Foreword

Are you educated in or otherwise well aware of the sciences and thus convinced that current scientific theories and data explain our origins? At the same time, do you have a basic awareness of Judeo-Christian scripture and its seeming incompatibility with science?

Conversely, do you believe that God created human beings and that all answers pertaining to our origins are clearly provided in scripture? At the same time, do you have a basic awareness of science and its seeming incompatibility with the teachings of your religion?

In other words, are you familiar with the main principles of both religion and science yet cannot reconcile the two to explain our origins?

At the start of this journey, I, too, was unsure whether or not the answers found in science books and religious scriptures could be reconciled. Now, having explored both in some depth, I can say that such reconciliation is not out of the question. This book attempts to demonstrate the reconciliation with respect to the appearance and early history of our species. But first, let me tell you about my background and potential biases.

I began with knowledge gained from a basic religious upbringing and a high school science education. To me, both bodies of knowledge were fascinating yet appeared incompatible. As I proceeded to obtain a scientific education, I initially came to think that science books answered everything. However, by my fourth year at university, some fundamental questions concerning human origins began to reappear. Simultaneously, in science texts some answers were not complete. So, I went back to study religion, this time also exploring the mystical component of religion so as to find deeper inner meaning rather than simple interpretation. Answers to my questions began to appear.

The Genesis creation narrative, for Christians and Jews, provides the foundation for an understanding of origins. For Muslims, too, it is an important component of the same understanding. While The Broken Gift is based primarily on the creation narrative, in order to delve deep into the subject’s mysteries I relied on Jewish sources exclusively, since Judaism has formed the background of my religious education. Of those with different religious backgrounds, or none at all, I ask that you please continue to read on. You may find that the various sources pertaining to origins have more in common than perhaps expected. Certainly, such widely divergent narratives—the divine creation of humankind in one day less than 6,000 years ago as revealed in religious texts, versus the appearance of our species 200,000 years ago as the culmination of numerous human-like species that existed over a span of millions of years as described in scientific texts—present a key challenge. They would seem incompatible, irreconcilable. I maintain they are not.

This book presents a rigorous analysis of key events and their dates related to the appearance and early history of our species as described in both Genesis and in the latest scientific publications. No attempt is made either to discredit or excuse any body of knowledge or any particular religious belief. On the contrary, the thesis of The Broken Gift is that both science texts and the Bible effectively describe human origins.

Nor is an attempt made to present why bodies of knowledge or beliefs are either compatible or incompatible by providing arguments that, although potentially powerful, cannot be proved conclusively. Instead, in The Broken Gift every attempt is made to reconcile religion-based events and their timing relating to the appearance and early history of our species with the same events as studied by scientists. When we put aside our personal beliefs and focus only on the events and their timing, we find alignment—a startling alignment. This book aims to elucidate that squaring of supposedly irreconcilable ways of knowing. My wish is that once you have glimpsed the possibilities, you then can ponder our origins with a newly reconciled set of stories—the Biblical story, which is thousands of years old, and the scientific story, which is very new. Together, they depict the revelation of human existence itself in complementary rather than contradictory terms.