Orthodox Jews in S. Florida join debate on evolution vs. intelligent design

Sun Sentinel ^ | December 12, 2005 | James D. Davis

[Dichroic]

Evangelical Christians aren't the only ones making evolution and intelligent design a cause célèbre: Leading Orthodox Jews have the topic in their sights as well -- some of them gathering for a three-day conference this week in South Florida.

At least two area Jewish groups have booked heavy hitters to discuss the issues this month. And, they say, Jews have a stake in the outcome.

Intelligent design holds that some structures of life -- such as blood clotting or the flagella of some microbes -- are so complex, they could not have developed without a purposeful designer.

"This is one of the cutting-edge issues of the culture wars," said religion professor Nathan Katz of Florida International University, a co-organizer of the conference. "The basic question is: Is God there?"

......... Starting Tuesday at FIU's North Miami campus, the International Conference on Torah & Science will muster 30 experts from the United States, Israel, Canada and South Africa. Their specialties are as varied as Kabbalah and solar research. They'll cover topics as diverse as food production and religious law.

.......

Ask Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, one of the conference organizers, about the topic, and he sounds much like a conservative Christian.

"The moral and ethical morass today -- hate among nations, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, family breakdown -- comes from people not believing there is a higher authority that owns and directs the world," said Lipskar, of The Shul of Bal Harbour. "But when we look to purpose and meaning, a superior authority, things fall into place, socially and spiritually."

[wideawake]

I think the difference between IDers and theistic evolutionists is that TEers believe that we are all magically evolved from a mythological "primordial ooze" and that God is the Deist God who merely set things in motion and never intervened in biology again (although they curiously still believe that He has or can intervene in history) while ID suggests the possibility that in the interim between ooze and people God made deliberate modifications that could not have happened intrinsically.

Of course, the TEers are also generally in the camp of those who like to explain away miracles by positing "natural explanations" for the plagues of Egypt or the destruction of Sennacherib or the behavior of the sun at the fall of Jericho, etc.

[Zionist Conspirator]

I think the difference between IDers and theistic evolutionists is that TEers believe that we are all magically evolved from a mythological "primordial ooze" and that God is the Deist God who merely set things in motion and never intervened in biology again (although they curiously still believe that He has or can intervene in history) while ID suggests the possibility that in the interim between ooze and people God made deliberate modifications that could not have happened intrinsically.

Of course, the TEers are also generally in the camp of those who like to explain away miracles by positing "natural explanations" for the plagues of Egypt or the destruction of Sennacherib or the behavior of the sun at the fall of Jericho, etc.

Well, it doesn't make a lick of sense to me. You have two sides, both of which believe G-d created the world via evolution and their screaming at each other like they had absolutely nothing in common. And the really puzzling thing is that the anti-ID theistic evolutionists are attacking pro-ID theistic evolutionists for expressing the very same thing that they themselves believe (ie, G-d used evolution to create the world). Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

BTW wideawake, I wish to apologize if my comment on the C. S. Lewis thing offended you (about the liturgical churches seeing truth as more philosophical and abstract than factual). You are an exception to that, and I suppose at one time the liturgical churches were more literal than they are now, but for a long time they've been in full allegorize-whatever-doesn't-happen-every-day mode. I once heard a Catholic priest on TV say that "Santa Claus is 'Truth' with a capital 'T.'" I assume that since he must consider G-d to be as high a truth that his conception of G-d must be similar to his conception of Santa; ie, just as G-d is the "Truth" behind the "fact" of evolution, so Santa is the "Truth" behind the "fact" of your parents. That whole way of defining truth scares the menel out of me.

[RobbyS]

Darwin NEVER discarded natural selection Of course he did. He said that he should have used a term like "natural preservation" since any changes in the orgasnism has already been accomplihsed by the time he was born. Evolution occurs , but Darwin under estimated the fixedness of species. He was overly influenced by the notion of gradualness. Lamarck's emphasis on the importance of "sports" foresaw that evolution is largely a matter of the preservation of useful mutations. His wrong guess about acquired characteristics was wrong only on the macro scale.

