Slifkin, Klinghoffer and Evolution

Slifkin discusses the religious implications of evolution. He says there are two views among the biologists – those that consider evolution from mud to human as an incredibly fortuitous, unlikely event and those that consider it inevitable. He accepts both as a possibility.

Life – inevitable?? Earlier he said they have no idea how life could have developed from mud. How could incredibly complex self-replicating RNA or protiens form randomly (and violate the 2^nd law of thermodynamics)? No one knows, but “life was bound to arise… and it will arise simlarly wherever and whenever the same conditions obtain”! [quote on p. 256] And a single cell would inevitably turn into a human, brains and all! Why slifkin considers such a view is beyond me.

He says the religious interpretation of this school of thought would be like the “Chanukah story, the ideological victory of which was that the laws of nature are seen to be programmed by God.” I’m not really sure what he’s saying; I would think the religious implication of such a weird idea is Deism.

The other “possibility”, the fact that the development of life was an amazingly unlikely process, clearly points to a Guiding Hand. But not everyone sees it this way. I can’t find the quote in Slifkin’s book, but read this quote from David Klinghoffer, an Orthodox Jew writing about Slifkin and Collins:

Something you'll often hear people say is, "Well, Darwinism doesn't mean God isn't the creator. Maybe evolution was programmed into the universe from the start. So He had no need to guide the process." The problem with such thinking is that it's directly contradicted by a major current in Darwinian evolutionary theory. In his book Wonderful Life (1989), the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould demonstrated what he called the "contingency" of life's history. Gould explained what an incredibly lucky break it was that Earth ever cast up intelligent life forms.
Wisely turning away from this doomed approach to showing God's hand…

It seems Klinghoffer is saying G-d couldn’t have done it, because the evolution from mud to humans was too unlikely for a designer to know it would happen. Klinghoffer then quotes a ‘brilliant’ solution:

In his most satisfying defense of belief, Collins brings forward a clever way of reconciling an unguided evolutionary process with God as the Creator. He points out that God resides beyond the limits of time. Hence, what appears to us as evolution's unpredictable course was, from God's perspective, entirely predictable. It's a neat perspective--except, perhaps, if we ask whether an unguided process of "creation" is still "creation" even if its results were foreseen.

Klinghoffer appears to be a deist, who doesn’t believe G-d could guide nature! And what exactlty is the havamina about G-d knowing the future? And what’s his difficulty with that? Maybe someone can explain it.

To Be Cont…(?)

Finalist Nebach!

Although its not official yet, it seems like I made it as a finalist in the Student blog category. Thank you to all voters! The second round of voting has been postponed to May 9th, to review the voting records. Make sure to come back and vote then!

Slifkin on ID

R' Slifkin makes it clear he does not like the ID movement. Ignoring the scientific issues, Slifkin says ID "involves some extremely problematic theological aspects" which make it a "great danger to religion." (p. 288) His argument can be summarized as follows: ID sees G-d by pointing to things in evolution that can’t be explained naturally. Also, it’s like “G-d of the gaps” and will eventually become obsolete once science can explain everything naturally. We should see G-d in the laws of the universe instead, which are amazingly unlikely constants perfectly suited for life.

Basically, all Slifkin has done is move G-d one step further away. Slifkin is afraid that creation will be able to be explained 100% naturally like the daily running of nature. But, maybe one day, the laws of nature will be explained also! Slifkin blurs the distinction even more between him and ID in chapter two. He says the wavelength of the light from the sun is perfectly suited for life on earth. But perhaps life developed to fit the wavelength, or developed here because the sun had the perfect wavelength! How is Slifkin's view different from ID?

Slifkin says ID “denies the role of G-d in 99% of the universe”. But a person could see both the wonders of G-d in nature and even more clearly in what can’t be explained completely with chance and natural laws. Slifkin recognizes this and calls it “a slight to G-d’s creative abilities. Was He incapable of designing laws that could accomplish all His objectives, and therefor had to interfere to bring about the results He wanted?”

Does Slifkin know G-d’s Mind so well? Perhaps G-d wanted to show Himself more clearly in nature! This is the “extremely problematic theological aspect” of ID? The idea of G-d intervening in nature? A basic Jewish belief of thousands of years is suddenly a “great danger to religion"? Whatever Slifkin’s personal beliefs about miracles, how can he attack ID in such a way?

