God and the Big Bang (1st Edition)

Daniel C. Matt

Description

Mysticism and science: What do they have in common? How can one enlighten the other? By drawing on modern cosmology and ancient Kabbalah, Matt shows how science and religion can together enrich our spiritual awareness and help us recover a sense of wonder and find our place in the universe.

Drawing on the insights of physics and Jewish mysticism, Daniel Matt uncovers the sense of wonder and oneness that connects us with the universe and God. He describes in understandable terms the parallels between modern cosmology and ancient Kabbalah. He shows how science and religion together can enrich our spiritual understanding.

We “embody the energy” of the big bang, writes Matt. Furthermore, “God is not somewhere else, hidden from us. God is right here hidden from us.” To discover the presence of God, Matt draws on both science and theology, fact and belief, and on the truths embodied in Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Christianity, as well as Judaism.

A rich dialogue between the physical and the spiritual, God & the Big Bangtakes us on a deeply personal, thoughtful and inspiring journey that helps us find our place in the universe—and the universe in ourselves.

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Sujets

• mysticism
• Philosophie et théologie
• Cábala
• Jewish philosophy
• Kabbalah
• Judaism
• The Big Bang Theory
• Religion
• Kabbale

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 23 novembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781580235495
• Langue: English

Extrait

God the Big Bang:
Discovering Harmony Between Science Spirituality
2006 Fourth Quality Paperback Edition
2001 Third Quality Paperback Edition
2000 Second Quality Paperback Edition
1998 First Quality Paperback Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information regarding permission to reprint material from this book, please mail or fax your request in writing to Jewish Lights Publishing, Permissions Department, at the address / fax number listed below, or e-mail your request to [e-mail] .
1996 by Daniel C. Matt
The chart on page 49 and brief passages from The Essential Kabbalah by Daniel
C. Matt, 1995, are used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Cover photo courtesy of NASA.
The picture on the cover is of the Orion Nebula, a vast cloud of cosmic dust and hydrogen gas 20 billion miles wide, swirling through space 1500 light years from Earth. The nebula is a spawning ground for new stars. As these stars erupt into life, enormous jets and plumes streak through the nebula s gases, lashing them into ever-changing forms and hues.
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Matt, Daniel Chanan.
God and the big bang : discovering harmony between science and spirituality/
Daniel C. Matt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Spiritual life-Judaism.
2. Big bang theory.
3. Jewish cosmology.
4. God (Judaism)
I. Title.
BM723.M384 1996
296.3'873-dc20
96-6106
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4
ISBN-13: 978-1-879045-89-7
ISBN-10: 1-879045-89-3 (PB)
Manufactured in the
United States of America
Book and cover designed by Glenn Suokko.
For People of All Faiths, All Backgrounds
Published by Jewish Lights Publishing
A Division of LongHill Partners, Inc.
Sunset Farm Offices, Rte. 4, P.O. Box 237
Woodstock, VT 05091
Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]
www.jewishlights.com
To Michaella and Gavriel, our usually angelic children, who show us how to be free
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Part One: The Big Bang
1 In the Beginning
Part Two: God, Self and Cosmos
2 Oneness and Nothingness
3 The Personal God-and Beyond
4 Self and God
5 Cosmic Hide-and-Seek
Part Three: Torah and Wisdom
6 The Essence of Torah
7 The Ripening of Torah
8 Halakhah: Walking the Pathless Path
9 Transforming Evil, Tasting Oneness
10 Israel s Covenant and Other Wisdoms
Hereafter
11 The End of Days
Notes
Glossary

