Science and Torah in the Jewish Press, Again

From this week's Letters To The Editor (Jewish Press):

The debate over evolution that emerges every so often in the Jewish Press is fascinating. There are two issues I have always had with supporters of evolution, and I hope they can resolve them for me.

One, supporters of evolution claim the world is billions of years old and that human beings, rather than being spontaneously created by God, gradually evolved. If you accept this, then many parts of Genesis cannot be taken literally. This includes the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and the Flood. And if you concede that these stories are allegorical, it is difficult to say where the allegories end and the historical account begins. There needs to be a logical explanation of why Abraham should be any more real than his figurative ancestors.

A second issue concerns the role of faith and reason in this debate. For the evolutionists, what would happen if no great rabbis in the past supported your position?

Imagine that rabbis like the Rambam and Rav Hirsch were squarely against a non-literal interpretation of the Bible. Would you still believe in evolution and its hundreds of years of accumulated scientific evidence? Or would you suppress your reason in favor of remaining a religious Jew?

Neither approach should appeal to people who consider themselves both rational and religious. If you accept reason over God, even hypothetically, you cannot claim to still be religious, since God is no longer supreme. Rather, the next issue of Biblical Archeological Review will decide what you believe.

And if you choose to remain religious, what is the value in knowing the two approaches are currently compatible? In the end, reason will have to be sacrificed for the sake of your faith. If not by evolution, then by biblical criticism or some other field of study.

Once you admit you are willing to give up reason, you are effectively saying, like your opponents, that in order to be religious you have to drink the Kool-Aid. The fact that your flavor happens to be a little more diluted does not make it any easier to swallow.

It seems to me that attempting to reconcile reason and religion is like that old proverb about trying to dance at two different weddings at the same time. It is a wonderful idea, but in the end you finally have to make a choice.

Mordechai Silberstein
Brooklyn, NY

Dear Mr.* Silberstein,

Your first question is certainly a valid one. One can certainly make the mistake of going too far and allegorizing the entire Torah. Your right that there needs to be some logical explanation as to why one part should be taken literally and the other not. However, before I address that point, I feel the need to point out that even if one lacks a logical explanation, that does not negate the fact that the first parts of Genesis might be true only in the allegorical sense. In other words, a failure to explain a distinction between the two sections does not mean that the distinction does not exist... any more than the failure to explain nuclear fission fusion until recently doesn't mean it hasn't been happening in the stellar cores for (at least) the last few thousand years.

That being said, I think that when you look at events listed in Tanach, you will generally find that they fall into three broad categories: those for which there is external evidence that it occurred as literally described, those for which there is no evidence one way or the others, and those for which there is physical evidence *against* it happening as literally described. Things that fall into the first category tend to occur later in Tanach -- the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, the existence of the Davidic dynasty, etc. Things in the second category tend to fall out earlier -- David himself, the earlier Shoftim, etc., the Avos (Patriarchs) themselves fall into this category. The last category tends to include items that are in the earliest part of Genesis -- the story of Creation and the Flood. By examining the physical evidence, you can easily conclude that the earth and humanity have been around longer than 5768 years. You can also easily conclude that a world wide flood, as described in Parshas Noach, could not have happened literally as described. In other words, there is physical evidence (and quite a bit of it) *against* a literal reading of these verses. One could easily postulate that events for which there is physical evidence that they could not have occurred as described should not be taken literally, whereas for events in the other two categories, we can state that they could have or did happen as literally described.

Your second point (regarding the fact that Rabbis in the past have not accepted evolution/cosmology, etc.) is a red herring. One could easily state that the Rambam (since you bring him up) was simply not aware of the evidence. In the lack of evidence to the contrary, I, too, would probably believe in a literal six day Creation. However, I have access to evidence that the Rambam did not. Lest you think that I'm committing some form of heresy by stating that the Rambam may have been deficient in some sort of knowledge, I advise you to open up your Mishneh Torah to the third chapter of Hilchos Yisodei HaTorah where the Rambam provides an entire astronomical scheme which has since been proven wrong. He states that the planets and stars are attached to glass spheres with no empty space (!) between them. He states that the Earth is 40 times the size of the moon, but that is not true by any reasonable measure. He also states that the sun is about 170 times the size of the Earth, but this calculation, too, is incorrect. In other words, do I have to believe these things despite their being physical evidence to the contrary because the Rambam (and many others) believed them to be? The answer is no -- the Rambam did not have access to modern observatories to be able to tell that his measurements were wrong. He could not know that the stars and planets aren't attached to glass spheres because he did not have the technology to find the evidence that it isn't true. The same could easily apply to evolution and cosmology. Since they lacked the evidence that such things could not have literally happened, they were fine with taking a literal approach. Now, however, that we have physical evidence to the contrary, we can (and perhaps must) state that these chapters of Beraishis cannot be taken literally.

You ask the following question:

Imagine that rabbis like the Rambam and Rav Hirsch were squarely against a non-literal interpretation of the Bible. Would you still believe in evolution and its hundreds of years of accumulated scientific evidence? Or would you suppress your reason in favor of remaining a religious Jew?

But what you fail to consider is a third possibility: that perhaps the Rambam would agree with us if he were living today. Perhaps if they had access to today's information, they, too, might agree that evolution occurred. Unless you are going to postulate that the Rambam (and other Gedolim) knew everything and could not possibly be misinformed, ignorant of science or mistaken, then you have to account for the possibility that, if the evidence were available in their day, they might looked at it and concluded that yes, the Flood could not have occurred as literally described.

Your conclusion also seems to have a false dichotomy. You seem to indicate that one must allow literalism to triumph over evidence (or reason, as you put it) since, if not, the person who relies on evidence will eventually have to discard his belief since he will undoubtedly uncover some evidence someday that will disprove the entire religion. But once again, you are failing to allow for a third possibility: the possibility that not everything in Tanach *has* to be read literally, the possibility that allegorical interpretation is allowed**, and the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, the evidence is correct and that God wants us to use our brains in evaluating it and draw reasonable inferences from it. If not, let me ask you the question in reverse: if you put the Chumash before reason, then what do you do when you find something that incontrovertibly contradicts what the Chumash says? What do you do when you see places that have been inhabited continuously for over four thousand years (in contradiction to the literal reading of the Flood story)? What do you do when genetic studies (the very same genetic studies, mind you, that were celebrated in the Jewish world showing that most Kohanim today descend from one person 3000 years ago) show that it is impossible for us to have all had one common ancestor at the time of the Mabul? What do you do when physical evidence in the earth itself clearly shows it to be older than 5700+ years? Do you just plug your ears and go "la la la I'm not listening?" Or do you think that it's possible, just possible, that perhaps the Torah wasn't speaking literally. If the former, then I respectfully ask just whom is not acting rationally.

Yours truly,

The Wolf


* I do not, in any way, intend to demean Mr. Silberberg. If he has, in fact, earned the honorific "Rabbi," then I would be happy to use that greeting instead. His letter does not indicate one way or the other.

** Of course it's allowed. Or does he think that God's hand was literally seen by the Sea? Does he literally think that Eve is the mother of *all life*? Does he think thatGod's voice literally walked in the Garden?