There has been a lot of discussion in the blogosphere about science, Torah and whether they are compatible. In my view they are not only compatible but they are intertwined.
Until last year the following would have been well within the framework of a Torah Hashkafa. But now it has been deemed Kfira by certain Gedolim. But I happen to believe it isn’t K’fira at all. And I believe ...in fact I know... that there are many others who are Yereim and Shelemim and think along these lines also. Of course some of these individuals have been forced into the closet. And worse... others who have relied on Gedolim to define Judaism for them have become skeptics because of it. But it needn’t be the case. Science and Torah are compatible. Here is why I think so.
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 I had at Roosevelt University. He was quite an interesting fellow and had actually done work on discovering DNA. He told us that he completely believed in the Theory of Evolution including the randomness factor. Yet he was a Shomer Torah and Mitzvos and definitely not a Kofer. He was a respected member of Academia AND the Torah world.
Many of the Frum students in his class were shocked that a Frum Jew could believe in something like this as we were all indoctrinated to believe evolution was a completely false theory invented by atheists. But he convinced us that Torah and evolutionary science is quite compatible. This changed my entire perspective on Science and Torah and I realized at that time that indeed Science and Torah are not only compatible, but they are inseparable. The Torah was written for the real world... the very thing that science studies... the one which exists in Metzius. And 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 is 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 a harmony of sequence between the order of evolutionary process and the order of creation. Thus indicating compatibility
At about the time I had developed my own synthesis of the Torah narrative and evolution, I came across the book by Rabbi Avigdor Miller trashing the theory of evolution. I was very upset by the poor arguments he made and I still feel the book was harmful to the search for Emes. His rejectionist attitude would in the end turn off serious students of Science. He rejected and ridiculed scientific evidence and denied human intellect.
But now after many years of continued searching for Truth, I have come to my own conclusions 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 that it is unlikely. 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 that it was purposefully guided by Him. In this way one can deal with scientific evidence on the one hand and on the other hand, the rational deduction that something does not come from nothing and that there must be a Creator.
But evolution is not the only issue between science and Torah. What about other apparent contradictions? Well I can’t deal with all of these problems since that would make this essay way to long. Besides I am not equipped to deal with any and all problems that one may have. But let me deal with at least one, the Mabul.
Doesn’t the fact that there is absolutely no evidence of a worldwide flood in the geological record indicate that there really was no flood? Isn’t this a contradiction between science and Torah? The answer is, 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 do I resolve this apparent contradiction?
In my view when there seems to be a contradiction 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, or
3) Both
To illustrate these points I would posit that we cannot always rely on what we see as fact. Sometimes what we perceive is incomplete and there are other factors that make what we see a lie.
The flat earth society thinks the earth is flat. Why? Because they go outside and look toward the horizon and see that it looks flat. But they don't know all the facts. The more information you have the closer you 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 know 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. Based on what we see, the earth is flat. The technology to measure any evidence of a flood has perhaps not yet been invented. To automatically presume that it didn’t happen is to be intellectually dishonest and to predispose oneself to a conclusion based on possibly incomplete information.
The same logic can be employed in the entire Torah narrative when we seem to have a contradiction. One need not reject the Torah narrative just because there is no evidence of its occurrence. We can believe in the Torah narrative and still maintain out intellectual honesty as long as we realize that it is in the very nature of science that nothing is sacrosanct. The only thing that IS sacrosanct is thee Torah.