About Jewish Lights
Copyright
Acknowledgments
I want to thank a number of friends and colleagues whose help and advice were vital at various stages of writing this book: David Biale, Arnold Eisen, Elaine Markson, Andrew Porter, Joel Primack, Robert J. Russell and Howard Simon. I was stimulated by my students at the Graduate Theological Union and in a course I taught as visiting professor at Stanford University.
In the course of my writing, I heard that Richard Elliott Friedman, professor of Bible at the University of California, San Diego, was also working on the theme of the big bang and Kabbalah as part of his book The Disappearance of God . We met, talked, exchanged manuscripts and became friends. I appreciate his deep learning, wit and warmth.
Arthur Magida, editorial director of Jewish Lights, deserves a special thanks from me and the reader for his keen eye and his generous efforts to clarify my writing. I learned a great deal from working so intimately with him these past few months.
I am grateful to Stuart Matlins, publisher of Jewish Lights, for his enthusiasm and encouragement and for his vision.
Finally, an offering of thanks to Ana for her love, support and inspiration.
Preface
Does the big bang, which serves as the scientific creation myth of our culture, have anything to do with God? Can it enrich our lives?
Physicists and theologians often contend that religion and science are two separate realms, each valid within its domain and operating under its own set of rules. The purpose of science is to explore nature, while religion s purpose is to foster spirituality and ethics. But the question How did the world come to be? is vital to both disciplines because it is such a fundamental human question, one that has been pondered since human consciousness evolved to a point where it could reflect on itself and the cosmos.
This book opens with an account of creation according to the theory of the big bang. An overwhelming majority of cosmologists regard the big bang as the most reasonable explanation of the evolution of the universe, the best approximation to truth that we currently possess.
But the name of this theory, the big bang, does not reflect the awesome nature of the origin of the universe. Furthermore, it is misleading because it implies that matter and energy exploded like a giant firecracker or an immense nuclear bomb in the middle of empty space. Yet according to the theory, space itself is part of the expansion of the universe, and matter is just carried along by the expanding space. So the bomb analogy breaks down. There were no sound waves to make the bang audible; the expansion was smooth and continues to this day.
The term big bang was coined by a bitter opponent of the theory: the English astronomer and physicist Fred Hoyle. In 1950, Hoyle gave a series of Saturday night radio talks for the BBC on The Nature of the Universe. Detesting the notion that the universe had a beginning, he held a different theory, according to which the universe is eternal. In his concluding talk, Hoyle, striving for a visual image of the theory he opposed, called it this big bang idea. The name gradually stuck, without any of the pejorative overtones Hoyle may have intended. The origin of the cosmos has such grandeur, such an effect on our imaginations, that it has bestowed a measure of grandeur on the term big bang retroactively.
Still, some scientists and science writers yearned for a different, more evocative name, so a popular astronomy magazine, Sky and Telescope , sponsored a contest in 1993 to find one. Not one of the 13,000 entries impressed the panel of judges enough to warrant replacing Hoyle s phrase.
Leaving the name aside, how does this contemporary creation story affect-or challenge-our concept of God? Can it help us discover a spiritual dimension in our lives and recover a sense of wonder? God the Big Bang wrestles with these questions. In conceiving and formulating answers, I have drawn on the insights of traditional Jewish learning, especially the mystical traditions of Kabbalah and Hasidism, as well as contemporary physics and cosmology. I suggest several intriguing parallels, but my purpose is not to prove that thirteenth-century kabbalists knew what cosmologists are now discovering. Rather, in juxtaposing these two distinct approaches-the scientific and the spiritual-I experiment with seeing each in light of the other. I am not trying to synthesize the two because their unique perspectives should not be collapsed. This book seeks, rather, to bring the two into dialogue.
It is said that science demystifies nature, but scientists on the frontier are awed by the elegance and harmony of nature. As science reveals the secrets of the universe and deciphers the cosmic code, it evokes wonder.
Why is the sky blue? Among the wavelengths of light in the sun s spectrum, blue oscillates at the highest frequency and is, therefore, scattered effectively by molecules of air in our atmosphere. This turns the sky blue. To me, this seems more amazing than ancient Mesopotamian and biblical beliefs that the sky is blue because of all the water up there. What science shows us about the evolution of our universe and our selves is as awesome to me as Genesis or the Kabbalah.
Both spirituality and mysticism are often dismissed as otherworldly. What excites me about them is not some secret through which to enter another world, but rather the secret of living differently in this world, of living in the light of the discovery that we are part of oneness.
God as oneness is a recurring theme in this book. Part Two, God, Self and Cosmos, explores the tension between this view of God and the traditional, personal God. I discuss the link between the concept of a personal God and the notion of self. According to Kabbalah, the world exists and we have individual consciousness only because the infinite God has withdrawn Itself from a single point of Its infinity, thereby making room for finite being. We exist to the extent that we lost oneness through a process the kabbalists call the breaking of the vessels. Similarly, contemporary physics speaks of broken symmetry, through which the initial unified state of being splinters into the diversity of galaxies, stars, planets and life. Physicists search for the symmetry hidden within the tangle of everyday reality. They dream of finding equations that link the apparently distinct forces of nature. Spiritual search, too, in its own way, charts a course through multiplicity toward oneness.
But is oneness livable? Part Three of God the Big Bang outlines a spiritual path that derives from Jewish tradition while remaining open to the wisdom of other faiths and the insights of science. I also touch on the problem of evil and describe the Jewish mystical technique of transforming the evil inclination.
The book ends with a number of possible endings of the universe and with reflections on the more immediate future.
Where do we fit in the cosmic scheme of things? Earth, our precious little ball of rock 4.5 billion years old, circles the sun once a year. Our entire solar system rotates around the core of the Milky Way Galaxy once every 250 million years. Our sun is an inconspicuous star, one of 100 billion in our spiral galaxy. Our galaxy is one of perhaps 100 bil