Warning: Category 5 Emunah ThreatReconciling Breishis with Science is good, clean fun. It doesn’t rea

The idiots on Avodah can't seem to give up their Bittul Torah discussion on Evolution and the age of the Universe. This weeks prime offender is Simcha Coffer, the guy just doesn't give up, which is a shame, since the position he is not giving up is a moronic one. Here is a great quote from Coffer, clearly showing his lunatic opinions:

If you're going to contradict the scientists, you may as well go the whole way (i.e. the correct way IMO) and say that in truth they really have no evidence at all. Once you come to this realization, the necessity of reconciling vast periods of time with [Maase Breishit] becomes obsolete.

But some blame must go to Micha Berger too, for actually engaging this guy in serious discussion. Micha, is there really any point? Don't you have anything better to do? Don't you realize that Coffer (and Ostroff) are crazy fundamentalists? They are not interested in reason. They have their pre-formed ideological opinions and all the evidence in the world is not going to change their minds. Arguing with these fools is like arguing with mental patients.

In case you missed it, here is some advice for you Avodah guys. (This advice also applies to Rabbi Slifkin and the Kiruv Clowns too). A basic assumption of your mehalech should be that you accept established science. That's it. No discussion, not argument, no proofs required. You accept it and then you move on from there. If you need to explain why you accept it, then you are probably talking to the wrong audience.

Creation and Evolution Are A Problem

Warning: Category 5 Emunah Threat

Reconciling Breishis with Science is good, clean fun. It doesn’t really matter at the end of the day if Adam and Noah were actual people or not, and it’s fun to speculate and debate wondrous peshatim about miracles and dinosaur extinctions and the like. One commenter here, Chaim, is convinced that if he can just put together the right collection of miracles, everything will work out. Currently he has figured out that the flood water wasn’t regular water, but was of course miraculous water, the kind of miracle water that doesn’t leave any damage to buildings or rock, though it does remove all traces of human life. We haven’t got to the end of his theory yet, but I assume at some point we will get to the miracle of the kangaroos magically hopping from the Ark all the way to Australia. When I told him he can’t just make up miracles like that, he responded ‘Yes I can, to answer questions’. All good fun, and highly entertaining too, especially for the Geek Orthodox. Even the Gedolim are not too bothered by all this.

A much bigger problem though is reconciling the rest of History with Orthodox Judaism. Starting with Yetzias Mitzrayim and ending around the year 500CE, there are two entirely different accounts of what actually happened. Most frum Jews are so shielded from academic scholarship that they take the entire OJ story for granted. They are aware that of course Reform and the Goyim don’t believe in Sinai, but they think that’s about it. Unfortunately modern scholarship dates what we now think of as Orthodox Judaism to the period of 0-500CE, in other words Chazal pretty much made up Torah sheBaal Peh as they were writing it down. One scholar even suggests that Rabbinic Judaism was created as a reaction against Christianity.

This is a much more difficult subject to get into. The Science around the creation and evolution of the world is well documented and well understood, and mostly accepted by all the world’s scientists. However the theories around the creation and evolution of Rabbinic Judaism are just that: mostly theories. It’s hard to determine what is fact, and what is theory. Each side is dogmatically entrenched in their own positions. Plus, this whole debate is mostly of interest only to historians interested in the evolution of Judaism. Orthodox Jews themselves mostly ignore this area of study, as they are content to just believe the standard frum account. This is in contrast to the Science & Torah issues where there has been a lot of interest over the years from all sides.

So what to do? This is below the radar of most kiruv organizations (which is probably a good thing), and I haven’t seen any material on it. I don’t even know where to start, and probably shouldn’t go there. But your fearless Godol will now go and read up on all this kefirah so you don’t have to. Book suggestions are welcome (but don’t tell the Rebbetzin).

New! Myth/Moshol V2.0

Skins are great. You can take a boring, out-of-the-box interface such as Mozilla Firefox and add a cool skin to it, one which makes you feel much happier about using the product. In the same spirit, I now present Myth/Moshol Theory V2.0, now with skins!

