“The (subject of) the work of creation (may not be expounded) in the presence of two, nor (the work of) the chariot in the presence of one, unless he is a sage and understands of his own knowledge.”
Chagigah 11b,  Soncino Press Edition

 

On September 5, 1977, the Voyager 1 probe was sent into space by NASA. At the request of American astronomer Carl Sagan, eleven years after its launch and having traveled an incredible distance of 3.7 billion miles, the probe was directed to turn around and take a snapshot of earth. The historic photograph, taken on February 14, 1990, was stunning. Named “Pale Blue Dot,” it displayed a small speck in the midst of a beam of light, across a vast, dark ocean of space. This picture inspired Carl Sagan to pen these hauntingly beautiful words, albeit tainted by a hopeless atheism,

“Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. . . There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot [1]

While Sagan’s words were incredibly poetic, the question is raised: Is it true that it is merely an “illusion” that we have a “privileged position in the universe”? Is it true that there’s “no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves?” We will explore these fundamental questions as they are ground zero in a fierce battleground between believers and skeptics. With the exception of the nihilism inherent in Sagan’s poem, he actually echoes the words of the Psalmist,

 “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; what is man, that you think of him? What is the son of man, that you care for him?”
Psalms 8:3-4

To be sure, there is a false dichotomy in the fields of Biblical and Scientific understanding: The position of believers and unbelievers that the Torah and Science are contradictory, leading the former to create an alternative “science” which conforms to their erroneous interpretation of the Torah, and the latter to correctly respond that this pseudo-science is incompatible with the facts, but ends up over-correcting to the point of denying the unknown, and minimizing the implications of the evidence. 

 

Science in the Media

“G-d on the ropes: The brilliant new science that has creationists and the Christian right terrified.” This was the headline of a 2015 Salon.com magazine article about a revolutionary theory by MIT Professor Jeremy England. It was shared by the Richard Dawkins Foundation website, in an attempt to further the atheist cause. Another news article’s headline was entitled, “Has science just disproved G-d?”

The question arises: Didn’t the media tell us that ‘science’ had G-d on the ropes years ago?  According to this headline, does this mean that G-d is still in the ring, using an Muhammad Ali-eqsue rope-a-dope technique? There is one massive problem with the media hype regarding this theory. It’s author, Jeremy England, is an Orthodox Jew who prays every day. He states,

“I see G-d revealed just as much in physics, neurology and cosmology as I do in Scripture and theology and prayer: G-d is present in all of these places and available if we’re just willing to open our eyes to the wonder and the mystery that is our maker.”
Jeremy England, MIT Professor, Interview with Relevant Magazine [2]

England’s theory is incredibly brilliant showing that, “under the right conditions, a random group of molecules will self-organize in a way that allows them to more efficiently use energy in their environment. Over time, the system could improve its ability to absorb energy, becoming increasingly lifelike. Nor is it an arbitrary process, but an inherent bias of the physical world, to form such self-organized systems.” [3]

Unfortunately, many ‘Bible believers’ may outright reject the theory of England because they have been told by the media that his theory is in conflict with the creation account of Genesis. Nothing could be further from the truth, and this incident highlights a massive problem in the world of popular science reporting: The science itself is not the problem.

The problem is that the media are biased. 

As in the world of politics, the popular media attempt to “spin” scientific data in order to support their narrative and worldview. For example, the media has portrayed the Big Bang Theory as a “replacement” for the book of Genesis. As we will see below, the truth is the exact opposite of what has been reported. However, many believers, both Christians and Jews, have been tricked into rejecting it, all the while it is one of the most powerful arguments, if not the most powerful, FOR the veracity of the Biblical account.

Well known tests such as the Miller-Urey experiment, which attempted to simulate the early conditions for life, and test for abiogenesis, the process of life arising from non-living matter, was hailed in the popular media as “creating life” in the absence of a Designer/G-d. While the experiment had several mistaken factors, it has been repeated successfully in subsequent experiments. However, no actual life was ever created. All that was produced were amino acids, the precursors or building blocks of life.

