can tell you that this book saved my religious understanding of how God interacts with this world, and how we were all created. Thank you Dr. Schroeder.

This is an extraordinary, eye-popping presentation of the confirmation of biblical creation by current scientific knowledge of the origin of the universe. Schroeder makes a very clear discourse on the physics that is totally understandable.

Schroeder's thesis is that the author of Genesis is describing a 15 billion year history of the universe and life, even though that was never his understanding or his intention. The true meaning Genesis 1 went undetected until it was discovered by the cabalist author Nahmanides in the 11th Century AD. It was lost again until Schroeder rediscovered it.
Even accepting the dubious proposition that people can write things that actually mean the exact opposite of what they intend, the match between the Genesis timeline and the scientifically proposed history of the universe makes an ill fit. Schroeder tries to reconcile the two by focusing minutely on certain words in Genesis that could be interepreted to allow for longer time periods, while totally ignoring the text read in its entirety. For example, day three of creation supposedly lasts 1.6-3.6 billion years ago. Genesis said "let the land produce vegetation". Success, proclaims Schroder, that matches the plant life on the planet, which is found only in the... water! He conveniently ignores the rest of the verse which calls for fruit-bearing trees and seed-bearing plants. There was nothing but protozoa and plankton back then. This is typical of the book.
The most absurd argument is that, if properly interpreted, the 6 creation days correspond to 6 actual 24 hour days on earth AND 15 billion cosmic years. How so? Einstein's relativity of time! Schroeder makes such an effort to preserve the 6 days of creation and the order of creation.
This book is ultimately a polemic. Although brilliant and articulate, one gets the feeling that Schroeder cannot bear to have Genesis undermined. That compromizes his scientific judgement. In that regard, this book is a slightly more sophisticated version of the trash put out by the Creation Science Institute and other pseudoscientific creation defenders. There are probably good ways for a believer in creation of reconciling with the evidence. Unfortunately, this is not one of them.

I wanted to buy kindle version of G Schroeder's books and the the store mobile interface does not have any feature that would allow me to do so!!! I only saw add to wish list and share button. It is sooo frustrating! Where and how do I pay ????? How can you expect to sell your items if you make it so hard!

In an effort to make the Bible and science agree, Schroeder develops a hypothesis that supposedly shows the convergence of a relativistic timeline and the creation story in Genesis. It's the centerpiece of this book. Three huge problems: 1. There are two different creation stories in Genesis, so Schroeder is at odds with one of them right off the bat. 2. He doesn't agree with the other Biblical sequence of events either. No matter how hard he tries - and he tries very hard - fungi aren't fruit trees. He should be congratulated for finding one other person from the past 4000 years who confused fungi and fruit trees, but that doesn't fly as proof. 3. His "science" isn't testable, which is a basic part of being scientific. His attempt to merge the Bible and science in this way is an abject failure.
What you're left with is Schoeder's theology - a non-Biblical, non-scientific theology that is completely irrelevant to those who understand science or study the Bible. It's just his theology, nothing more.
Basic logic also presents problems for Schroeder. He insists on calculating probabilities for past events (quick - what is the probability that the Buccaneers won the January 2003 Super Bowl? Logical people would say 100%. Schoeder would calculate a non-100% value). If you pile enough illogical statistics together, you can show how unlikely anything is.
I suppose this book is relevant to Schroeder, his publisher, and people who can ignore its failures in logic, Biblical interpretation, and science. Look elsewhere for wisdom.

I this book was simply fantastic to read. The only area in which it falls short is the fact the author did not write more. After finishing the book I still wanted to learn more. It dramatically changes your prespective on life and the universe.

