What fruit did Adam and Eve taste from the Tree of Knowledge? A fig? Wheat? An apple?
If one of these answers is true, does it mean that the other answers are false?
Or, somehow, could all the answers simultaneously be true?
The human brain rebels against two incompatible conclusions or commandments co-existing as truths. How, then, do we grapple with incompatibilities such as:
God gives the Ten Commandments in Exodus, saying “Remember the Sabbath Day.” In Deuteronomy’s “flashback” to the Ten Commandments, God says “Keep the Sabbath Day.” But God only spoke the Ten Commandments once! How could two varying versions exist?
With one utterance, God can voice two different words simultaneously.
Once upon a time, scientists were sure that if they amassed enough knowledge, they would find that no contradictions or incompatibilities existed in the observable world.
Now, scientists encounter photons that seem to travel two paths at once, and particles whose paths seem to depend on where the observer looks for them.
When events are examined closely enough, uncertainty prevails; cause and effect become disconnected.” (John Wheeler, New York Times Large Print Edition, Vol. 34, No. 1,763, December 18, 2000.) Now Nature, too, seems to defy human logic.
Religion and science both point to God’s “beyond-ness,” and to the limits of human understanding.
Could it be, then, that religion and science themselves do not contradict each other?
They are just two different ways of approaching the divine mystery of creation.?
We hear God’s “single utterance” through both religion and science.
Scientists ponder the theory of evolution.
Mystics ponder the tradition that God portrays God creating and destroying 318 worlds before He created our world.
Science discovers telomers, thread-like structures that limit the life of a cell to 50 divisions, and God decrees that all men must die.
Astronomers explain lunar phases.
Jewish tradition explains that the moon shrinks as a punishment for its arrogance.
Beyond the power of language to express, beyond the power of instruments to reveal, Beyond the ability of humans to understand, there is a realm where religion and science exist in harmony. They are two roots, nourishing one tree of truth beyond our comprehension.
To what purpose? To experience overwhelming reverence for God:
“Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, who brings out their host by number, …because he is strong in power, not one is missing.” (Isaiah, 40: 26.)
