Can simple processes of replication and survival really create more complex forms by themselves? I recalled the Life Game we liked so much during basic programming training. And it goes more or less like this: Let’s imagine a colony of, say, imaginary living cells, which reproduce and die generation by generation according to the following rules:

• A cell surrounded by too few other cells (one or zero) – will die of loneliness in the next generation.
• An empty slot surrounded by exactly two cells – will give birth to a new cell in the next generation.
• A slot surrounded by exactly three cells – will retain its status (living cell or no cell) in the next generation.
• A cell surrounded by four or more other cells – will die of crowdedness in the next generation.

And now let’s see what evolution does to our imaginary cells (tip for beginners – try starting from simple symmetric shapes):

Click here to try

Among religious preachers, especially Orthodox Jewish ones, there are many references to the amusing discussion on the alleged vast knowledge of our holy ancestors about the exact length of the moon cycle, also known as the synodic month, which is the basis for the Jewish calendar as well as several other calendars. You can see an example of this here.

The moon, as we know nowadays, has been drifting away from us since its formation, probably following the collision of some celestial body with Earth. While the Earth’s rotation slows down (causing the day to be longer), the lunar orbit time also becomes gradually longer. During Talmudic times (about two millennia ago) it was roughly 29.530586 days and nowadays it’s approximately 29.530589 days. When looking at different geological eras, we see much bigger differences measured in hours and even days.

But even if we limit ourselves to this tiny era that consists of the last few thousands of years… how could the ancient Babylonians and Greeks reach such seemingly-impossible precision, calculating the lunar cycle?

Let’s start by stating that the precision in question is not that high. When talking in days, the number 29.53059 looks pretty impressive (5 decimal digits!), however, if we translate this to shorter periods of times, we’ll notice it’s not extraordinary. The difference between 29.53058 and 29.53059 days is about one second. Not something which is unthinkable for ancient measuring. The ancient Babylonian calculation reached an accuracy of about 2 seconds per month.

Ancient clocks of those times typically used technological means such as measuring the angle of a shadow (sundial) or using “water clocks”, in which time was measured by the regulated flow of water (or other liquid) into or out of a vessel.

In these eras which we discuss here, a lunar eclipse takes a few hours and a solar eclipse lasts a few minutes. Both occur about twice a year, if we include partial eclipses, and much more rarely if counting only full eclipses.

We’ll spare you the simple explanations (learned in school) for the essence of these eclipses. We’ll only indicate that both types of eclipse occur only when the moon is in a specific lunar phase: A lunar eclipse – only when there is a full moon (middle of the month), and a solar eclipse – exactly during the time of the new moon (beginning/end of month).

All these facts didn’t go unnoticed by ancient astronomers, whose main occupation was watching the sky during ideal ancient darkness. As we already saw, they also had the ability to measure time periods of minutes with an accuracy of seconds, and time periods of days with an accuracy of minutes.

Now, suppose you – the educated reader – are a respectable astronomer in ancient Babylon. You are equipped with all the above simple knowledge, and with state-of-the-art water clocks, courtesy of your patron king. You waited patiently between eclipses and managed a detailed record of events, as precise as those times enable. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume we’re discussing two lunar eclipses, two years apart, for which you attempted to precisely measure (say, two-minute precision) the moment that is easiest to detect – the initial “bite” of the full moon by the Earth’s shadow.

Your records tell you that since that moment of the previous eclipse, 708 days, 17 hours and approximately 37 minutes have elapsed. You know this, since you measured in minutes the amount of time between sunset and the beginning of the eclipse. As we’re talking about the same season in the year, the sunset is more-or-less at the same minute of the day. If you are an experienced astronomer, you already took into consideration the small differences of the actual sunset (up to 8 minutes in our case).

Now you do some math: If 24 lunar months took exactly 708 days, 17 hours and 37 minutes, what’s the length of a single month? Exact arithmetic is a must for an astronomer who desires job stability: 17 hours and 37 minutes are 0.743 days. Thus we divide 708.734 by 24 and get… 29.53058 days. Should we stick to kosher food from now on?

The secret is of course that precision of seconds per month is more-or-less equivalent to a precision of minutes per year. It’s much easier to associate the latter with ancient measuring. The above simulation is imaginary, but similar to the real methods by which ancient calculations were performed. Perhaps there were more years and less minute precision. Perhaps vice versa. Maybe solar eclipses were used instead, and possibly several rather than just two.

