Saturday, 7 August 2010

Can Orthodoxy REALLY Be Reconciled With Science?

I had a most interesting discussion the other day which I would like to share.

I got into a big argument with a relatively Yeshivish person about Young Earth Creationism. Now this person, we'll call him Reuven, is not an idiot and did not make the mistake of claiming that evolution is bunk or that geology is wrong etc. Instead he suggested that although science points unquestionably to an old earth it is still reasonable to assume that perhaps God tweaked things to make it look old.

Now I naturally rolled my eyes and perhaps overconfidently decided to show him the wrong of his ways but since I wanted to keep things "kosher" I tied my hand behind my back and took for granted, as he does, that the Torah is divine writ, without question, and is the eternal and infallible word of God. Since this is the Orthodox notion of TMS the point of the discussion was to see if the Modern Orthodox are succesfully able to hold both the doctrine of TMS and also uphold the reliability of science.

My first argument was that God would not "lie" (as I posted in my last post) about the world by creating it in a fashion which makes it seem that it is older than it really is.

Countered Reuven, God would not lie in the Torah that the world was created in 7 days.

I then said, that surely choosing the Torah over science is an arbitrary decision. After all God is deceiving us so to speak in one area either way, who is to say that the deception doesn't lie in the Torah instead of the science.

Countered Reuven, God never gave us nature as a source of insight or as a "guide to life". Conversely we were given the Torah for the explicit pupose of teaching us something. Therefore it indeed makes more sense to assume that the deception lies in nature not in the Torah.

I then said that we see that the Torah was written for a certain generation and perhaps made concessions to the superstitions and traditions of the Ancient Hebrews. Basically I invoked a sort of Nahum Sarna approach that the Torah was written in the form of Ancient Mythology as a "concession" to the spirit of the age,

Countered Reuven that even assuming that the Torah was written for a certain generation (he was quite reluctant to admit this) it is still unreasonable for God to leave such overt deception in a book which is meant to guide us. It is unreasonable for God to waste time expounding on a clearly fictional narrative in order to teach some sort of lesson to the Ancient Hebrews, when it clearly is a stumbling block for our generation. No matter how you say it, it is still a very misleading narrative and surely we should not attribute that to God?

I countered the Torah is not a history book etc.

He replied that that is true but is still should not mislead us.

I asked why God bothered to trick us with nature?

He said he had no idea but countered why would God trick us throught the Torah?

Since I decided not to say to Reuven "Well the Torah is not infallible etc." (Which is against Orthodox dogma) I basically lost the argument.

So I leave it to you folks. Did I miss something? Or is Modern Orthodoxy simply kidding itself when it claims to believe both in science and Torah? I've always assumed due to my brainwashing upbringing that although I personally don't believe in Orthodoxy, that Orthodoxy still does not HAVE to contradict science. But is this correct? Perhaps the Chareidim have it right and it is not reasonable to believe in the infallibility and complete divinity of the Torah and to also believe that science is correct. Perhaps the only real way to reconcile Judaism with science is to admit that the Torah is not infallible and is not ad verbatim the word of God. Maybe. I leave it to you.