But evolution is not the only issue between science and Torah. What about other apparent contradictions? What about the age of the universe? Is the world 5,766 years old – or billions of years old? This particular issue is one that is currently being hotly contested in Klal Yisrael and is the source of much grief in the Torah world.
One posek in Israel banned books by a young haredi author who contends that, based on vast amounts of physical evidence, the universe is indeed billions of years old. Some of the rabbinic leaders who signed onto the ban contend that such a view constitutes kefira, heresy. But does it?
No less a rabbinic figure than Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, zt”l, whose yiras shamayim and expertise in Torah knowledge was undisputed, and who in matters of science had few rabbinic peers, contended that the universe was indeed 15 billion years old. He understood that the scientific data could not be simply whisked away with a wave of the hand.
Rabbi Kaplan’s complete emunah led him to do a search of classic sources dating back to the days of Chazal to determine if there was any precedent for believing that the universe was more than five thousand years old. He found many such sources in many different eras from as far back as 2,000 years ago and was able to calculate through them that the universe is 15 billion years old. He presented his views in a paper to the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists.
The format of this essay, coupled with my own limitations, precludes a lengthier look at all the problems inherent in attempting to reconcile science and Torah. But I’ll address one more: the mabul, the cataclysmic flood described in the Bible.
Does the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of a worldwide flood in the geological record indicate that there really was no flood? Is this a contradiction between science and Torah? I don’t know if it is or it isn’t, but I also believe that Torah and metzius cannot contradict each other. So how is this apparent contradiction resolved?
In my view, whenever there seems to be a seemingly irreconcilable conflict between Torah and science it means one of three things:
1) We don’t know all the facts about the metzius.
2) We don’t understand the Torah properly.
3) Both.
As a way of illustration, I would posit that we cannot always rely on what we see as fact. Sometimes what we actually perceive with our senses is incomplete and gives us a false conclusion. There are other undetected factors that make what we see completely false.
The Flat Earth Society thinks the earth is flat. Why? Because its members go outside and look toward the horizon and see that it looks flat. But the Flat Earth Society doesn’t know all the facts. Its founding fathers were missing information that we now possess. The more information we have, the closer we are to reality.
Do we have all the facts pertaining to the mabul? One might think so. We look at the lack of evidence and say we see the facts – but do we see all the facts? I don’t think so. We only see what we have now. We do not see beyond the “horizon” of the facts at hand.
It is not unreasonable to suggest that the type of technology needed to measure some of the evidence of the mabul is not known – or perhaps has not yet been invented. To automatically presume that it didn’t happen is to be intellectually dishonest, stubborn, and to predispose oneself to a conclusion based on possibly incomplete information.
The same logic can be employed vis-à-vis the entire Torah narrative when we seem to have a contradiction. One need not reject an incident described in the Torah just because there is no evidence of its occurrence. We can believe in the Torah narrative and still maintain our intellectual honesty as long as we realize that it is in the very nature of science to hold nothing sacrosanct. To us, of course, the only thing that is sacrosanct is the Torah.