Brisker Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Halachik Construct’

Talmud Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Aggadatah’

New Age Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Breishis contains Spiritual Truth’

Humanistic Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Breishis contains Moral & Ethical Truth’

Skeptical Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Breishis contains a bunch of made up stories’

Cassuto Skin
Replaces the words ‘Myth/Moshol’ with ‘Jewish Mythology to counteract Sumerian Mythology'

In other words, skin it (or spin it) any way you like. But don't take it literally.

Brisker Myth/Moshol Theory

[Guest Post]

The approach that Torah is not a history book has always left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. However, after reading a significant portion of RYBS Ish Hahalachah, I now have a new perspective on the science/history vs religion issue. One needs to make a “brisker” type of distinction between “al pi din” and “metzius”. The object one sees through a prism is no less real than without a prism. Just as when we look at something through our eyes and a “visible spectrum” of light it appears different than if we could see the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Is any one view right or real? No just different perspectives. Halachah and Judaism looks at the world through its own prism, while science has its own view. Is any one view right or is either one real? No, they just use different perspectives.

Halachah expects us to view things through its own perspective. It has its own set of rules and regulations. Thus, salting meat will “remove” the blood, carrying an object 4 amos in a public place “removes” it from one domain to another domain, a bliah in a kli will make the food it comes in contact with imbued with a taam of the bliah if it's less than 24 hours old and the taam will be pogum if its more than 24 hours, an animal with a sign of treifah can not live etc. For an Orthodox Jew, the boundary provided by a “tsuras hapesach” is no less real than a solid wall. All these halachik constructs are not necessarily factual from a “metzius” perspective but they are 100% factual from a halachik perspective.

Mathematics is considered the “purest” sciences. Yet to a mathematician, so called “imaginary numbers” are no less real or useful than so called “real numbers”. The square root of a negative number is no less “real” or useful than is the square root of 4. Non-Euclidean geometry can be just as real as Euclidean geometry. Is any one view right or real? No they just use different perspectives. No wonder why, the Gra, one of the greatest Talmudic minds appreciated math so much. (I understand that R Moshe Feinstein z”tl also enjoyed solving complex calculus problems).

Similarly, the Torah wants us to view Breishis, Noach etc as if they were factual no less than any other halachik construct. They are no more mythical than imaginary numbers or laws of kashrus. Thus Shabbos IS the “seventh” day, Adam and Chavah WERE the first two people etc. By adopting this perspective we attain a Torah viewpoint of life. This perspective is important when considering the value/need to observe Shabbos, the value of a single human life etc. The question of “what really happened” is no more relevant [GH: I assume he means to Judaism, obviously it is relevant to Science] than what is the red stuff that exudes from a piece of salted meat. Halacha considers the liquid as “juice” and considers creation as having taken place in 7 days. When studying science we wear a scientific “hat” when living our lives as moral/halachik Jews we view things from a Torah perspective.

From time to time there may appear a seeming conflict between these two viewpoints. Of course, halacha has some flexibility in it, so an 8 month baby is now viable and the metzius/halacha has changed. Sometimes the halachah allows for a convergence of the metzius and the din sometimes they remain distinct. When that should happen is for the poskim to debate.

Makes sense to me. What do you think?

[GH: I think you are basically saying that it's a myth/moshol, but you don't want to use those words. And also that there are 'halachik' (or rather 'hashkafic') reasons why the Torah portayed things the way it does i.e. There are deep moral and spiritual lessons in the Torah's version of events, which is exactly what Myth/Moshol Theory says too. So I think this is ultimately the Myth/Moshol theory with a Brisker/RYBS spin on it. In other words, I like it!]

Real Questions... Fake Answers

[Note: This post is not serious. Of course all these questions are very difficult ones. What bothers me about the Artscroll ad is that it makes it seem they have good answers, when of course they mostly don't. These are issues that we all struggle with every day, yet Artscroll makes it seem that we just need to buy this set of 6 CD's and all will be answered. Well, I will buy the set, but I don't have high expectations, except for lots of raw material to post about].