Whether you call it breaking the laws of nature, or quantum improbabilities or just extremely unlikely events, G-d’s Hand is seen in nature. This is what ID proponents believe.
For example, William Dembski, one of ID's leading proponents, said:

The fundamental claim of ID is straightforward and easy: there are natural systems that cannot be adequately explained in terms of undirected natural forces and that exhibit features which in any other circumstance we would attribute to intelligence. [emphasis mine.]

ID's position is just that nature clearly shows design. Some ID proponents even think nature could have been 'preprogrammed', a view remarkably similar to Slifkin's. For example, earlier in the book Slifkin quotes Behe:

It is fine by me if common descent is indeed true, and there is some sort of designed program to power changes over time (i.e., evolution).

But ID is necessary to explain how it all came about. Sure, Amalek could say at krias yam suf that it was just the wind, the Jews were lucky, there is no G-d. And the scientists can say about creation that it was just “natural selection” and chance. But it makes no sense without believing in a G-d who caused and guided it all. What does Slifkin have against ID?

Science & Monotheism (draft)

R' Slifkin begins the book by pointing out that all of science is really based on monotheism. The fact that the nature has set laws that can be understood and that the universe shows such unity points to One G-d who created it all. Atheism and polytheism can’t explain such order.

The connection between Monotheism and Science can be seen in the greatest scientist of all time. Issac Newton, who discovered the Universal Law of Gravitation, recognized the unity the Universe showed. He rejected the Trinity and secretly believed in One G-d. Later in the book (p. 283), Slifkin quotes Darwin:

I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, ''as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion." …

But Leibniz preffered to believe in a totally mechanistic universe with no magical “force of gravity”. He felt gravity was like saying there was an ongoing “miracle” that couldn’t be explained. This is almost the opposite of the objections against Darwin. And Darwin himself was an agnostic who didn't believe in any Divine revelation. ...

Coming up

I'm going to yeshiva today. Also, The Challenge of Creation is overdue at the library, so I won't have it anymore. I will still try to publish some posts about:

• Science, Monotheism and Newton
• G-d and Nature
• Miracles & Providence

Then, I'll hopefully move on to part two in the book about the age of the universe and Genesis.
Finally, I'll get to the real issues about ID and evolution.

The Challenge of Creation

A few weeks ago, I finally read The Challenge of Creation, by Rabbi Natan Slifkin. I plan on discussing some of the ideas in the book on my blog. But first, some general comments about the book:

The book consists of 3 parts: Science, Cosmology and Evolution:

• In the first part, Slifkin presents evidence for G-d’s existence from the laws of the Universe. He then discusses miracles, providence and natural law. Finally he shows how to resolve conflicts of Science with Torah by reinterpreting things not-literally.

• In the second part, Slifkin presents evidence for the age of the Universe. He then discusses different approaches of reconciling the science with the Torah. He rejects these approaches and concludes that Genesis is a theological text, not a scientific one.

• In the third part, Slifkin presents evidence for Common Ancestry, Evolution and Natural Selection. He discusses Intelligent Design, but rejects it for religious reasons. He then tries to reconcile Darwinian Evolution with Judaism. Finally, he tries to resolve the contradiction between the scientific explanation of man’s existence and the account in Genesis.

The book is filled with many quotes to give authority to the views presented. Quoting someone doesn’t prove it is true and it makes the book a slightly choppy read, but I guess it is necessary. The book is filled with controversial and sometimes irrelevant footnotes, which often raise issues without discussing them well. I thing some of them should be expanded, and others deleted. The book is overall well-written, though some phrases sound like the writing of a 17-year old. The book often gave me a déjà vu feeling because of its redundancies. The same quotes appear in multiple places in the book. Besides these minor flaws, The Challenge of Creation is an excellent discussion of critically important, but often ignored, issues.

On most issues, I probably would agree with Slifkin. I may disagree somewhat about ID or some of the book’s implications, but I’m not 100% sure about all my views. The posts to come will be discuss the actual issues.

Leap of Faith?