"The Science of God" is another example of the combination of wishful thinking and poor scholarship.
One example of this is Schroeder's misleading characterization of Richard Dawkins. Schroeder dismisses Darwinian evolution (as presented by Dawkins in "The Blind Watchmaker") by claiming that randomness cannot generate meaningful order. In dismissing Dawkins, he states, "Convergent evolution by random mutations of the DNA nucleotides becomes statistically so highly improbable as to be functionally impossible."
In fact, Dawkins never claims that ramdomness is the primary driving force in evolution. In "The Blind Watchmaker," page 49, Dawkins states unequivocally, "Chance is a minor ingredient in the Darwinian recipe, but the most important ingredient is cumulative selection which is quintessentially nonrandom."
Schroeder, in beginning with a cherished position and then elaborately constructing a shaky supporting framework by setting up a straw man in Richard Dawkins, does a disservice to both science and religion.
"The Science of God" does not deserve any stars, but one star was the bottom choice. "The Blind Watchmaker," on the other hand is a delight to read and qualifies as "real science." I recommend you read that instead.

The main reason I chose to write this review was to clear up some of the misunderstandings in other reviews about Schroeder's time calculations. The choice of the factor million million is NOT arbitrary. It is based off of the redshift of cosmic background radiation between quark confinement and approximately the present. It is also related to the change in temperature from quark confinement to the present. I double-checked this temperature change in "Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics: Volume II (3rd Edition)".

Actual review: this book is great. As a christian, I had fears when I began reading it. I see this fear when evolution is mentioned in my church. It is the fear that your entire life is based on something that doesn't agree with the facts, that you have been missing the truth.

But in reading it, my faith in the Bible is stronger than it has ever been. It is true what he says: an understanding of the works of God comes not only from the Bible, but from a firm understanding of science. Don't blink at the facts. Read this book and understand why there is no reason for conflict between two of God's greatest creations.

----

6 years later (2009)...

This review has apparently been helpful to so many people that it is now the top-rated review. I am honored and grateful that so many people found affinity with what I said.

This also happened to my review of Schroeder's other book, The Hidden Face of God. However, like that review, I am probably about to lose my spot as the top-rated review because I feel an overriding responsibility to be honest.

The Science of God was an important book for me. It got me seriously thinking about science and evidence. It is what propelled me to reach beyond the small religious world I had relegated myself to and to start talking seriously to other people about the truth. I believed Schroeder's arguments were the key to uniting science and the Bible.

However, after years of studying, researching, thinking, and discussing, I no longer agree with the arguments I presented above in support of the book.

1 REDSHIFT
It is true that the choice of the factor million million (10^12) is not *completely* arbitrary. It is indeed based off of the redshift of cosmic background radiation between quark confinement and the present.

But there is a problem.

There were 3 primary eras during the big bang. The GUT era (10^32 to 10^27). The Hadron era (10^27 to 10^12). And the Lepton era (10^12 to 10^10). Amazing things were happening to quarks and other sub-atomic particles in all of these eras.

Now here is the punch-line: there is no scientific reason to select the end of the Hadron era (10^12) as the time when the universe "really" started. The only plausible reason I can think for selecting this temperature is that Schroeder wanted his calculations to work out. And so he personally (and subjectively) selected that temperature.

This can all be verified from the same diagram I used 6 years ago: "Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics: Volume II (3rd Edition)". Page 1162, Figure 45-24.

2 SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE
After years of study and thought, I can no longer agree that Science and The Bible are compatible. The Bible was created by religion. And science was created by the scientific method.

Now, let me start by saying that there are two very important things that science and religion agree about:

1) There is truth
2) We can find that truth

That is, there is a true reality behind this existence and there are ways that we can know about the greater truths of this reality. We can know about things that we can't even see with our own eyes. These truths can be revealed to us.

But there is also one very important thing that science and religion disagree about. And that is HOW these truths will be revealed.

A) According to religion's rules, truths about the universe can simply be *asserted* and believed because they feel right to the individual or because someone else asserted them a long time ago. According to religion, once a statement is asserted about the universe (e.g. "God exists"), that statement can be treated as THE truth and can never be questioned without destroying the religion.

B) According to science's rules, truths about the universe can only be discovered through careful and thorough study of external evidence. According to science, when a statement is believed about the universe (e.g. "time is absolute"), that statement can and should be questioned. If external evidence causes us to doubt that statement, science becomes stronger because it receives new answers.

Here is the conflict: both science and religion are trying to define the same universe simultaneously. These two rule-sets directly contradict each other.

