Natan and the Cavemen

An avant-garde academic analyzes primitive ideologies

A trip to a fundamentalist Christian museum left our favorite Rationalist with another opportunity to Rationalize over the important questions in life. Why, he ponders, don’t fundamentalist Chareidim also make a museums to explain how they reconcile the creation story with the fossil record? (See here; sorry, this time you’ll have to pay your own way.) Of course, the question is all in good fun, because, as he immediately explains, they have no reconciliation to offer. Indeed, the best they can do is announce that Jews shouldn’t think about such things (as a leading Chareidi gadol explained in his “infamous diatribe”), or claim that the fossils’ existence is “an incomprehensible miracle designed to trick people”.

As a non-PhD accredited fundamentalist, I wouldn’t be so bold as to enter into this learned discourse, but I think we’re at least entitled to ask the rather obvious follow-up question: does Dr. Slifkin himself have a reconciliation to offer that doesn’t involve explaining the fossils as an incomprehensible phenomenon designed to trick people?

To find out, we humbly compare the old-fashioned reactions to this conundrum with Dr Slifkin’s favored more cutting-edge mentality. We come not to debate the merits of each, but rather to see if they accomplish their own stated objectives.

I.

To overgeneralize a bit, we can identify three broad categories of reconciliation:

The first approach is to simply assume that the scientists don’t know what they are talking about. The fossils are of recent vintage; their dating methods are faulty. After all, how is anyone able to determine the accuracy of methods claiming to establish something as 90 million years old? Maybe over long periods of time bones start to display characteristics or break down molecules in ways that scientists assume to take far longer. Some of the more adventurous proponents offer theories as to what may have sped up the process, but there’s no real need to come to that – the basic reality is that the events and developments of the distant past are unknowable, and are therefore mere conjecture that can be safely ignored when contradicted by what we know to be true[1].

For those not quite ready to take on the establishment, a second approach is popular: we simply assume that the world was created ‘old’. Just like, presumably, a tree created on the third day of creation was not created as a sapling but rather as a full-grown tree – and would have had multiple rings if chopped down – many other elements of creation were also already in their developed state from the outset[2].  As such, who is to say that there weren’t also many fossilized animals – complete with carbon degeneration millions of years into the process – baked into the cake as well?

Many are uncomfortable with this alternative, because of a simple question: “Why would G-d do that?” True, we understand that created objects had to be made in a developed state, but why in the world would G-d randomly sprinkle his virgin earth with decaying carcasses of dead animals that never lived? As one lecturer put it, “It’s definitely possible. But it seems highly unreasonable that Hashem would do something like that.” A popular columnist said it more bluntly: “He put them there, why? To test our faith? This is not even good religion.” And, of course, there’s Dr. Slifkin’s sardonic “designed to trick people” formulation.

And so, in recent years a third approach has been peddled by those for whom maintaining scientific integrity is paramount. We are to assume the scientific conclusions as literally true, the fossils are millions of years old and thus prove that the world has actually been around for eons, and it is rather the Torah itself which should not be taken literally. All sorts of allegorical or metaphorical interpretations are offered for the Torah’s genesis account, the exact nature of which need not concern us for the time being. For our present purposes the general underlying approach suffices: modern dating methods present an irreconcilable difficulty to a face value acceptance of the Torah’s account; it must therefore be exchanged for some reformulations that fit the new evidence.

This last approach has generated considerable controversy, as it constitutes a radical revision of some fundamental assumptions in Judaism[3]. What interests us, however, is whether any intellectual objective is actually accomplished by the revision.  

Proponents of this approach reject option number two because they consider it unreasonable for Hashem to put aged fossils in a new earth. Personally, we’re wary of the working premise that G-d only does things that you and I consider reasonable (explain the platypus, please), but that is neither here nor there. The more relevant point is that if this is your concern then the proffered alternative, option 3, solves nothing.  You’ve merely replaced the suggestion that G-d confused us by creating a world in a way that appears different than what he describes in His Torah – which you consider disingenuous and unreasonable – for a suggestion that He confused us by giving us a Torah and thousands of years of Mesorah that provides misleading information about the origins of the world. In what way is this an any less disingenuous and unreasonable thing for Him to do?

Let’s back things up a bit. I don’t claim to fathom in any real way how briyas ha’olam went down. K’vod Elokim hasteir davar, ain dorshim b’maasei Bereishis, and all of that[4]. However, I do know what it is that Hashem wants to reveal to me about how briyas ha’olam worked. And He is mighty insistent that what I do know about it is that it took place in a very specifically ordered six days, capped by a seventh day of rest/completion. He wants me to know this, declare it regularly, and live my entire life in cycles of 6 / 1 to emulate it.

