New Views on Age Old Question
Written by Arnie Gotfryd PhD
Thursday, 01 November 2007

A physics professor wrote this comment following my lecture at Amherst, MA. "I enjoyed Dr. Gotfryd's talk. However, not to accept that the universe is much older than 5800 years simply puts Judaism in an absurd and untenable position of denying the undeniable."
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Hi Rabbi Adelman,
I enjoyed Dr. Gotfryd’s talk. However, not to accept that the universe is much older than 5800 years simply puts Judaism in an absurd and untenable position of denying the undeniable.
Attached is a photo of the Crab Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Crab Nebula is due to an exploding star and was first recorded in Chinese records about 900 years ago. It was first seen in a telescope in 1731, around the time of the Baal Shem Tov.
How long did it take the light from the exploding star to reach us on earth? The Hubble telescope can also be used for a simple method to measure how far away it is, just by looking at it over a period of years. The speed of light is also known from measurements on earth. Putting these rather straightforward measurements together, the light from the Crab nebula that we see today started about 7-10,000 years ago. And this is by far NOT the oldest light we see in the Hubble.
None of this is even slightly controversial. That the observable universe is billions of years old is one of the best established facts in science, known from a dozen independent directions. Anyone who portrays this as controversial or not well accepted among scientists – is doing a disservice to students.
It is as well established as the existence of atoms, the existence of DNA, or other things we cannot see in everyday life but we believe to exist based on evidence uncovered in recent years. The arguments and experiments that lead us to believe in atoms and DNA are of exactly the same kind, and are 100% consistent with, the reasons we believe in the age of the universe and the record of biological evolution. So if we deny the astronomical understanding of the universe, we should really also deny the atoms, DNA, electrons, lasers, computers...
Do Torah Jews deny the reality of all these things? Because atoms or DNA are not mentioned as such in Bereisheet, are we to think they are mistakes?
Or, on the contrary, are these discoveries not the result of humans using their G-d given faculties to understand the world He gave us? And is this recent upsurge in knowledge not the glory of G-d and the sign of the coming Messianic Age? Is not scientific growth of knowledge one of the ways that humans elevate themselves and bring G-d into the world? And since this is all so glorious and marvellous and such a wonderful story, why deny this glory to Hashem who created it?
To deny all this is NOT the answer, it’s simply ridiculous. There must be a better answer. Since we believe in the Torah and no rational person can fail to believe in science also, there seems to be a serious crisis in Torah-based understanding! This is a problem crying out to be solved. In my opinion, a new wave of Torah understanding and interpretation is needed and is incumbent upon those who desire Moshiach to provide a better answer and show how there is only one universe, known in different ways.
Lipah [Larry Domash, Physics Professor, Amherst]
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Dr. Domash,
Thank you very much for your correspondence, following my talk at Amherst Chabad House, which I received via our mutual friend, Rabbi Chaim Adelman.
While you raise many points in your letter, I'll venture to say that the overarching issue appears to be the vast discrepancy between what I represented as the Torah's view on the age of the universe (5768 years), and what you represented as the scientific view (billions of years).
Let me start by stating unequivocally and categorically that any apparent conflict between Torah and science is necessarily based on some misunderstanding, either of Torah, or of science, or of both. The key to the resolution lies in your own words at the close of your letter, "there is only one universe known in different ways". I could not agree more. Science views the world through human eyes while Torah views the world through G-d's. For over a century, science has totally abandoned the view that its findings are absolute, objective and certain. On the contrary, thanks to Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Gauss and so many others, science considers its own findings to be relative, subjective, uncertain, and probabilistic. To borrow your own term, it is these that are the "undeniable" facts of science, whether we speak of the experimental sciences like physics, observational sciences like astronomy, or speculative sciences like cosmology.
Whether or not you accept the Torah as divine and its six-day creation as factual, as a man of science it is your responsibility to affirm the conditional and tentative nature of science itself, and cannot turn back the clock to resurrect anachronistic 19th century beliefs that have since been so firmly deposed. I'm sure that a calm analysis of both Torah and scientific perspectives will clarify the issues and enlighten us all, showing that there is no need for concern in the first place.
As to the specifics of your letter, I am responding below.

However, not to accept that the universe is much older than 5800 years simply puts Judaism in an absurd and untenable position of denying the undeniable.
Why is questioning currently fashionable opinions in the scientific community deemed 'denying the undeniable'? If the dating of stellar objects were a matter of observation instead of backward extrapolations built on unproven (and scientifically challenged) assumptions such as the uniformitarian principle and Hubble red shifts being caused by Doppler effects, your claim of undeniability would have scientific merit. That is, however, not the case.
