Evolution and the Jews

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, April 16, 2005

In talking about the teaching of evolution, creationism, and intelligent design, in the classroom, Miranda raised an issue of interest not only within the Jewish community, but also in American society at large.

On Wednesday night when I was speaking at a Catholic Church in Los Altos, I was asked about evolution, and an op ed piece entitled: “Intellectual Honesty Devolves: Battle Against Teaching Evolution Is More Than An Attack on Science”, appeared this week in the Mercury News.

How can it be that in the year 2005 more Americans believe in UFO’s than believe in evolution? Why in a society that benefits so much from the fruits of scientific inquiry, is the scientific enterprise so little valued? More generally we might ask why are the liberal Protestant denominations shrinking while fundamentalist churches seem to be thriving? And perhaps closer to home, why do some Jewish young people who have had the benefits of the best secular educations available, reject that world and become baalei teshuvah, often joining those streams of Judaism most rooted in the middle ages?

Often we are tempted to belittle those with an outlook different than our own, calling them ignorant, or psychologically needy, not as intelligent and worldly as we are. But perhaps we have something to gain in considering why these opposing world views have become so popular in our own time.

One hint to me is found in the person of the Hatam Sofer, a great Jewish scholar of the late 19th century. As the pace of change continued to increase, his response was to declare a moratorium on all change. Using words that originally related to the first fruits which according to Jewish law were dedicated to God, he declared: Kol HeChadash Asur – Everything New is Forbidden. I think there are those in our society today who overwhelmed by the changes that have taken place, similarly want to stop the world.

Another cause for losing faith in science, particularly for Jews, stems from the Holocaust. Many Jews are skeptical that science and philosophy can create a good society. After all, Germany was the most sophisticated, the most advanced scientifically, the most artistically developed society in the world, at the time when Nazism emerged. If advanced thinking cannot protect us from that great evil, then its value becomes suspect.

Finally, the relativism that the social sciences have engendered is finally coming full circle and those who have learned that all truths are relative to their own society, now feel the same way about scientific truths. The Hottentots had their beliefs, they say, and we have our science, and no one can say that one is more correct than the other.

If my suspicions are correct about the roots of our current situation, then our best approach may be to address these three challenges. We need to help people find moorings, even in a world that is constantly changing. We need to insure a commitment to creating good people rather than just smart people, and finally we need to help reestablish a way to sort out truth systems through recourse to values without reestablishing the intolerance that preceded relativism.

In the weekday Amidah we pray for deah, chochmah vadaat - knowledge, wisdom and insight, reminding ourselves of the importance of all three different aspects of intelligence and of their being, each in their own way, a gift from God.