Part three out of five guest posts from our reader דוד . The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Irrationalist Modoxism - Ed.
In the last post we showed how our Mesorah has an rigid opinion on the age of the universe, namely 5,783 years old, give or take a few days, and counting. That being the case, we wound up with a conflict from what science has discovered the age of the universe to be. Here is my proposition to answer the question, IMHO. It’s a subtle idea with even heavier ramifications (coming in the next post) so I’m going to try to break it down into its finer components, bear with me.
1. Scientific Definitions
Let’s begin by going back to the basics, and I mean real basics, like what is science? The Google definition for science is, “the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation, experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained.” A similar definition by Webster’s: “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena.”
In simpler terms, science deals with questions like, “what are things?” and, “how do things work?” To explore this properly, let us use the analogy of something man made, where there is no question that it was made with a history. Specifically, we will use a cake - besides that cake is delicious, its process is something which we are familiar with. You can pick any object that interests you if you prefer.
To begin this exercise, imagine in your mind’s eye a delicious slice of warm chocolate cake in your hands. Its texture is soft and spongy; it has a moist, heavy feeling; its color is dark, hovering between rich brown and black; it is chocolaty and warm. While it may be just a “cake” to a laymen, in reality it is a far more complex object than its name suggests. The scientist will ask what makes the cake soft and spongy; what makes it moist; what gives it its rich, dark color? In essence, what makes cake “cake”?
A cake is really a composite of a whole slew of ingredients – flour, eggs, sugar, etc. (which in turn each have their own “ingredients”) - which are placed in an oven to transform into what we call a cake. Here is an excerpt from a British science-nerd, cake-baking-lover, who explains this beautiful transformation in scientific terms:
“…Baking can be broken into three stages: expansion, setting and browning. As the batter temperature rises, the gases in the air cells expand the stretchy gluten from the flour, then the chemical leavening agents release carbon dioxide. As the batter reaches 60C, water vapour begins to form and expand the air cells even further. Carbon dioxide and water vapour account for approximately 90% of the subsequent expansion of the batter, the remaining 10% being due to thermal expansion.
At around 80C, the risen batter adopts its permanent shape as the egg proteins coagulate, the starch granules absorb water, swell and form a gel, and the gluten loses its elasticity. The texture produced at this point is then held until the cake is set by the coagulation of the egg and flour proteins, producing the familiar porous structure of the cake crumb…”[1]
He actually writes an entire article, one of many, on the science of food making, because that’s what a scientist does. A scientist wants to understand what things are and how they work. While we simpletons see “just a cake”, the scientist sees the entire beautiful process of what makes the cake a cake.
Through the scientific process the scientist has a deeper appreciation of what cake is. He “understands cake” more fully. The texture of the cake, while to us may be delicious; to a scientist it is the product of its history. Everything about the cake; the color, the taste, the texture – these are all products of what the cake went through to become a cake.
In short, the scientific definition of cake is: its history. What makes a cake what it is? The very processes that led it to being a cake. The coagulation of the egg proteins, the expansion of the batter caused by the vaporizing water and on - all of the ingredients and how they are chemically affected by the heat, are all what makes the cake a cake. In different words: to a scientist, every cake tells a story. This is not just to say that the history of the cake is imbedded in every detail of the cake, but more than that - there is nothing in the cake that isn’t its history. Every single part of the cake is the product of one ingredient or another being affected by the mixing and baking processes. A cake is its very history, and the history of the cake is the very product called cake. These are not two things; they are one indistinguishable unity, the process and its pure result.
Cake is being used as an example here, but the same process applies to any area of science. For instance, when we ask questions like "What is a diamond?" or "What is a rainbow?" or "What is the sun?", we analyze the components that make up each of these entities, and gain an understanding of the underlying processes that lead to the final outcome. This is the scientific definition.