This way or the other, there’s no need for “divine knowledge” and no celestial inspiration is required in order to achieve the results actually reached by the ancient Babylonians and Greek astronomers. All you need is clear sky, free time and old instruments. You also need some common sense, patience, accuracy, and basic knowledge of arithmetic – things that are not necessarily the top priorities of modern day religious preachers.

“And call ye on the name of your god, and I will call on the name of the Lord; and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God” (1 Kings, Chapter 18, Verse 24)

The meaning of ‘Hezbollah’ in Arabic is “God’s party” (’party’ as in ‘political party’). The meaning of Nasrallah’s name in Arabic is no less than “God’s victory”. ‘Allah’, so it seems, plays a major role in the recent conflict on Israel’s north border, between the State of Israel and the Lebanese-Iranian terrorist party that resides in several bunkers in the south of Lebanon.

Using an idiom set by Israeli Channel Two’s Amnon Abramovitch, we have a Muslim-Haredi politician in the land of cedars, recruiting his ‘Allah’ for fighting the Zionist heretics. The Lebanese politician, who sells arrogant preaching with pathos as tactics for raising reliability among certain people, doesn’t have exclusivity on the arrogant preaching tactics, nor on recruiting this ‘Allah’ for his private goals. He was preceded with both things by many other “good” people, some from the same era and region, such as Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden, as well as many other mythological figures of the region.

There’s not much difference between the ancient world, where when two nations that fought each other brought their own gods into the battle, and the modern world, where when two nations that fight each other bring God into the campaign. For that matter, it would be interesting to compare the many speeches made by Saddam Hussein and George Bush (Sr.) in the beginning of 2003. If the Christian God is the same entity as the Islamic one, he must be suffering from a split personality.

In practice, almost every politician given a microphone in front of him performs this sin of cheap godly demagogy. One should hear the speeches in almost any modern parliament (including the Israeli ‘Knesset’) in order to realize how God is recruited, often with great purpose, many times unintentionally, for the benefit of the speaker.

‘God’, ‘Allah’, ‘Elohim’, and ‘El’ penetrated not only the names of strict believers, but also our day-to-day language and purely secular names. Starting with “Thank God” and ending with names like Eliyahu, Elhanan, Emanuel, Michael and their many linguistic sibs. A similar thing happened to God’s remote relative ‘Jehova’, ‘Yehova’, ‘Yahweh’ and ‘Yah’ with names such as Ovadia, Yehonathan, Yehoram, Hallelujah, John, Judy and many others.

‘El’, as we know, was the top god of the ancient Canaanite-Phoenician pantheon, also revealed in the excavations of Ugarit from the 14th century BC. We don’t know for certain how did these ancient Lebanese inherited El’s name, and from which even more ancient civilizations, if any. We do know how its name later evolved into ancient Israel’s ‘Elohim’, and ‘Allah’ of the Muslim world. How ironic it is that “El’s party” and the terrorist preacher named “El’s victory” appeared nowadays in Middle East history in the same geographical region where their name had originally showed up, to the best of our knowledge.

“El’s victory” and the victorious ‘El’

Recruiting “force majeure” for the benefit of man is a result of our characteristics, and a natural thing to do under many circumstances and difficulties. When we endure great suffer, we tend to call every god upon which we were brought up, even upon its name alone. We may do so silently in our heart, or we may do so explicitly and loudly. There’s nothing wrong with that, and nothing to criticize. This is how we are built.

The much-needed (and often absent) criticism is about the cold manipulative and well-planned usage of these “super forces” to justify horrible acts on behalf of the user/recruiter. Sometimes meant for the ears of the audience, and many other times as self-justifications for the preacher himself. ‘Allah’ in this sense has turned into just another weapon in the arsenal of war politics. And those who use various weapons should not wonder when these weapons lose their high position together with the results of using them.

In a cogent and highly readable analysis, Dr. Ray traces the contagion course of religion as it enters the lives of countless individuals, beginning in childhood and infecting their behavior, professions, sex lives, and virtually ever aspect of living. And Dr. Ray knows whereof he speaks, for he is the child of fundamentalist, evangelical parents, who frequently took their young son to Bible thumping religious revival meetings.