However, if such an experiment were to be successful and actually create some type of primitive life, would this disprove a Creator? Not according to the Jewish understanding of the Torah. R’ Aryeh Kaplan (1934 – 1983 CE), who was a Torah scholar and physicist, wrote the following,

“I remember years ago when some of the first experiments were conducted making amino acids, the basic building blocks of living matter, out of carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia and water vapor, together with spark discharges or ultraviolet radiation. I remember where further experiments were performed, where Professor Fox was able to combine these amino acids automatically to form simple proteins and micro-spheres, which almost looked like very simple living creatures. When this happened, many religious people were very upset. Many people saw this as a blow to our tradition. Here we saw that the interface between the living and the non-living was not quite as immutable and unbreachable as people thought it was. I recall that around that time, people came to me and asked, “Rabbi Kaplan, what do you think about that?” My reaction was “Mah gadlu ma’asecha HaShem” – “How great are Your deeds O G-d.”
R’ Aryeh Kaplan, Kabbalah and the Age of the Universe, pg. 6

Rabbi Kaplan continues,

“All this experiment did was show that inert matter and nonliving elements have the ability to actually crystallize into life, producing the chemicals of life. But what does this mean? It means that Whoever created the basic matter of the Universe, created it to be the building block of life. Whoever created the carbon atom, designed it specifically so that under certain conditions, it would build into amino acids and proteins.”
R’ Aryeh Kaplan, Kabbalah and the Age of the Universe, pg. 6

HaShem designed the universe to support life. England’s theory, and the Miller-Urey experiment, only verify that that design of the universe is structured to inherently support life. Imagine the media reacting in surprise that Legos just happen to fit together, and then claim that they were not designed. It is surprising that the media and believers see this as a blow to the Biblical account, when that is exactly what the Biblical account says. Rephrasing the question, we may ask, does Evolution disprove Creation?

In truth, Evolution only asks the question of HOW, not WHO. Therefore, most believers actually do not reject evolution per se, but rather the assertion that it is RANDOM, without a guided design or purpose. The method of how HaShem created the universe and life is a not problem, as we have a dictum ‘dibberah Torah k’lashon bnei adam‘, “The Torah speaks in the language of man.” In other words, G-d could have used evolution (with punctuated equilibrium) all He wanted to. The real issue is that it is impossible to test whether something is random or guided. Because it is not testable, the idea of random chance, without guidance, is not scientific. It is a nihilistic philosophy, which is what believers in the Bible truly reject. Therefore, evolution in and of itself presents no problem for a believer.

Evolution says that life began in the oceans, and through a gradual process of natural selection, life made it to land, with the apex being the human being. The Genesis account says that life began in the oceans, and through a guided process of increasing complexity made it to land, and culminating in the human being. In truth, the real problem for these two accounts to mesh is the time frame.

The subject that we are about to explore is complex, and it is challenging to know exactly where or how to begin. Therefore, let us begin in the Beginning.

 

 

The Big Bang

“In the Beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.”
Genesis 1:1

In contrast to the Torah, which states the universe had a beginning, the scientific community believed in the Steady-State Theory until relatively recent history. Steady State Theory states that the universe is static, unchanging, having neither beginning nor end. In 1915, Einstein published his theory of General Relativity. His equations predicted something that no one in mainstream science accepted: The universe was expanding. To correct this “error” and restrain gravity, Einstein added the cosmological constant (Λ). This arbitrary ‘control’ was abandoned after Edwin Hubble’s discovery that other galaxies were moving away from each other (called recessional velocity, indicated by a red shift of light), implying expansion.

In 1954, Jewish American radio astronomer Arno Penzias, along with fellow astronomer Robert Woodrow Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation. In simplified terms, this was the “echo” of the Big Bang, which signaled the death of the Steady-State Theory. They received the Nobel Prize for Physics for this discovery in 1978. The universe was indeed expanding. Therefore if we “rewound” the history of the Cosmos, so to speak, this would result in a collapse of all the planets, stars, galaxies and energy in the universe into a singularity, a “point” of near-infinite energy, where the laws of physics breakdown, and time and space cease to exist. The landscape of science changed forever – the Universe had a beginning. It turns out that the Torah, written 3500 years ago, was correct after all.