Reinterpretationists insist that it’s theoretically possible that this one all-encompassing revealed tidbit is also meaningless as stated, and really is a reference to some entirely different abstract idea that has occurred to no one but some inspired biology majors. And I suppose they’ll maintain it’s possible that three thousand years’ worth of Yidden have made kiddush to declare to the world and impress upon their own consciousness something that was actually completely off base. I mean, by their metric nothing is theoretically impossible; who are we to divine the Divine plan and/or sense of humor?

But recall that our benchmark need not be ‘impossible’ – in context we were comparing levels of ‘unreasonable and misleading’. Maybe it’s the Aseres Hadibros that tips the scales for me, but in my book this elaborate prank would qualify as at least as unreasonable and misleading as G-d deciding to bury some dinosaur bones he had lying around.

Any way you slice it, the brutal fact remains that the age of the world based on what it says in the Torah and the practices of normative Yiddishkeit does not match the age based on contemporary academic methodology. Assuming G-d to be both the author of the former and in control of the latter, we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that He – for whatever unfathomable or seemingly unreasonable reasons of His own – does not mind allowing things to be confusing. As such it’s difficult to see why one would consider it more “reasonable” to use this modern confusion to conclude that three millennia of Torah scholarship has all been in fact a primitive error, and we’ve been waiting for some 20^th century paleontologists to set us straight.

II.

In truth, anyone who finds it “unreasonable” to assume that Hashem would ever “test our faith” need only read some Chumash to be disabused:

כִּֽי־יָק֤וּם בְּקִרְבְּךָ֙ נָבִ֔יא א֖וֹ חֹלֵ֣ם חֲל֑וֹם וְנָתַ֥ן אֵלֶ֛יךָ א֖וֹת א֥וֹ מוֹפֵֽת: וּבָ֤א הָאוֹת֙ וְהַמּוֹפֵ֔ת אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֥ר אֵלֶ֖יךָ לֵאמֹ֑ר נֵֽלְכָ֞ה אַֽחֲרֵ֨י אֱלֹהִ֧ים אֲחֵרִ֛ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יְדַעְתָּ֖ם וְנָֽעָבְדֵֽם: לֹ֣א תִשְׁמַ֗ע אֶל־דִּבְרֵי֙ הַנָּבִ֣יא הַה֔וּא א֛וֹ אֶל־חוֹלֵ֥ם הַֽחֲל֖וֹם הַה֑וּא כִּ֣י מְנַסֶּ֞ה יְיָ֤ אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶם֙ אֶתְכֶ֔ם לָדַ֗עַת הֲיִשְׁכֶ֤ם אֹֽהֲבִים֙ אֶת־יְיָ֣ אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם בְּכָל־לְבַבְכֶ֖ם וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁכֶֽם: (דברים י"ג ב' – ד')  

If there appears among you a prophet or a dream-diviner, who gives you a sign or a portent, saying, “Let us follow and worship another god”—whom you have not experienced —even if the sign or portent named to you comes true, do not heed the words of that prophet or that dream-diviner. For your God, Hashem, is testing you to see whether you really love your God, Hashem, with all your heart and soul.

The Torah itself, it seems, does not consider it unreasonable to suggest that someone may present convincing evidence – miracles! – to claims that run counter to the Torah. And it is our responsibility to ignore them.[5]

In fact, even proponents of the first approach – that the scientists are simply ignorant – cannot avoid this conclusion. Whatever our own opinions on scientists, the fact remains that they command a good deal of authority with the general public and manage to present a face of supreme confidence in their knowledge and sophistication. And so, as we understand Hashem to be the director of world events including this reality, we have Him placing us in the position of having venerated experts declare that the fossils are demonstrably millions of years old. They may be wrong, dishonest, devious, idiotic, or insane – but the fact remains that G-d apparently has no issue with making things confusing for the rest of us. And in such cases the avodah is not necessarily to try and figure out how the false prophet managed to pull off his shtick, nor is it to try and reconcile his message with the Torah’s. The avodah is to recognize that zos haTorah shebiyadeinu lo tehei michlefes, and no amount of hocus pocus can shake us away from it.

So maybe that “diatribe” actually contained some valuable insight after all, notwithstanding Dr. Slifkin’s 20 year-long attempt to trivialize it. Maybe the Chareidi gadol was not avoiding the question, but rather presenting a Torah true approach to navigating a world of hester panim. Because, indeed, for those who are אהבים את ה' בכל לבבם, these questions are mere distractions, curiosities to be answered this way or that or not at all, but certainly rather ridiculous as an impetus to radically revise fundamental Torah teachings.