“At the time that my parents began taking me to hear ministers, I was just old enough to understand the words that they preached at us,” said Dr. Ray. “From those experiences, I learned who was good and who was bad: people of other religions or of no religions were sinners who would wind up in Hell. Such teachings infected my young mind and had a profound effect on my life, at least until I outgrew my impressionable teenage years and was sufficiently determined to think for myself. The degrees that I earned in religion and psychology immeasurably helped me to see through prejudice, myth, and superstition. My situation is not uncommon, but my book is. And I believe that people who want to think intelligently and rationally about religion, whether they are believers or non-believers, will find my book a useful resource.”

The God Virus carefully details the practical consequences of fundamentalist religious beliefs, infecting personalities, families, and cultures. It deals with the superstitions of religion propagated by clerics who, for example, told congregants that cancer and other diseases were the results of sinful living. As science became more sophisticated and was able to explain the causes of past diseases, such as the Black plague, religious figures had to back off their initial pronouncements. Such a paradigm continued as researchers discovered the non-divine causes of yellow fever, polio, small pox, pneumonia, tuberculosis, syphilis, gonorrhea, influenza, etc. Such discoveries, unfortunately, did not prevent religious leaders from condemning evolution, homosexuality, aspects of astronomy, anthropology, psychology, and even economics. Blind belief in the righteousness of one’s beliefs has caused fundamentalist Christian leaders to claim that that the attacks of 9/11 were caused by the sinful behavior of Americans. Such a pronouncement was not different in intent or origin from fundamentalist Muslim clerics who declared that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God as a punishment to America.

Dr. Ray, as a resident of Kansas, has seen first hand how fundamentalist religious beliefs have a negative effect on education, for it was in his state that members of boards of education wanted to ban the teaching of evolution and substitute the teaching of creationism, which propounded that the Earth is only a few thousand years old.

As Dr. Ray has written, “Religion seems to inject itself into schools, courts, legislatures, presidential politics, and local school boards, detracting from rational conversation about real-world problems, such as science, education, economics, economic development, disaster relief, and war.’

Dr. Frank Schaeffer, the celebrated author of Crazy for God, wrote: “I am a religious person, a churchgoer. Nevertheless, this one-of-a-kind book [The God Virus] is a vital reminder of the fact that we think objectively at what religion does to us.”

And Earl Doherty, author of the best-selling book, The Jesus Puzzle, wrote: “Dr. Ray’s approach is non-confrontational. He advocates understanding and tolerance. He gets inside the American fundamentalist movement in ways which show that such entities have a collective life of their own, functioning as large-scale organisms which their individual members may not themselves understand or be aware of.”

Whether you are a believer, an atheist, or an agnostic, you will find The God Virus an exciting and challenging experience, especially if you are not frightened or timid about being a being a rational, thoughtful, and compassionate human being. One has nothing to lose but the mental chains of superstition and intolerance that can keep one in a perpetual state of fear.

“By writing The God Virus,” stated Dr. Ray, “I have attempted to inoculate my readers against a viral infection that results in terminal ignorance and fear.” Many grateful readers agree.

The Orthodox Jews have a name for this: Emunas Chachomim – faith in the wise ones, the sages. Whatever my rabbi says is sacred. There is no doubt he is right. If something later appears to be wrong, look for the reasons elsewhere, not in the words themselves. It’s important to emphasize again that this is how they feel. And this is based on Biblical text itself: “…and thou shalt observe to do according to all that they shall teach thee.” (Deuteronomy, chapter 17, verse 10). This is indeed a closed loop: God says I should listen to my rabbi, which in turn teaches me that everything God says is right!

There are a couple of other issues, worth mentioning on this complex road of forming one’s way of life.

Yehoshua Bar-Yosef wrote the book ‘A Heretic Despite Himself’, which tells a long and colorful story of the road from Orthodox Judaism to the secular world. In the beginning of the story, our hero keeps participating in monthly gatherings with his male friends, away from their wives (for a good religious reason, you know). Their dancing ritual together – producing that high feeling – is described as far better than having sex.

