Man what drives you? What are you so relentlessly seeking out there in space? What makes you so determined to conquer the expanse of the heavens that you’re willing to spend many billions of dollars to remove the veil of mystery from the secret of Creation? What is the source of this fierce craving to know and understand everything about everything down to the ultimate tantalizing question: how did it all begin?

Is it really mere curiosity?

It’s understandable that you send satellites into outer space for purposes of communication weather monitoring and intelligence. But why did you also shoot a gigantic telescope into the heavens in an attempt to look upon the first moment of the “Big Bang ” which according to your theory was the beginning of this universe?

For some reason you are mesmerized by this riddle. Its mysterious enchantment has you in its hold and won’t let go. You feel that you urgently need some kind of answer in order to be released from this vague incomprehensible discomfort. Is this where the explanation for you insatiable curiosity lies?

There were times when you thought you’d found it the solution that would free your soul. The 18^th century mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace developed a theory of an eternal universe with no assumption of a Creator as a First Cause. Afterwards you said to yourself “Evolution. Development through natural selection aided by mutation.” For a while it seemed that you were released from the enchantment — all was known. You found happiness in the embrace of evolution your redeemer from the shackles of mystery.   

It seems however that deep inside something still troubled you. You persisted in thinking despite the simple ingenious solution you had found. You did not cease to be amazed at the mystery.

You asked questions; you pondered. You investigated you researched you thought deeply and analyzed your latest findings. You summarized them and you came to the conclusion that they contradicted many of your previous assumptions — assumptions that had been aggressively promoted as scientific fact and accepted for generations.

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Listen man. Listen to the new conclusions you have reached in the last generation.  

After empirical proofs were found for the Big Bang theory which speaks of the universe spreading out from a hidden starting point before which according to the laws of nature there was nothing you bowed your head before Jewish concepts such as creation ex nihilo chaos (tohu vavohu) and more. You stopped mocking them too. In fact you began using them although for generations they had seemed utterly irrational to you. Your ears heard a different tune from the leading cosmologists of our day such as the famous Stephen Hawking (A Brief History of Time) who stated: “The moment of creation itself is found outside the sphere of the laws of physics that are known to us.” Note that he uses the taboo word “creation.” And he isn’t alone in this new mode of expression which comes to describe the beginning of the universe. Professor Alan Guth of MIT writes[YL1]  that “it seems clear that there was an absolute moment of creation.”  

When the Big Bang theory was first publicized the scientific community objected to it because of the implicit conclusion that there must have been a point of creation. But in light of the proofs that accumulated over the years there was no alternative but to accept this painful and revolutionary conclusion. This pain was summed up by astronomer Robert Jastrow of NASA a cosmologist and populist author who passed away in 2008:

“There is a kind of religion in science; it is the religion of a person who believes there is order and harmony in the Universe. Every event can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause. … This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications he would be traumatized.”

Yes you openly admitted your failure to crack the code of Creation evolution and other theories notwithstanding. With great humility you understood your limitations even in an age when technology had almost fooled you into believing you were omnipotent. But you should know that this “failure ” this humility is the greatest of your triumphs and in this of all things you can take pride. For it opened the gates before you to correctly evaluate everything that happened after that hidden moment concealed behind the clouds of Bereishis.

“Nature is the way to G‑d. It allows us to see His greatness and splendor” stated Justus Von Liebig a chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry. “It makes it possible for us to perceive the glory of His Kingdom. Without knowledge of the laws of nature and natural phenomena man cannot describe the greatness and wisdom of the Creator.”

And so it led you to reconsider the simple meaning of the first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning G‑d created….” Standing in wonder before the marvels of Creation you sought the truth and you learned a profound sense of modesty for as geologist Oswald Heer said “The laws of nature all point to the existence of a lawmaker.”  

Professor Aharon Katzir a pioneer in the study of electrochemistry who perished in the Lod Airport Massacre in 1972 said at a microbiology conference back in 1963 that “We recognize the phenomena but not their cause. For example a ray of light travels through the universe and reaches a certain point in the minimum span of time. But how does that ray of light know to choose a path that is minimal in terms of time? Is there someone who directs it that way — or is it merely mechanical?… These days when science has made considerable progress scientists in particular are tending to think that there is higher power that organizes and controls the entire cosmos. It seems paradoxical because science is built on formulas not on faith and the two are diametrically opposed. But apparently it is a parabola which when it reaches its peak returns in an arc almost parallel to the path it took.”  

Robert Jastrow a leading a leading figure at NASA in the heyday of space travel wrote in his book G‑d And The Astonomers: “For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Georges Lemaitre a Belgian priest renowned astronomer and professor of psysics in the 1950s and ’60s would regularly end his lectures with thanks to “the One Who gave him a heart to know Him to recognize something of His glory in His world and Who wondrously matched the world to the power of our intellect.”

You see in those words of Lemaitre lie the source of your tremendous curiosity your bold aspiration to uncover the secret. It is the drive for the unknown that the Creator infused into you so that you should seek and find Him in the midst of His creation in an endless journey of discovery. And most of all so that you should learn to be astounded and excited even to delight in the fact that each new discovery contains further mysteries. For “mystery is the most beautiful experience we can have. A person to whom this experience is foreign and who cannot look upon it with enthusiasm might as well be dead! His eyes are closed! To know that what cannot be grasped really does exist and reveals itself through the supreme wisdom and the most radiant beauty” (attributed to Albert Einstein).

And (as the Ramchal explains in Daas Tevunos) as this awareness actually floods you with a deep sense of gratitude in the joy and excitement of discovering one more little part of the great truth know that this joy too was made by G‑d for your sake.