I find myself once again responding to an article on Cross-Currents. Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblum posts a rather lengthy dissertation originally published in HaModia about Darwinism where he tries to make the point that Darwinian scientists have a pre-existing bias to promote the theory of evolution as guided exclusively by random natural selection... and that they reject any evidence that would support other legitimate theories. In the course of his a thesis he posits that scientists unfairly exclude all non-natural causes of our existence as a priori inadmissible. I disagree.
As an Orthodox Jew who believes in creatio ex nihilo, I never the less find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending a scientific approach which does not consider the concept of a supernatural Creator. Not because I adhere to science as more legitimate than Torah, God forbid, but because of an inherent objectivity that defines the discipline, if not necessarily the scientist who studies it.
First let me say that for many of the reasons mentioned by Rabbi Rosenblum, I too believe that an unguided random natural selection process does not satisfactorily explain the origin of the species. As to whether there was an evolutionary process that determined speciation, that is an open question in my mind. But whether such a process was by the “Intelligent Design” of a Creator is beyond the scope of science.
I therefore cannot accept the idea that it is disingenuous to exclude all non-natural causes as a priori inadmissible as Rabbi Rosenblum seems to suggest. Science by definition is the study of the natural, not the supernatural. The implication of rejecting non-natural causes as a priori inadmissible is that one is blinding oneself to a more reasonable explanation of existence. But that is not so. Scientists would correctly maintain that they are simply looking for physical data in a physical universe. To look for spiritual data in the physical universe is an impossibility. There are no instruments to measure spirituality. So they do not look for those kinds of solutions to problems as they have no way of testing such hypotheses.
This of course does not mean that one cannot have the conviction that God created the universe. One can indeed have such convictions; believe them with all his heart, with all his soul, and with all his might, as I do. But such a belief is not provable in a scientific context and hence is not a valid consideration of science.