People searching for their “identity” also seek a group of which to be part. We usually enjoy Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ when we’re too young to fully understand what’s going on (The king is naked! The king is naked!). Yet the message is clear and true: The power of the crowd is real. It both pressures and strengthens. The pressure is in the sense that we hate to appear different than the others. As for strengthening – have you ever participated in an event, where a large group of people with a similar ideology were performing some ritual together? Whether in political or religious context, one gets rather emotional in this “I encourage you and you encourage me” situation, and things seem as if they must be truer than ever.

Having a clear and well-defined goal fits well in this picture – just ask any successful high-tech startup manager. If you know exactly what you want to achieve and how you’re going to be rewarded at the end, you are also liable to share that feeling of “I am right”.

Another issue has to do with Newton’s first law of inertia. In addition to our being programmed to follow what we absorb as kids, we start implementing another program in our brain when we grow up – the program that makes it difficult for us to change things. Again, we are programmed to preserve our perception of the world, as we grow older. And yet again, another characteristic of ours is that we think we do a good job in examining the alternatives and choosing constantly.

This is somewhat correlated with what’s known as the Touchy-Feely Syndrome – the tendency for people to overvalue things they have touched or selected personally. This characteristic of ours is often a good reason for why investors stay with an investment for too long.

By the time many people dare to really think about altering their way of life, they have already established their position in the society around them. By then it might be very difficult to change the day-to-day behavior – What you wear, how you speak and where you live – even if perhaps you now secretly believe in completely different things.

Sometimes you unknowingly lie to yourself, only in order not to change things. You may even invent some intellectual excuses to explain why you’re right (“Doctors don’t know anything”, “Praying is proven to physiologically help”, “The king is not actually naked”). You must prove to yourself you haven’t been wasted all these years in vain. Other times you don’t bother lying to yourself any more, and knowingly decide not to change things. It’s a fact that there are people raised in a religious atmosphere since childhood, who are not religious anymore by any definition you may think of, except for their external appearance and surroundings.

George Orwell wrote ‘Shooting an Elephant’ in 1950. This story about life in Burma became quite famous. So did Orwell’s description of the man who grew to do what he was expected to do: “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

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“It ain’t what a man don’t know that makes him a fool, but what he does know that ain’t so.” – Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw)

The workers of San Diego’s Wild Animal Park were facing a strange kind of problem. While promoting the California condor breeding program, they reached a point in time when they were about to see some newly hatched chicks. However, they had to take precautions so that the chicks would not see them. They actually used some puppets to hide their hands, in order to fool the chicks.

Raising animals in captivity introduces a whole new set of problems, some of which are surprising. It appears that many kinds of chicks and cubs tend to imprint whatever they see after they are born and follow it around from then on. They interpret it as their mother, and interestingly, evolution has programmed them to follow their mother and mimic lots of her behaviors.

Humans – so it seems – are also extremely open to imprint things they see around them when they’re young. Families who have migrated from one country to another have often encountered another related syndrome: It appears that their small children have picked up the new language miraculously, to such an extent that they switch spontaneously to speaking it. They sometimes even do it in the presence of their parents, who barely understand the new sounds. They seem to do it especially when they’re excited or upset.

We largely absorb our understanding of the world around us from the way we are brought up. We are built to do so. In spite of what we may think, we have little control over this process. Have you noticed how in an Islamic environment, most people grow to be Muslims, while in a Christian environment, people somehow grow to worship the Trinity? The very same person would argue passionately about totally different things, if they had spent their childhood among others.

From the moment we are formed until we are full grown, our perception of this world changes from almost zero to everything we know, or think we know. Generally speaking, this dramatic change may be contributed to two sources only. One of them is found in our genes and the way we have evolved – for example: No one taught us how to suck milk as infants, or how to hold objects tightly with our little baby hands. The other source of our knowledge is in everything we see, hear, smell, feel and taste – whether this data comes from still objects, plants, animals or other people around us. This is what we grow up with, and is eventually the major source of information for us that turns into the abstract contents of these little boxes in the top of our heads.

And what do we see, hear, smell, feel and taste in this modern world of the 21st century? From the moment we start hearing stories, we learn about God, the Bible, miracles and saviors, monsters and witches, vampires and aliens. From the time we start seeing pictures and signs, we see the artistic comforting face of Jesus Christ, the glaring eyes of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and/or copies of the New Testament in every Western hotel room. It would take a really strong personality to put some solid sense into this stream of confusing emotional input.