If scientists tried to discover truths using rule-set (A), there would be no science. Just a bunch of warring cultural opinions, like todays world religions. But because they discover truths using rule-set (B), science is unified. There is a consensus. In science, we all believe the same things about reality because what we believe is not based on personal feelings (of either ourselves or people who lived thousands of years ago): it is based on external evidence that can be verified at any time.

I applaud Schroder for supporting evolution and the big bang. But when it comes to the topics of God and the Bible, he stops thinking like a scientist.

He is no longer asking: "What does the evidence say? What does it motivate us to believe is true?" He is now asking: "How can I present the evidence in a way that it will appear to support my personal beliefs, which I was not motivated to believe in by evidence?"

It really did find a medium betweeen the two. as a christian, i often got frustrated with the evolution thing becuase i believe micorevolution is evident. also,it presented me with the option that maybe God did choose to let something happen, while not discounting the fact that he is still sovereign

When I first started reading this book I was very much encouraged to see his accounting for gravitational time dilation. Then I realized he got it backward. A clock ticks slower in a gravitational field, so time on earth is 24 hours and ticking of a clock at the edge of an expanding universe is much much faster, billions of years. The author is a Day Ager. This theory is in error both theologically and scientifically. The days of Genesis are not long ages of time, they are 24hrs of earth time. How could someone of such intelligence and learning get it backward and be so confusing on this subject?

This book is full of a lot of great scientific information, however the author's real purpose is to fudge both science and the Bible so that it appears they are one in the same. The author says in the first chapter that he will not try to fudge the Bible so it fits with science yet that's all he does throughout the entire book. His connections are unlikely to convince the average intelligent reader. But don't take my word for it, if you chose to read this book then try this: After every conclusion he makes about the Bible and Science ask yourself 'Does this evidence support the idea that the Bible is true, or is it merely a way of reading the Bible so that it loosely fits scientific fact'.

Beware - most Gentiles (and many Jews) are not familiar with the Jewish sources Schroeder uses, or rather abuses. He quotes them out of context, misreads them or misinterprets them. check out these two links for example.
alter cocker jewish atheist blog spot com december 2013 for an honest report of the jewish sources Schroeder misquotes (mainly about chapter 9) . It is from someone in the know - a former yeshiva bocher.
Also check out this link by another man who studied in yeshiva - does something similar for a different chapter - jewish atheist tumblr com post 78946551774 fizzix schroeder, search for fizzix at the tumblr.

Excellent book attempting to reconcile science and bible. Readers should be cautioned that some familiarity with quantum mechanics and relativity are helpful but not required. Recommended especially for those with science background who have not read the bible.

This text is a giant leap backward in understanding the methods of science. In order to begin describing all the logical mistakes I'd need to direct the reader to a book on logic and logical fallacies. At no point does the author even approach cogent a conclusion. His degree, while genuine, is not in the field used in this book, and is for all intents and purposes utterly ancient in relation to our cosmological understanding. This is coupled with a jaw dropping handwaiving of politics and society from the early days of biblical authorship.

Please avoid this book at all costs. We cannot afford this unscientific approach to the world. Instead take a look at God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Several have said that this book is completely unconvincing for various reasons. The reasons tend to be as follows:

1. The author quotes non-Biblical sources such as Kabbalistic writings, therefore they have no relevance to the Bible.

2. The author does not read the Bible in a literal fashion from a person's perspective on Earth (and that's what the Bible was intended to be, damn it!).

3. The author is an idiot because he is trying to prove the existence of God, and it's clear God doesn't exist.

4. This book is no more than this person's opinion, and therefore has no value.

Each of these reasons contains a kernel of truth, but little more. All of them show inconsistency in reasoning. To refute:

1. The non-Biblical sources such as commentary on Scripture CAN be true, even though they are not the primary source, i.e., the Bible itself. The logic in point one is presented thusly:

a. The Bible is true.

b. Source A is not the Bible.

c. Ergo, Source A is not true.

