Faith and Science – Part 7
With God's help
Relations Between Faith and Science as a Drama in Five Acts
In this column I would like to sketch a general background for the discussions that will follow. I will try to describe here five possible approaches to the relationship between faith and science. The description will be from a historical perspective, but this is done only for didactic reasons. All five approaches still exist to this day, and they have not appeared everywhere in the order described here.
Let us begin with a schematic and not entirely precise description of the development of the relationship between Torah and science in the modern era[1]. In the first period, the adversarial approach held sway. Its main effort was devoted to refuting scientific claims that contradicted tradition. Later, when science had already attained a status that was difficult to contend with, the apologetic stance emerged (it seems to me that most members of the movement of 'Torah-observant scientists' can be associated with it), in which the main effort was to reconcile what is said in the Torah with the findings of science. During this period it was already accepted to engage in both fields, in an effort to reconcile them. The focus of the discourse was still the conflict, but there was a sense that it could be solved and harmonized.
These two periods parallel the modernist age, which developed and glorified science and saw it as the be-all and end-all. Both the modern deniers of tradition and those who rejected science on the strength of the claims of religious tradition shared the same dichotomous conception, according to which we must choose between the scientific worldview and the traditional Torah worldview. The apologists tried to hold onto both fields, but still saw a need to reconcile them with one another.
In the next period, a different stance developed: the parallel stance (=parallelism), which sees Torah and science as two domains that do not intersect. According to this approach, these are two domains, each of which deals with a different aspect of phenomena; hence one should neither raise difficulties from one against the other, nor feel any need to reconcile them. One of the most prominent representatives of this stance was Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who argued that as a religious person he believes that the world was created six thousand years ago, and as a scientist he believes that the age of the world is several billion years.
In many areas we adopt parallel explanatory planes, and therefore such a stance should not be seen as a logical contradiction[2]. For example, according to the popular 'mythology,' Newton was sitting under a tree when an apple fell on his head. He asked himself why apples fall to the ground, and thus discovered the law of gravitation (=the attractive force between bodies with mass). As a believing Christian, Newton should have been satisfied with the theological answer: presumably the apple fell on his head as punishment for some sin he had committed. He was not satisfied with that, because he was looking for a scientific answer, not a theological one. And what about the theological answer? He could have believed it, while at the same time seeking a scientific answer[3]. If so, we find here different answers to the same question, each relating to a different plane. On the scientific plane there is one answer, and on the theological plane another. The same is true regarding the Torah's promises, according to which rain and produce depend on our observance of commandments and our transgressions, whereas from a scientific perspective these phenomena appear to be the result of physical and meteorological factors. Incidentally, this is true even among the various sciences. For example, the very same mental process can have psychological and physiological explanations, and likewise on the social plane, and so forth.
Among many of those who advocate this stance, it is customary to say that science deals with the 'what' and the Torah with the 'why,' and therefore these are parallel planes of reference[4]. For example, the theory of evolution describes how the world came into being, but it does not address the question of who directed this entire process. That is, there is no obstacle to saying that God created the world by way of evolution[5].
After some time, the parallelist conception underwent a further development, and the subjective-postmodern stance emerged. In this period, various thinkers treated science, along with other fields of knowledge, as subjective. This attitude provided fertile ground for religious apologists, who climbed onto the postmodern bandwagon and argued that we too, as religious people, can join the 'dance of differences' (in the language of Rabbi Shagar, of blessed memory, in his book 'Kelim Shevurim,' who was one of the representatives of this postmodernist conception)[6]. According to those who advocate this approach, apologetics is not needed at all, since we are 'dancers' with equal rights in the circle. Several sources expressing such a stance imply that religion is something subjective, and perhaps it does not accord with science; but since everything is subjective, and the choice of science too is arbitrary, it is therefore no less legitimate to choose religious tradition as a narrative (=discourse) than the scientific narrative or any other narrative.
This argument is convenient and effective, for it neutralizes the possibility of discourse and thereby spares us the need to apologize and explain away difficulties, but it "throws out the baby with the bathwater." When one gives up the objectivity of belief in God and in Torah from Heaven, and treats it as a myth whose historical or metaphysical truth is unclear (and also unimportant), one thereby implicitly capitulates to the atheistic stance. Faith becomes a kind of subjective discourse (narrative), which is the result of a personal (arbitrary) choice. God here is transformed from a being into an idea, a feeling, or a paradigm (=a conceptual framework for discourse). Such an approach is common among modern religious thinkers (and not only religious ones) in our day (mainly in academia), who apparently cannot, and therefore do not even try to, reconcile their religious way of life with their scientific beliefs. They advocate a religion that does not deal with facts and does not make factual claims about the world, and consequently it is not exposed to scientific criticism[7].
Despite all the conceptual finery and semantic contortions, in many cases this amounts to a de facto stance of heresy. This is faith in God, but not in one who truly exists. To this one may apply the words of Rav Kook, who wrote: "There is a kind of faith that is like heresy, and a kind of heresy that is like faith." ("There is a faith that is like heresy, and a heresy that is like faith")[8]. A God who is nothing more than the believer's subjective handiwork is precisely what Karl Marx called, and rightly so, "opium of the masses."