The British theoretical physicist John D. Barrow and cosmologist Frank J. Tipler write,

“A number of quantum gravity models of creation ex nihlo of the entire Universe, including space and time, have been constructed. The idea common to all of them is that the Universe is envisaged as originated out of a ‘point’ in the past.”
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Frank Tipler & John Barrow, Oxford University Press, pg. 443

The British cosmologist and astrophysicist Sir Martin Rees states,

“The often-used analogy with an explosion is misleading inasmuch as it conveys the image that the Big Bang was triggered at some particular centre. But as far as we can tell, any observer – whether on Earth, on Andromeda, or even on the galaxies remotes from us – would see the same pattern of expansion. The universe may once have been squeezed to a single point, but everyone had an equal claim to have started from that point: we can’t identify the origin of the expansion with any particular location in our present universe.”
Sir Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe, pgs. 74-75

It may be hard to conceive of the entire universe fitting in the palm of your hand, however theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku explains, that the entire universe’s net matter may be incredibly small,

“The total matter/energy content of a universe may actually be very small. The matter content of the universe, including all the stars, planets and galaxies, is huge and positive. However, the energy stored within gravity may be negative. If you add the positive energy due to matter to the negative energy due to gravity, the sum may be close to zero!…to create a universe like ours may require a ridiculously small net amount of matter, perhaps as little as an ounce.”
Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, pg. 94

From this singularity, the entire universe came into being. In his incredible commentary on the Torah, R’ Moshe ben Nachman (1194 CE -1270 CE), made the astonishing observation,

וְהִנֵה בַבְרִיאָה הזֹאת שֶהִיא כִנְקֻדָה קְטַנָה דַקָה וְאֵין בַּהּ מַמָש נִבְרָאוּ הַנִבְרָאִים בַשָמַיִם וּבָאָרֶץ
פירוש הרמב״ן על התורה, בראשית א

“Now, with this creation… which was like a small fine speck and had no substance were created…all the creations in the heavens and on the earth.”
Artscroll, Ramban’s Commentary on Genesis, Vol I, Mesorah Publishing Ltd., pg. 26

The word translated as “small fine speck” in Hebrew is “kin’kudah qatanah” (like a small point). The Maharal of Prague, R’ Judah Loew ben Betzalel (1520 CE – 1609 CE) comments,

“In the way the six days are fit for work, the seventh is inherently fit for rest. That is because the world is physical. Anything physical is bounded by six sides [North, East, South, West, up, down]. There is another “boundary” separate unto itself – the center – an infinitely small dot occupying no space, which does not relate to anything physical, as six sides do. Having no dimension, it relates to the non-physical – the spiritual. . . ”
Maharal, Gur Aryeh, The Lion Cub of Prague, Book One, pgs. 19-20

Psalm 104 says,

“He covers himself with light as with a garment. He stretches out the heavens like a curtain.”
Psalms 104:2

A parallel verse in Job states,

“It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers; who stretches out the heavens like a curtain, and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”
Isaiah 40:22

These verses describe the heavens being “stretched out” or expanded “like a curtain.” In ancient times, and today, curtains are made of fabric. How is it possible that the Bible, written thousands of years ago, describes the universe expanding like fabric?

 

The Age of the Universe

R’ Levi ben Gershon (1288 to 1344 CE), also known as the Ralbag or Gershonides, wrote a treatise named Ma’aseh Hoshev (Work of Calculation) in the year 1321. It covered the extraction of the square of cube roots and other mathematical concepts. His studies in Torah and science were revolutionary. In fact, he is the only ancient astronomer to have accurately calculated stellar distances (on the order of 100 light-years). He refuted Ptolemy’s model, in what physicist Yuval Ne’eman says is,

“…one of the most important insights in the history of science, generally missed in telling the story of the transition from epicyclic corrections to the geocentric model to Copernicus’ heliocentric model.”
Astronomy in Sefarad, Yuval Ne’eman [5]

Like the size of the universe, the Rabbis also had astonishing insights into the age of the universe. Before we discuss the details of age, we must understand the concept of time. Albert Einstein discovered that time is relative. When Albert Einstein’s close friend, Michele Besso passed away, he stated,

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Albert Einstein

A century before Einstein’s discovery, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (April 4, 1772 – October 16, 1810 CE) stated the following,

