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Monday, January 08, 2007

The Torah-True Take on Evolution

Here's a joint project for GH and Gil, if they choose to accept it: The Torah-True Take on Evolution.

I'll get things started by providing this outline:

Section I
IF IT'S FALSE IT ISN'T JUDAISM / IF IT'S TRUE IT IS JUDAISM
By definition, can something essential to Judaism be false? If a claim of ours has been trumped and proven false by science or one of the other disciplines, that must be seen as conclusive proof that the defeated claim was never fundamental to our religion. By the same token, an idea that is certainly true is, by definition, a Torah idea.

Section II
EVOLUTION IS TRUE
This isn't a hard argument to make. The libraries are full of books on the subject written by careful and thorough scientists, and anyone who's bothered to look at the question with any seriousness has come away convinced that Darwin, in the main, was right.

Section III
SO WHAT?
SRH and other luminaries have already told us not to worry about evolution, and why should we? It poses no threat at all to Judaism or to Jewish observance. Evolution doesn't free us from the commandmants. We're still required to wear tefilin, and keep kosher and the rest. More to the point, the men and women who understand these things agree that evolution is true. Therefore, fighting evolution on hashkafic grounds is a way of the saying that, in Judaism, the truth does not come first. And that anti-intellectual idea is far more offensive to Judaism than anything of Darwin's.

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