The following famous joke illustrates the spirit of things:

A little girl was talking to her teacher about whales.

“Whales can’t swallow people,” the teacher said. “Even though they are large mammals, their throats are very small.”

“But Jonah was swallowed by a whale,” the little girl replied.

“That just can’t be,” the teacher said. “It’s physically impossible.”

“When I get to heaven I will ask Jonah,” said the little girl.

The teacher looked down at her, smiled and asked, “What if Jonah went to hell?”

The little girl replied, “Then you ask him.”

You see, the little girl in the joke is merely you and I. We are programmed to act in certain ways and follow what we are repeatedly told. It is a human characteristic to consider things shown to us when we are young as true. It is another human characteristic to think we control this process and choose our truths. In fact we largely don’t.

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Thus, scientific answers do not provide mental satisfaction for the person asking such questions. He or she needs answers in the sense that he or she seeks relief to this intellectual distress, so to speak. Open questions are bad and instant answers are good. This is like a small boy who hears his father’s complex explanations about their financial situation, but eventually feels compelled to ask again for that expensive toy in the window.

It is important to emphasize the aspects related to the term “nature’s wonders”, as commonly used. It is only natural for us humans to admire things that seem so wonderful and complex – for instance, the anatomy of the eye and its capabilities. Moreover, it would be appropriate to regard with suspicion a person who does not feel a kind of contradiction between such complexity and sophistication on one hand, and the simple laws of physics (as taught in school) on the other hand.

Part of this feeling is refusing to accept that what seems complex to us has been created naturally. This feeling is not based at all on any knowledge about the actual origin of things. It is based on the way our brain is built (or rather, evolved over millions of years).

It’s very difficult for us to perceive long periods of time. We don’t feel what “hundreds of millions of years” really is. Never in our history of evolution have we had any need for such a feeling. We cannot feel very slow development, so it is interpreted in our mind as something faster, which makes it absurd and unacceptable. As if it took three generations for fish to turn into reptiles, and for proto-chimps to become Homo sapiens. As a consequence, we obviously tend to reject such absurdity. Hence, our inability to perceive huge periods of times and enormous distances eventually causes our minds to seek a more comprehensible explanation of some divine intervention, creating things in much shorter times within a much smaller world.

The minds of people like Einstein or Darwin (and for that matter, yours and mine as well) are not essentially different in this respect. However, they managed to distinguish between these subjective feelings and objective facts, based on hard evidence. Indeed it seems absurd that the eye has been shaped by natural selection processes. Don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Yet, the facts and evidence we have confirm this process. Indeed there are wonderful things in the kingdom of animals and plants, but the wonder is found in the way we look at things, not in the things themselves.

Certain animals (snakes, butterflies and others) have pictures of big eyes imprinted on them. These are usually explained as a mechanism that has evolved to frighten potential predators, meaning those with bigger eyes survived more. Is this the real reason? Probably yes. Can we absolutely prove it? Not in mathematical terms. Can our mind feel this is the reason? Not really. Our mind imagines eye pictures that have been created quickly, thus having no natural explanation. With a bit of logic (exercising control over our natural feelings) we can find natural explanations for many wonderful characteristics of animals and plants.

Scientists do not take advantage of the lack of knowledge of others, as I heard once. Quite the opposite, scientists often fight their own feelings and instincts. They attempt sticking to facts, even if sometimes those facts are not very convenient, even for them as humans.

A somewhat related story has to do with our urge to assign reasons to various events. Our perfect imaginary world includes a cause for every thing that happens. If there’s no obvious cause, we may often invent one that serves our purposes. Many times we do it in our mind without noticing. We sometimes do it even against our will, like a person afraid of the dark, knowing perfectly well that the darkness cannot cause any harm. Reasoning is a basic quality of our world. Why was President Kennedy murdered? Why is this sword lying in the field (Joan of Arc, in case you missed it)? We easily adopt cosmic conspiracies. You know what? There is even a reason for this chapter to reach your eyes.

Analyzing this characteristic of ours, we may find that it has actually evolved over time. Many of our ancestors stood a better chance of surviving if able to assign reasons for events. Ironically so, the same quality we’ve developed due to evolution is now used to deny it. In other words: You refuse to believe that all those feelings of yours are in fact chemical processes, evolved during millions of years? Your refusal to believe so, is in itself a feeling, a chemical process, which has evolved during millions of years.