“In reality there is no such thing as time. Time is only an illusion…Our notions of time are pure illusion. Someone who thinks about this carefully will certainly put all his strength into abandoning the vanities of this time-bound existence and putting all his hope in that which is beyond time. You should have faith in the One who is beyond time. Then nothing in this world can throw you down. Wherever you are, you will always be able to remind yourself, “This day have I given birth to you” (Ps. 2:7). These words refer to Mashiach who is in a realm beyond time. There everything finds healing. Time past is annulled completely.. . There is only today. Today you were born. Literally! All that is wrong with the world is a part of the “Evil work that is done beneath the sun” in the time-bound world. . . what remedy is there for all the days and years, all the time that [one] wasted in wrongdoing? His only hope is in the realm beyond time. From there comes all healing. It will be as if he were born again today. So long as you have faith – in G-d, in the World to Come, and in the Messiah who is beyond time – you have eternal hope.”
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, Meshivat Nefesh, Restore My Soul, Translated by Avraham Greenbaum, Breslov Research Institute, pg. 88-89

Long before Einstein, the Bible stated that time is relative, as Psalm 90:4, said,

“For a thousand years in your sight are just like yesterday when it is past, like a watch in the night.”
Psalms 90:4

Peter rephrases the words,

“But don’t forget this one thing, beloved, that one day is with the L-rd as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”
2 Peter 3:8

The Book of Isaiah says,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says HaShem. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:8-9

Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher (1255 to 1340 CE) states,

“…we find in the Midrash, in Bresheet Rabbah, “It does not say, “Let there be evening’ but ‘And there was evening’; we see from here that there was a system of time beforehand.” Even though time is a creation, and before creation there was no time, it refers to time in regard to those two thousand years. For those days were not as human days, but rather a day from those years was of the days about which there is no comprehension. This is as it is written, (Job 36:26) “Are Your years as those of men?
Rabbeinu Bachya, Commentary on Genesis 1:3, cited in the Challenge of Creation, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, Gefen Publishing, pg. 170

The Bible specifically that the first six days were observed from G-d’s perspective,

“G-d saw that it was good.”
Genesis 1:18

It then shows the flow of human time,

“Adam lived one hundred thirty years, and became the father of a son . . . and named him Seth.”
Genesis 5:3

Pesikta Rabbati says of the “Day of G-d,”

“And there was evening, and there was morning, one day.” This is a thousand years, which is the day of G-d, as it says, “For a thousand years are in Your eyes as a day” (Psalm 90:4).”
Pesikta Rabbati, Hosafah 2:1, cited in Challenge of Creation, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, Gefen Publishing, pg. 180

R’ Dovid Tzvi Hoffman also clarifies that this doesn’t necessary mean that 24 hours exactly equals 1000 years, but that the principle is relative,

“In many places, and especially in the Zohar, it is proven that the expression “day” as it appears in the account of Creation, is not to be understood as an ordinary human day of 24 hours, but rather the intent is to the day of G-d, which last 1000 years – that is to say, a day that lasts for an undefined length of time.”
Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman, Commentary to Genesis, pg. 48, cited in Challenge of Creation, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, Gefen Publishing, pg. 181

This verse states that humanity perceives the flow of time differently than G-d does. R’ Yitzhak of Akko (13th – 14th century), a disciple of the Ramban, comments on Psalm 90:4, which is the key to unlocking the puzzle,

“I, the insignificant Yitzchak of Akko, have seen fit to write a great mystery that should be kept very well hidden. One of G-d’s days is a thousand years, as it says, “For a thousand years are in Your eyes as a fleeting yesterday.” Since one of our years is 365 ¼ days, a year on High is 365,250 our years.”
Otzar HaChaim, pg. 86b-87b, cited in The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution. Yashar Books; Assumed First edition. p. 171

MIT Physicist and Torah scholar Dr. Gerald Schroeder explains,

“We have a clock that begins with Adam, and the six days are separate from this clock. The Bible has two clocks. That might seem like a modern rationalization, if it were not for the fact that Talmudic commentaries 1500 years ago . . .(where) all the Sages agree that Rosh Hashana commemorates the soul of Adam, and that the Six Days of Genesis are separate. Once you come from Adam, the flow of time is totally in human terms. Adam and Eve live 130 years before having children! Seth lives 105 years before having children, etc. From Adam forward, the flow of time is totally human in concept.”
Gerald Schroeder, The Age of the Universe, Aish.com [4]

Like space, time can bend and stretch. In fact, this “stretching of time” is called in science, time dilation. It has been experimentally verified with Cesium clocks, and forms an important part of Einstein’s theory of Relativity. According to Schroeder, this is exactly what happened during the massive expansion of the universe after the Big Bang.

