Evolution, The Age Of The Universe, And Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan,Rabbi Harry Maryles

There has been a lot of recent discussion in The Jewish Press about whether evolution and Torah are compatible. In my view they are not only compatible, they are intertwined. I believe in the evolutionary process. I also believe that God created the world just as it says in Parshas Bereishis. How is that possible? First, a little bit of my own personal history on the subject.

Back in the sixties, long before anyone thought about synthesis between Torah, evolution, and concepts like "Intelligent Design," I was taught the theory of evolution by a completely Orthodox Jewish college professor at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He was quite an interesting fellow and had actually done work on discovering DNA. He told us that he firmly believed in the theory of evolution, including the randomness factor. Yet he was a shomer Torah u'mitzvos and definitely not a kofer (heretic). He was a respected member of academia and the Torah world.

Many of the frum students in our class were shocked that a frum Jew could believe in something like this, as we all had been indoctrinated into thinking that evolution was a completely false theory invented by atheists. But as the course progressed, this frum professor convinced us that Torah and evolutionary science are indeed compatible. This changed my entire perspective on science and Torah, which I realized are not only compatible but inseparable. The Torah was written for the real world - the world that science studies, the world that exists in metzius (reality). That, after all, is what science is: the study of metzius and nothing else.

The wonderful thing about science is that it has at its core no underlying belief system. Nothing is sacrosanct in science. A fact that seems to be proven today can be discarded tomorrow with the discovery of new facts. So, for a time in my life, I was a believer in the theory of evolution in all its radiant glory including the randomness factor, which I thought did not deny anything in the Torah. And the closer I looked at the Torah narrative the more I saw harmony between the sequence of the evolutionary process and the order of creation, thus indicating compatibility.

At about the time that I had developed my own synthesis of the Torah narrative of creation and evolution, I came across a book by Rabbi Avigdor Miller, Rejoice, O Youth, in which he attempted to refute the theory of evolution. I was very upset at what I felt were the poor arguments he made and feared his rejectionist attitude would turn off serious students of science who were also yereim u'shleimim - frum Jews who wanted nothing more than to serve God and His Torah but who also could not deny what science had taught them.

Although evolutionary theory is not proven in the absolute, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming and independently derived by many different disciplines, all of which seem to converge in the same way, reaching the same conclusions: That evolution indeed took place.

But does that mean it just "happened" - that it was random, with no guidance from Hashem?

After many years of searching for Emes, I have come to my own conclusion that while evolution may indeed be the process by which God created the species, the chances of random sudden mutation is a highly unlikely proposition. Not that it is impossible, just unlikely in the extreme.

What I believe in firmly now is the concept of Intelligent Design - that God for His own reasons created a universe that followed a natural evolutionary path, but one that was purposefully guided by Him. In this way one can deal with both scientific evidence and the rational deduction that something does not come from nothing, and that there must therefore be a Creator.

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.

Until very recently the above would have been widely accepted as well within the framework of a Torah hashkafa. And while it now seems to have been deemed kefira by some rabbinic figures, I believe otherwise - and I know there are many others who are yereim u'shleimim and who think along these lines, though some may feel pressured to keep their views to themselves.

I wonder how many frum Jews who were brought up to rely on gedolim to define Judaism for them have become skeptics or worse after encountering evidence of an old universe or evolution. Can one imagine a more senseless falling away of Jews from Torah Judaism? Especially because it needn't have been the case. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan did not become a heretic after encountering such things and incorporating them into a Torah worldview. It is his example we should follow.

Rabbi Harry Maryles received s'micha in 1972 from Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik at the Hebrew Theological College. He has been active in Jewish education in Chicago for more than 30 years. He maintains a blog called Emes Ve-Emunah located at haemtza.blogspot.com.

Read Comments (4)

Evolution, The Age Of The Universe, And Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan , Rabbi Harry Maryles

Its Ge''paskend
Date 11:06, 06-22, 06

R' Harry,

I admire your courage to speak up. But the masses of haredim aren't interested in your arguments. R' Elyashiv paskend, and thats final for us. For us, it might be kefirah to think otherwise. For R'Kaplan, it isn't.

When Shammai says Kosher, and Hillel says Traif, is Shammai eating Traif?

It''s about more than just Parashat Berei''shit
Date 05:06, 06-23, 06

Rabbi Maryles has touched upon a point often missed in the debate over evolution. To accept the science behind evolution up to a point and then to switch to fundamentalism once Day Six arrives is to betray an irrational inconsistency. If the rest of the Torah is literal, why are the first few verses mere allegories? And if the first verses are allegorical, why should this not be a possibility for the entire rest of the Torah?

As I understand it, the science behind evolution, if followed consistently, does not merely deny the literal interpretation of the first days of creation. It also denies the existence of a literal Adam and Eve (and the descent of the entire human race from this first couple), the lifespans of the early generations, the Mabbul, the Haflagah, and in fact the historicity of the entire Torah. Do not these same scientists by following the same method arrive at "higher criticism" of the Torah, that its figures are myths, and that its miracles never happened?

I am merely a Noachide (and one from a Fundamentalist background) so I certainly recognize that I am not an expert and it is not my place to pontificate on this subject, and that I approach the issue with my own prejudices. But many Orthodox supporters of evolution have been sweeping evolutionary science''s denial of the entire Torah (especially the early chapters of Genesis) under the rug and act as if the whole matter hinged only on the issue of the interpretation of the verses relating Sheishet HaYamim. This is not so.

I may disagree with Rabbi Maryles' approach to this issue, but I salute him for having the courage to raise it.

Variability of time
Date 01:06, 06-25, 06

One factor that seems not to have been taken into account even in strictly scientific papers is the variability of time as a function of the presence of matter. At the big bang, the entire contents of the universe were concentrated in a small volume, resulting in time running very slowly as compared to our time. This phenomenon, and its resultant contribution to understanding the six day-15 billion year dichotomy is very well explained by Dr. Gerald L. Schroeder in the book "The Science of God". He demonstrates that once the variability of time is taken into account, six days are actually equivalent to 15 billion years.

Authoritative View
Date 12:06, 06-26, 06

This is a very difficult subject, one on which most people (including the author and myself) are not qualified to publish their own opinions. We need the guidance of the Gedolim. I am priviledged to be the son of a leading Rav zt"l and, coincidentally, have an advanced science degree from a major U.S. university.

According to my Father and the other Gedolim, there is absolutely no way (and absolutely no need) to resolve the conflict between the Torah HaKedoshah and the theory of evolution. The Torah -- the Words of the Ribono Shel Olam -- states clearly and unequivocally [in Bereishis 1: 1-31 and in Shmos 31: 17] that HASHEM created the universe in six days. Evolution is only a theory and its proofs are far from conclusive: (1) As CHAZAL have taught us, the rates of change were very different during and, perhaps, before the Mabul. (2) The fossils that have been discovered may be remnants of earlier worlds created by the Ribono Shel Olam, who (according to a Midrash) was a "Boneh Olamos UMachrivam."