Creationism: 3 Flavors and A Jewish Response
Cong. Beth Shalom 2/23/08 =17 Adar I, 5768
Donald Weinshank
http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weinshan/ (See site for
PowerPoint file with live links or write to me.)
weinshan@cse.msu.edu (Write to me for references.)
517.337.1545
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 1
Overview of Disciplines Related to Evolution: Alpha. order
(Theories change: data are cumulative)
Anthropology:
hunting,
gathering
Astronomy,
cosmology,
astrophysics
Biochemistry:
protein
structure, DNA
Chemistry:
inorganic,
organic
Cladistics: slow,
fast “clocks”
Ecology: niche,
selection
Ethology:
biogrammar,
behavior
Geography:
continental drift,
isolation,
superposition
Genetics: gene
pools, speciation, isolation
Mathematics:
population biol.,
models
Paleobotany:
fossil plants
Paleontology:
fossil animals
Physics: radioTaxonomy
active clocks
thermodynamics
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 2
Overview of Dating Methods: Alpha. order
(Theories change: data are cumulative)
Amino acid
racemization
Archaeomagnetism
Fission track
Fluorine
diffusion
Obsidian
hydration
Potassium /
Argon
Radiocarbon
Stratigraphy and
superposition
Thermoluminescent
Tree ring
More complete
list at
http://darwiniana.o
rg/datingmethods.
htm
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 3
Digital Evolution Lab at MSU: Lenski, Ofria,
Pennock, et. al.
•
Devolab home page:
» http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/publications/Publications
» http://devolab.cse.msu.edu/publications/
•
Richard Lenski
» http://www.msu.edu/aktl/8.html
– See “The Evolutionary Origin of Complex Features,”
Richard E. Lenski, Charles Ofria, Robert T. Pennock, Christoph Adami, Nature (Vol. 423, 2003,
pp. 139-145)
» http://www.msu.edu/~pennock5/research/publications.html#EvoOrgComFeat
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 4
Creationism in 3 Flavors
• Creationism
– Young Earth Creationism
– Old Earth Creationism
– Intelligent Design Creationism
• Jewish understanding of b’reshit
• Threat to Halakha
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 5
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism
• Earth age: few thousand years
• No ape-human intermediates
– Qualitative difference
• Each organism created l’minah [Gen.
1:24]: species fixed
• Sudden appearance of new species
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 6
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism -- Claims
• World-wide [Noachian] flood
• dating unreliable, e.g. fossil sorting during the Flood: aquatic
below, terrestrial above
• “Appearance of age” e.g. fossils created in rocks,
radioactivity
• Fossil record gaps: out of evolutionary sequence
or forged [e.g. “Piltdown Man”]
• Contrary evidence predicted: Paluxy footprints
» [But see “Footprints in Stone”
http://www.skepticfiles.org/evolut/fooevo.htm and
Scientific American June, 1983, p 6, William Stansfield]
• relationships assumed, not real
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 7
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism – Continued
Some photos from Field Museum, Chicago
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 8
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism Refs.
• Scientific Creationism, Henry Morris,
Creation Life Publishers, ICR, 1974
• Biology: A search for order in complexity;
John N. Moore and Harold Schultz
Slusher, for ICR, Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, 1974
• Institute for Creation Research [ICR]
– http://www.icr.org/
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 9
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism Refs. Continued
• The Genesis Flood, John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and
Henry M. Morris, 1960 and later editions,
» http://www.amazon.com/Genesis-Flood-John-CWhitcomb/dp/0875523382/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203097
109&sr=1-3
• Creation Museum
» http://www.creationmuseum.org/
» 2800 Bullittsburg Church Rd.
Petersburg, KY 41080
» “Prepare to believe…brings the pages of the Bible to life.”
• New York Times on fossils in Ohio 11/25/07:
“Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock”
» http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/magazine/25wwln-geologistst.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=geologist+%22young+earth%22+flood&oref=slogin&oref=
slogin
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 10
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism Sequelae
• "Scopes Monkey Trial" (Scopes v. State,
152 Tenn. 424, 278 S.W. 57 (Tenn. 1925),
“Butler Act”
» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
» “Inherit the Wind” fictionalized play & movie
• McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education
(1982)
» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean_v._Arkansas
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 11
Part 1: Young Earth Creationism Sequelae -2
•
Judge Overton in the McLean case:
Essential characteristics of science
– Guided by natural law
– Explanatory by reference to
natural law
– Testable against empirical world
– Conclusions tentative, not
necessarily final word
– Falsifiable [Popper: capable of
being tested and shown to be
false]
– Creation science “fails to meet
these essential characteristics”
and thus is “not science.”