This is a non sequitur fallacy that implies that only the Bible contains truth, and everything else is false. Even the Bible itself says that there are things (specifically, other miracles of Christ) not mentioned in the Bible. Other works besides the Bible can be sources of truth, even if those works are not divinely inspired. (Example of inconsistency in reasoning in this logic: most who agree with number 1 will claim the above and then read other authors like Billy Graham or Hal Lindsey. If the writings of Billy Graham can contain truth, why not the writings of Josephus or the writings of Rambam?)

2. The whole point of this book is to attempt to square the text of the Bible with modern science. To those who would say that the author is out of bounds by interpreting the six-day creation story as being six days from God's perspective (as opposed to the perspective of someone on Earth), let's look at another passage. Is the bread and wine at the Last Supper LITERALLY the Body and Blood of Christ, or only symbolic? Most who hold to the logic evinced by point 2 would say that the Six Days were six days as we understand them, but that the bread and wine were only symbols of Christ's Body and Blood. once again, this is inconsistent reasoning. Incidentally, as a Catholic, I believe that the bread and wine, are, in fact, the actual Body and Blood after the Consecration. Also, nothing in the Bible says that EVERY word in the Bible is absolutely literal, so to assume otherwise violates the (also unbiblical, yet ironically assumed by many) tenet of Sola Scriptura.

3. If you accept premise number 3, you are no scientist. Theists, atheists, and agnostics can all be good scientists. Since we cannot disprove the existence of God, it is an irresponsible (and unscientific) person who claims that only atheists can be real scientists. We are free to discuss problems in logic of the various religions, but to dismiss out of hand the possiblity of the existence of a Creator is to be in denial.

4. This may be the most ridiculous premise of all. Of course this book is only this man's opinion. He does not claim it to be a religious text. He only says that he is trying to find a way to reconcile what seem to be completely exclusive opinions. Also, in the same vein, of course his postulates are untestable. So is Darwin's theory of evolution, as it would take millions of years from now for us to observe any real macroevolution. That does not mean that Darwin was wrong, nor does it mean that this author is wrong. On the other hand, Einstein's theory of relativity has been tested. Without a counterexample, it cannot logically be assumed to be false. Certain parts of evolutionary theory, such as microevolution, HAVE been tested and shown to be true as well.

I, as I said, am a Catholic. In reading this book, I find my faith greatly strengthened. Not because this man or his work is specifically Catholic in nature (I think he is an Israeli Jew), but because his work lends scientific backing and independent credibility to what the Catholic Church has always taught. St. Augustine, in the 4th century AD, said that we should always have "faith seeking understanding". He also said that if science or OUR UNDERSTANDING of Scripture are at odds, then one of them is incorrect. For many years, Creationists have said that science was wrong, and Evolutionists have said that Scripture was wrong. What is beautiful about this book, is that it shows that both of these groups could be wrong about their assumptions, and all the while both groups could be right about their core beliefs. Does this mean that both might have to modify their worldviews to accept this thesis? Yes, however, this modification neither endangers faith nor science, but should strengthen both. Because of the fact that Catholic teaching is bolstered by these ideas, this is definitely a must-read for Catholics. Actually, I think it is a must-read for all who seek truth.

Those who say that nothing in this book changes their minds about anything (unless, of course, they already agree 100% with the author), are either not actually reading the book, or their minds are SO closed that they believe they already know everything worth knowing. (If the latter is the case, why bother reading? Reading a book only to create a straw man is not evidence of a person seeking truth, but only that of a person with a closed mind. Only God knows everything.)

Obviously, as this man is not God, nor is inspired directly by Him, this work is not perfect. But it is definitely gourmet food for thought.

Gerald Schroeder is an accomplished Physicist who is also steeped in his own private religious teachings -- as those teachings are expressed through the Old Testament. What apparently was intended to be his crowning achievement in life (since so far he has written three books on this subject) was finally resolving the differences between the biblical account of man's existence and the scientific account. His approach to this project, as far as one can tell by reading this book, was to invent a new interpretation of the biblical side of this equation that would then somehow be seen as being congruent with the scientific side. Once the two interpretations were expressible in the same language, and laid side-by-side, then it was his view that all differences would disappear. He thus proceeded scientifically, but in my view, using science in an avowedly unscientific and pseudo-scientific way.