According to Schroeder’s interpretation of Genesis, the six days of Creation (from G-d’s perspective) would have appeared as 13.8 billion years from our perspective, because of time dilation, caused by the rapid expansion of space during the Big Bang. Therefore, the six days may “stretch out” as follows,

Enter the Sefer HaTemunah, “a Kabbalistic work attributed to the first-century Talmudic sage, Nechunya ben ha-Kanah.” This text takes the cyclical nature and patterns of the Torah, from the Shmitta periods of 7 years to the Yovel, (the 50 year cycle), and applies them in an exponential form to the universe. According to R’ Slifkin, the Sefer HaTemunah teaches that,

“…this seven thousand year cycle is merely one Sabbatical cycle amidst a larger cycle of seven Sabbatical cycles and a Jubilee. Hence, the total duration of the universe is forty-nine thousand years (seven times seven thousand). Some authorities state that we are currently in the second Sabbatical cycle (Derush Ohr HaChaym), whereas others maintain that we are in the seventh. Still others understand that the world is in its sixth Sabbatical cycle, which would mean that the world is 42,000 years old.”
Challenge of Creation, Rabbi Natan Slifkin, Gefen Publishing, pg. 170

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan was extremely knowledgeable in physics and Kabbalah considered if we took the opinion of the universe being 42,000 years old, we would have to use the key provided by R’ Yitzhak of Akko that these years are not from a viewpoint of human observation. In other words, this would need to be calculated in Divine Years, i.e. 365,250 years x 42,000. This would equal 15.3 billion years old, remarkably close to the modern understanding of 13.82 billion years, a difference of only 1.48 billion years. Moreover, the uncertainty of where we actually are in the larger cosmic shemittah cycle may eliminate the relatively minor discrepancy [6]. Regardless, the point is that the Six Days of Creation are on a much higher level that regular 24 hour days. In fact, the sun and the moon did not exist until day 4, so it is highly unusual to insist on a literal 24 hour time frame (as observed by a human point of view).

 

Just Six Numbers

It is well known in science that our universe is fine tuned for life. This is called the Anthropic Principle, and forms one of the most powerful arguments for Design. Theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson stated,

“As we look out into the Universe and identify the many accidents of physics and astronomy that have worked together to our benefit, it almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming.”
Freeman Dyson, cited in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (1986) by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, p. 318

After highlighting the differences between the two extremes between the Copernican Principle and the Anthropic Principle, Michio Kaku states,

“…at the other extreme, we have the Anthropic principle, which makes us realize that a miraculous set of “accidents” makes consciousness possible in this three-dimensional universe of ours. There is a ridiculously narrow band of parameters that makes intelligent life a reality, and we happen to thrive in this band. The stability of the proton, the size of the stars, the existence of higher elements, and so on, all seem to be finely tuned to allow for complex forms of life and consciousness. One can debate whether this fortuitous circumstance is one of design or accident, but no one can dispute the intricate tuning necessary to make us possible.”
Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, pg. 348

Kaku continues,

“Sir Martin Rees of Cambridge University, think that these cosmic accidents give evidence for the existence of the multiverse. Rees believes that the only way to resolve the fact that we live within an incredibly tiny band of hundreds of “coincidences” is to postulate the existence of millions of parallel universes. . . it is no accident, he believes, that the universe is fine-tuned to allow life to exist. There are simply too many accidents for the universe to be in such a narrow band that allows for life. “The apparent fine tuning on which our existence depends could be a coincidence,” writes Rees. “I once thought so. But that view now seems to narrow…Once we accept this, various apparently special features of the universe – those that some theologians one adduced as evidence for Providence or design – occasion no surprise.”
Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, pg. 250

British Cosmologist Sir Martin Rees describes how the universe is governed by six numbers, which are as follows,

Sir Martin Rees states,

“These six numbers constitute a ‘recipe’ for a universe. Moreover, the outcome is sensitive to their values: If any one of them were to be ‘untuned’ there would be no stars and no life. Is this tuning just a brute fact, a coincidence? Or is it the providence of a benign Creator? I take that view that it is neither. An infinity of universes may well exist where the numbers are different.”
Sir Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe, pg. 4

