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Judaism Confronts...The Big Bang and Evolution Daniel Anderson - Limmud Conference (Dec 2014/Tevet 5775)

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Judaism Confronts...The Big Bang and Evolution Daniel Anderson - Limmud Conference (Dec 2014/Tevet 5775) Judaism confronts...the Big Bang and Evolution Daniel Anderson - Limmud Conference (Dec 2014/Tevet 5775) 1) The literalist perspective: Lubavitcher Rebbe and Rabbi Dr David Gottlieb The universe is 6 days old and science is wrong ...it was quite a surprise to me to learn that you are still troubled by the problem of the age of the world as suggested by various scientific theories which cannot be reconciled with the Torah view that the world is 5722 years old. I underlined the word theories, for it is necessary to bear in mind, first of all, that science formulates and deals with theories and hypotheses while the Torah deals with absolute truths. These are two different disciplines, where reconciliation is entirely out of place... In short, of all the weak scientific theories, those which deal with the origin of the cosmos and with its dating are (admittedly by the scientists themselves) the weakest of the weak... Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson/Lubavitcher Rebbe (1902-1994), 18th Tevet 5722 [December 25, 1961] Brooklyn, NY The solution to the contradiction between the age of the earth and the universe according to science and the Jewish date of 5755 years since Creation is this: the real age of the universe is 5755 years, but it has misleading evidence of greater age. Rabbi David Gottlieb, PhD in Mathematics, former Professor of Philosophy at John Hopkins University, Senior faculty of Ohr Somayach Yeshiva Evolution is nonsense ...The argument from the discovery of the fossils is by no means conclusive evidence of the great antiquity of the earth... [for] one cannot exclude the possibility that dinosaurs existed 5722 years ago, and became fossilized under terrific natural cataclysms in the course of a few years rather than in millions of years; since we have no conceivable measurements or criteria of calculations under those unknown conditions... ...Even assuming that the period of time which the Torah allows for the age of the world is definitely too short for fossilization (although I do not see how one can be so categorical), we can still readily accept the possibility that God created ready fossils, bones or skeletons (for reasons best known to him), just as he could create ready living organisms, a complete man, and such ready products as oil, coal or diamonds, without any evolutionary process...We cannot know the reason why God chose this manner of creation in preference to another, and whatever theory of creation is accepted, the question will remain unanswered. The question, Why create a fossil? is no more valid than the question, Why create an atom? Certainly, such a question cannot serve as a sound argument, much less as a logical basis, for the evolutionary theory, [for which there is not a shred of evidence to support]... [However] the theory, to which reference has been made, actually has no bearing on the Torah account of Creation. For even if the theory of evolution were substantiated today, and the mutation of species were proven in laboratory tests, this would still not contradict the possibility of the world having been created as stated in the Torah, rather than through the evolutionary process. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson/Lubavitcher Rebbe (1902-1994), 18th Tevet 5722 [December 25, 1961] Brooklyn, NY The bones, artefacts, partially decayed radium, potassium-argon, uranium, the red-shifted light from space, etc. - all of it points to a greater age which nevertheless is not true. G-d put these things in the universe and they lead many to the false conclusion of a much greater age. I said the evidence is misleading. Does that mean that God is tricking us? Not at all: He told us the truth! Only 1 Judaism confronts...the Big Bang and Evolution Daniel Anderson - Limmud Conference (Dec 2014/Tevet 5775) someone who [perversely] decides to ignore the statement of the Creator and rely only on what he can investigate will be lead to a false conclusion. Only to such a person is the evidence misleading. And note that this policy of creating the world looking different from its true nature is an inescapable Jewish idea. For, we recite twice every morning that God constantly recreates the universe, even though this is not observable. Let's first understand that G-d certainly can do this if He wishes. There is no logical impossibility in imagining such indicators of false age. Furthermore, something like this is part of the naive understanding of Genesis. Adam was created as an adult. Observing him a few minutes after he was created, we would assume him to be at least twenty