The best that can be said about his approach here is that science was used as a wrecking ball to try to deconstruct the Old Testament and reconstruct it in a new false image of science. That is to say, he attempted to convert the myths, stories, visions, and poems of the Old Testament into refashioned data that, by hook or crook, would appear to have a patina or veneer of science, a veneer that would shine so brightly that at least to the scientifically uninitiated it would readily seem that the two paradigms of man's existence would look the same?

But even if you grant his analysis the benefit of all doubt (as I did), the two stories still do not converge even in his newly created false scientific universe. It did not occur, has he had mandated, that: What should be "rendered to Einstein" would be so rendered, and what should be rendered to God through the Bible, would also be rendered.

Professor Schroeder would not be the first to attempt a project such as this one and fail. The literature of modern man is littered with such attempts. I have reviewed many of them here on the store.com. The unique part of this attempt however is that unlike most others, who give themselves a little wiggle room, the author set himself up for failure when he decided to take the bible literally and used the biblical stories as if they were factually true? In the end, that proved to be a square box from which no circles could be built. I thus will not waste valuable time trying to debunk his many excursions down into the pseudo-scientific rabbit holes he built for himself and for the scientifically uninitiated. Other reviewers have done a fair job of that, although some apparently got sucked down into the rabbit hole of Intelligent Design, false attack on Evolution, etc. by what is clearly scientific sophistry at its worse.

Despite this, there is one aspect of this study that recurs in similar attempts that I believe deserves not to be left unchallenged: It is the "unwritten given" that invariably frames all of them. It is the teleological notion that man's existence must have a purpose. Almost always this thesis is granted up front as a given and no further attention is paid to it. But this is a very pregnant and controversial thesis in itself, one that, following Bertrand Russell, cannot so easily be dismissed as a given. Russell's view so far has no adequate refutation. He feels the same way about the requirement that man's existence must have a purpose, as he does about the existence or non-existence of God itself:

His retort is unchallenged: Why even ask either question? Other than man's own self-absorbed need to see himself as cosmically important, why indeed should we ask these questions? Is it not equally likely that there is no God and that man's existence on this earth has no importance other than just being a cosmic fluke, and that there is no other purpose for his existence?

Professor Schroeder has committed a series of unforgiveable unforced scientific errors that he surely will never recover from. One star.

I randomly opened the book close to page 107 and started reading there just to get a feel for how accurate the book's science is. Here's what I found.

Page 107

Already there's a couple of red flags. I see fancy-sounding but awkwardly redundant phrases like "With the statistics of probability, it is not the mathematics that is difficult," that were seemingly made artificially wordy to help the text sound more scientific and to create an air of credibility. This worries me.

Also on this page, he asserts a number of trials "required" for some event to come true; this was wrong usage of statistics wording, since nothing ever statistically "requires" a certain amount of trials (beyond one). Not a big deal though, I give the benefit of the doubt and keep reading in spite of this initial vibe that book might not be the best example of careful scientific rigor.

Page 108

There's a pretty obvious conceptual mistake about math (see bottom of this review for details), which again makes it seem like the author does not have much of a math and science background, in spite of how the book presents itself.

Page 109

Here the author tries to discredit his opponents' claims that working computer simulations have been made of evolution, and that scientists using one of these programs have famously evolved an eye, an organ that was once accused of being too complex to evolve. The author lambasts those scientists for not making their virtual gene pools realistic enough, and then sets about making his own scenario that attempts to evolve an eye - poorly.