R' Gottlieb of Cross-Currents recently posted about Dr. Francis Collins, discussing "a leap of faith, or what we commonly refer to as emunah peshutah." Although I'm not sure if we really have different views, R' Gottlieb seems to believe you need to first just "have faith" and only then can studying the Universe bring you closer to G-d. He implies the intellect alone won't bring a person to recognize there's a G-d. Maimonides also believed this, he claims. I commented there:

The “leap of faith” you find so appealing is a Christian concept:

Christian dogma, according to Kierkegaard, embodies paradoxes which are offensive to reason. The central paradox is the assertion that the eternal, infinite, transcendent God simultaneously became incarnated as a temporal, finite, human being (Jesus). There are two possible attitudes we can adopt to this assertion, viz. we can have faith, or we can take offense. What we cannot do, according to Kierkegaard, is believe by virtue of reason. If we choose faith we must suspend our reason in order to believe in something higher than reason. In fact we must believe by virtue of the absurd.

—The Stafford Encylopedia of Philosophy
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/#Reli

Maimonides says a person can’t believe irrational things and mentions some Christian beliefs like the one above. This is what he has to say about Emunah Peshutah:

There are some who think a lot about G-d and mention him frequently but have no knowledge and merely follow imagination or accept tradition blindly… Such people are outside of the habitation … and do not in truth mention or think about G-d. Because that which is merely in his imagination… does not correspond to any existing being at all…

—Moreh Nevuchim 3:51 translation by D. Eidensohn

Although religious belief isn’t based entirely on logic, no “leap of faith” is necessary to recognize G-d. Part of recognizing G-d may indeed be “hearing the music” and not 100% mathematical proofs. But it is still based on reason. Avraham Avinu looked at the Universe and realized there must have been a Creator. Only than, was there revelation to him. Certainly now, after the revelation to our forefathers, we need no leap of faith.

Science doesn’t just show the “plausibility of the existence of G-d”, it is very strong evidence for it. The perfection of the laws of the Universe and of DNA are are far more rational to explain based on a belief in G-d than on atheism. Atheism and Christianity require a “leap of faith”, not Judaism.

P.S.
There was only one response to my comment on Cross-Currents, and it was from some Christian who didn't really say anything

The Rambam on Providence & Chance.

In a famous letter to the Rabbis of Montepelier on Astrology, the Rambam clearly states his belief about Providence. He disagrees with the philosophers that all is chance, and quotes the Torah and Talmud to show that the this world is one of Providence and Reward & Punishment:

...The Philosophers claim that everything that happens... is all due to chance... We assert that that what happens to a person is not chance but rather it is the result of G-d's Judgment... The Torah warned and gave testimony that if you don't obey G-d He will punish you (Vayikra 26:14). Therefor if you assert that this suffering is not punishment for sin but merely chance you will suffer additional calamities from this "chance". This is stated clearly in Vayikra (26:27-28): If you walk with me with chance then I will walk with you with the wrath of chance. This is the root of our religion which is the Torah of Moshe - that all events that happen in the world and all suffering that happens to a person is just a decree from G-d. Thus, our sages said that there is no death without sin and no suffering without transgression (Shabbos 55a).
(translation by D. Eidensohn)

The Rambam continues:
...Here is Reuben, a tanner, poor, and his children have died in his own lifetime. And here is Simon, a perfumer, rich, and his children stand before him.
The philosopher will maintain that this is due to chance. It is possible that Reuben could become a perfumer, grow rich, and have children; and it is possible that Simon could become impoverished, turn into a tanner, and witness his children's death. All this is simply fortuitous... This is the position of the philosophers....

The true way upon which we rely and in which we walk is this: We say regarding this Reuben and Simon, that there is nothing that draws on the one to become a perfumer and rich, and the other to become a tanner and poor. It is possible that the situation will change and be reversed, as the philosopher maintains. But the philosopher maintains that this is due to chance. We maintain that it is not due to chance, but rather that this situation depends on the will of "Him who spoke, and (the world) came into being" (Ps. 33:9); all of this is a (just) decree and judgment. We do not know the end of the Holy One's wisdom so as to know by what decree and judgment He required that this should be this way and that that should be the other way; "for His ways are not like our ways, neither are His thoughts like our thoughts" (Is. 55:8). We rather are obliged to fix in our minds that if Simon sins, he will be punished with stripes and impoverished and his children will die and the like. And if Reuben repents and mends his ways and searches his deeds and walks in a straight path, he will grow rich and will succeed in all his undertakings and "see (his) seed and prolong (his) days" (ibid. 55:10). This is a root of the religion. If a man says, "But look, many have acted in this way and yet have not succeeded," why this is no proof. Either some iniquity of theirs caused this, or they are now afflicted in order to inherit something even better than this.
(translation from here.)