Let me add though, that as much as I am disgusted by the Chareidim's vehement opposition to evolution, I am equally disgusted by the 'Rationalists' defense of it.
First, the Chareidim. What's the big deal? They accept that the world can be billions of years old (as Menken keeps arguing, many Chareidim accept this, though it is also quite true that many don't - I don't see much value in debating how big each crowd is). So clearly, they can accept a somewhat allegorical understanding of Breishis. So why any different with evolution? What is so disturbing about evolution? Just say God did it and you're done. What, coming from monkeys is too awful to contemplate? How about a tipah seruchah? Is that better? It makes no sense.
Second, the Rationalists. What's the big deal? Who cares? So let's say evolution isn't quite 100% proven. So what? So there's global consensus that it's a solid theory? Okay, well there's global consensus that that the Torah was written by multiple authors. When was the last time you saw a rationalist accept the DH? Most of them are too scared or too fake to even bring up the subject.
Basically, I have zero respect for all the players here, as far as I can tell they're all a bunch of fools, fakers or in some cases, both. Realizing that all Orthodox Rabbis are hopelessly biased and incapable of seeing things honestly (or admitting to it) is one of the reasons I lost respect for OJ. (apart from the fact that it's fundamental beliefs are clearly untrue).
Of course I do know some wonderful OJ Rabbis who mean well and do nothing but good for the community, they are generally the types who stay far, far away from these utterly stupid debates.
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31 comments:
Excellent
I think they realize on some level that evolution undermines one of the main reasons people believe in God. I've found that even many Orthodox Jews who believe in evolution will only admit it begrudgingly, as if it's something that shouldn't be spoken about out loud.
JA, I disagree. I don't think anyone would claim that evolution undermines belief in God. It does undermine belief in the Torah as interpreted classically, and that bothers people.
Good point about the global, scholarly consensus of both evolution and the DH. So naively do detractors of these theories think they are justified, resorting to defenses like "they can't prove it."
JA is right. Evolution undermines the argument from design, at least in its most intuitive form.
If anyone is interested, I wrote about this idea a while ago: http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/2010/04/force-behind-nature.html
tesyaa:
I'm not saying that you can't believe in evolution and God, but it's just a matter of fact that many people become atheists after learning about evolution. Darwin himself, for example.
(or at least agnostic.)
Couldn’t sleep last night, so instead of counting sheep I began thinking of the multiple voice theory. I wanted to see if it could be made at all plausible, given the current state of source criticism. So let’s begin with what “we know”. 1. God gave the Torah to Moses in a text very close if not identical to our Masoretic version. 2. The Torah was first written as four , probably more, documents, each document consisting of more basic pericopes. These documents were merged , cut and pasted, and then the whole was redacted at least once, probably more than once, until the process stopped, yielding our Masoretic text. Each of the documents and all the subsequent transformations were created at different times. The question is why would God give us at Mount Sinai such a hybrid, twisted document? Why didn’t He give a torah that was all of a piece, a completely non redacted Torah?
The answer is God being omniscient knew that the Israelites would eventually forget what He taught at Sinai and dictated to Moses. Over time the zekanim would only remember bits and pieces.God knew that ALL the sofrim involved, from the first author to the final redactor saw themselves as heteronomous agents, simply passing on the mesorah they were given, to the next generation. He knew that what we would eventually end up with is what we have, the redacted, Masoretic text.So in order not to give the Israelites and thereby the Jews a Torah that was not in their possession, thereby creating endless problems, He gave at Sinai what was written down over time and what we have today. Little did He know that this redacted text would be deciphered three thousand years later, and He ends up looking bad, really bad. We moderns have our doubts whether it was appropriate to give such a Torah, full of obvious contradictions, even though it was out of love for klal yisrael? (In truth we should pray for the time when Hashem will replace our Torah of fragments and reveal the remaining faces of Torah in all their completeness. (See Wolfson’s “Open Secret”.))
