Congregation B’nai Avraham’s Rabbi Simcha Weinstein writes this week in his Broken Halo column about Darwin’s theory of Evolution, “controversy” about Brooklyn Heights’ native Jennifer Connelly’s new movie Creation and how scientists aren’t bad people at all.
Broken Halo: Evolution says that a dumb universe can create intelligent beings. But we read in Genesis that our intelligent universe just looks dumb – it is smarter than we can perceive.
That’s not to say we human beings aren’t dumb: if you want to see how badly natural selection works, just watch some reality TV!
Some respectable Torah scholars have tried to align Judaism with evolution. Yet none of them can square the famous creation story in Genesis with Darwin’s theories, or their own.
Their error stems from the commonplace belief that evolution has been scientifically proven and therefore cannot be questioned. This is simply not the case. While Darwin’s theories were quickly embraced as handy (and sometimes sinister) metaphors by some artists, writers and philosophers – not to mention a famous dictator or two — they haven’t withstood more rigorous examination.
At bottom, we’re stuck with a handful of fossils, lots of speculation– and plenty of unanswered questions.
The human mind recoils at the prospect of having to say, “I don’t understand.” Any theory is better than none. As far as many moderns are concerned, even a half-baked theory is better than the alternative: religious faith.