Following the huge tsunami in December 2004, some Jewish religious authorities (including one of Israel’s chief rabbis) simply knew why the tragedy took place. It was due to God’s anger at the gentiles – the non-Jews – for not keeping the minimal set of laws required from them by God. Those laws are known in the Jewish tradition as the 7 laws of Noah. Chief Muslim authorities, however, knew of a different reason: The tragedy happened because of prostitution and Zionist activity associated with the suffering areas.

For that matter, it was Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach – a major religious leader in Israel of the 20th century – who published the evident religious thoughts about the necessary reason for the Jewish Holocaust: It was a punishment for Jewish bad religious behavior, and following its implementation, the Jewish balance with God has been reset (for now).

Religious thinking is especially fond of assigning reasons to things. We often believe in the reasons we wish to believe in and then feel that we see things we wish to see. People who deeply believe seem to know that if something good happens, it’s because they did what God expected them to do. If something bad happens, it means, of-course, that they didn’t perform as expected. Either way, for them, it’s an internal proof of what should be done, and for the existence of God. Certain creative religious minds may even twist the purpose of this book to be some sort of a weird test by God. People in the early stages of leaving their religion tend to associate their physical problems with their new deeds. Many conclusions are drawn just to calm down the God-seeking mind.

Seeking for a clear beginning and end, longing for a simple reason, it’s no wonder our most popular book (and the text we study as children) starts with the words “In the beginning God created…”

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“Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.” – Niels Bohr

“Red is grey and yellow white, but we decide which is right, and which is an illusion.” – ‘Late Lament, Nights in White Satin’, The Moody Blues, Graeme Edge

There is a well-known story about a woman who attended a lecture, and heard the lecturer say that the universe was going to self-destruct in five billion years. The woman fainted immediately. After being woken up she was asked whether the reason she fainted had to do with the five billion years mentioned. She replied with a sigh of relief, saying, “Thank God! I thought he said five million years.”

This chapter is a bit different than the others. No, it does not discuss Italian cooking or underwater sex, but it deals less with God and religions, and deals more with ourselves, or rather – the way we grasp the world around us.

Let’s begin this short journey with a small example: We know that all that’s around us, including our own flesh and bones, is made of tiny molecules, which in turn are built from a collection of atoms. And what makes up the atoms? We were told in school that each atom is made of electrons that sort of circle around a nucleus and that all of these particles are extremely small.

Imagine taking a single atom and increasing its size about a trillion times, so it becomes as big as a large concert hall. When we start to travel inside this imaginary huge atom, we’ll find somewhere in the middle a little nucleus, the size of an apple. What about the electrons? Ignoring some physical facts about how difficult it is to actually locate them, they will still be too tiny for us to see in the hall, even smaller than the head of a pin.

We know the world around us is made of atoms. We now also know that most of the volume of this world is occupied by… nothing. When we press our finger against the wall, we actually press lots of emptiness against more emptiness. However, the wall still feels very rigid, doesn’t it? (You just tried it yourself… I saw you!)

Furthermore, imagine our nice brick wall now being heated with intense flames. We know that this causes the tiny molecules of the wall to move faster. However, when we touch the wall now, we don’t feel any movement of the molecules. At least not the way we grew up to understand what “movement” is. What we do feel is a very hot wall.

Where does this feeling of solidness come from? And how come the movement of small particles is translated into the feeling of heat? It is truly amazing how our brain and mind deal with the physical phenomena around us: Different frequencies of light in the real world are perceived by us as different colors in our world. Certain frequencies are felt as cold colors, while others produce warm colors in our mind. Combinations of sound waves with nice mathematic relations are mapped into pleasant chords of music, while not-so-nice relations are taken for discordant harmonies.

In a nutshell, things that we feel about the world around us, as strong as this feeling may be, represent the way our mind was shaped to understand these things, not necessarily what they really are.

Let’s take this concept one step further. Remember our imaginary concert-hall-size atom? Let’s increase it a bit more until all the protons and the electrons become easily visible. What do you think is the shape of an electron? Is it round like a ball? And what is the texture of a proton? Is it soft or hard?

