Can One Believe in Both Evolution and God?

Interview Content

Can One Believe in Both Evolution and God?

Can the theory of evolution and faith be reconciled? Is someone who believes in the existence of God doomed forever to deny the findings of science? Is a neo-Darwinist necessarily also an atheist? The book “God Plays Dice,” published by Yedioth Books, offers an answer to these questions. The book’s author, Rabbi Michael Abraham, attempts with originality and insight to reconcile belief in God with the theory of evolution, and presents his readers with an innovative claim: the starting points of both sides are correct, but their conclusions are mistaken. “It seems that we will not forever have to choose between two bad alternatives: being foolish believers or intelligent atheists,” the publisher says.

The book was written as a response to Dawkins’s book “The God Delusion.” Rabbi Michael Abraham presents a comprehensive and incisive scientific and philosophical critique of Dawkins’s arguments. He cuts the Gordian knot, commonly accepted by most people engaged in this field, between the philosophical and theological questions about God and the scientific questions. “The conclusions that emerge from it,” we are told, “may surprise many readers.”

Rabbi Michael Abraham holds a doctorate in theoretical physics. After several years of research at the Weizmann Institute and Bar-Ilan University, he served as a lecturer at the hesder yeshiva in Yeruham. Today he teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University, is a member of the university’s Talmudic Logic Group, and teaches various courses in the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University, at Bezalel, at Kiryat Ono College, and elsewhere. He has published many articles and books dealing with physics, logic, and philosophy; Talmud, Jewish law, and law; and above all the connections among all these fields. His book Two Carts and a Hot-Air Balloon—On Judaism and Postmodernism won the Minister of Education’s Prize for Jewish Creativity in 2004. His previous books paved the way for the comprehensive philosophical work he presents today: “God Plays Dice.”

Source (Arutz 7): http://www.inn.co.il/News/News.aspx/220733