years old: he was created with misleading symptoms of greater age than he possessed. The trees created in the Garden of Eden presumably had tree rings. Tree rings usually indicate the age of the tree, but in this case the rings are misleading evidence of age the trees did not possess. So the idea is not inherently absurd. Rabbi David Gottlieb, PhD in Mathematics, former Professor of Philosophy at John Hopkins University, Senior faculty of Ohr Somayach Yeshiva 2) The accommodative perspective: Isaac of Acre and Rabbi Israel Lipschitz The age of the universe is 15 billion years old The Sefer HaTemunah [13th-14th C] speaks about Sabbatical cycles (Shemitot). This is based on the Talmudic teaching that “the world will exist for six thousand years, and in the seventh thousand year, it will be destroyed” (BT, Sanhedrin 97a). The Sefer HaTemunah states that this seven year cycle is merely one Sabbatical cycle. However, since there are seven Sabbatical cycles in a Jubilee, the world is destined to exist for 49,000 years. There is a question as to which cycle we are in today... According to one opinion, we are in the seventh cycle, [which would suggest that] the universe is 42,000 years old. Rabbi Aryan Kaplan (1934-1983), ‘The Age of the Universe’ (Published 1993) I, the insignificant Isaac of Acre, have seen fit to record a great mystery that should be kept well hidden. One of God’s days is one thousand years, as it is written: ‘For a thousand years in Your sight are as a day’ (Tehillim/Psalms 90:4). Since one of our years is 365.25 days, a year on high is 365,250 of our years (i.e. 365.25 x 1000). Two years on high is 730,500 of our years (i.e. 365,250 x2). From this, continue multiplying to 42,000 years, each year consisting of 365.25 days, and each supernal day being one thousand of our years, as it is written: ’God alone will prevail on that day’ (Yeshiyah/Isaiah 2:11). ‘Who can speak of G-d’s greatness?’ (Tehillim/Psalms 106:2). Blessed be the name of Him whose glorious Kingdom is forever and ever. [NB Thus according to Isaac of Acre the age of the universe is 42,000 x 365,250 = 15,340,500,000 years old, which is in alignment with current scientific thinking, which suggests that it is 14.46±0.8 billion years.]... ....Behold, our eyes see that the world has existed for a very long time. This is to refute the opinion of those who say that the world has not existed more than forty-nine thousand years, which is seven Sabbatical cycles. Isaac ben Samuel of Acre (1250-1350), Ozar ha-Hayyim, pp.86b-87b Evolution is part of God’s creation …As regards the past, Rabbi Abbahu states at the beginning of Bereishet Rabbah that the words ‘and it was evening, and it was morning’ (in the apparent absence of the sun) indicate that “there was a series of epochs before then; the Holy One created worlds and destroyed them, approving some and not others.” [Midrash Rabbah (Bereishit 3:7)] 2 Judaism confronts...the Big Bang and Evolution Daniel Anderson - Limmud Conference (Dec 2014/Tevet 5775) The Kabbalists expanded upon this statement and revealed that this process is repeated seven times, each Sabbatical cycle [Sh’mita] achieving greater perfection than the last…They also tell us that we are now in the midst of the fourth of these great cycles of perfection… [NB: Many paleontologists also consider there to have been four eras: the Precambrian, Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic.] We are enabled to appreciate to the full the wonderful accuracy of our Holy Torah when we see that this secret doctrine, handed down by word of mouth for so long, and revealed to us by the Sages of the Kabbalah many centuries ago, has been borne out in the clearest possible way by the science of our generation. The questing spirit of man, probing and delving into the recesses of the earth, in the Pyrenees, the Carpathians, the Rocky Mountains in America, and the Himalayas, has found them to be formed of mighty layers of rock lying upon one another in amazing and chaotic formations, explicable only in terms of revolutionary transformations of the earth’s surface. Probing still further, deep below the earth’s surface, geologists have found four distinct layers of rock, and between the layers fossilized remains of creatures. Those in the lower layers are of monstrous size and structure, while those in the higher layers are progressively smaller in size but incomparably more refined in structure and form. Furthermore, they found in Siberia in 1807, under the eternal ice of those regions, a monstrous type of elephant, some three or four times larger than those found today… Similarly, fossilized remains of sea creatures have been found within the recesses of the highest mountains, and scientists have calculated that of every 78 species found in the earth, 48 are species that are no longer found in our present epoch.
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