2. Functional Definitions
From a scientific perspective, the definition of a cake involves considering its ingredients and the processes involved in making it. However, there is another way to define a cake that we will refer to as its “functional definition.” Functionally, the cake tastes delicious and has nutritional value. This is an entirely different way of explaining, “What is a cake?” Unlike the scientific definition which which focuses on the physical properties and history of the cake, the “functional definition” describes how the cake is of use to us humans. This definition is the one we use in our day to day lives. It doesn’t explain anything about the properties of the cake; there is no “system of operation” or “systematic structure” involved in this definition. But it is the definition that matters to us when conversing; we care about its relevance to our lives. Noam Chomsky paraphrases Aristotle that “…we can define a house as stones, bricks and timbers - in terms of its material constitution; or as a receptacle to shelter, chattels of living being - in terms of function and design.”[2]
Chomsky continues to point out that,
“…I may think that the place that I call home is a house but I could be wrong - it could really be a library in which some odd people spend much of their time. And in fact, someone entering it for the first time might be excused for reaching the conclusion. The answer depends on choice of perspective and on circumstances, which I not might even know. If that thing was designed to be a library and is characteristically used this way while I am gone, then it perhaps it really is a library. It is not a house, contrary of what I thought. Or perhaps it’s a garage. Or maybe it is an oddly constructed and misplaced paperweight belonging to a giant. There simply is no independent truth of the matter…”
In our terms: the function of the object is completely subjective, based on how it used by humans. Even though the library may have the same exact “scientific definition” as a neighboring house, its classification in daily conversation will be based on its function. The library will be called a library; the house, a house. Meanwhile, two items with the exact same function, i.e. two paperweights which share the same functional definition (and usage in conversation), can have a completely different scientific definition.
If our beloved cake were used as a paperweight, its classification as a cake would sit on the sidelines, and the new definition, “paperweight”, would be its name. Only as an adjective does it remain a cake (i.e. a cake paperweight, as opposed to, say, a metal paperweight). Meanwhile in its scientific definition, it did not change one iota.
A great example where these two definitions share radically different results is when defining light.[3] According to James Maxwell's scientific definition, there is not much difference between white light and other colors of light. All colors are essentially the same thing, just different variations of the wavelength of a photon. For example, red light has a longer wavelength than blue light, and our brain processes these colors differently when these wavelengths hit our retinas. However, when all the colors of light hit our eyes at the same time, our brain processes them as white light. But in our daily lives, we don't use the scientific definition of light. Instead, we use a functional definition that takes into account how we actually use light. When we refract light and bend its waves, we see a rainbow, and we differentiate between white light and a rainbow because this difference is highly significant to us practically. Microwaves are another type of electromagnetic wave with a wavelength longer than the infrared light (detected by us as heat). Their functional definition is based on their usefulness to us, rather than their scientific properties. In reality, there are many other wavelengths between infrared and microwaves, but we only practically define it, or give it a specific name, when it serves a functional purpose for us.
In short, science studies how things work and what their properties are, which means that the scientific definition of something is its physical history as we explained. Meanwhile, there is a different definition which we use in our day to day - the functional definition, how the object is used by the human defining it.[4]
We are used to thinking that between these two types of definitions, the functional definition is just an arbitrary construct used as a mode to communicate the item in conversation, while the scientific definition is more essential to what the object really is. Let’s examine the truth of that assumption.
3. The Nature of Reality
We live in a world where things exist because they existed prior. As Torah believing Jews, there is nothing actually essential about this; the only reason why things continue existing is because Hashem “exists” them. Meaning things shouldn’t necessarily exist at all and the fact they were existing says nothing of them continuing to exist; they exist because Hashem wants them to and because He happens to continue wanting them to. In this real reality, there is no system. Nevertheless Hashem did create the feeling - a mirage - where things seem to exist because they did. This “fake world” is where science finds its place.
Imagine if a sorcerer created a slice of cake out of thin air. What would be the nature of this cake? Would it be the product of a longwinded baking procedure? Most definitely not!
Interestingly, this magical slice could actually be completely identical to the cake that was evolved through the natural process. It would have the same soft and spongy texture; it would be moist and heavy; its color would be dark, hovering between rich brown and black; it would be chocolaty and warm. But its soft texture would not be the product of expansion, setting and browning. It wouldn’t be the product of any physical process; it would be the product of whatever the wizard did to produce it. If wizardry is the method of “physicalizing” spiritual concepts, this would be the product of that.