Ah, you ask, but why didn’t God know it would be deciphered, He is omniscient? The answer is the same as the apologetics used in theodicy. The ability to decipher was not always there, nor need it have ever occurred. It came about through endless acts of free will by many people, the free will that created the Hellenistic period, the High Medieval period, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the post Newtonian modern period. Before Spinoza’s time, nobody, literally nobody, thought the Torah was not written by God. It was impossible to think such a possibility as plausible. (Here we need a Hegelian story of the Spirit becoming self conscious over time. Not for today.) The upshot is that even though He is omniscient, God could not have both known that Wellhausen &Co. would figure out the cut and paste job, & also simultaneously allow for genuine free will. Just one example. How could God have predicted that Martin Luther would be willfully such an akshen and baal gaaveh to stand fast and overthrow the entire Catholic ordering of the world? The gadlus of the dor hamidbar is that even though they saw in the Torah allusions to events that had yet to occur, they gladly accepted the Torah. One might say that both klal yisrael and Hashem had the hope that the fragmented, redacted Torah of the dor hamidbar would last for the duration.
Then I fell asleep. And not a minute too soon.
@ evanstonjew:
"1. God gave the Torah to Moses in a text very close if not identical to our Masoretic version."
Are you serious? Who but a true believer would accept this question-begging premise?
I have to leave, but bekitzur I am not asserting either 1 or 2 in isolation; I used scarequotes for 'know'. I was trying to work out how it would be POSSIBLE, for BOTH 1 and 2 to be the case. As Yogi Berra said "When you come to a fork in the road, take it!"
Best I can do just now.
"tipah seruchah"
What does this mean?
EJ, you should write for Dr. Seuss.
great fairy tale, too bad its all made up
Ksil...Of course I made it up. I didn't find this pilpul in the Collected Works of Rabbi Avi Shafran.But...and here's is the pt., I do accept the XGH challenge: Find a way to both assert the DH and believe in TMS. Instead of Breuer's little didactic lessons in the multiple voices I gave a macro solution how God might have given the exact torah that we ended up with after centuries of composition. You think it's a fairy tale, because deep down you believe the entire narrative about Sinai is a fairy tale. But don't hide behind the so called "global consensus of multiple authors".
"tipah seruchah"
a putrid drop
>>>> Find a way to both assert the DH and believe in TMS
EJ,
But, why bother. How many times does it need to be said the DH is NOT the only argument against the divinity of the Torah.
It very much also the content.
As i’ve commented repeatedly it’s the anachronisms, the dozens of contradictions, the duplications (that differ in their details), the fictitious history, the non-beneficent laws, the immorality of others, the faulty science, etc. etc.
It’s one thing to say the Torah speaks in many voices, but if the voices contradict each other or are mistaken about science and history …where does divinity come in.
>>>> Find a way to both assert the DH and believe in TMS
EJ,
But, why bother. How many times does it need to be said the DH is NOT the only argument against the divinity of the Torah.
It very much also the content.
As i’ve commented repeatedly it’s the anachronisms, the dozens of contradictions, the duplications (that differ in their details), the fictitious history, the non-beneficent laws, the immorality of others, the faulty science, etc. etc.
It’s one thing to say the Torah speaks in many voices, but if the voices contradict each other or are mistaken about science and history …where does divinity come in.
david a….your list can be divided into 2 categories. “…the anachronisms, the dozens of contradictions, the duplications (that differ in their details) and the fictitious history” exist because the multiple documents were composed way after the ‘fact’ and were then merged and redacted. This is usually subsumed under the title DH. “The non-beneficent laws, the immorality of others, the faulty science, etc. etc.” are a different story. But you forget that TSBP is an integral part of the story. You must have seen how many use the ‘tanur shel achnai’ story in Bava Metziya 59 as a basis for thinking we, not God, must develop, deepen the mesorah over time until we reach a point where our mesora and our intuitions of truth and morality coincide. We’re not there yet, even in the most advanced liberal Orthodox circles. What we don’t want is for the tradition to teach falsehoods and immoral behavior that we accept in virtue of the tradition. If tanach says pi is 3, that’s not a problem because we know it isn’t. But a 2 substance views on the mind body problem and a belief in an afterlife, which we accept because we think we are committed to these ideas as part of our emuna in ikrim, IF false, would be an example of how our mesora continues to lead us astray. Acting badly in the occupied territories might be another example. As long as the process self corrects we can hope we are approaching truth and rightness. What makes the uhr text divine is that it enabled klal yisrael to work within this framework in its quest for understanding and acting rightly, and have reason to hope/expect we will get there at some point.It doesn't mean all moral theory or all scientific theories was given at Sinai.If we received the entire truth as it were what is the gadlus of naaseh venismah?