– Cited in Tower of Babel: The
Evidence against the New
Creationism, Robert Pennock,
MIT Press, 1999, p 5 See
» http://www.msu.edu/
~pennock5/
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 12
Part 2: Old Earth Creationism
• The Earth may be very old.
• Humans are a special creation in the recent past.
• Similarities to other living things do not prove they are
related.
• Gap Creationism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Earth_creationism
– Life was immediately and recently created on a pre-existing old
Earth…. taken by Gap creationists to imply that the earth already
existed but had passed into decay during an earlier age of existence,
and was now being "shaped anew”.…. 1909 Scofield Reference Bible .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofield_Reference_Bible
• Progressive Creationism
– God allows certain natural process (such as gene mutation and natural
selection) to affect the development of life but has also directly
intervened at key moments in life’s history
• See Pennock Tower of Babel ... cited above, p. 14 ff.
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 13
Part 3: Intelligent Design Creationism
• Aaron John Ihde (1909–
2000) and the story of the
elephants
–
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/HIST/awa
rds/Dexter%20Papers/IhdeDexterBioJJB.p
df
• Reference: Intelligent Design
Creationism and Its Critics,
Robert Pennock, MIT Press,
2001
– 9 sections → 37 chapters
attacks on evolutionary science
–
http://www.msu.edu/~pennock5/
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 14
Part 3: Intelligent Design Creationism - continued
• “The Wedge Strategy” 3/1992
• Johnson, Behe, Meyer, Demski
• Governing Goals
–
–
–
–
To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and
political legacies.
To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding
that nature and human beings are created by God.
• Five Year Goals
– To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and
scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
– To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than
natural science.
– To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal
responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda
• Discovery Institute: Center for Science and Culture [main I.D. think
tank]
• http://www.discovery.org/csc/
• E-mail Weinshank for many I.D. references
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 15
Part 3: Intelligent Design Creationism – Analysis of
“Wedge Document”
• See Creationism’s
Trojan Horse: The
Wedge of Intelligent
Design
• http://www.creationis
mstrojanhorse.com/
• See Pennock
Intelligent Design
chapter 1: “The
Wedge at Work”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 16
Part 3: Intelligent Design Creationism – Behe’s
“Irreducibly Complex”
• Michael J. Behe
– in Pennock Intelligent Design… chapter 10: “Molecular
Machines: Experimental Evidence for the Design Inference”
• “By Irreducibly Complex I mean a single system composed of
several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic
function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the
system to effectively cease functioning.”
– Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,
» http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-BiochemicalChallenge/dp/0743290313/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=book
s&qid=1203355626&sr=1-1
– An “Irreducibly Complex” system has to invoke to an outside
agent -- the “Intelligent Designer.”
– Weinshank, “Evolutionary Theory and Intelligent Design,” The Michigan
Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, May 3, 2006
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 17
Intelligent Design Creationism – Bacterial
Flagellum and other “irreducibly complex” findings
• Jonathan Sarfati: “15
ways to refute
materialistic bigotry”
– http://www.answersingenes
is.org/news/scientific_ameri
can.asp
• Mousetrap
• Blood clotting system
• Bacterial flagellum cannot evolve spontaneously
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 18
Refuting Intelligent Design Creationism:
Bacterial Flagellum Evolution PNAS
• “Stepwise formation
of the bacterial
flagellar system”
– Renyi Liu and Howard
Ochman
– Pp. 7116–7121 PNAS
April 24, 2007 vol.
104 no. 17
» www.pnas.orgc
gidoi10.1073pna
s.0700266104
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 19
Intelligent Design Creationism as a “Science
Stopper” [Michael Ruse]
• I.D. makes statements about past and present science
but is unable to say anything about the future
[“prospectively mysterious” ABW]
• “Draws line in sand: ‘Up to here it is science; beyond
this, science cannot work’” Weinshank in LSJ 6/20/05
• See also Weinshank “An Analysis of ‘Irreducible
Complexity’ in the History of Science,” Michigan
Academy of Science, Arts and Letters, March 3, 2006.
• Real science: questions which cannot be answered
today are simply “open questions.”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 20
Evaluation of Intelligent Design Creationism
• 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” by John Rennie
» Scientific American, July, 2002
http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview
&ARTICLEID_CHAR=4805EFF5-850B-47F3-9E59-A292B52B437
• “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial”
– Documentary -- PBS, Tues. Nov. 13, 2007, 8 p.m.