In recent years a fifth stance has been developing, one not always explicitly distinguished, but it may be called the synthetic period. Such a stance holds that science not only does not contradict tradition, and not only possesses positive value, but can even be used as an important component in Torah study and its understanding. Some have gone so far as actually to identify the two fields. Yet even if one does not go that far with respect to content, more and more academic methods are being introduced into study-hall learning (a phenomenon accompanied, as is well known, by fierce polemics)[9].
[1] A. Before the modern era, there was generally no distinction between science and Torah, both in Christianity and in Judaism. For example, many of Aristotle's claims were perceived as religious truths. In the modern era the situation changed, and the difference between the fields became sharper. Here we are dealing only with the second stage of this drama.
B. The description in this chapter is presented chronologically, but in practice the division between the positions is not always by period. In recent years several approaches have become thoroughly intermingled, and sometimes the very same people raise arguments from several types. For our purposes, the main importance lies in distinguishing the positions themselves, and the historical question is secondary.
[2] See my book 'Et Asher Yeshno Ve'asher Einenu,' Part Four, for an extensive discussion of parallel explanatory planes in various forms.
[3] This claim is far from simple, and prima facie it involves a logical difficulty. An 'explanation' is generally required to be necessary and sufficient, and therefore, prima facie, there cannot be two different explanations for the same phenomenon; see my aforementioned book on this. Here we will suffice with pointing out the fact that people accept such an approach as plausible, and therefore it can equally be applied to such conflicts between Torah and science. There are, however, factual conflicts, and there the issue is not explanations but facts. For example, the question of the age of the world. Here, seemingly, there is only one answer: either it is 6,000 years old or it is billions of years old. Here too there is room for several parallel answers, if we distinguish between different concepts of 'age' (or time). There are several answers to these questions, and therefore I will not enter into this point here.
[4] There is room here to distinguish between phenomenological (=descriptive) theories and essential (=explanatory) theories, but this is not the place to elaborate.
[5] My friend Nadav Shnerb once told me that he does not understand why evolution contradicts our tradition any more than gravitation does. If one assumes that the laws of nature operate without an agent, then gravitation too contradicts our faith no less than evolution; and if we accept the fact that science describes God's activity, then there is no essential contradiction between any scientific theory and religious tradition.
[6] See my critique of the book in 'Nekuda,' as well as the critique by my friend Nadav Shnerb in 'Tzohar' 18.
[7] See on this Gili Zivan, 'Dat LeLo Ashlaya,' HaKibbutz HaMeuchad, 2006 (and likewise her supervisor, Avi Sagi, in several places). See also the anthology 'Al HaEmunah,' edited by Moshe Halbertal and Avi Sagi, especially the essays by Moshe Halbertal, Roni Miron, and others. A similar approach appears in several articles by Moshe Meir (see, for example, 'Akdamot' 12, and my response there in the following issue). For a sociological description of this phenomenon as part of what is called "the new Religious Zionism," see the illuminating (and amusing) article by Yitzhak Geiger in 'Akdamot' 11. Such an approach also appears in many books on faith and on God that have been published in recent years, but I cannot elaborate here.
I should note that among scholars of Jewish studies there are quite blunt expressions of this approach, specifically among scholars committed to Jewish law. Various scholars reach conclusions regarding the sources of various laws or customs, and the conclusions of their research cast these in a problematic light, or at least as non-binding; yet in practice they continue to relate to them as any tradition-observant Jew committed to Jewish law would. For them there is a disconnection between the facts uncovered by research and Jewish law, and parallelism serves as a solution, at least on the practical level. I would note that such a phenomenon may be expected to appear (though not necessarily) in especially acute form among academic scholars who also serve as rabbis. For two prominent examples, see the critique of Rabbi Prof. Rosenthal that appears in the article by his student Menahem Kahana, 'Talmud Research at the University and Traditional Learning in the Yeshiva,' in 'Ma'agalei Temurah U'Masoret,' Rehovot 1990. A similar phenomenon is found in the article by Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau, 'A Reflection of Truth – Rabbinate and Academia in the Writings of Rabbi Rosenthal on Saving a Gentile on the Sabbath,' 'Akdamot' 13, and in my response there in the following issue. Likewise, see the article by Barukh Kahana, 'Where Is the Wind Blowing,' 'Akdamot' 20, Kivun B, in polemic with the positions of Moshe Meir.
[8] See 'Orot HaEmunah,' p. 25. Likewise, see my threads on this topic in the forum 'Atzor Kan Hoshvim,' dated 21.9.2005.
[9] See the article by Rabbi Amit Kula in 'Tzohar' 13, the ongoing discussion of the 'layers' in 'Tzohar' 15-18, and the articles by Eliyahu Shai in 'Tzohar' 13-14, 29.