Quote from Rabbi David Willig:
«But to argue against the evolutionary process completely on the basis of the literal meaning of the bible is to argue..»
RRW's response
Actually when one follows the pattern of Creation in Breisheet, it starts from the most simple (grass) and ends with the most complex (woman :-) - which really does parallel Darwin as I understand it.
I also find 'dinosaurs' in "taninim g'dolim"
So w/o working hard on apologetics, the Humash narrative matches the general scientific view in several ways. - And I think the Torah was being general.
Furthermore Rabbi Willig had suggested taking Torah seriously - but not literally. This approach may be quite informative. You need some flexibility in order to ignore dogmatists on both sides of the debate.
We also know from the Torah text that literal 24 hour days make no sense regarding days 1-4 when the Sun and Moon were first created. Again not apologetics, just simple analysis within the text.
So a fundamental read of the text cannot really match what PASSES for a fundamental read anyway.
If a were teaching a "Martian" - I would say that Darwin was writing from a technical perspective, while the Torah was approaching the same sequence from a more spiritual and poetic perspective - yet both were describing the same events [more or less]. So it's primarily a gap in style than in substance.
Even my 9th grade science teacher - a secular Jew - taught us classic evolution and allowed the possibility that God was pulling the strings. I think most of us students were quite comfortable with that perspective. AFAIK none of us felt that it threatened our belief in Humash
KT
RRW
«But to argue against the evolutionary process completely on the basis of the literal meaning of the bible is to argue..»
RRW's response
Actually when one follows the pattern of Creation in Breisheet, it starts from the most simple (grass) and ends with the most complex (woman :-) - which really does parallel Darwin as I understand it.
I also find 'dinosaurs' in "taninim g'dolim"
So w/o working hard on apologetics, the Humash narrative matches the general scientific view in several ways. - And I think the Torah was being general.
Furthermore Rabbi Willig had suggested taking Torah seriously - but not literally. This approach may be quite informative. You need some flexibility in order to ignore dogmatists on both sides of the debate.
We also know from the Torah text that literal 24 hour days make no sense regarding days 1-4 when the Sun and Moon were first created. Again not apologetics, just simple analysis within the text.
So a fundamental read of the text cannot really match what PASSES for a fundamental read anyway.
If a were teaching a "Martian" - I would say that Darwin was writing from a technical perspective, while the Torah was approaching the same sequence from a more spiritual and poetic perspective - yet both were describing the same events [more or less]. So it's primarily a gap in style than in substance.
Even my 9th grade science teacher - a secular Jew - taught us classic evolution and allowed the possibility that God was pulling the strings. I think most of us students were quite comfortable with that perspective. AFAIK none of us felt that it threatened our belief in Humash
KT
RRW
* For more on "Religulous" see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religulous
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