He comments,

“There are various ways of reacting to the apparent fine tuning of our six numbers. One hard-headed response is that we couldn’t exist if these numbers weren’t adjusted in the appropriate ‘special’ way: we manifestly are here, so there is nothing to be surprised about. Many scientists take this line, but it certainly leaves me unsatisfied. I’m impressed by a metaphor e by the Canadian philosopher John Leslie. Suppose you are facing a firing squad. Fifty marksmen take aim, but they all miss. If they hadn’t missed, you wouldn’t have survived to ponder the matter. But you wouldn’t just leave it at that – you’d be baffled, and would seek some further reason for your good fortune.”
Sir Martin Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe, pg. 166

All of science points to the existence of a “Creator” of some sort, and there is only one escape hatch: The idea of the multiverse. In truth, this only pushes the question back a step, and creates another problem: If all possibilities are realized, then a Creator exists somewhere. The other problem is that the idea of a Multiverse rests on pure speculation. Here is an excerpt from a Discover Magazine article on this issue:

“We have a lot of really, really strange coincidences, and all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible,” [Andrei] Linde says. Physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. Life, it seems, is not an incidental component of the universe, burped up out of a random chemical brew on a lonely planet to endure for a few fleeting ticks of the cosmic clock. In some strange sense, it appears that we are not adapted to the universe; the universe is adapted to us. Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life.”
Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory, Discover Magazine [7]

There is one massive problem with the multiverse idea. Because our universe is so fine tuned, it is statistically impossible for this to have happened without guidance from a Higher Power. It would be more probable that someone could throw a dart from earth and hit a bulls-eye on the opposite side of the Moon. However, if there are infinite universes, each having their own set of laws, and every single possibility realized, then the chances of us being here are now 100%. The problem is that this idea is not verifiable, and is in the realm of philosophy. Its implications could also border on the ridiculous. While atheists who claim to believe in science mock believers for believing in fairy tales, if they hold to a belief in infinite parallel universes, they are literally saying they believe in aliens, fairies, and leprechauns. And if every possibility is realized, then there must also be a G-d.

 

Ten Dimensions

The opening of the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation, says,

“Ten Sefirot of Nothingness,
ten and not nine,
ten and not eleven,
Understand with Wisdom,
Be wise with Understanding,
Examine with them,
and probe from them…”
Sefer Yetzirah 1:4, translated by R’ Aryeh Kaplan, pg. 38

The Sefirot are G-d’s attributes, however all of Creation is a reflection of the true Reality above. Michio Kaku writes in his book Hyperspace,

“There was only one period of time when energy on this enormous scale was readily available, and that was at the instant of Creation. In fact, the hyperspace theory cannot be tested by our largest atom smashers because the theory is really a theory of Creation. Only at the instant of the Big Bang do we see the full power of the hyperspace theory coming into play. This raises the exciting possibility that the hyperspace theory may unlock the secret of the origin of the universe. Introducing higher dimensions may be essential for prying loose the secrets of Creation. According to this theory, before the Big Bang, our cosmos was actually a perfect ten-dimensional universe. . . However, this ten-dimensional world was unstable, and eventually it “cracked” in two, creating two separate universes: a four- and six-dimensional universe. . . This six dimensional universe, far from being a useless appendage to our world, may ultimately be our salvation.”
Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension, Anchor Books, pg. 27

Michio Kaku later stated on video,

“I’m a theoretical physicist, and I like to say that I walk in the footsteps of Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, I’m not a philosopher, however I am rather dazzled by the fact that many of the basic mysteries that we find in String Theory and the Theory of Everything seem to be mirrored in the Zohar…”
Michio Kaku

Kaku poetically writes in his book Parallel Worlds,

“String theory allows us to view the subatomic particles as notes on a vibrating string; the laws of chemistry correspond to the melodies one can play on these strings;  the laws of physics correspond to the laws of harmony that govern these strings; the universe is a symphony of strings; and the mind of G-d can be viewed as cosmic music vibrating through hyperspace.”
Michio Kaku, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, pg. 356

 

Design

It is well known that music and math are two sides of the same coin. Where does math come from? What is the origin of this universal code language of Creation? In science, this is not a small question.

