We have come to anticipate these questions comprise

we have come to anticipate, these questions comprise the modern frontier of cosmic discovery and, at
the moment, they transcend the answers our available data and theories can supply. Some promising
ideas, such as inflationary cosmology and string theory, already exist. These could ultimately provide
the answers to those questions, further pushing back our boundary of awe.
My personal views are entirely pragmatic and partly resonate with those of Galileo who, during
his trial, is credited with saying, “The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go”
(Drake 1957, p. 186). Galileo further noted, in a 1615 letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, “In my
mind God wrote two books. The first book is the Bible, where humans can find the answers to their
questions on values and morals. The second book of God is the book of nature, which allows humans
to use observation and experiment to answer our own questions about the universe” (Drake 1957, p.
173).
I simply go with what works. And what works is the healthy skepticism embodied in scientific
method. Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and
understanding, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery. Yet my vocabulary of scientific
inspiration strongly overlaps with that of religious enthusiasts. I, like others, am humbled in the
presence of the objects and phenomena of our universe. And I go misty with admiration for its
splendor. But I do so knowing and accepting that if I propose a God who graces our valley of
unknowns, the day may come, empowered by the advance of science, when no more valleys remain.

FORTY-TWO
THE PERIMETER OF IGNORANCE
W
riting in centuries past, many scientists felt compelled to wax poetic about cosmic mysteries and
God’s handiwork. Perhaps one should not be surprised at this: most scientists back then, as well as
many scientists today, identify themselves as spiritually devout.
But a careful reading of older texts, particularly those concerned with the universe itself, shows
that the authors invoke divinity only when they reach the boundaries of their understanding. They
appeal to a higher power only when staring into the ocean of their own ignorance. They call on God
only from the lonely and precarious edge of incomprehension. Where they feel certain about their
explanations, however, God gets hardly a mention.
Let’s start at the top. Isaac Newton was one of the greatest intellects the world has ever seen.
His laws of motion and his universal law of gravitation, conceived in the mid-seventeenth century,
account for cosmic phenomena that had eluded philosophers for millennia. Through those laws, one
could understand the gravitational attraction of bodies in a system, and thus come to understand
orbits.
Newton’s law of gravity enables you to calculate the force of attraction between any two
objects. If you introduce a third object, then each one attracts the other two, and the orbits they trace
become much harder to compute. Add another object, and another, and another, and soon you have the
planets in our solar system. Earth and the Sun pull on each other, but Jupiter also pulls on Earth,
Saturn pulls on Earth, Mars pulls on Earth, Jupiter pulls on Saturn, Saturn pulls on Mars, and on and
on.