Selected Pages and Posts
Torah, Science and Evolution
Fundamentals
Here are three fundamental principles that can be substantiated:
1. The existence of Hashem, the Creator and Guide of the universe.
2. The truth of His Torah, both Written and Oral.
3. Reward and punishment both in this world and the next, together with the centrality of the Torah Nation.
The order matters. Once the existence of a Creator and Guide has been established, the second principle becomes epistemically easier to substantiate. The arguments for Torah therefore come next.
These fundamentals logically precede the various objections raised by skeptics, such as Biblical criticism, archaeology, and ethical challenges. Those questions should be considered only after the more basic issues have been addressed.
Abraham and the Search for Truth
The most influential intellectuals around the world are largely atheistic materialists. They assume that G-d exists only in the minds of religious believers. On their view, we are nothing more than arrangements of chemicals and cosmic dust, living out our lives in a blind and purposeless universe that came into being for no reason. Judaism stands as a protest against that despair—in the name of G-d and in the name of humanity.
The history of the Jewish people begins with Abraham and Sarah. They, and later their descendants at Mount Sinai, embark upon a long and momentous journey through the millennia of history.
Abraham is associated above all with the attribute of chesed—acts of kindness toward his fellow human beings. But he also proclaimed the truth about G-d to a world in which knowledge of that truth had been lost. Abraham regarded this as among the most important truths he could teach those who entered the warmth and hospitality of his home.
Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim 2:19: “My purpose in this chapter is to explain to you, by means of arguments that come close to demonstration, that the universe is here by design.”
For this reason, the prophets repeatedly point to the heavens as evidence for the existence of a necessary and transcendent Being.
Abraham reflected upon the stars, as is well known.
Isaiah directs us to the same inference: “Lift up your eyes on high, and see: Who created these?”
Jeremiah declares that He made the heavens. Abraham speaks of “the Lord, G-d of Heaven.”
Sotah 10b: Resh Lakish said: Read not “and he called,” but “and he caused others to call” [וַיַּקְרִיא], teaching that our father Abraham caused the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, to be uttered by every passer-by.
How? After travelers had eaten and drunk, they rose to bless him. Abraham said to them: “Did you eat of mine? You ate from that which belongs to the G-d of the universe. Thank, praise, and bless Him who spoke and the world came into being.”
The key theme tying all of this together is that Avraham did not merely believe in G-d; he reasoned from the world to its Creator and then taught others to do the same.