According to the Rabbis, the Torah is the Instrument and Blueprint of Creation. The Torah is written in Hebrew, and each of its 600,000 letters is equivalent to a number. This concept is called gematria in Hebrew. It is universally recognized that Creation’s foundation is written in the language of mathematics, which is comprised of numbers cloaking the Hebrew letters like garments upon a human being. The Torah’s words reveal formulas, and its sentences are equations that encode the fabric of Hyperspace. The physical world that we perceive is merely its shadow. The Zohar says,

“The Torah proclaims: I was by Him an architect, through me He created the world!”
Zohar II:161a, Soncino Press Edition

The book of John says,

“In the beginning (בְּרֵאשִׁית) was the Word, and the Word was with G-d, and the Word was G-d. The same was in the beginning with G-d. All things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
John 1:1

Pale Blue Dot

At a distance of 135 AU (2.02×1010 km) from the Sun as of June 2016, Voyager 1, is the farthest spacecraft from Earth. If it were to turn around and take a photo today, earth would not be visible as a pale blue dot. Returning to the words of Carl Sagan, who said that “there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves, ” and that we are under a “delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe.”

We actually do have a privileged position on this ‘lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.’ We not only have a fine tuned universe with innumerable coincidences allowing our existence, but we live in a position where we can view and understand this. We live on a planet whose sun and moon line up perfectly, like a hand in glove, during an eclipse. Discover Magazine writes,

“The beautiful symmetry of a total solar eclipse happens because—by pure chance—the sun is 400 times larger than the moon but is also 400 times farther from Earth, making the two bodies appear the exact same size in the sky.”
Discover Magazine, 20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Eclipses, LeeAundra Temescu, July-Aug Issue

We are in the optimal position to view the universe, with front row seats in a grand theater. Someone wants us to view the universe. All of the evidence points to a Creator, who is not a distant Deity disinterested in the everyday lives of humanity, but a Hyper-Intelligent Being, focused on every event from the subatomic level to the macro scale of the Cosmic Web. We have every hint of “help” coming from above, to “save us from ourselves.” Since Adam’s sin, all of the universe has fallen, but it is Yeshua, who guaranteed before the sin that he would repair it,

“…the main guarantor is the soul of Mashiach, which is the collective soul of all tzaddikim throughout the generations. Mashiach will complete all rectifications (tikkunim) and fix all the damage that was incurred throughout history. This is why Mashiach suffers on behalf of all Israel—because he serves as guarantor for them all. Therefore, Dovid HaMelekh, who was the Mashiach, entreats G-d, “Be surety for Your servant for good…” (Psalms 119:122). That is, [he declares before G-d,] “Behold, I have been made a guarantor on behalf of all [at the beginning of the Divine plan, prior to creation]. And no one can stand up to help me fulfill my obligation but You alone!” Thus, he entreats, “Be surety for Your servant for good…” (ibid.) (L”H, Arev 4:3, 4).”
Breslov Teachings About Mashiach, Breslov Center [8]

R’ Yitzhak Breiter  (1886 – 1943 CE) wrote the following in his Seven Pillars of Faith,

“The soul of Mashiach preceded the world. It is the root of the souls of Israel, and the entire Creation, for “The entire universe was only created to attend him” (Berakhot 6b) and “The Tzaddik is the foundation of the world” (Proverbs 10:25). 2. The Holy One, blessed-be-He, took counsel with this soul in the creation of His Universe, as it is written: “With whom did He take counsel, who gave Him understanding and guided Him in the way of judgment?” (Isaiah 40:14). He gave G-d a guarantee that he will repair the Universe.”
R’ Yitzhak Breiter, The Seven Pillars of Faith, 7th Pillar: The Tzaddik, Breslov.org [9]

The Mashiach will repair the universe. However, Yeshua taught us that his return is not an excuse for us to reject the responsibility that our Creator has endowed and tasked us with: The Reparation of the World. We are to be his extensions, his emissaries, his representatives in its repair, becoming active agents in the Redemption of this Small Blue Dot. On July 19th 2013, the NASA Cassini spacecraft captured a new updated photo (below) of a bright blue dot against a backdrop of a vast dark ocean of space, full of hope, waiting for her Redeemer.

