Evolution versus Einstein

Last week's TIME magazine featured a fascinating debate between the well-known atheist biologist Richard Dawkins and the famous mastermind of the human genome project Francis Collins, entitled "Science versus G-d". In shule last Friday night, I summarized the debate while adding a few insights of my own.

On further review of the article, I found Dawkin's concluding remarks of great interest:

"When we started out... I provided what I thought were cogent arguments against a supernatural intelligent designer. But it does seem to be a worthy idea. Refutable - but nevertheless grand and big enough to be worthy of respect. I don’t see the Olympian gods or Jesus coming down and dying on the cross as worthy of that grandeur... If there is a G-d, it's going to be a whole lot bigger and a whole lot more incomprehensible than anything that any theologian of any religion has ever proposed."

So even the atheist Dawkins is ready to believe in G-d if He is grand and incomprehensible enough. This reminds me of something I once heard in the name of the Kotzker Rebbe, "I cannot believe in a G-d that any Tom, Dick and Harry could understand." Or to quote Groucho Marx: "I don't wish to belong to any club that would have me as a member!"

In the future, I hope to write a series of articles on this intriguing subject. In the meantime, I am reprinting an article that I wrote in 1989 in the South Head publication, "From the Rabbi's Desk". It was titled "Evolution versus Einstein".

As a rabbi, I am often asked, "Does Judaism jell with the Theory of Evolution?" Note: Not does evolution jell with Judaism, but does Judaism jell with evolution.

One wonders: where from this certainty about a theory that has never been scientifically proven?

Fortunately, to answer this question, we need not look far. The famous scientist and philosopher, Aldous Huxley, provides us with the answer:

"I had reasons not to want the world to have meaning, and as a result I assumed the world had no meaning, and I was readily able to find satisfactory grounds for this assumption ... For me , as it undoubtedly was for most of my generation, the philosophy of meaninglessness was an instrument of liberation from a certain moral system. We were opposed to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom."

And he wasn't the only one. Professor August Weisman, one of the founders of modem genetics, had this to say:

"Though we may never be able to determine the process by which a new species was generated by means of natural selection in the struggle for survival, we are nevertheless obligated to accept the principle of natural selection because it offers the only explanation of a diversified natural living world, without our having to assume that it was created by a force that desired and created it intentionally..."

One could be forgiven for thinking that the Theory of Evolution has less to do with science than it has to do with the quest for liberation from conscience and morality.

If one accepts Creation, one is bound to accept a Creator. This in turn points in the direction of purposeful existence and concomitant moral responsibilities. Enough to cause more than a little discomfort to the self-centred hedonists.

So, to justify their pursuit of pleasure, they devised a theory in which G-d is conveniently absent.

"So what?" you ask. "Why begrudge them the ability to pursue their little pleasures?"

Unfortunately it is not as easy as that. The atheist does not merely sin against G-d. Of far greater concern is his attitude to Man. One who truly believes in G-d respects man as having been created in the image of G-d. To the atheist, however, man is but a link in the evolutionary chain, an animal like all other animals, homo sapiens - an intelligent ape, but an ape nonetheless.

The bankruptcy of this approach was never more clearly demonstrated than in the prelude to the Holocaust. Here is what Hitler, yemach shmo wrote in Mein Kampf.

"In nature there is no pity for the lesser creatures when they are destroyed so that the fittest may survive. Going against nature brings ruin to man ... It is only Jewish impudence to demand that we overcome Nature!"

Jews and Judaism were an anathema to Hitler precisely because, in their belief in G-d, they represented the uncompromising dignity of each and every human being no matter what his station in life. It was this desire to destroy the G-dly in man which led him to become obsessed with the annihilation of the Jews.

On another occasion he wrote:

"It is true we are barbarians. That is an honored title to us. I free humanity from the degrading suffering caused by the false vision called conscience and ethics ... They are Jewish inventions. The war for the domination of the world is waged only between the two of us ... the Germans and the Jews... "

In essence he was no more than giving practical application to the theory of evolution, the law of the jungle, where might is right. Radical as it may seem, by accepting evolution, we grant our arch-enemy a posthumous victory!

(Please note: We are not addressing the issue of whether Torah can be interpreted to include at least some aspects of evolution. There are, in fact, various opinions on this matter. Although I personally do not accept the necessity of interpreting Torah in the light of Evolution, I accept that there are believing Jews who wish to accept that G-d "managed" the evolutionary process. It is with those who omit G-d from the process that I take issue.)

The answer, I believe, is that we have been programmed, nay brainwashed, from a very impressionable age into believing in science and scoffing at religion. This can be the only reason why otherwise intelligent people will laugh when it is suggested that Adam and Eve actually existed as described in the Bible, yet will blindly accept (on the word of "scientists") that one species can evolve from another species in the total absence of any proof.

It is not that true science is in any way evil. Quite to the contrary, it is only through science that we can truly appreciate G-d. The Zohar, that master-work of Jewish mysticism, equates the development of science with the development of our understanding of G-d. As an example of this we need go no further than Albert Einstein. Few men throughout history have revolutionised scientific thought in the manner of Einstein. Yet what lead him to his discoveries? Let us listen to the man himself:

" I have no interest in learning a new language, or in food, or in new clothes ... I want to know how G-d created this world. I want to know His thoughts. The rest are details."

And on another occasion:

"... to know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our purest faculties ... this knowledge, this feeling...is the core of true religious sentiment."

Or in the words of his biographer, Banesh Hoffman:

"Einstein's search for a unified field theory was sustained by his profound conviction that there ought to be such a theory that, as the ancient Hebrews put it, the L-rd is one."

As did our father Abraham before him, Einstein saw a beautiful, ordered world and peering through the shades saw the Master of the House staring down at him.

True, Einstein did not confess to a belief in a personal G-d. For that, one requires a tradition of revelation. And, not having been brought up in a family which bore that tradition he was not privy to It.

(To me, it would seem, that in not having had that opportunity he missed an important link in his unified theory; the fact that not only the celestial spheres but the actions of man, too, must reflect the universal unity.) Be that as it may, Einstein was a scientist for whom, in the tradition of the great Jewish thinkers, science and G-d were a symbiotic whole: science led to G-d and G-d led to science.

The Baal Shem Tov taught us that Creation was not a one-time occurrence. Rather G-d's creation of, and involvement with, His world continues every single moment. He also taught us that we can learn something of G-d in everything we hear and see. Science is no more than the microscope, the listening device, through which we extend our senses to see what is otherwise hidden. As such science enables us to see more of G-d.

There is one prerequisite however. Like Einstein we must believe that G-d is there to be discovered. More than Einstein, however, we must also believe that we too are worthy of G-d's love, care and concern.