Evidence · Case 08 · Science
Robert Jastrow, “God and the Astronomers” (1978)
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
Jastrow, the founder of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, closed his book with the image of the scientist scaling the mountain of ignorance, reaching the summit, and being “greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” He stated plainly that he was an agnostic.
Sources
Robert Jastrow, “God and the Astronomers” (W. W. Norton, 1978)
Objections & responses
- Jastrow was writing in 1978, wasn’t a cosmologist, and thought the Big Bang was compatible with both a theistic and a non-theistic reading. Isn’t quoting the mountain-climbing line without that context misrepresenting him?
Jastrow’s book is a popular work and his remark is an opinion, not a scientific result, and he drew no theological conclusion himself; he thought the question of what came before was scientifically unanswerable. His point was about the surprise of the discovery for a scientific culture that had assumed an eternal universe, and about the irony that the biblical tradition had long asserted a beginning. That is all he is cited for. Its value is limited to answering the assumption that only believers see a fit between the Big Bang and the doctrine of creation.