[highball]

Typical.

The only objection they can muster to evolution is "But we don't like the implications we can draw from it!"

No evidence, no research, nothing except an emotional appeal.

Proof again that ID is nothing more than warmed-over PC. It's all about emotions.

[RobbyS]

Science has largely replaced the notion of demons with the notion of"virus." Give the patient a palliative and tell him to wait two weeks. ;-)

[King Prout]

Ah the vaunted evolutionists may be required to face the results of animal behavior established via that theory of common descent!!!!

you have been told and told and told and told... and now shall be reminded yet again: In their own writings on ID, the gurus at the Discovery Institute consider common descent a fact, unchallenged and irrefutable. Their game is not a challenge to speciation, but this symantic game they call "irreducible complexity".

This fact has been pointed out to you at least two score of times in the past three months. Why do you persist in stating and implying that ID excludes common descent and is analogous to special creation?

[King Prout]

symantic = semantic

been messing with computers too long

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Of course he did. He said that he should have used a term like "natural preservation" since any changes in the orgasnism has already been accomplihsed by the time he was born."

That's not an abandonment of natural selection in any way. Natural selection was understood by Darwin to be a two step process. First step is the production of variation within a population. Second step is the selection proper, done by the totality of the environment every individual in the population is in. This was never denied by Darwin.


"Evolution occurs , but Darwin under estimated the fixedness of species."

No he didn't. Species aren't fixed. There are no *essences*. He was correct.

"Lamarck's emphasis on the importance of "sports" foresaw that evolution is largely a matter of the preservation of useful mutations."

The preservation of useful mutations is natural selection. *Sports* is not what we see in studies of mutations.

And please enlighten us just what exactly were Erasmus Darwin's contributions to evolutionary thought?

[wideawake]

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

They are both different strategies for trying to find a way to make peace between Scriptural truth and the postmodern culture.

I wish to apologize if my comment on the C. S. Lewis thing offended you

Doesn't offend me at all. What offends me is when people say that just because the Catholic Church allows people to allegorize to the point of panic it means that (1) The Church's official position on Scriptural truth is purely allegorical and (2) a Catholic who is extremely suspicious of the allegorizing tendency (like myself) is somehow less Catholic or more heterodox in relation to the larger Church.

I take the exact same position that Thomas Aquinas did on these matters and he is the definition of the mainstream of Catholic thought.

Also, when discussing Lewis one should keep in mind that the abiding passion of Lewis' life was allegory. Not only are The Chronicles of Narnia an allegory, but his other major fictional series The Space Trilogy is also an allegory, his first major work of fiction The Pilgrim's Regress is obviously modeled on Bunyan's great allegorical narrative The Pilgrim's Progress, and his other works like Till We Have Faces and The Great Divorce are modeled on mythological and allegorical works of the past.

Lewis' professional career was as a premier scholar on allegorical literature of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance and he was one of the world's foremost experts on Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene which are respectively the longest and most elaborate works of allegory in prose and verse of the English Renaissance.

Lewis had an extremely allegorical bent of mind - it was his lifelong passion.

So it would be wrong to characterize Lewis' attachment to allegory as being inspired by his conversion to a liturgical church.

It might be more accurate to say that he chose a liturgical church because in it he found the freest field of play for his allegorical fancy.

[shuckmaster]

Your high school science teachers did insert themselves into your Sunday School class by claiming that Genesis is false.

Lie much?

[RobbyS]

Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and others offered speculations that gradually established biological variability in the public mind. Charles Darwin added nothing except a supposed mechanism for change, which turned out not to be suficient. The deeper meaning has to be found in the development of cell theory and genetics. If there is any mechanism, it is to be found in the germ plasm. Darwin has been superceded more surely than Newton has been.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and others offered speculations that gradually established biological variability in the public mind. Charles Darwin added nothing except a supposed mechanism for change, which turned out not to be suficient."