In reality these questions have no immediate meaning. Shape and texture, just like temperature and elasticity, are characteristics of large objects made of many molecules. They simply don’t apply for electrons and protons. At least not in the simple sense we grew up with. And yet, we find it extremely difficult to think of something we know is there as having no specific shape or texture. For our own complete vision of the universe, we must assign in our mind some shape, texture, color, exact location, and speed to any object out there.

This is to say that our mind is very limited. We have the urge to fully understand what everything is composed of, and we’ll never be satisfied because in our perception of the world there could always be something smaller. Molecules are made of atoms; atoms are made of electrons, protons and neutrons. Those, in turn, are made of quarks and strings… does it ever end? More importantly: Can our mind deal with this question at all?

The need to satisfy our limited mind creates paradoxes and difficult situations for us. We read about the duality of light, being both particles (photons) and energy (waves) at the same time. We may understand the equations, but our mind doesn’t really absorb these facts as a true feeling of what’s around us. Similarly, we find it extremely difficult to deal with death and the loss of a loved one. Our mind can’t accept the fact that someone we know ceases to exist. We manage this loss by completing the picture with the notion of the next world.

Einstein’s theory of relativity produces many more examples that are perhaps easy to calculate, but fall again into this category of “not satisfying our mental wish for completeness”: How can the speed of light always be the same, even if we move towards it or away from it? How can time tick at different rates for persons in different situations (e.g., the twin paradox)? The answer is of-course that the problem lies in the way our mind has been built to interpret the world, and not in the world itself or in our scientific way of understanding it. The problem, if you will, is with us, not with the world around us. The world is complex for our mind.

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Religion, in contrast, is not very tolerant of raising doubts. How can religious knowledge advance when it is forbidden to claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and it is considered a crime to even teach evolution? In a way, religion lets the text do the thinking for the people.

The Rambam (Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Moses Maimonides) who lived in the 12th century is considered as one of the greatest Jewish philosophers and the most famous codifier of Jewish law in history. Though possessing certain scientific knowledge of his time, he ordered, “Those who say the Bible is not from Heaven … he who kills one of them, follows his duties greatly”. This duty was reinforced later by other famous Rabbis and codifiers – so much for modern Bible research. Quoting the Bible, “and that ye go not about after your own heart and your own eyes” (Numbers, chapter 15, verse 39), he forbade dealing with any thoughts that may contradict the essence of Judaism. According to this idea, religious people are indeed not allowed to read this book! And if you think this is some kind of a joke, you are cordially invited to spread copies of this book in fundamentalist neighborhoods, let them be Jewish or Christian or whatever.

The above is even more disturbing, as one of the most common tactics used by religious preachers is to politely invite you to examine their religious claims. The preacher will try to persuade you that you shouldn’t be “narrow minded”, and will perhaps mention phrases like “what do you have to lose?” Just try returning this invitation, equipped with appropriate so-called heretical material, and see what happens.

Rationalism and logic play a major role in science. They link evidence with conclusions. In the opening chapter of his book, “Journey to the Depths of Existence”, Rabbi Mordechai Neugershel talks about rationalism: “We shall not start our discussion … before we declare that … our belief is strong and unshakeable. Following this declaration, we can peacefully access the rational discussion.” – these words speak for themselves. Religious rationalism goes like this: First we decide on the outcome of the discussion, and only then can we argue rationally. No wonder Galileo was put on trial.

This seems to give the religious preacher an advantage when arguing with the scientist: The latter is inherently more open to changing his or her mind. If tomorrow some hard evidence is found for the existence of a man named Methuselah, who lived for 969 years (Genesis, Chapter 5) – the scientist will have no problem believing this story to be true. In fact, this is a big advantage of the scientific way of thinking.

Perhaps even more than demonstrating who’s got the advantage, this demonstrates that a common language is a basic requirement for a fruitful discussion. There’s not much use for a conversation between two sides, when the very notion of a conversation is perceived differently: When one side shall not start the discussion before declaring the result.

On a slightly different note, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, known also as the Ipuwer Papyrus, is a famous archaeological discovery from Ancient Egypt. It is comprised of phrases like “the river is blood” which prompted some historians to call attention to the obvious link to the Biblical story of the Exodus. In actuality, it is safe to assume that the old Biblical story was greatly influenced by an even more ancient Egyptian culture. As in other similar cases, both texts probably evolved from older stories of an ancient environmental disaster.

