Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon

September 23, 2006

Creation, Evolution and Truth

Rabbi Anthony D. Holz

In Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah celebrates the birthday of the world.  So it is appropriate to read the Genesis narrative about the world’s creation. This great Biblical text poses no particular problem for most modern, thinking people who read it as a powerful symbolic narrative.  But in today’s globally interconnected world, such a critical perspective of ancient religious narratives runs into strong opposition from religious fundamentalists and from dogmatic supporters of “Intelligent Design.” 

In the post September 11 world we have become increasingly aware of religious fundamentalisms.  Most prominent are Islamic fundamentalists much in contemporary headlines, who play destructive roles especially in various parts of the Middle East.  However, there are also Christian, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalists. What they all share is the perspective that every word of their particular scripture is true and perfect, that they alone know the truth and that everyone else is not only wrong, but morally deficient and therefore eligible for punishment at the hands of the “true believers.”

A less violent and more subtle attack on modern thinking comes under the banner of “Intelligent Design.”  Especially in the United States, Christian fundamentalists have launched a well-coordinated assault specifically on the theory of evolution, insisting that the complexity and diversity of the natural world is not the product of random mutation and natural selection, but of the deliberate intention of a supernatural God.  Certainly, many religious people of all varieties believe that there is a God who controls everything with a master plan.  But those who so aggressively insist on this idea of Intelligent Design clearly build their thinking on creationism, the view that holds that all of our world, was created by God in exactly six days. The advocates of Intelligent Design may avoid mentioning such a literal understanding of the Genesis narrative, but they reject any thought that biological change arises as a result of selection that follows random mutations over long periods of time.  Instead, they maintain that the world is too complex for human understanding, and therefore diversity of opinions, experimentation, and any theory that is open to further question (as all scientific theories are) should be rejected in favor of the only correct and acceptable answer, namely that God, the great designer, created the world as the result of a master plan. 

Such dogmatic thinking, masquerading as science and supported by certain politicians, is a direct threat to us as modern Jews and Americans.

Let me illustrate.  In 1885 a group of Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh and issued a major statement known as the Pittsburgh Platform.  In response to general scientific and specifically Darwinian theories of their time, they included this sentence as part of their platform:  “We hold that the modern discoveries of scientific researches in the domains of nature and history are not antagonistic to the doctrines of Judaism, the Bible reflecting the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothing its conception of Divine Providence and justice dealing with man in miraculous narratives.” 

Understanding the Biblical accounts of creation as symbolic, Reform Judaism has had no essential problem with evolution and other contemporary scientific knowledge.  It is a long-standing modern Jewish perspective that we today are able to know more than people who lived in earlier times that knowledge advances. 

Reform Jewish leaders have also issued other major statements.  For instance, in San Francisco in 1976 Reform rabbis again had no problem with scientific, contemporary thoughts.  And they welcomed diversity within our community.  In the language of the rabbis:

             “Reform Jews respond to change in various ways according to the Reform principle of the autonomy of the individual…In our uncertain historical                 situation we must expect to have far greater diversity than previous generations knew.  How we shall live with diversity without stifling dissent and without paralyzing our ability to take positive action will test our character and our principles.  We stand open to any position thoughtfully and conscientiously advocated in the    spirit of Reform Jewish beliefs… We accept such diversity as precious and see in it Judaism’s best hope for confronting whatever the future holds for us.”  Such statements have not only been Jewish, but also very American. 

As citizens of the United States, we have all benefited greatly from the expanding understanding of the natural world that science has brought us.  This expanded understanding has brought dramatic improvements to the quality of life of most people alive today. Witness the reduction of infant mortality, the virtual elimination of small pox, and tremendous advances in technology which include electrification, automobiles, airplanes, electronics, computers and the internet, ever evolving medical and pharmaceutical products and much more.  What is remarkable is that most of these scientific and technological advances have come not as a result of any government decree but rather as the by-product of private individuals or teams of individuals in business or the academic world, who were simply curious and pursued knowledge for its own sake, with no particular application in mind.  Certainly, science has sometimes brought with it unintended negative consequences, such as thalidomide babies, chemicals that destroyed the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere and leaded gasoline. But, again, scientists have usually played a leading role in exposing the dangers of the new knowledge that other scientists first generated and in helping remedy the problems. 

As Americans we have greatly benefited from the scientific approach which does not assume truth in advance, but rather acquires knowledge through a “bottom-up” standpoint.  The truth that eventually emerges may be unexpected, but it bears up well under the test of time and experience. 

New ideas that disrupt established ways of thinking can be very unsettling, even painful.  We are probably all familiar with the term “culture shock,” the phenomenon that occurs when people from one cultural world find themselves in a totally different cultural situation.  For instance, most people who have grown up in modern cities would be quite disoriented if they found themselves living in the Amazon jungle or the middle of the Sahara Desert.  Similarly, someone who grew up in a modern democracy might have real difficulties living in Saudi Arabia or other dictatorial societies, and vice versa.

Something very much like culture shock occurs when, as the result of new knowledge we have to re-think ideas that we previously took for granted.  When we become critically aware of new truths that undermine and displace our previous knowledge, this “critical shock” can be as painfully disruptive as culture shock.  For instance, before September 11, many may have believed that America is loved, and that we here are immune from physical attack.  What the coordinated terrorist attacks taught us is that we have real enemies out there, and we here are vulnerable.  Such new knowledge was disillusioning and discomforting beyond the horror of the event itself. 

Critical shock is an unavoidable part of everyone’s growing up.  For instance, every child has to learn that his or her parents, far from being perfect, are only human.  So we can see how new knowledge and fresh insight may force us to a painful re-evaluation of our own thinking.   

For fundamentalists and the religiously orthodox, such a move to reconsider our knowledge is intolerable, and perceived as undermining everything that they hold dear.  And so, subtly or violently, they attack any such rethinking as satanic, evil and dangerous.  By contrast, those of us who are more used to living with uncertainty may sometimes have discomfort with new knowledge, but it does not threaten our very identity as individuals.  We can remind ourselves that it is better to live our lives in accordance with the way things really are, as opposed to living in an imaginary and unreal world.

Beyond all the sound and fury generated by what in America is a fairly small group, we may affirm certain basic facts.  First of all, as Jews, we recognize that the bottom line issue is one of civil liberties.  In a free society, individuals and groups may believe anything that they want to.  But they have no right to force their beliefs on others.  Neither an American president nor congress nor the members of a local school board have any business imposing their personal beliefs on others, let alone trying to tailor scientific investigation into their own prejudiced and narrow dogmatic thinking.  Science proceeds best through the avoiding of a top-down politicizing of knowledge.  True advance always comes from the bottom up, as the people who are grappling with the details of research uncover fresh information and discover new ways of seeing our world. 

It is of great importance that as a society, we in America stop the tendency of some politicians to cater to the prejudices of a few in ways that risk the advance of knowledge, knowledge which can benefit us all.  We would do well to coordinate the efforts of scientists, educators, civil libertarians and the mainstream religious community, to prevent such self-defeating road blocks to the unfolding of a better future for us all. 

In important ways, the Biblical writer of our Genesis narrative of creation understood basic truths which we today can still affirm.  Two and a half thousand years ago, it must have been very easy to see everything in terms of a local, tribal and isolated context.  But in strong contrast, the beginning of our Torah tells us that we all live in the same world, that there was a single creation, that all human beings are related, that we can make the world better, and that we need to be responsible adults. In the words of the Talmud’s Rabbi Tarfon:  “You are not required to complete the work, but neither are you free to abstain from it altogether.  Amen