Gerald Schroeder

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Dr. Gerald Schroeder is a former professor of nuclear physics at MIT and former member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. He holds doctorates both in Earth Science and Nuclear Physics. He is the author of Genesis and the Big Bang, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, and The Hidden Face of God.

Schroeder is an Orthodox Jew, and his most famous works attempt to reconcile the Biblical account of the age of the universe and of Godly Creation with the claims of modern science that the world is billions of years old and that the process of evolution led to the existence of life. He is closely affiliated with Aish HaTorah, a Jerusalem-based organization promoting Orthodox Judaism. He was an honored speaker at “Torah and Science”, an honor which was later revoked due to criticism about his work.

In his article "What Would Newton Do?", Intelligent Design advocate Phillip E. Johnson summarizes Schroeder's article "The Age of the Universe":

Schroeder starts by noting that the generations of humans starting with Adam and Eve adds up to 5757 years. The biblical "clock" for this purpose starts after the initial six days, a mysterious preliminary period which ancient commentators said contains "all the secrets and ages of the universe." Before Adam, and especially before the creation of the earth, the Bible speaks of time from the viewpoint of the universe as a whole, which Schroeder interprets to mean at the moment of "quark confinement," when stable matter formed from energy early in the first second of the big bang.

Relativity theory teaches that time passes much more slowly in conditions of great gravitational pressure than it does on earth. Using these familiar principles, Schroeder calculates that a period of six days under the conditions of quark confinement, when the universe was approximately a million million times smaller and hotter than it is today, is equal to fifteen billion years of earth time. Genesis and modern physics are reconciled.

1 Criticism
2 Books by him
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Criticism

Critics argue that by choosing a frame of reference in this way using a different moment, and so a different gravitational environment, the six days may in fact be expanded into 100 billion years, a million years, or indeed any other period of time. Further, they argue that the formulation of the argument in fact requires the existence of absolute time, in direct violation of the Theory of Relativity.[1] Other serious factual errors have also been pointed out in his works, including assertions that:

One of his most outspoken critics, Mark Perakh, commented that: "To satisfy the requirements of the special theory of relativity, as per Schroeder's explanation, we have to accept that, first, God is a physical body, second, that it is a body which occupies a certain localized volume in space, and third, to imagine that, during the six days of creation, the Creator was rushing at an enormous speed past the universe he was creating. What would then remain from the concept of the omnipresent non-material God?" [2]

[edit] Books by him

Genesis and the Big Bang, Bantam Books 1990, ISBN 0-553-35413-2
The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom, 1997, ISBN 0-7679-0303-X
The Hidden Face of God, Free Press May 9, 2002, ISBN 0-7432-0325-9.