Q&A: Torah and Science: Circumcision
Torah and Science: Circumcision
Question
Hello,
In the context of Torah and science and the relationship between them,
organizations that promote return to religious observance say that on the eighth day the body's ability to stop bleeding and heal is at its highest point over the course of a person's life.
From this they try to show that there is scientific knowledge in the Torah.
What do you think about this? Is that claim even actually true?
Answer
I have no idea.
Discussion on Answer
That’s simply not a good proof. Someone who doesn’t believe will just say that they settled on eight days through trial and error. This doesn’t really help either side.
Trial and error of what? Clearly they didn’t take thousands of babies and check which ones healed faster and then average it out.
The problem with this kind of claim is that if the Torah operated according to scientific principles, many commandments would have had to look different. For example, there should have been a commandment for democracy, a prohibition on eating unhealthy foods, and so on. In practice, it seems clear that the Torah is aimed at spiritual principles, not scientific ones.
A, what’s the problem? You can see that babies circumcised on the eighth day recover better.
Babies circumcised at 8 days recover better than at 7 days?
I’m not a doctor, but from what I’ve read there is some truth to it. There is a rise in the level of clotting factors on the eighth day (following an increase in vitamin K levels). The increase continues until it stabilizes when the baby is a few months old, but the eighth day is a local maximum.
I haven’t checked, but I assume that doing a circumcision at a few months old is not really relevant in terms of pain level and awareness, so it’s possible that the eighth day is an optimum from a scientific perspective as well.