Attached is a photo of the Crab Nebula from the Hubble Space Telescope. The Crab Nebula is due to an exploding star and was first recorded in Chinese records about 900 years ago. It was first seen in a telescope in 1731, around the time of the Baal Shem Tov.
How long did it take the light from the exploding star to reach us on earth? The Hubble telescope can also be used for a simple method to measure how far away it is, just by looking at it over a period of years. The speed of light is also known from measurements on earth. Putting these rather straightforward measurements together, the light from the Crab nebula that we see today started about 7-10,000 years ago. And this is by far NOT the oldest light we see in the Hubble.
NASA pegs the distance at about 6000 light years, not 7-10,000, but agreed that is not the point. Your contention is that if it takes more than 5768 years for the light to get here, then it obviously left the object more than 5768 years ago, and the world is therefore older than the Torah says. That would be fine if the star was created without its light. However if the star was created with its light, then the light we see is not more than 5768 years old. See the article "Dating by Starlight" on this website.
None of this is even slightly controversial. That the observable universe is billions of years old is one of the best established facts in science, known from a dozen independent directions. Anyone who portrays this as controversial or not well accepted among scientists – is doing a disservice to students.
I beg to differ on the scientific concensus regarding the age of the universe as well as the claim that a dozen independent directions confirm the estimate. When I was a kid the universe was 18 billion years old, then it was 16 byo. About 5 years ago, they banged it down to 13.7byo. But what about the astronomy articles identifying stars that are 2 billion years older at their youngest than the universe is at its oldest? Discover Magazine called this the "Crisis in Cosmology." Besides that, hundreds of cosmologists now doubt the Big Bang altogether, and some are presenting cogent cases for a reinterpretation of the Hubble Red-Shift as a non-Doppler phenomenon. See the New Scientist article "The End of the Big Bang?"It is as well established as the existence of atoms, the existence of DNA, or other things we cannot see in everyday life but we believe to exist based on evidence uncovered in recent years. The arguments and experiments that lead us to believe in atoms and DNA are of exactly the same kind, and are 100% consistent with, the reasons we believe in the age of the universe and the record of biological evolution. So if we deny the astronomical understanding of the universe, we should really also deny the atoms, DNA, electrons, lasers, computers...
I believe in the invisible. I believe in atoms, gravity, and electrons, even though our evidence of them is only indirect. That's because none of these things involve untestable backward extrapolations over eons of unobserved time over unknown conditions. Evolution and Big Bang are not even theories according to the normative definition of science which requires them to generate falsifiable hypotheses. They are narrative attempts to explain great unknowns, namely the origin and development of space, time and life. In no way are these myths better supported by empirical fact or logical analysis than the Genesis narrative.
Do Torah Jews deny the reality of all these things? Because atoms or DNA are not mentioned as such in Bereisheet, are we to think they are mistakes?
No
. The Torah doesn't have to mention something for it to be real. But what it does say, is true.
Or, on the contrary, are these discoveries not the result of humans using their G-d given faculties to understand the world He gave us?
Yes, they are.
And is this recent upsurge in knowledge not the glory of G-d and the sign of the coming Messianic Age?
Yes, it is.
Is not scientific growth of knowledge one of the ways that humans elevate themselves and bring G-d into the world? And since this is all so glorious and marvellous and such a wonderful story, why deny this glory to Hashem who created it?Again, atomic and molecular theory is subject to experimental test, whereas origin myths are not.
To deny all this is NOT the answer, it’s simply ridiculous. There must be a better answer. Since we believe in the Torah and no rational person can fail to believe in science also, there seems to be a serious crisis in Torah-based understanding! This is a problem crying out to be solved. In my opinion, a new wave of Torah understanding and interpretation is needed and is incumbent upon those who desire Moshiach to provide a better answer and show how there is only one universe, known in different ways.I hope our discussion elucidates those different ways of understanding the universe better. In addition there is the legitimate quantum view that whatever predates human observation is not to be considered physically real. There is also the view of Moshe Carmeli, member of the Nobel Physics Award selection committee, who says that the calculated 13.7byo age of the universe is to be considered a universal constant since the first cosmic day.
In any case, consider this: If G-d is smart enough to evolve a universe from a Big Bang in such a way as to generate intelligent life that can reason so well about its origins, should he not be smart enough to be able to create it in seven days with all its species in place? I love and respect science and am proud to be counted among its practitioners. You probably feel the same way. But we must bear in mind that the concensus of scientists is not always tantamount to verifiable truth.
Respectfully yours, Aryeh (Arnie) Gotfryd.________________________________________