אָמֵן בֹּאָה־נָּא הָאָדוֹן יֵשׁוּעַ
“Amen! Yes, come, L-rd Yeshua.”
Revelation 22:20

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References

1. A Pale Blue Dot, The Planetary Society
2. What the Man Described as ‘The Next Darwin’ Has to Say About G-d, Relevant Magazine
3. Meet the Orthodox Jewish physicist rethinking the origins of life, Times of Israel
4. Dr. Gerald Schroeder, Age of the Universe, Aish.com
5. Astronomy in Sefarad, Yuval Ne’eman
6. One of the most brilliant Torah scholars alive today, R’ Ari Kahn, wrote a challenge to this, that R’ Yitzhak of Akko believed the second cycle, not the beginning of the 7th. However, this does not exclude the possibility of using R’ Yitzhak of Akko’s  time relativity key to a different opinion in regards to which cosmic cycle we are in. While R’ Yitzhak Luria considered these years as spiritual, there is no reason why we cannot seek a combination of the spiritual and physical, thus resulting in a number astonishingly close to the modern age of 13.82 billion years.
7. Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: the Multiverse Theory, Discover Magazine
8. Breslov Teachings About Mashiach, Breslov Center
9. “Quantum physicist Antoine Suarez of the Center of Quantum Philosophy in Zurich … claims [Quantum] entanglement tests conducted with real photons in the lab suggest that quantum effects must be caused by “influences that originate from outside of space-time. . . You could say the experiment shows that space-time does not contain all of the intelligent entities acting in the world because something outside of time is coordinating the photons’ results. . . There is strong experimental evidence that non-material beings act in the world…”
   Discover Magazine, March 2011 Issue, Physics of the Divine, Zeeya Merali, pg 5
10. Speaking of Wigner’s Friend Paradox…that leads to an infinite series of observers who collapse the wave functions:
    
    “There seems to be only five ways to avoid this quandary. First, solipsism, which, as Wigner emphasizes, any physicist would reject out hand. Second, any being with consciousness can collapse wave functions by observations. Third, a ‘community’ of such beings can collectively collapse wave functions. Fourth, there is some sort of Ultimate Observer who is responsible for the collapse of wave functions. Fifth, wave functions never collapse. . .The order in the Universe is brought about in some way by the manner in which these observations are made self-consistent. Wheeler calls the Cosmos arising in this Anthropic manner a ‘Participatory Universe’…however we ourselves can bring into existence only very small-scale properties like the spin of an electron. Might it require intelligent beings ‘more conscious’ than ourselves to bring into existence the electrons and other particles? This line of speculation leads naturally to the fourth possibility, that there is some Ultimate Observer who is in the end responsible for coordinating the separate observations of the lesser observers and is thus responsible for bringing the entire Universe into existence. . . This joining of sequences of observers continues…until all sequences of observations by all observers of all intelligent species that have ever existed and ever will exist, of all events that have ever occurred and will ever occur are finally joined together by the Final Observation by the Ultimate Observer. He must be located at the final singularity in a closed universe , or at a future time-like infinity in an open universe. Since no further observations are possible past this final observation . . . the infinite sequence of observations must come to an ‘end’. . . The Final Observer can be regarded as ‘collapsing’ into one possibility – one value of the i label – without invoking the Neumann collapse axiom because the Final Observer is not in the Universe to which the quantum theory applies. . . In effect, the selection of which actually occurs is not made until the Final State is ‘reached’. Not until ‘then’ is the Universe actualized. (The words ‘reached’ and ‘then’ placed in quotes since the Final State is not in space-time.”
    The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Chapter 7, by John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, pg 468 – 471

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For Further Study

• Hyperspace by Michio Kaku, Amazon.com
• Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, Amazon.com
• Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe by Sir Marin Rees, Amazon.com
• Gur Aryeh, The Maharal of Prague on Genesis, Amazon.com
• The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Frank Tipler & John Barrow, Amazon.com
• Discover Magazine: Science’s Alternative to an Intelligent Creator: The Multiverse Theory
• The Visual Scale of the Universe
•  Fingerprint of G-d by Grace Baptist Church
• Nature by Numbers by Cristobal Vila – etereaestudios.co