The Relationship Between Faith and Science as a Drama in Five Acts
With God's help
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 given from a historical perspective, but this is done only for didactic reasons. All five approaches exist to this very day, and they did not appear 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 prevailed. The main effort invested in it was to refute the scientific claims that contradicted tradition. Later, once science had already acquired a status that was difficult to contend with, the apologetic stance emerged (it seems to me that most members of the 'Torah-Observant Scientists' movement may be associated with it), in which the main effort was to reconcile what is said in the Torah with the findings of science. In this period it was already accepted to engage in both domains, as part of an effort to reconcile them. The focus of the discourse was still the conflict, except that there was a sense that it could be resolved and harmonized.
These two periods parallel the modernist age, which developed and exalted science and saw it as the be-all and end-all. Both the modern deniers of tradition, and those who rejected science on the basis of the claims of religious tradition, shared the dichotomous conception according to which we must choose between the scientific worldview and the Torah-based traditional worldview. The apologists tried to hold on to both domains, but they still saw a need to reconcile them with one another.
In the next period a different stance developed: the parallelist stance (=the parallel approach), which sees Torah and science as two domains with no overlap between them. According to this approach, these are two domains, each dealing with a different aspect of the phenomena, and therefore one should not raise difficulties from one against the other, nor is there any need to reconcile them. One of the prominent representatives of this position was Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who argued that as a religious person he believes the world was created six thousand years ago, and as a man of science he believes that the age of the world is several billion years.
In many areas we adopt parallel planes of explanation, and therefore such a position should not be seen as a logical contradiction[2]. For example, according to the prevailing '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 law of attraction between bodies with mass). As a believing Christian, Newton was supposed to be satisfied with the theological answer: that the apple presumably 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 and not a theological one. And what about the theological answer? He could have believed it, and at the same time searched for a scientific answer[3]. Thus we find different answers to the same question, and each relates to a different plane. On the scientific plane there is one answer, and on the theological plane another. The same applies to the Torah's promises, according to which rainfall and crops depend on our commandments and transgressions, whereas from a scientific point of view these phenomena appear to be the result of physical and meteorological factors. Incidentally, this is also true among the various sciences themselves. For example, the very same mental process can have psychological and physiological explanations, as well as an explanation on the social plane, and so forth.
Among many who espouse this position it is customary to say that science deals with the 'what' and the Torah deals 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 impediment to saying that God created the world in an evolutionary way[5].
After some time, the parallelist conception underwent further development, and the subjective-postmodern stance emerged. During this period, various thinkers came to regard science, as well as other fields of knowledge, as subjective. This attitude constituted fertile ground for religious apologists, who got on 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' ['Broken Vessels'], who was one of the representatives of this postmodernist conception)[6]. According to proponents of this approach, apologetics is not even necessary, because we are 'dancers' with equal rights in the circle. From several sources that express such a position, it emerges that religion is something subjective; it may not accord with science, but since everything is subjective, and the choice of science is also arbitrary, it is therefore legitimate to choose religious tradition as a narrative (=discourse) no less than the scientific narrative or any other narrative.
This argument is convenient and effective, since it neutralizes the possibility of discourse, and thereby exempts us from the need to apologize and rationalize, but it 'throws the baby out with the bathwater.' When one gives up the objectivity of belief in God and in the divine origin of the Torah, and treats it as a myth whose historical or metaphysical truth is unclear (and also unimportant), one thereby implicitly capitulates to the atheistic position. Faith becomes a kind of subjective discourse (narrative), which is the result of a personal (arbitrary) choice. God is transformed here from a real being into an idea, a feeling, or a paradigm (=a conceptual framework for discourse). Such an approach is widespread among modern religious thinkers (and not only religious thinkers) today, mainly in academia, who apparently cannot—and therefore do not even try to—reconcile their religious way of life with their scientific beliefs. They espouse a religion that does not deal in facts and does not make factual claims about the world, and therefore it is not exposed to scientific criticism either[7].
