Why don't more Orthodox Jews support the intelligent design movement against evolution?
By SHLOMO BRODYDinosaurs 88 224(photo credit: Courtesy of 'Jurassic Park')Q Why don't more Orthodox Jews support the intelligent design movement against evolution?
- A.E., Jerusalem
A I have spoken about the compatibility of Judaism and the theory of evolution in many forums, and am constantly amazed by the widespread fear and ignorance of this issue. Among many others, I've met haredi rabbinic students who never heard of fossils, Evangelical Christians at Ivy League universities searching for help from others and modern Orthodox Jews seeking but incapable of showing the compatibility of science with Torah.
Within the Orthodox world, some figures, usually haredi, believe that Genesis's first chapter refutes any notions of macroevolution. The late Lubavitcher rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneersohn, wrote in the 1960s that these "far-fetched" scientific claims stem from a hubristic desire to provide natural explanations for supernatural phenomena. He further maintained that God might have created fossils that appear ancient but in actuality are less than 6,000 years old.
More recently, Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, contemporary leader of Jerusalem's Eda Haredit, denounced attempts by religious scientists to affirm evolution and accused these figures of adopting heretical ideas to please non-Jewish colleagues. As such, some haredim excise pictures of dinosaurs from their textbooks and homes, refusing to acknowledge their existence.
Yet as Rabbi Natan Slikfin (zootorah.com) has painstakingly documented (despite vitriolic attacks against him), many leading Orthodox figures have affirmed the compatibility of Torah and evolution, including Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, Rabbi Abraham I. Kook and Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik. While various arguments, some more developed than others, were taken by different figures, two major schools of thought have emerged to show the compatibility of Torah and evolution.
One school contends that the alleged conflict is fundamentally flawed since the Torah's account of creation includes non-literal and allegorical elements. They cite, for example, Rashi's (11th century, France) assertion that the Torah did not record the sequence of events in the world's creation, since water is present on day one even though it only gets created on day two (Genesis 1:1). Others similarly note that vegetation, which requires sunlight to grow, gets created on day three, while God only creates the sun on day four.
A larger problem for a literal, historical reading of the story stems from the Torah's alternative depiction of creation in Chapter 2 of Genesis - which was the real event? Instead of providing a scientific history, the Torah was teaching theological beliefs about God's dominance over the world and humanity's role within it.
A precedent for this approach comes from Maimonides, who confronted a similar issue with regard to the ancient debate over whether the world was eternal, as Aristotle claimed, or created, as many theologians advocated. While Maimonides affirmed the latter position, he stated that if advocates of the former position could logically prove their claim, he would have no problem reinterpreting the biblical text accordingly, since the "gates of interpretation remain open" (Guide, II:25). He, as well as Hasdai Crescas (14th century, Spain), further asserted that the creation chapters must be interpreted allegorically.
A different school resolves this question by highlighting different sources that indicate, explicitly or implicitly, macroevolution and the antiquity of the universe necessary for macroevolution to take place. An early midrash, for example, states that many worlds, spanning eons of time, were created and destroyed before the Genesis narrative began (Bereishit Raba 3:7). Following this idea, medieval kabbalists espoused the "doctrine of sabbatical years" which asserted that many worlds existed before ours and new ones will be created. As Prof. Raphael Shuchat has documented, some post-Darwin rabbis went so far (and perhaps too far) as to assert that these pre-Darwin sources not only show the compatibility of the nascent theory of evolution with Torah, but even prove the superior wisdom of our tradition.
Unfortunately, a combination of religious ignorance and anti-religious polemics by secularist scientists has led some to deny this nearly universal scientific theory and perilously ignore classic sources. Rabbi Ovadia Seforno (16th century, Italy), for example, asserts that the "Adam" created in Genesis 1:26 refers to a general species which was only later blessed with the divine image to create the first individual human called Adam (2:7). When Rabbi Gedalia Nadel, a Bnei Brak haredi rabbi, used this source to argue for evolution's compatibility with Torah, his posthumously published lectures were banned and removed from stores.
To my mind, modern Orthodox Jews, like me, have wisely not supported the "intelligent design" movement. We believe that Torah represents both true doctrines and a passion for truth, and see no reason, as believers, to attack universally-held scientific theories that do not contradict traditional interpretations of the Torah. We have no need for bans and no desire to guise our theology in pseudo-scientific theories, and will continue to use the full range of traditional sources to understand God's Torah and His universe.
The writer, editor of TraditionOnline.org, teaches at Yeshivat Hakotel and is pursuing a doctorate in Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University.
jpostrabbi@yahoo.com
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