EJ,
"Acting badly in the occupied territories might be another example."
It might be, if it were true, which it isn't.
Yes, there are certain security measures in place. Why? because of a small phenomenon called suicide bombers. What would you have Israel do? Israel withdrew ENTIRELY from Gaza, and boy didn't that go well. (Three rockets were just fired into Israel in the last 24 hours).
You can drop all the references to Hegel, Spinoza and Rawls that you want. The stench of moral bankruptcy cannot be obscured by a dousing of philosophical perfume.
Or perhaps you might reference a little Heidegger. I hear that he and supported a regime with ideas not to distant from those of , say, Hamas.
Try telling the remaining Fogel family, or countless other terror victims, how badly Israel is behaving. In the time of the Russian pogroms, H. N. Bialik wrote, of those who spilled the blood of Jewish children, that Satan had not yet conceived a proper revenge for such an atrocity. Had you been alive then, you probably would have speculated as to whether the actions of the cossacks were merely emblematic of Nietzsche's ubermench ideal, and further found some "bad behavior" that the Jews engaged in that justified their being attacked.
Scholarship without a moral compass becomes obscene.
The issue is not Gaza which Sharon, returned, not I; nor is it security measures. It is the occupation, which the entire world opposes because of the Geneva conventions not allowing the occupier to resettle territories it has conquered. US policy from 1967 has been that the settlements are an obstacle to peace. The Netanyahu régime as well as governments going back to Shamir committed themselves to negotiations and a two state solution. Netanyahu today, though not when he was grandstanding in Congress, accepts the Obama formula of a return to the 1967 borders with territorial adjustments. In 2 months a Palestinian state will in all likelihood be recognized by the UN, in which case all the settlements are on foreign land. A majority of Americans under 50 do not support Israel in its settlement policy. In Israel the right has greater support, but even today polls show a majority favor land for peace. At the same time we know hell will freeze over before the settlers and the far right will negotiate in good faith, or call a halt to new settlements. For more see today’s Haaretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-the-purveyor-of-hatred-1.372603
I wrote “Acting badly in the occupied territories might be another example.” ‘Might’ means the same as “If” in the previous example, namely depending on which view is correct. For suggesting the possibility that the world, the US and a significant percentage of American Jews might be correct and the settlers and their supporters wrong, you respond for starters by insulting me and my way of commenting, call my comment as exhibiting “the stench of moral bankruptcy” , suggest I am a Nazi sympathizer, and a supporter of Nietzschean fascism. As if that weren’t sufficient you close by saying of me “Scholarship without a moral compass becomes obscene.”
I wrote about this take no prisoners type insults in my comments to the next post. I would add that if you feel your education is inadequate you need not let out your resentments on me. But most importantly I have treated you if not with fondness at least with respect. I expect the same.
EJ,
My comment was vehement, admittedly. Much more vehement, in fact, than those I have written in response to some very sharp personal insults that have been directed at me or my views in the past. I can suffer personal insults relatively easily,and leave it to God to deal in His own way with those who insult Him, but I don't let off so easily those Jews who side with our enemies in time of crisis. Such Jews have always caused us incalculable damage, and continue to do so. And when the person involved is, like you, intelligent, well read and well respected, that makes the damage even worse. How many anti-semites dosuch Jews provide cover for! ("I don't hate Jews, why, I am only saying the same thing as X did, and he's Jewish...")
I don't particularly care too much as to what the "whole world" thinks. The "whole world" has thrown us to the dogs many times. As Achad Ha'am (no raving right wing looney he) wrote --"Is it possible that the whole world is guilty, and we are innocent? IT IS! It is possible!"