» http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/id/
– Discovery Institute site attacking documentary
» www.judgingpbs.com
» E-mail Weinshank for consolidated document of all postings
• Plaintiffs : TAMMY KITZMILLER, et al v. Defendants DOVER AREA
SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al. Judge Jones, December 20, 2005
» Public document widely available: GOOGLE (Dover trial Jones)
» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
» E-mail Weinshank for version with Table of Contents
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 21
Jewish understanding of b’reshit:
ongoing process, not date on calendar
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 22
Jewish understanding of b’reshit:
translations -1
• King James Version, [1603]
– 1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
– 2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of
the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
– 3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
– 4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the
darkness.
– 5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the
evening and the morning were the first day.
• Revised Standard Version [1901]
– 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
– 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.
– 3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
– 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the
darkness.
– 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was
evening and there was morning, one day.
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 23
Jewish understanding of b’reshit:
translations - 2
• Jewish Publication Society TaNaKh (1917)
– 1. In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
– 2. Now the earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the
deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters.
– 3. And God said: 'Let there be light.' And there was light.
– 4. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the
darkness.
– 5. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was
evening and there was morning, one day.
• Jewish Publication Society (1985, 1999)
– 1. When God began to create heaven and earth
– 2. the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep
and a wind from God sweeping over the water –
– 3. God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
– 4. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the
darkness.
– 5. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was
evening and there was morning a first day.
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 24
Jewish understanding of b’reshit:
translations - 3
• Everett Fox (1983…)
– 1.At the beginning of God’s creating of the heavens and the earth,
– 2.when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of the Ocean,
rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters –
– 3.God said: Let there be light! And there was light.
– 4.God saw the light: that it was good. God separated the light from the darkness.
– 5.God called the light: Day! And the darkness he called: Night! There was a
setting, there was a dawning one day.
• Richard Elliott Friedman (2001)
– 1.In the beginning of God’s creating the skies and the earth
– 2.– when the earth had been shapeless and formless, and darkness was on the
face of the deep, and God’s spirit was hovering on the face of the water –
– 3.God said, “Let there be light. And there was light.
– 4.And God saw the light, that it was good, and God separated between the light
and the darkness.
– 5.And God called the light “day” and called the darkness “night.” And there was
evening, and there was morning: one day.
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 25
Jewish understanding of b’reshit:
translations - 4
• Robert Alter (2004) [NOTE: no verse numbers]
– When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth was then welter
and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering of the waters,
God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it
was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light
day, and the Darkness he call Night. And it was evening and it was morning, first
day.
• Schottenstein Edition Interlinear Chumash
– 1. In the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth,
– 2. When the earth was astonishingly empty, with darkness upon the surface of
the deep, and the Presence of the Divine hovered upon the surface of the
waters]
– 3. God said – Let there be light, and there was light.
– 4. God saw the light that is was good, and God separated between the light and
the darkness.
– God called the light: Day and the darkness He called Night And there was
evening and there was morning one day.
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 26
Christian understanding of b’reshit:
• [Wide variety of opinions, depending on denomination]
• Christian literalist-fundamentalists: story about event
– James Ussher (1581-1656), Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of
All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin
Creation event occurred Sunday 23 October 4004 BC. Sir John
Lightfoot added at 9:00 AM Eastern Standard Time.
– Incorporated into authorized version of the Bible1701
– Dated other biblical events
– Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise on Monday 10 November
4004 BC
– Ark touched down on Mt Ararat on 5 May 2348 BC `on a Wednesday'.
» http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/ussher.htm
• Fixing on b’reshit as an event has led to calculations of
the magnitude of “day” and “year.”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 27
Jewish understanding of b’reshit as a process:
“renews daily”
• Mi’cha’desh
– Sim Shalom 1998 p. 107
“In Your goodness, day after day, You renew creation.”
– Siddur Hadash p. 226
“In your goodness, you renew each day the work of creation.”
– Art Scroll Interlinear p. 319
“…and in His goodness renews every day –perpetually – the work
of Creation”
– Gates of Prayer p. 301
“….with goodness He renews the work of creation continually, day
by day”
• “Ontological support of the Universe”
– “God can make an ass with three tails but not a triangle with four
sides;” Paracelsus.
– Universe constant, lawful, knowable.
– Without such support, would dissipate into chaos. [Not testable in
Karl Popper’s sense nor meant to be.]
