Misplaced Priorities

It’s a crying shame that we always seem to have enough money to spend on luxurious and splendid hotels for Pesach, magnificent and exquisite cruises in the summer, and Atlantic City casinos during the rest of the year. But we never seem to have any money left for struggling yeshivas and their rebbeim. (I once overheard a person comment that he couldn’t pay full tuition because he needed the money to go away for Yom Tov.)

The Chofetz Chaim in his old age would travel all over the world for the Vaad Hayeshivas, the lifeblood of our nation. He wrote that there is no greater reward than for harbotzas haTorah. As the Beis Halevi writes in Parashas Vayigash, woe to the person who is shown to have been hypocritical when on his yom hadin he is asked, Why did you claim not to have any money for tzedaka, yet you had enough money to send your son to university?

(Continued)

Science Neither Invokes Nor Denies God

Regarding Dr. Yaakov Stern’s misrepresentation of evolutionary theory as “gazillions of accidents [that] somehow produced an ordered system with all elements in perfect harmony and function,” I’d like to point out that the ordered system on which evolution is based is the fundamental ordered system of the universe itself. Now, evolution does not account for the natural laws of the universe but it does indicate what those laws would produce given certain conditions.

Darwin’s breakthrough was to see that the natural world does not need a direct caretaker to produce complex systems. Evolution works like a ratchet – i.e., it can go easily in one direction but it’s much more difficult for it to go back. So if an accidental mutation is beneficial to the individual it will prosper and mate and spread its beneficial mutation throughout the species, but if an accidental mutation is detrimental then that individual will either die or not be competitive in nature and his genes will not be passed on. So, you see, natural selection selects for those individuals who are best fit to survive and mate thus retaining the improvements while keeping the failures out of the equation. Individual mutations may be accidental, but the path of evolution is progressive.

Furthermore, “perfect harmony and function” would certainly not describe the bodies we all have or the natural world in which we live. Granted, it’s pretty good and the system works, but human bodies frequently suffer from backaches, poor eyesight, morning sickness and a host of other physiological imperfections.

But if you were referring to the natural world in general in terms of ecosystems and interspecies relationships, here we see species always at odds with each other. It may be highly complex but at its root lies simple interactions in terms of things like competition, predation, and parasitism. Each species is looking for its own success and survival in contest with other species. A balance is inevitably met. This is hardly a harmonious arrangement when you get down to the nitty gritty where you see that organisms must kill other organisms to survive and where you must note that species extinction is a common event.

Now let’s take a look at evolutionary theory in general. While there are some theists who believe that the theory itself implies that there is no God (or that it is some sort of secular religion) and there are some atheists who believe that the theory gives them the freedom to say that no God exists, the fact of the matter is that evolution from science’s point of view does not talk about God at all.

To use an example, when one is discussing how water evaporates, a theist could claim simply that God is responsible while an atheist could say that no God exists because the water evaporates according to these laws of physics. But logically, both of these claims are found outside of strict science. Science neither invokes nor denies God. The physics of water evaporation merely explain how it happens, not the ultimate cause, nor does it tell us the foundation for the laws which are in operation. Likewise, evolution explains how species arose on this planet but not any add itional information.

Is Judaism threatened by the fact that the direct hand of God is not found in the physical equations determining water evaporation? I think not. Similarly, Judaism should not feel threatened when the direct hand of God is not found in our determinations of the evolutionary process. As Albert Einstein once said, “The Lord God is subtle, but malicious He is not.”

Space constraints make it difficult to write a full-bodied response too all the various issues raised here, but for those who seriously contemplate a young earth or for whom evolution just does not make any sense, I’d suggest taking the time to read a couple of books in geology and biology. And I do not mean the sensationalist kinds of titles that you hear about all the time (and after which readers feel comfortable to call themselves experts in the field) but a “boring” serious college-level book which can actually give you a feel for what this is all about.