Postscript:

One of the enduring imponderables of life is what it is that drives some people’s preoccupation with this particular question. Surely there’s no shortage of areas in which Hashem chooses to obscure the reality of His existence and hashgacha, long before we carbon tested a bunch of fossils. Every inappropriate billboard screams of chillul Hashem and hester panav. Every unresolved commentator’s question represents an internal difficulty within the Torah itself. And yet we all recognize obscurity and a less than complete perception to be natural features of interfacing a finite human experience with an infinite divine reality. So what is it about the heap of dried bones specifically that gets us all out of sorts?

We suspect that the rationale has to do with a subconscious feeling of having outwitted the Torah. True, there are many obvious phenomena that indicate hester panim, but we can assume that those were taken into account. But now modern man has discovered something new, that also obscures Hashem’s reality. It’s a scoop!

The less delusionally arrogant find their time better spent working on Torah reconciliations of a different sort. It’s strange that Dr. Slifkin – who has devoted a lifetime to searching for external synthesis – moonlights as a chief critic of the system that spends its days working to understand and resolve Torah’s internal messages and conundrums[6]. Ultimately, those Chareidi reconciliation museums Natan seeks are right there under his nose – just step into the nearest Kollel and join the discussion. Maybe together we can be meyasheiv R’ Akiva Eiger’s kashya on tzaras habas.  

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[1] “Science” is by definition the study of theories that are experimentally disprovable. To call those who speculate about what happened a hundred million years ago “scientists” is a misnomer, and wrongly confers on them the credibility of those who can objectively verify their assertions. No scientist in his right mind would promote an experimental drug that was formulated entirely by theory without any amount of clinical testing; all of paleontology and cosmology are, and forever will remain, in that category. 

[2] A few minutes of thought would reveal this to be an extremely compelling assumption with countless applications. Adam was created as an adult. Stars whose distance would require millions of years for their light to reach the earth were visible in the sky. Plants and animals whose genetic makeup were by all physical indications inherited from parents were simply created that way. Mountains, which grow at inches or less per year, were created eons into the process towering thousands of feet high. And on and on.

Of course, all of these can have different explanations, and the very nature of these discussions precludes referring to any theory as an ‘obvious truth’, but there doesn’t seem to be anything unlikely or objectionable about the assumptions presented here.

[3] The word ‘kefira’ has fallen out of favor lately, and we will avoid its use here. In addition, the contemporary predilection toward digging up old and forgotten ‘minority opinions’, regardless of their acceptance in normative mesorah, ensures that the discussion of any viewpoint’s legitimacy quickly devolves into a flurry of search engine gymnastics, creative readings, and innovative applications. We have little stomach for such distractions, so we will simply note that tinkering with fundamental tenets is a delicate and dangerous habit. Whether the theory passes the threshold of technical halachic heresy is immaterial to our discussion, and we will leave it to others to decide. 

[4] See, for example, the Ramban in the beginning of Bereishis, “מעשה בראשית סוד עמוק, אינו מובן מן המקראות, ולא יודע על בוריו אלא מפי הקבלה עד משה רבינו מפי הגבורה, ויודעיו חייבים להסתר אותו. The process of creation is a deep mystery not to be understood from the verses, and it cannot truly be known except through the tradition going back to Moses our teacher who received it from the mouth of the Almighty, and those who know it are obligated to conceal it.” It’s peculiar that one whose worldview rests so heavily on their being ‘no psak in hashkafa’ seems to have paskined so decisively against this fairly mainstream premise that it engenders dismissive sardonic mention.

[5] That is not to say that scientific conjecture is anywhere near as conclusive as a confirmed נביא. To the contrary, the actual theories involved are quite murky, wildly speculative, riddled with gaps and internal contradiction, and are the subject of considerable skepticism from within the scientific community itself. In real terms, the nisayon presented by the ‘age of the earth question’ is not so much from the intrinsic convincingness of their conclusions – to an unbiased observer they’re not very convincing at all – but rather from the human tendency to be impressed by what ‘everybody knows’. Be that as it may, a nisayon it remains.

[6] And it’s definitely rather odd that someone who takes his salary from a non-profit – supported through the generosity of others – for the crucial work of addressing a handful of questions on the first couple parshios in the Torah, should feel so scandalized at the meager subsidies provided to those who are working on the rest of it.