For all the author's emphasis on making a more realistic simulation than the scientists, he completely forgets that recombination (mixing of parents' gene codes), not mutation, is the biggest source of genetic change that happens each generation in organisms. This alone completely invalidates all of his probability estimations and conclusions, but the mistakes don't end there; he furthermore makes the following inappropriate assumptions:

-That there must be only one genome configuration that produces an eye shape
-That a single gene in animals is entirely dedicated to producing the eye's shape (hence his figure of 1,000 base pairs), an assertion that is apparently made up out of the blue
-That when the eye first evolved it was in a human-length genome
-That all genes contain 1,000 amino acids, which is inconsistent with something he said earlier (where 1,000 was the extreme upper bound)
-That all the intermediate shapes would be completely worthless to the organism (and therefore not even worth mentioning); on the contrary, a poorly-shaped eye would help an organism to avoid bumping into things far better than no eye at all would.

Pages 110 and 111

These pages discuss the author's statistical conclusions about what got invalidated by the above.

Page 112

On this page, the author puts forth the claim that there exists doubt among scientists about evolution. During this, he cites a quote from an academic journal:

"The concept that the eyes of invertebrates have evolved completely independently from the vertebrate eye has to be re-examined."

So, taking apart the quote: The concept that these two historic processes (invertebrate and vertebrate eye evolution) progressed independently of one another, instead of, say, one giving rise to the next or there being some other type of interaction between them, is obviously what's being questioned here; not evolutionary theory as a whole, but just some detail of how part of evolution went. Anyone with good reading comprehension can tell that from the context he left in the quote.

The author strangely does not see it this way, and claims the quote questions the entire theory of evolution, expecting you to take his word for it in the face of what the quote actually contains. In his own words, (appearing immediately after the quote):

"An article in this most highly respected journal has asked for a reexamination of the process of evolution!"

This isn't even a case of taking a quote out of context; he actually left the context in that contradicts what he says about it, so it's even worse. He either has very poor reading comprehension, or is being very dishonest by gambling that *you* do.

The author then stresses the importance of how that science quote questioned evolution...but, as explained, it really didn't. Really, the fact that the author had so much trouble finding a single quote questioning evolution in any science journal is strong evidence towards the opposite of his point: Scientists agree on evolution.

Not two sentences later, he throws in another out-of-context quote from a different source ("strongly argues for a common developmental origin") mid-sentence without any explanation, and similarly uses it to create the illusion of support for his point (when in reality it looks like some quote that's in support of evolution from a common ancestor). Overall, the tactics he uses on this page seem dishonest.

Page 113

I stopped reading here. The small sample of this book that I read, and the number of critical mistakes that it contained, convinced me that the whole book is misleading throughout. My conscience did not want me to release this unfortunate (though possibly well-intentioned) book back into the world, but I needed the extra money from selling it and so I must at least give the world a warning.

Beware of those who twist and misrepresent the findings of science in attempts to sidestep questions about established beliefs or to protect the familiar dominance that the church has in our society. Never stop asking hard questions about ideas and holy texts that those around you treat as authoritative. Do not cowardly fail to ask questions for fear of eternal damnation; doing so fails to ask the question of why we even avoid pain in the first place. Real science books are not afraid to ask such questions.

Cognitive Scientist Stephen Pinker's "How the Mind Works" is a good starting point if you are fascinated by science, and want to know what it says about the world and us. Not this book.

Garett

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*The minor mistake on page 108: He compares the probability that one nucleotide finds its correct value (out of 4) within n generations to the probability of 1,000 independent nucleotides all doing the same, as if there was no difference. In reality, the math for that would be more complicated, because the last nucleotide out of the thousand to hit its correct state would determine the number of trials needed, and so the slowest one out of the thousand determines the time. This doesn't kill his point that genes can find their correct state in relatively few generations, but it's still a mistake that someone who's trying to correctly explain probability should not make.

Mr. Schroeder mentions the dinosaur problem with the Bible but doesn't go far with it, because he can't. I would think he convinces mainly those who are members of the choir who have already taken that leap of faith.

I wanted this book to be good, I really did. I wanted it to make me think. I crave information that challenges my intellect; that's just the kind of person I am. I don't claim to have any answers about absolute nature of the universe, I simply enjoy the mystery.

Here are my credentials (as if they really matter on an the store review... but some people like to know)

I have a basic understanding of both anthropology and biology, and a thorough, college level knowledge of astronomy.
I have attended several different protestant churches for 20 years, and I have read the Bible from cover to cover.
I am agnostic.