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 28
Jewish understanding of evolution as a process
• Not “God of the gaps”
– Contrast with Intelligent
Design
– “The highest levels of
recognition of God are
reached through grasping that
the workings of natural law are
no less miraculous than the
negations of those laws that
are known as miracles.”
– http://www.amazon.com/Challe
nge-Creation-EncounterCosmologyEvolution/dp/1933143150/ref=p
d_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=book
s&qid=1203471077&sr=1-1
• More on Rabbi Natan Slifkin at
– http://www.zootorah.com/
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 29
Jewish understanding of evolution
as embedded miracles
• “At the beginning of Creation
– He created nature and the laws it would follow.
– Thus miracles were built into nature”
• Rambam Commentary on Avot 5:6 in Slifkin
• Numbered as 5:8 in Sim Shalom 1998 p. 273
• Dr. Joshua Kulp (Jerusalem) on Avot 5:6 11/8/2003
» http://uscj.org/archives/MISHNAHYOMIT.html
• “Mishnah lists fourteen things … seem to defy … laws of
nature…… problematic because God …… created a world that
acts upon the laws of nature.
• “Metaphysical problem ….. these supernatural items were
created …during the in-between time, right before creation ended at
the end of the sixth day. …. part of God's ultimate plan and ….. not
in essence ‘supernatural.’”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 30
Summary
• Biblical literalism about creation or evolution was
foreign to Judaism … until recently [Slifkin ch. 1]
• Avot 2:19 (Sim Shalom 1998 p. 263): “Be armed
with knowledge to refute a heretic”
• Yeshayahu Leibowitz: “Science tells you how;
religion tells you why.”
» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeshayahu_Leibowitz but quote
is not there.
• Slifkin [p. 47]: Describing how the universe
works does not explain why there is a universe
to begin with.”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 31
Threat to Halakha
• Modern version of Aquinas’ “Five Rational Proofs of the Existence of
God”
» http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas
• Talmudic “Weak reed” argument in Sefer Ha-Aggadah / Book of
Legends
» http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805241132/qid=1142455915/sr=11/ref=sr_1_1/102-7590930-4948949?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
• Ma-aseh b’reshit, Ma-aseh merkavah
• Tradition feared speculating on these would lead to sophistry [“subtle, tricky,
superficially plausible, fallacious”]
• Rambam, Guide I:32 “Intellects … have a limit at which they stop” in Slifkin
p. 99.
• Science: limited to measurable, observable, testable
• Attempt to use (shoddy) science to prop up religion: Slifkin p. 18
• An “open question” ≠ proof of an Intelligent Designer (God)
• Therefore, Intelligent Design is chillul ha’shem
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 32
Next-to-Last Word: Tillich on Truth of Science,
Truth of Religion
• “The distinction between the truth of faith and the truth of
science leads to a warning, directed to theologians, not
to use recent scientific discoveries to confirm the truth of
faith..... The truth of faith cannot be confirmed by latest
physical or biological or psychological discoveries—as it
cannot be denied by them.”
– Paul Tillich (1886–1965), “The Truth of Faith,”
in Dynamics of Faith, Harper (1958).
» http://www.amazon.com/Dynamics-FaithPerennial-ClassicsTillich/dp/0060937130/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=
books&qid=1203521448&sr=1-2
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 33
Last Word to Stephen Jay Gould: NOMA
• See Pennock Intelligent Design… p. 737
– from Natural History, Vol. 106, Iss. 2; pg. 16, 9 pgs
– “Nonoverlapping magisteria”
• “The text of Humani Generis focuses on the magisterium (or
teaching authority) of the Church-a word derived …from magister
…Latin for "teacher."
• … principled resolution of supposed "conflict" or "warfare" between
science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each
subject has a legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching
authority-and these magisteria do not overlap
• … NOMA, or "nonoverlapping magisteria").
– The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of
(fact) and why does it work this way (theory).
– The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value.
– These two magisteria do not overlap”
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 34
Other Useful References
• Cantor & Swetlitz, Jewish Tradition and
the Challenge of Darwinism, 2006
» http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-TraditionChallenge-DarwinismGeoffrey/dp/0226092771/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=
books&qid=1203477962&sr=1-1
• Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation
Struggle, 2005
» http://www.amazon.com/Evolution-CreationStruggle-MichaelRuse/dp/0674022556/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=boo
ks&qid=1203478413&sr=1-4
Feb. 23, 2008
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 35
Michigan (and National) Citizens for Science
http://www.michigancitizensforscie
nce.org/main/nfblog/
Feb. 23, 2008
http://citizensforscience.org/
Creationism 3 Flavors and A
Jewish Response
Slide 36