The selective reliance on scientific evidence is yet another remarkable feature of religious preaching. Whenever there is a tiny piece of evidence lending credence to a Bible story, or some scientific opinion against an aspect of evolution, we find large parts of the religious community celebrating. Suddenly they all become experts and scientists, but somehow seem to forget what the majority of the scientific world has to say, and how the scientific community draws conclusions.

This religious community of “newly born” experts also enjoys quoting famous scientists. By way of speaking, many people, including true scientists, often use phrases that contain ‘God’. This alone may serve those who like to assign their own beliefs to the quoted person. For example, Albert Einstein is a popularly cited character, especially since he is no longer alive and cannot speak for himself. Back when he could still defend his own opinions, this is what Mr. Einstein had to say about people quoting him:

“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings … … it was, of-course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

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“The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.” – Mark Russell

Did you know that every modern scientific discovery already appears in the Bible and its various interpretations? Perhaps you didn’t know that tidbit, but many Orthodox Jews are brought up with this knowledge. This includes not only things that science has already found, but also things not yet discovered.

Purely from a mathematic point of view, there are not enough bits of information in the Bible to cover all of modern scientific knowledge (part of which is scientific research of the Bible itself). Nevertheless, you’ll often hear about the vast knowledge of our holy fathers in the areas of math and physics, as if Abraham had been busy solving differential equations between prayers.

A preacher would say, “Only nowadays are scientists starting to discover things long known by the Holy Bible.” This is usually accompanied by the simple yet effective sales pitch: “Scientific theories keep changing all the time, while the Bible is eternal.” and sometimes, even, “Science keeps proving that the Biblical knowledge is right”.

Furthermore, over the years, many ultra-Orthodox Jews have sort of studied science from their holy texts. For example, one just need to delve a little into the tractate of ‘Chulin’ in the Jewish Talmud to find how scientific decisions were taken by the process of comparing the sayings of various rabbis, rather than by actually examining things in the real world. This art of gedanken experiment (German for ‘thought experiment’ that one carries out in his or her head) has been very popular as a major substitution for modern scientific research. Note that in many cases, from the believer’s point of view, the belief is the reality.

It’s a fact that science and religion do not always get along. Evolution is just one example, as is the study of the age of our planet. Archaeology in the Middle East is yet another branch of science where religious stories and interpretations are found to be in conflict with tangible evidence. Did the ancient people of Israel in fact participate in the massive Exodus from Egypt around 1500 BC? Was King Solomon’s kingdom truly so large and strong around 950 BC? Was the human female created from a rib of the human male around 3700 BC? Scientists and archaeologists suggest a simple no for an answer to each of these questions (as well as many others).

In the core of this argument we frequently encounter the question: What is evidence?

Nicolaus Copernicus published his Little Commentary in the beginning of the 16th century, when he reached the conclusion that the Earth revolves around the Sun. At that time these ideas were too revolutionary for most people to believe for it would compel them to combine their religious education with evidence that wasn’t concrete. People simply knew the Earth was stationary. Some hundred years later, Galileo Galilei provided the evidence using a new invention – the telescope. Galileo was of-course prosecuted by the Vatican for heresy. It took 359 additional years for the Catholic Church to officially admit that the Earth revolves around the Sun (Pope John Paul II in 1992) and thus to absolve Galileo of guilt.

Do Galileo’s observations constitute evidence? Perhaps the Earth is still at the center of the universe and the rest of the planets move in very complex paths, which look as if the Earth and they circle the Sun?

In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley conducted their famous Michelson-Morley Experiment, using another new invention – the Michelson Interferometer. By measuring the speed of light in various situations, they managed to prove that the Earth was not moving relatively to the ether – the stuff that was considered to fill space itself. The Michelson-Morley Experiment triggered a whole new branch of science that yielded, among other things, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.

Neither the Old Testament, New Testament, Koran, nor any other ancient collection of stories and rules, knows anything of light interference or of modern relativity. It is true, however, that the notion of absolute evidence in physics is not always defined. In fact, this is exactly the thing that initiates the advancement of science, as opposed to the stagnation of religiously-based knowledge.

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