Re Haaretz: As Menahem Begin reputedly said, the last government that Ha'aretz supported was the British mandate....That newspaper, while very small in circulation (7% market share of the tiny Israeli market)is the paper of record for those who wish to find fodder to attack Israel with. I'll bet that Pat Buchanan and Noam Chomsky are avid readers.
FYI, I don't support the extreme right wing position either. I would support territorial compromise, once the other side publicly and unequivocally recognizes Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. But neither do I malign my own beleaguered people and blame them for their reasonable reaction to the other side's hatred.
Like it or not,intentionally or not, when you give aid and comfort to our enemies, at a time when they threaten us, you are complicit in the spilling of Jewish blood. And I cannot forgive that, nor mince words in my condemnation.
The idea of serious negotiations without endless preconditions has been the policy of Labor governments and the Israeli left since Rabin and before. It is the current policy of the main opposition party Kadima and its leader Tzipi Livni, whose credentials as a Mossad agent and a scion of an old Herut family are impeccable. The last Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, another old time Likud–Herut politician, conducted secret negotiations with Abbas, and is quoted as saying the deal on the territories and Jerusalem is settled, all that is left is the refugee problem. The discussions were reported in the Israeli papers and the NYTimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/magazine/13Israel-t.html (More details on Avishai’s blog.)
http://bernardavishai.blogspot.com/
Of course Netanyahu repudiated any progress and went back to square zero.
This strategy of branding your opponents as traitors (in your jargon “when you give aid and comfort to our enemies, at a time when they threaten us, you are complicit in the spilling of Jewish blood”), discussed in the Haaretz article, is the new way the right is trying to cope with a problem of its own making. Last comment you called me a fascist, this comment I am murderer into the foreseeable future. I would like to quit while I am ahead.
I also point out in the context of the discussions on this blog, that the settlers need a “thick” version of TMS to be true. Their main argument is that God himself commanded them to engage in unlimited settlement activity, and He gave Israel today all the land up to the Jordan and beyond, as evidenced by the pasukim in Genesis. If anything less than the Torah was dictated by God to Moses is true, the settlers justification by referencing the Bible won’t fly. Why should Jewish public policy with regard to the territories, which affects 14 million Jews around the world, be based on the theological beliefs of a minority? Doesn’t it make sense to have a more empirical consensual basis for this expansionist foreign policy, a policy that will keep Israel at war in perpetuity ?
I’m done.
JA,
My understanding is that evolution was not the major blow to Darwin's faith. Rather it was the the good old problem of Theodicy. In fact, the incredible pain, suffering and torture that exists in the non-human animal world (where free will seems not to exist) seemed to be particularly troubling to him.
"The idea of serious negotiations without endless preconditions has been the policy of Labor governments..."
And yet none of them was ever able to make a comprehensive peace. Almost makes one think the other side had something to do with it.
"This strategy of branding your opponents as traitors..."
Please. If someone advocates returning all the shetachim, without adequate security guarantees, I may disagree and say so, but do not brand him a traitor.
You on the other hand, criticize Jews for defending themselves. And I did not even call that "treason". But that it aids our enemies is an undeniable fact.
"Last comment you called me a fascist"
Where did I use that word?
"murderer"
Nope, I didn't say murderer, either. As you note, I said "complicit in the spilling of Jewish blood". If someone writes, falsely, how evil Israel is in its treatment of the Palestinians, and as a result some terrorist is thus incited to act, well, I'm sorry, but the writer is morally complicit.
"This strategy of branding your opponents as traitors ...is the new way the right..."
As opposed to the old way of the left, who would (and still do)call right wingers "facists" or "Judeo-Nazis".
"Settlers"
Like I said, I don't agree with the maximalist position, and am not here to defend it.
"I'm done"
I challenge you , here and now, to debate the following proposition.
"RESOLVED: The right wing of Israeli politics is primarily at fault for the lack of a Palestinian state."
Rules of engagement: You will support the resolution, I will oppose it. No ad hominum attacks. Just factual assertions and logical reasoning therefrom to be permitted.
Come on, if my position is so off base, it should be quick and easy for you to so demonstrate. Otherwise, readers may be left with the impression that your criticism is grounded in something other than fact.