Real Questions... Real Answers
Answers to The Most Frequently Asked Questions About Judaism - A 6 CD-Rom Set (Windows only)

[6 CD's !!! I could do it in a few lines! See my comments below]

List Price: $59.99
Online Discount: 10%
You Pay Only: $53.99
Binding: Cd-Rom
Published: September 2005 by Association for Jewish Outreach Programs

Description:
Never in history have so many Jews had so many questions about their religion, their heritage and their identity. Good questions, honest questions, real questions. This unique CD set brings together twelve of the most highly regarded individuals in the Jewish world - people who for years have been addressing literally thousands of questions posed by thousands of real people, with real questions.

This interactive CD-ROM puts a wealth of expertise at your fingertips. Without a doubt, you too have been asked many of the questions dealt with - at the office, by a neighbor, friend or relative. You have done your best to answer, and now you can do even better. Real Questions, Real Answers will enable you to do just what you want to do - respond thoughtfully and effectively when an inquiring person asks you a good question - a question whose answer just might open up a whole new world to a questioning Jewish mind.

Prominent figures featured include HaRav Shmuel Kamanetzky, HaRav Noah Weinberg, Rav Mordechai Becher, Rav Beryl Gershenfeld, Rav Rueven Leuchter, Rav Yerachmiel Milstein and more...

Sample Questions:

1. Isn't the idea that we are the Chose People elitist or even racist?
   [Elitist]
   
2. Why does a man say the blessing of "shelo asani isha" while a woman says "sheasani kirtzono"?
   [Because Davening reflects the social norms of the 1st millenium (or earlier) when women were regarded as inferior]
   
3. How can I believe in G-d when there is so much suffering in the world? How could G-d have allowed the Holocaust?
   [There is no answer except that we assume G-d evens everything out in the next world]
   
4. What is G-d's attitude toward the non-Jew?
   [Presumably he loves them too. But traditional Judaism doesn't so much]
   
5. Why should I marry a Jew?
   [The Halachah says you have to]
   
6. Do you believe that Orthodox Judaism is the only valid form of Judaism? Aren't Conservative and Reform Judaism also valid expressions of the Jewish religion?
   [Judaism has had many sects over the years. Orthodox Judaism is a descendant of Rabbinic (Pharisee) Judaism which arose around the time of the destruction of the 2nd Temple. OJ believes that its form of Judaism is the most accurate.]
   
7. Hypocrisy: Am I not worse off if I know and don't do than if I simply remain ignorant?
   [Yes, you will be worse off.]
   
8. Why must women dress modestly?
   [To stop men staring at them and getting bad ideas]
   
9. Won't Judaism stifle my individuality and creativity?
   [Orthodox Judaism might, other branches won't]
   
10. How do I know the Torah was really given on Sinai?
    [You just have to have faith]
    
11. How can observant Jews do bad things?
    [Very easily]
    
12. Why did G-d choose the Jewish Nation?
    [According to the Jewish tradition, because G-d liked Abraham, though it's not very clear why. Presumably because he recognized G-d and had superior morals.]
    
13. What is wrong with Christianity and Islam? What is the fundamental difference between them and Judaism?
    [According to OJ, their claims of revelation are lies, while our claims are true.]
    
14. What if my partner intends to convert?
    [To what? Judaism?]

'Better' DNA out of fossil bones

Map shows first migratory routes taken by humans, based on surveys of different types of the male Y chromosome. "Adam" represents the common ancestor from which all Y chromosomes descended

Neanderthals evolve about 250,000 years ago
Their range extends from Europe to Central Asia and the Middle East
Modern humans leave Africa about 60,000 years ago and arrive in Europe around 40,000 years ago
By 27,000 years ago, the Neanderthals are extinct
Possible reasons include climate change and competition with modern humans

Research based on DNA testing of 10,000 people from indigenous populations around the world

Source: The Genographic Project

By Alison Ross
BBC News

Improved technologies for extracting genetic material from fossils may help us find out more about our ancient ancestors.

Scientists in Israel have just developed a new technique to retrieve better quality, less contaminated DNA from very old remains, including human bones. It could aid the study of the evolution and migration of early modern humans, as well as extinct populations such as our close relatives, the Neanderthals.

Many researchers would dearly love to get their hands on DNA samples from hominids further back in time - from those that lived 100,000 years ago or more - to find out how they were related to people alive today.