Your knowledge of biological history is very poor. These *precursors* were almost to a man essentialist's. When they spoke of *transmutation* they meant that a new essence was created. There was no concept of gradualism(except for Lamarck, who did not believe in common descent though) or of common descent. Even Lyell, who is most noted as a uniformitarian, thought of the origin of species as occurring when extinction and a new essence was created. Darwin introduced population thinking into biology. He introduced the idea of common descent combined with gradual changes in variation. His theory of Natural Selection, despite your hand waving, is supremely sufficient to describe the mechanism of evolutionary change. It's the accepted mechanism by the vast majority of evolutionary biologists.

"The deeper meaning has to be found in the development of cell theory and genetics. If there is any mechanism, it is to be found in the germ plasm. Darwin has been superceded more surely than Newton has been."

Genetics and molecular biology have only strengthened evolution and natural selection.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It all seems so, well, ecumenical.

[ndt]

"At minimum those who believe Genesis should have the opportunity to defend themselves in the environment where the false charge is made."

So your saying that churches should be required to have geneticists/biologists presenting arguments for evolution in Sunday school since the charge that evolution is false is made there?

[PatrickHenry]

Yeah. In the words of the immortal Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"

[ndt]

"Like ID, it can't be disproved and it doesn't predict anything."

Sure it can and yes it does. There are dozens and way to disprove evolution, for example, prove that mutations stop after x generation.

[aimhigh]

There are plenty of people of faith who are also highly-credentialed scientists and their contributions to the dialogue need to be taken seriously. Why deny them the ability to speak in the public square?

I heard a Nobel nominated scientist speak on creation. But, he needs to be censored. God forbid he be allowed to present a scientific argument. God forbid he be allowed to debate, if an evolutionist ever had the guts to debate.

[RobbyS]

He did not introduce the idea of gradualism, which is a philosophic rather than an empirical notion, and one which permeated the air of Victorian society. In any case, his contribution to evolution was to convince the public and biologists that there WAS a mechanism for evolution. Huxley admitted in the 1890s that even if natural selection as a "true cause"was dropped the evidence in favor of evolution remains. Of course natural selection is an observed fact, except that it occurs after the useful change has come into being. Essential-ism? That sounds like the conventional wisdom about "metaphysics," which rather ignored what that term meant and tried to reduce all nature to the fir the categories of Newtonian physics. Yes, Aristotle doesn't fit, but neither does Newton any more.

[Dimensio]

I heard a Nobel nominated scientist speak on creation. But, he needs to be censored.

Can creationists come up with an argument that isn't predicated upon a logical fallacy. In this case it's an appeal to a strawman.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"He did not introduce the idea of gradualism, which is a philosophic rather than an empirical notion, and one which permeated the air of Victorian society."

Actually, it went against the main currents of Victorian thought. The gradualism I am talking about is the gradualism of evolutionary change. The only other evolutionist who was a gradualist before Darwin was Lamarck.

"In any case, his contribution to evolution was to convince the public and biologists that there WAS a mechanism for evolution. Huxley admitted in the 1890s that even if natural selection as a "true cause"was dropped the evidence in favor of evolution remains."

Huxley was wrong. Most evolutionists prior to the modern synthesis in the 1940's did not give much weight to natural selection. Now almost no evolutionary biologist denies it's central role as the mechanism of evolutionary change.

"Of course natural selection is an observed fact, except that it occurs after the useful change has come into being."

Natural selection is a TWO step process. First there is the production of heritable variation, then the totality of the environment selects the best fits to that environment. If it wasn't for selection, populations could not adapt to a changing world.

"Essential-ism? That sounds like the conventional wisdom about "metaphysics," which rather ignored what that term meant and tried to reduce all nature to the fir the categories of Newtonian physics. Yes, Aristotle doesn't fit, but neither does Newton any more."

Essentialism, for the natural historian, was the idea that species are the products of unchanging essences. There may be variation around this *essence*, but there is a point where variation can go no further. This was disputed by Darwin, who introduced population thinking. Species are not unchanging essences but collections of unique individuals. There is no end to the variation that can be had, for there is no essence to hold back more variation.

On this point Darwin was absolutely correct. There are no *essences*.