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  • From: Rolf Furuli <furuli AT online.no>
  • To: b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Supernatural faith and scientific faith
  • Date: Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:53:33 +0200

Dear Yigal,

I agree with you that we should not belittle people who have a faith different from ours. You mentioned "faith, laws of nature, and scientific method," and I think it would be fine to say something regarding the relationship between them (I changed the subject from "Genesis 41: 1: "Two Years of Days""). I think this discussion is relevant for b-hebrew, because it deals with methodological issues related to the study of the Tanakh.

I suppose that all list members want to use scientific methods when they work with the Tanakh. But in connection with this, there is one disturbing situation. In order to follow scientific methods, we must leave out anything that is metaphysical. God and supernatural acts supposed to have been done by him are per definition metaphysical and must be rejected. We therefore are led into the position that we study a text (the Tanakh) where all the authors to a great extent ascribe particular acts to God, and ascribe their own texts to God, but God must a priori be excluded as an explanatory factor on the basis of scientific principles.

Many years ago I became aware of this disturbing situation, and I asked myself whether we here really have a situation of faith against knowledge. Is science free of metaphysics and faith? Interestingly, I found that the opposite was true, and the issue is not knowledge versus faith but rather supernatural faith versus scientific faith. I will discuss one particular example.

When a prophet spoke in the name of YHWH and said he got his message from God, or when a miracle occurred, these situations cannot be studied today by the help of scientific means. But there is one situation that can be scrutinized scientifically, and that is the origin of life on earth. The Tanakh says that the universe and life on the earth was created by YHWH, while the theory that permeates both the natural sciences and the historical sciences is organic evolution. For a long time Karl Popper, who is a renown historian of science, held the view that the theory of evolution was not a scientific theory because it could not be falsified. After an immense pressure over many years he retracted a little and said that a small part of the theory could possibly be falsifiable.

Be that as it may, but in any case it is possible to address the question about the origin of life in a scientific way - and I have done that. If we form a theory and it predicts something, and the predictions turn out to be true, we have not achieved much. This is so because there can be many other reasons why the predictions to come true than our theory. And similarly, if a theory is falsified, we have not come very far. But If we can be certain that there are only two possible answers to a question, and one is falsified, the other answer must be the correct one. In connection with life on earth there are only two possibilities. Either life originated by chance (organic evolution), or it was caused by one or more living entities outside the earth.

In order to explore the two possibilities I calculated and studied

-the total mass of bio-atoms (atoms used in living matter) on the earth.
-the possible sources of energy on the early earth.
-the energy wavelengths that could be accepted by each bio-atom and those which would be
rejected.
-the equilibrium constants in water of each bio-atom, in order to know when each atom would
precipitate.
-the chemical and physical laws that would be at work in the synthesis of atoms into molecules and in
the destruction of the same.
-possible mechanisms that could shield synthesized molecules from destructive energy.
-the different forces that would be at work in the synthesis of nucleo-acids versus proteins.
-how much information that could generate by chance.
-how much information was necessary for the smallest possible living entity.

There were also many questions connected with the points above that I studied. And my conclusion after reading about one thousand scientific articles and 300 books and doing my own calculations, was that origin of life by chance (evolution) was impossible to the highest degree, if the laws of nature as we know them were at work on the early earth. When one theory (chance origin) is falsified, the other had to be the correct one, even though it could not be directly verified by scientific means. On the basis of my study I could not identify the originator of life on earth as YHWH, the God of the Tanakh, but only as one or more living entities.

Considering the question of faith and knowledge, it appears that regarding this single question - the origin of life- science builds on a foundation (paradigm/model) of metaphysics and faith, while the Tanakh accords with the laws of nature, as we understand them today. We also see the great place faith plays in the scientific studies of the Tanakh. For example, the Documentary hypothesis and the Deuteronomistic Historical hypothesis are presented to students today as facts, while the truth is that the foundation of both is nothing but faith-they may be true, or they may be wrong.

I would like to conclude in the following way: We all have a horizon of understanding based on our experience, preferences, philosophy, and religious beliefs or lack of such. To some extent this will influence our scientific work, but we should strive as much as possible to reduce this influence. On the basis of what I have presented above, I would hesitate to contrast faith and knowledge in connection with Tanakh studies, because the foundation of any scientific discipline to a great degree is build on faith (models and axioms). While a scientific study of the Tanakh should not presume the works of God, neither should the existence of an acting God be excluded. I think an approach where we in most cases do not say that something is impossible, but only that something is unlikely is a balanced approach. We do not exclude anything, but we keep our eyes open. I do not say that there are not things that should be rejected as myth. For example, when Berossus says that men in the past were born with two or four wings, and that some were born with the legs and horns of goats and others with the feet of horses and the foreparts of men, this can be rejected as myth. But we should not be too hasty to reject information found in the Tanakh because it appears not to conform with modern scientific theories - because we may not be in a situation of faith versus knowledge but rather of supernatural faith versus scientific faith. Regarding long life-spans under discussion, I do not see that they can be excluded on the basis of biology and our knowledge of the human body, because the process of aging is not understood.

Best regards,

Rolf Furuli
University of Oslo


Dear James,

While I personally think that Jim's theory is dead wrong, there is a huge
difference between the long life-spans of biblical characters (and those in
other works of literature as well) and the examples that you listed bellow.
Humans living hundreds of years is not only not a part of our present-day
experience. It is also totally impossible within our understanding of the
laws of nature as they stand at present. Theorizing that "nature was
different in the distant past" or the "God intervened in the cases of
certain chosen people" is a statement of faith, by its nature unprovable by
any scientific method known to us. As long as you admit that your position
depends on an acceptance of the biblical text as factually accurate out of
faith, that's fine. Comparing anyone who does not accept your faith with
children is derogatory, and has no place on this list.

Yigal Levin

Co-moderator, B-Hebrew







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