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Vayechi 5766
Genesis 47:28-50:26
By Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff
Congregation B’nai
Israel
Can
you imagine the excitement you would feel introducing your sons to their
grandfather for the first time?
In the Joseph story, which we finished reading from the Torah today,
Joseph had been separated from his father, Jacob, for many years after his
brothers had sold him into slavery in
Egypt
.
Jacob thought Joseph was dead—the brothers told him Joseph had been
torn apart by wild animals. In
last week’s Torah reading we had the emotional reunion between Joseph and
Jacob. This week Joseph
introduces his sons to his father for the first time.
As the story is told, Jacob has f
allen
ill. Joseph
comes to visit, and receives a blessing from his father.
When he’s done blessing Joseph, Jacob notices two boys with him.
Jacob asks, “And who are these?”
Joseph replies “They are my sons, whom God has given me in this
place.”
“Whom God has given me in this place.”
Who among us would think to introduce our kids with that phrase?
Joseph was very aware of God’s providence, of God’s presence, and
of how God is responsible for all that happens in the world.
You might say that Joseph believed in Intelligent Design.
He did not believe that his children were the result of random
things happening in the Universe.
God the Creator, the Intelligent Designer, was responsible for the gift of
those children.
In many ways, believing that there is some kind of intelligent design in
the universe lies at the heart of not only Judaism, but every monotheistic
religion. And believing there
is an intelligent designer is NOT incompatible with science.
Einstein said “God does not play dice with the Universe.”
The smartest man to ever live believed in Intelligent Design.
I also believe in Intelligent Design.
Intelligent Design says the world is too complex to have happened
randomly. Look at a car:
thousands of parts, all milled with great precision, many of them critical
for the car to function at all.
Obviously someone pretty intelligent came up with the design.
Extrapolate that idea to the universe.
The universe is too intricate to have happened by accident.
The very beginning of the Torah asserts that the world is no accident—the
first chapter of the Bible is taken up with an account of God creating the
world. The Midrash tells us
that not only did God create the world, but He had a blueprint—the Torah,
which in a mystical fashion existed as a sort of primordial Torah before
the Creation of the world.
But what about science?
Scientists overwhelmingly support the theories of the Big Bang and
Evolution as explaining the creation of the world.
Are we forced to
choose between Torah and science?
Is one right and the other wrong?
I believe they are both right—we don’t have to choose between them.
The Torah deals with the “truths” of what it means to be “Adam,” to be a
part of Mankind.
The Torah is not a science lesson.
The Torah tells us God created the world – science tells us how.
But what does that do to the tradition of “Torah mi-Sinai,” which says
the Torah comes from God. Is
it possible to continue to believe in the divinity of the Torah if you
don’t take it literally?
Maimonides (Rambam) wrote in Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah, The Foundations of
the Torah: “If so, what does
the Torah mean when it says things like, "under His feet" (Exodus 31:18),
"written with the finger of God" (ibid), "the hand of the Lord" (Exodus
9:3), "the eyes of the Lord" (Genesis 38:7), "the ears of the Lord"
(Numbers 11:1), et cetera? These phrases are in line with the level of
understanding of people, who can only comprehend physical existence, and
the Torah speaks in terms that we can understand. All examples of this
nature are merely attributory. For example, when it says, "If I whet My
glittering sword" - does God really have a sword and does He really kill
with one?! Such phrases are figurative.”
A basic principle the rabbis have understood for thousands of years is
that the Torah speaks in the language of Man—it puts things into terms we
can understand, into language we can relate to.
In other words, as Rambam says elsewhere, to take the Torah
literally is a distortion of Torah—it misses the REAL meaning of the
Torah.
A good Jew can still believe in Evolution.
I believe God, the Intelligent Designer, created the world through
the Big Bang and Evolution (or those theories are the current
approximation of what happened, until they are replaced by other more
accurate theories). The
fundamental teaching for me in the first chapter of Genesis is God created
the world—not how God did that.
At the most simplistic level, one could say God is what made the Big Bang
go bang.
Using the term “Intelligent Design” very loosely, all monotheists, an
overwhelming majority of the American population, and indeed a majority of
all people on the planet, believe that God, the Intelligent Designer, is
responsible for the creation of the world in some way.
Given that most people believe there is an “intelligent designer,” did US
District Judge John Jones rule CORRECTLY a few weeks ago that a
Dover
,
Pennsylvania
school district was
forbidden to teach Intelligent Design in biology class?
This past week, the Ohio Board of Education voted 9-8 to keep a “Master
Lesson” for high school biology classes called “Critical Analysis of
Evolution,” which encourages students to examine alternate theories to
evolution—encouraging them to consider intelligent design as an alternate.