But fossil studies this far back in time have long been hindered by contamination with foreign genetic material and the problem of recovering long, intact DNA sequences.

The new method provides hope, however.

What's real?
"DNA gets everywhere. So when we're dealing with a sample and you find it's got human DNA in it - is that DNA from the fossil, or is it actually DNA from the person who unearthed it?" says Professor Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, UK.

Also, DNA falls apart over the course of time. "It breaks up into very small fragments so it is quite technically complicated to put it all back together again," explains Dr Robert Foley, the director of the Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK.

Freezing provides the ideal preservation conditions. The most widely accepted oldest DNA yet isolated comes from 400,000-year-old plants found in ice in Siberia. But most specimens are not excavated from such places.

An improved technique for retrieving DNA from fossil bone, just published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), may help.

Dr Michal Salamon, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues, showed that "crystal aggregates", small mineral pockets formed during fossilisation, can preserve DNA better than the rest of the bone.

They compared DNA extracted from these crystal aggregates with genetic material taken from untreated, whole-bone powder. The samples were taken from eight different modern and fossil bones.

They found better preserved, less contaminated DNA could be recovered from the isolated crystals. This approach, "significantly improves the chances of obtaining authentic ancient DNA sequences, especially from human bones", they told PNAS.

Commenting on the latest research, Dr Michael Hofreiter, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who helped decode 40,000-year-old nuclear DNA from a cave bear earlier this year, said: "It's possible; but there need to be more studies on more samples, and they need to show that you don't get human contamination of animal bones.

"Then I would believe that it is a breakthrough for ancient DNA research."

The big split

Scientists are hopeful the new technique will help them get at the DNA in the chromosomes of a cell - the nuclear DNA.

Ancient DNA research has so far mainly focused on mitochondria, the tiny "power-stations" of the cell. These exist outside of the nucleus and have their own DNA. And, although this information is very useful, it is more limited in its scope than that which could be obtained from nuclear DNA.

It is partly a question of sensitivity. "There's about 1,000 times more mitochondrial DNA than nuclear DNA in our cells, so it's much easier to pick up," explains Professor Stringer.

The mitochondrial DNA is inherited only through the egg - through females. This means it is a useful marker for tracing a line back into the past, as it has never been mixed with DNA from males.

"One of the most important discoveries from studying ancient mitochondrial DNA is the estimate of when humans diverged in evolution from the Neanderthals - around half a million years ago," according to Dr Foley.

Professor Stringer adds: "We've now got about 10 Neanderthal specimens of around 40-50,000 years old that have yielded DNA that is clearly distinct from anyone alive today."

This means scientists can be sure that it is ancient, not just modern DNA from contamination. It has also given them a measure of how different Neanderthals were from modern people. Neanderthals are three times as different from us as we all are from each other," says Professor Stringer.

Species debate

But there remains the hotly debated question of whether Neanderthals were a completely separate species to us. Professor Stringer says that they are if that assessment is based on studying their bone anatomy.

However, the evidence from mitochondrial DNA is somewhat ambiguous. "The mitochondrial DNA on its own can't tell us if we're a distinct species," he explains. "It depends what mammal you take. There are some species where the difference in mitochondrial DNA between us and Neanderthals would say they were a different species. "Whereas in chimpanzees, our closest relative, you could contain the variation between us and Neanderthals in a single species alive today in Africa."

Scientists need to recover better DNA from our fossils, especially the nuclear DNA. "Each gene has a separate evolution so to understand Neanderthals properly we will need different bits of their DNA to see if they're all telling us the same story," he adds.

Population movements

The male sex chromosome (the "Y") is useful for tracking male inheritance, since males inherit their Y chromosome only from their father.

Using both mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA from people alive today, complex pathways have been mapped for how modern humans got to where they are - but there are problems.

Dr Mim Bower, an ancient DNA researcher at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge, UK, gives an example.

"Using modern DNA we see a different pattern of settlement in the Pacific islands between men and women - the mitochondrial DNA patterns show a different migration pattern to the Y chromosome DNA."

Studying the DNA not of modern humans but of their distant ancestors could help answer such questions.