That being said. This book is awful. I burned my copy today (along with my copy of natural cures "they" don't want you to know about) because it simply does not deserve to exist, and I like to burn things. There is not an ounce of science in this book. The author claims that the mistakes and contradictions in the Bible were put there on purpose, in some strange attempt to make people examine it more closely. He does not say that this is his opinion, but rather states it as a fact. This is an UNSCIENTIFIC assertion. When we use the scientific tool of OBSERVATION to look back at the history of the church, it is quite clear what the vague language and contradictions in the Bible have done. They have not only caused the Christian church to split into hundreds of irreconcilable belief-systems that all use the same exact text, but they are also the source of incredible suffering (war, torture). We know the Bible has been translated and interpreted over and over by the imperfect hands of men. So wouldn't that be a much more likely reason for the Bible's imperfections? This is a much more simple, realistic and provable theory? If we are to accept Schroeder's explanation, then we must also accept the fact that God knew that the vagueness of his book would result in war, suffering and the division of his followers.

Theoretically, perfection cannot beget imperfection. So the simplest explanation is that the imperfections in the Bible are man-made.

To further expand on this topic, the author has the gall to tell us that the mistakes and inconsistencies of the Bible make it MORE CREDIBLE. Yet, when he comes across any flaw or inconsistency (or something he does not understand) in the theory of evolution or any other biblicaly-contradictory scientific claim, he discounts the whole thing! Thus, the title of this review. He is quick to point out the flaws of science, yet he is continually jumping through hoops to justify his belief in his particular theology. That kind of bias is laughably unscientific.

Mr. Schroeder, you demand flawlessness from the science mortal men, yet you justify the truth of the Bible on the grounds of it's flaws!?

The Science of God is a deeply flawed book. Maybe it was purposefully written that way so people would examine it more closely! See how dumb that sounds?

Oy vay!

(If you don't speak yiddish it's a short way of saying "cut the crap because it hurts my head".)

I have rarely seen a more ridiculous example of sophistry and naarishkeit... sorry there I go again. It's worth reading as an example of how not to think. Combines junk science and terrible theology. I hope his Rebbe doesn't get to hear of it.

The entire premise of this book is "If you hold the bible up to the light of the full-moon while standing on one leg, one can plainly see how scriptures and science are in harmony" While I can think of many colorful short phrases to describe this book while it ricochets of the wall into the trash can, the initials "B,S" comes to mind.

Schroeder wants the reader to believe that the book of Genesis makes reference to Einstein's theory of relativity! Supposedly, Einstein's time-dilation explains why the Creation "days" are actually long eons of time and that quantum mechanics can be used to explain other apparent contradictions between Genesis and the findings of modern science. Never, I say again never have mankind witnessed the establishment of a scientific fact that came about as a result of biblical investigation. These pseudo scientists lurks in the murky shadows of biblical nonsense until real science reviles some wonderful and enlighten truth about our world. Then they pounce and yell "Eureka!!!", bible in hand, ready to defile and hijack true scientific findings.

By reinterpreting the bible to conform to reality is nothing short of intellectual dishonesty. For it is written starting from Genesis that "The evening and the morning was the first DAY!!!" The evening and the morning was the second DAY!!".... so on and so on"
"Six DAYS you shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh DAY is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. For in six DAYS the Lord made the heavens and the Earth and rested on the seventh DAY"......Exodus 20: 9, 11. Hence 1 day = 24hrs Wouldn't it be fun to see how "science in the bible" explains how dead people rise from the tome and rejoin the living, how blindness, leprosy, paralysis are healed just by a mere touch????????

This book makes a mockery out of science and a travesty to critical thinking. Click your heels together three times Mr. Schroeder then return to reality. The rest of us are waiting for you.

In Reason.

Another christian apologist who is not very good at science appeals to those who are not good at science either. If you really want to know the scientific position on the origins of the universe, abiogenesis, evolution, genetics, geology, do yourself a favor, and pick up books on those topics by actual scientists.