Despite all the intellectual finery and semantic twists, in many cases this is a position of de facto heresy. It is belief in God, but not in one who really exists. Of this one may aptly apply the words of Rabbi Kook, who wrote: "There is a faith that is like heresy, and a 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 subjective handiwork of the believing human being is precisely what Karl Marx called, and rightly, "opium of the masses".
In recent years a fifth stance has been developing, though it is not always explicitly distinguished, and it may be called the synthetic period. Such a position holds that not only does science not contradict tradition, and not only does it have positive value, but it can even be used as an important component in Torah study and in its understanding. Some have gone so far as actually to identify the two domains. But even if one does not go that far with respect to content, more and more academic methods are being introduced into study in the study halls (a phenomenon accompanied by fierce polemics, as is well known)[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 distinction between the domains was sharpened. 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 among the positions is not always by periods. In recent years several approaches have become intermingled, and sometimes the very same people advance arguments belonging to several types. For our purposes, the main importance lies in distinguishing among the positions themselves, and the historical question is secondary.
[2] See my book 'Et Asher Yeshno VeAsher Eyneno,' part IV, for an extended discussion of parallel planes of explanation in their various forms.
[3] This claim is by no means simple, and apparently it involves a logical problem. An 'explanation' is generally required to be necessary and sufficient, and therefore, seemingly, there cannot be two different explanations for the same phenomenon; see my aforementioned book on this. Here we will content ourselves with pointing to the fact that people regard such an approach as reasonable, and therefore it can likewise be applied to such conflicts between Torah and science. Admittedly, there are factual conflicts, where we are not speaking of explanations but of facts. For example, the question of the age of the world. Here, apparently, 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 among different concepts of 'age' (or time). There are several answers to these questions, and therefore I will not enter this point here.
[4] There is room here to distinguish between phenomenological (=descriptive) theories and essential (=explanatory) theories, but this is not the place.
[5] My friend Nadav Shnerb once told me that he does not understand why evolution contradicts our tradition more than gravitation does. If one assumes that the laws of nature operate without an operator, then gravitation too contradicts our faith no less than evolution does; 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,' and also the critique by my friend Nadav Shnerb, in 'Tzohar' 18.
[7] See on this Gili Zivan, 'Religion Without Illusion,' Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 2006 (and likewise her adviser, Avi Sagi, in several places). See also the anthology on faith, edited by Moshe Halbertal and Avi Sagi, especially the articles by Moshe Halbertal, Roni Miron, and others. A similar approach appears in several of Moshe Meir's articles (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 emerges in many books about faith and about God that have appeared in recent years, and I will not elaborate further.
I would note that among scholars of Jewish studies there are blatant expressions of this approach, precisely among scholars committed to Jewish law. Various researchers arrive at conclusions concerning the sources of different laws or customs, and the conclusions of their research cast these in a problematic light, or at least in a non-binding one, and yet in practice they continue to conduct themselves toward them like any tradition-observant Jew committed to Jewish law. There is, for them, a disconnect between the facts uncovered by research and Jewish law, and parallelism provides a solution, at least on the practical level. I would add that such a phenomenon is likely to appear—though not necessarily—in especially acute form among academic scholars who also serve as rabbis. For two striking examples, see the critique of Rabbi Professor Rosenthal that appears in the article by his student Menahem Kahana, "Talmud Research at the University and Traditional Study in the Yeshiva," in 'Ma'agalei Temurah U-Masoret,' Rehovot 1990. A similar phenomenon appears in the article by Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau, "A Reflection of Truth – Rabbinate and Academia in the Writings of R. A. S. Rosenthal on Saving a Gentile on the Sabbath," 'Akdamot' 13, and in my response there in the following issue. Likewise, see the article by Baruch Kahana, 'Which Way the Wind Blows,' 'Akdamot' 20, 'Kivun B,' in polemic with the positions of Moshe Meir.
[8] See 'Orot HaEmunah,' p. 25. Likewise, see my threads on this subject in the forum 'Atzor Kan Khoshvim,' dated 21.9.2005.
[9] See Rabbi Amit Kula's article, 'Tzohar' 13, the ongoing discussion of the 'layers,' 'Tzohar' 15-18, and the articles by Eliyahu Shay, 'Tzohar' 13-14, 29.