140 cosmos
means simply “this.” God is right here, in this very moment, fresh and un-
expected, taking you by surprise. God isthis.
notes
- I want to thank Professors Walter Kohn and Barbara Holdrege, whose
thoughtful responses to my essay stimulated my thinking about this problem. - Moses Cordovero,Or Ne’erav,ed. Yehuda Z. Brandwein (Jerusalem: Yeshivat
Qol Yehudah, 1965), 2:2, 18b–19a. - J. B. S. Haldane, cited in Richard Dawkins,The Blind Watchmaker(New York:
W. W. Norton, 1986), 249. - John D. Barrow and Joseph Silk,The Left Hand of Creation: The Origin and
Evolution of the Expanding Universe,2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,
1993), 21. - See Willem B. Drees,Beyond the Big Bang: Quantum Cosmologies and God(La
Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1990); Hubert Reeves, “Birth of the Myth of the Birth of the
Universe,” inNew Windows to the Universe,ed. F. Sanchez and M. Vasquez (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 2: 141–149. - Andrei Linde, “The Self-Reproducing Inflationary Universe,”Scientific Ameri-
can, November 1994, 48–55. See also Alan H. Guth,The Inflationary Universe: The
Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins(Boston: Addison-Wesley, 1997). - Andrei Linde, “Particle Physics and Inflationary Cosmology,”Physics Today
40.9 (1987): 68. - Joel R. Primack and Nancy Ellen Abrams, “ ‘In a Beginning...’:Quantum
Cosmology and Kabbalah,”Tikkun10.1 (January–February 1995): 71. - See Don Page, cited in Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer,Origins: The Lives
and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 409. - See Norbert M. Samuelson,Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 237. - Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan,Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who
We Are(New York: Random House, 1992), 276. - Exodus 31:17.
- Steven Weinberg, cited in Heinz Pagels,Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the
Beginning of Time(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 363–364. Weinberg makes a
similar statement at the end ofThe First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of
the Universe(New York: Basic Books, 1988), 154; see his discussion of the reactions to
this statement inDreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws
of Nature(New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 255–256. For a wide range of responses to
Weinberg from some two dozen leading cosmologists (including Weinberg himself ),
see Lightman and Brawer,Origins,passim. - Harald Fritzsch,The Creation of Matter: The Universe from Beginning to End
(New York: Basic Books, 1984), 276. - The Taoistwuand the Buddhistsunyataandmuare similar to Western mys-
tical nothingness but not identical. See Daniel C. Matt, “Varieties of Mystical Nothing-
ness: Jewish, Christian and Buddhist,”Studia Philonica Annual9 (1997): 316–331. For
a history ofayin,see Matt, “Ayin:The Concept of Nothingness in Jewish Mysticism,”