Did the Ohio Board rule correctly?
The Cleveland Jewish News reports “Most scientists oppose the lesson
because they say it uses concepts straight out of intelligent design
literature and allows a pseudo-scientific rehash of creationism to creep
into high-school biology classrooms.”
I maintain that Judge Jones ruled correctly: and the Ohio Board of
Education voted the wrong way.
Intelligent Design does NOT belong in high school science classes.
That’s because Intelligent Design is not science.
It is theology.
Science explains WHAT happens in the world around us, and HOW it happens.
We observe a phenomenon, and try to understand what caused it.
Theology is not
about WHAT and HOW. Theology
is about WHY. Theology is
about meaning.
The proponents of teaching intelligent design as science argue that
Darwin
’s theory of evolution is
"not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps."
Is that a reason to reject it as science??
When Einstein said, “God does not play dice with the universe,” he was
criticizing the theory of quantum mechanics.
He thought it was a bunch of hooey.
Today, of course, virtually all physicists believe Einstein was
wrong, and quantum mechanics IS valid.
That does not mean that the old Newtonian physics is “wrong.”
It’s just incomplete.
But that doesn’t mean we throw it out:
if you’re going to play a game of pool, a knowledge of
Newton
is much more useful than
understanding Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.
Even intelligent designers can sometimes do things that are pretty
random, or that fail. Look at
the Edsel! Or as God (played
by George Burns) put it in the movie “Oh, God!” “Avocados.
I should have made the pits smaller.”
When scientists start making theological pronouncements (whether they are
pronouncing for or against God is irrelevant) they are talking outside
their realm of expertise. And
their thinking can lead in some dangerous directions.
Norman Hall, a scientist
specializing in molecular genetics and cardiac biochemistry wrote,
“Science has succeeded as a cooperative human effort by asserting the
belief that the universe can only be understood through the values of
integrity and truth-telling. In the process it has become a system of
values, and it has provided humankind with a language which transcends
cultural boundaries and connects us in a highly satisfying way to all the
observable universe. It has the potential to be used as the basis for a
workable and profoundly satisfying system of ethics.”
Sorry, science cannot be used as the basis for a profoundly satisfying
system of ethics. That’s been
tried: Hitler thought he was being very “scientific” in crafting a “Master
Race,” and thousands of highly-educated doctors, engineers, and scientists
helped him commit mass murder.
The roots of the ethical lie not in science but in something
transcendental—in God, in the realm of theology.
Similarly, scientists are quite rightly upset when theologians try to
muddle in science. Scientists
are like Sgt. Joe Friday in the old Dragnet show: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
Based on the
facts, I believe in God and Evolution.
God, the Intelligent Designer, chose to create the world through
the Big Bang and Evolution.
Those theories
are certainly incomplete, and they contain gaps.
But they represent science’s attempt to explain observable
phenomenon.
What we see when
we look at those gaps is clearly colored by what we want to see.
John Wisdom described it well in his parable of the Gardener.
Two people look at long neglected garden.
One looks at all the weeds and says “there must not be a gardener.”
One looks at the flowers and says “there must have been a gardener.”
As a person of
faith, I look at the world through “God-colored lenses.”
I see evidence of God everywhere I look.
But scientists are trained NOT to look at the world with
“God-colored lenses,” at least not at work.
At work, they put aside pre-conceived notions, deal with the facts
and try to explain them. And
every so often, for many scientists and doctors, they take a step back
from their work and feel awe at being in the presence of God who created
such a wonder. But mostly they
know enough to keep that awe and sense of wonder separate from their
scientific work.
Plugging a
variable into an equation which says “insert intelligent designer here” is
not going to help us understand how the world works.
It will not help us unlock the mysteries of physics and cosmology.
That would be a cop-out on the part of scientists trying to
understand God’s world. What
would have happened to advances in physics if 100 years ago when
scientists bumped up against something they couldn’t explain, they
shrugged their computers and said “must have been an intelligent
designer.” We probably
wouldn’t have computers, cell phones, or atom bombs.
Using God as a variable in a scientific equation means surrendering
true scientific inquiry.
Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah) says that the very first act of Creation that
God did was to hide—to engage in tzimtzum, which means
“contraction.” And God did a
good job of hiding. The
Jewish tradition teaches that God is hidden from our sight much the same
way that the soul is hidden from our sight. What’s the difference between
a corpse and a live person?
The presence of a soul, which science will never find—notwithstanding the
claim made at the beginning of the movie “21 grams.”
God is the soul of the universe.
Scientists will never find God via the scientific method, but God
is what brings the universe to life.
By all means teach Intelligent Design in high school.
But teach it in a comparative religion class.
It does not belong in science class.
Even if it’s true.
Shabbat Shalom
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