Q&A: Moving the Goalposts
Moving the Goalposts
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael Abraham
There is a common claim among atheists that any non-literal or non-factual treatment by believers of the creation story only began once evolution and the Big Bang were discovered; before that, they did treat it literally and as a factual description, and only after those things were discovered did they start saying it was not literal. (They call this "moving the goalposts.")
I know Nachmanides, who writes at the beginning of his commentary on the book of Genesis that creation contains great secrets and is not to be taken literally, but immediately afterward he writes there that the days of creation were actual days.
How do you answer that claim?
Thank you
Answer
I don't understand the claim. Is one forbidden to learn and change one's views in light of the knowledge we have gained? Indeed, in the past people thought it was literal, and today we have understood that it is not. We have advanced. In the secular world, are people not willing to learn new things? I really can't understand this strange claim.
Discussion on Answer
The claim is that giving interpretation to the texts sounds like an excuse: people once didn't understand the world and told stories in order to understand it, and when they discovered that the stories weren't true they gave them reinterpretation—saying they are parables and not literal.
After all, in that way you can say about any book that was written that it isn't literal and that it is describing something else.
But from the fact that already the Mishnah and the Talmud understood that these are secrets, you can see that this understanding preceded the theories of the Big Bang and evolution. So these are not after-the-fact excuses.
Okay, you're repeating yourself. I don't understand the difficulty. You interpret it as an excuse, but I also say it's an excuse. Indeed, in the past they didn't understand it, and now they do. What's the problem here?
As for the claim itself,
it is explicit in Mishnah Hagigah 2:1, and at length in the Talmudic passage on it, that "the Account of Creation" consists of secrets that are not taught to just anyone. If it were literal, they would teach it even in kindergarten.