I decline. After all your insults you expect me to debate you? Have you lost all your marbles? I am here to say what I want to say and leave. If attacked as you just did, I will respond once, twice, but I don't want to trade insults or even win. I told you the same when you first came on this blog, and at this point your tchepping me is tedious. Leave me alone, go fight with someone else, just not me.
EJ,
What about a debate on any of the following topics:
Which nation in the middle east affords women the most rights?
Which nation in the middle east affords gays the most rights?
Which nation in the middle east has the most democratic political process?
Which nation in the middle east affords artists the most freedom of expression?
Which nation in the middle east does not use capital punishment, even for terrorist mass murderers?
Which nation in the middle east affords the most rights to its religious minorities?
Which people in the middle east accepted, in 1947, a UN resolution that provided for an Arab state in Palestine? Which people rejected it?
What people ruled the West Bank and Gaza from 1948-1967, yet failed to establish a Palestinian Arab state in all those years?
Who massacred a non-political religious minority in Hebron and Jaffa in 1929 and 1936? [What year was Israel founded again?]
What entity in the middle east has a law on its books that provides for capital punishment for selling land to members of a certain religion?
Which entity in the middle east has a president who wrote a thesis denying the holocaust?
Which ruling party in the middle east has a charter that reads, in part: "The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree...I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I will assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill ....The Zionist invasion is a mischievous one. It ...relies to a great extent, for its meddling and spying activities, on the clandestine organizations which it has established, such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, Lions, and other spying associations [ed. note.--I think they inadvertently left out the Jaycees]...Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there....
Who in the middle east is constantly firing rockets at a civilian population?
Which people in the middle east popularized the use of teenage suicide bombers?
As Joe Friday used to say, "Just the facts, Ma'am."
Damn that right wing Netanyahu.
"Basically, I have zero respect for all the players here, as far as I can tell they're all a bunch of fools, fakers or in some cases, both. "
Please tell us who you have great respect for. Dawkins? Harris? Hitchens?
There are two different issues with the theory of evolution, its theological implications and its scientific basis.
Your question is what is theologically wrong with it - while that is an important question (and one I hope to deal with soon on my site), I want to address the scientific problems with the theory of evolution.
I obviously can't do that in one comment, but I am working on creating a series of posts on evolution which deals with two (plus one) aspects of the theory.
First of all, what is called the Fact of Evolution - that is that even if we do not know how evolution happened, we know that it did happen.
Secondly, there is the theory of evolution - how evolution happened (with the modern synthesis aka the neo-darwinian theory of evolution being the main contender here).
Finally, slightly related (perhaps more so than people realize) is how life started in the first place. While the theory of evolution discusses what happens after life begins, I think that how life begins has important bearings on the theory itself.
I am working on dealing with all of these issues, step-by-step, issue-by-issue, evidence-by-evidence. I will also, of course, deal with the theological issues, while we move along.
So, in answer to your question - what is the big deal, please feel free to check out my posts and decide for yourself. Here are the links:
* http://www.morethinking.com/2011/david-berlinskis-views-on-the-theory-of-evolution/
* http://www.morethinking.com/2011/antibiotic-resistance-and-evolution-understanding-what-really-happens/
* http://www.morethinking.com/2011/where-did-these-wings-come-from-flightless-wings-vestigial-structures-and-the-theory-of-evolution/
Moshe writes: "First of all, what is called the Fact of Evolution - that is that even if we do not know how evolution happened, we know that it did happen."
Shouldn't you end the sentence above like the following? "... we know that it did happen by purely natural means."
You're just an ass GS. Why don't you ask. You have no logic. You never have, The idea of an old earth is in some parts of tradition. RAMBAN. And even the pshat to an extent 'cos where was the sun on the first 3 days.. and the RAMBAN apparently points that out. But Evolution hasn't really got a source in Torah. That, and as you've so brilliantly pointed out, Judaism or mainstream anyway, teaches an idea earlier generations being greater, and we're like crap compared to them. So the theme of Evolution would undermine that teaching, and respect for past authorities is very important in mainstream Judaism.
Why dont you check out JPACNYC.BLOGSPOT.COM for their protests against evolution or google them.
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