"At the moment we can't follow that into the past as it's very difficult to get nuclear DNA," Dr Bower says.

This is especially problematic for the Y chromosome, which is nuclear.

Dalai Lama has more sechel than the Gedolim?

Dalai Lama has more sechel than the Gedolim?

[Hat tip: I don't think he wants one!]

New York Times
September 18, 2005

'The Universe in a Single Atom': Reason and Faith
By GEORGE JOHNSON

It's been a brutal season in the culture wars with both the White House and a prominent Catholic cardinal speaking out in favor of creationist superstition, while public schools and even natural history museums shy away from teaching evolutionary science. When I picked up the Dalai Lama's new book, "The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality," I feared that His Holiness, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, was adding to the confusion between reason and faith.

It was his subtitle that bothered me. Spirituality is about the ineffable and unprovable, science about the physical world of demonstrable fact. Faced with two such contradictory enterprises, divergence would be a better goal. The last thing anyone needs is another attempt to contort biology to fit a particular religion or to use cosmology to prove the existence of God.

But this book offers something wiser: a compassionate and clearheaded account by a religious leader who not only respects science but, for the most part, embraces it. "If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims," he writes. No one who wants to understand the world "can ignore the basic insights of theories as key as evolution, relativity and quantum mechanics."

That is an extraordinary concession compared with the Christian apologias that dominate conferences devoted to reconciling science and religion. The "dialogues" implicitly begin with nonnegotiables - "Given that Jesus died on the cross and was bodily resurrected into heaven. . ." - then seek scientific justification for what is already assumed to be true.

The story of how someone so open-minded became the Tibetan Buddhist equivalent of the pope reads like a fairy tale. When the 13th Dalai Lama died in 1933 he was facing northeast, so a spiritual search team was sent in that direction to find his reincarnation. The quest narrowed further when a lama had a vision pointing to a certain house with unusual gutters. Inside a boy called out to the visitors, who showed him some toys and relics that would have belonged to him in his previous life. "It is mine!" he exclaimed, like any acquisitive 2-year-old, and so his reign began.

Once installed in Lhasa, the new Dalai Lama happened upon another of his forerunner's possessions, a collapsible brass telescope. When he focused it one evening on what Tibetans call "the rabbit on the moon," he saw that it consisted of shadows cast by craters. Although he knew nothing yet about astronomy, he inferred that the moon, like the earth, must be lighted by the sun. He had experienced the thrill of discovery.

Before long he was dismantling and repairing clocks and watches and tinkering with car engines and an old movie projector. As he grew older and traveled the world, he was as keen to meet with scientists and philosophers - David Bohm, Carl von Weizsäcker, Karl Popper - as with religious and political leaders. More recently his "Mind and Life" conferences have brought physicists, cosmologists, biologists and psychologists to Dharamsala, India, where he now lives in exile from the Chinese occupation of Tibet. He and his guests discuss things like the neuroscientific basis of Buddhist meditation and the similarities between Eastern concepts like the "philosophy of emptiness" and modern field theory. In "The Universe in a Single Atom" he tells how he walked the mountains around his home trying to persuade hermits to contribute to scientific understanding by meditating with electrodes on their heads.

But when it comes to questions about life and its origins, this would-be man of science begins to waver. Though he professes to accept evolutionary theory, he recoils at one of its most basic tenets: that the mutations that provide the raw material for natural selection occur at random. Look deeply enough, he suggests, and the randomness will turn out to be complexity in disguise - "hidden causality," the Buddha's smile. There you have it, Eastern religion's version of intelligent design. He also opposes physical explanations for consciousness, invoking instead the existence of some kind of irreducible mind stuff, an idea rejected long ago by mainstream science. Some members of the Society for Neuroscience are understandably uneasy that he has been invited to give a lecture at their annual meeting this November. In a petition, they protested that his topic, the science of meditation, is known for "hyperbolic claims, limited research and compromised scientific rigor."

There may be a political subtext to the controversy. According to an article in Nature, many of the petitioners are Chinese. But however mixed their motivation, they make a basic philosophical point. All religion is rooted in a belief in the supernatural. Inviting a holy man to address a scientific conference may be leaving the back door ajar for ghosts.