If a scientist found this cake a few minutes after it popped into existence, he would be able, through the classic rigorous process of experimentation and trial and error, to figure out the scientific reality of the cake. Most notably, he would be able to use the scientific method to duplicate this very same cake!
More than that, in a baked cake, although the ingredients have lost their noticeable identity, they don’t actually disappear. The eggs still exist in the cake, albeit in their reconstructed and baked form; the eggs (amongst the other ingredients )are precisely what give the cake its unique flavor and texture. So when the wizard creates this cake from nowhere, what he is creating is a cake with eggs, and specifically eggs in that have gone through the baking process. That is the true makeup of the cake, and why a scientist would be correct in saying that he figured out the nature of the cake; it actually is what would have been the product of the cake baking story.[5]
A scientist could even devise a scientific experiment to show that this cake was made with actual eggs by inventing an egg extractor device and extract the “egg” out of the cake, as clear proof that this cake was made with eggs, because this is in fact the true nature of the cake which the wizard produced.
But would the scientist be correct in stating that he figured out the history of this cake?
The entire scientific enterprise is based on the illusory reality, which Hashem created, where things exist because they did. Only in this fake world does the scientific definition have any meaning, because scientifically, the definition of a cake is its history as we elaborated. The very words “a cake is its history” can only be true in the world where the cake is a product of a history. But cake (metaphorically) in real terms, isn’t a product of anything; it is just God’s will to express Himself. In the real world there is absolutely no real science; there is absolutely no history.
The scientific nature of the universe is a universe that is thirteen billion plus years into the process science has discovered. If we had a science lab big enough and all the time and energy (and in this I mean scientific energy) needed - if we were in God’s playground - we could actually recreate the physical universe using the process which science proposes happened. The very universe we see today is what would exist thirteen billion years into that process. Science, as science should, has figured out the scientific nature of the “cake”. What the texture is made of, what the color is made of. Through their rigorous experiments they have proved to be correct about the nature of the universe. But they think that this means that they also figured out the history, and this is where we disagree.
Incidentally, the reason for this illusion to give this world a feeling of permanence - it sure feels like we’re on our own here; we sure feel like we will exist in a minute because we are existing now. This is not a game or a trick; it is the essence of creation.
Let’s take this home – if Hashem created the world 5,783, which He did, as the rishonim tell us unequivocally, and as Hashem Himself seems to dictate in His Torah[6], did you expect that a scientist will go out find a world that matches this description? Would the scientific method of trial and error would discover a non-scientific world which popped into existence? But the scientific method has no meaning in such a world! The scientific method is the process of duplication and recreation, not for a world of Sheimos. The scientific enterprise exists only in the world of cause and effect, which is entirely an illusory reality which Hashem wants in order to give his creatures a feeling of permanence, and so a history is not something built in to trick us; rather it is the very definition of טבע. This leads to the next point, in which the cake analogy will be prodigious.
4. Modern Science
Technically, the system of how things exist because they existed before could have been very different. Hashem could’ve created a world where a bird is a bird because its parents were birds, and its parents were birds because their parents were birds, and back so all the way to infinity - birds all the way back. Meanwhile, a rock would have been a rock all the way back; an eternal rock. This is what we would instinctively think to be the case. If the purpose of a rock is to be a rock, why create an alternate reality in which rocks are really products of other things? Make the rocks scientifically eternal rocks! (We will discuss the reason why it is not this way in the next post beH.) And in fact, until a couple hundred years ago, this was thought to be the case.
In the world that was thought to be, where rocks were rocks all the way through, the scientific definition of rocks wouldn’t have been like the scientific definition of cake. Whereas cake is made of various ingredients whose assembly is the cake, rocks would’ve been made up of nothing more than “rock particles.” Rocks would just be rocks. Rabbits would be just rabbits; everything would just be itself all the way down to its core. This too would be a scientific explanation but of course it would be less deceiving how this entire existence just began at some point; how the “eternal” rocks were really creations that just seemed eternal.
Instead, when using the scientific method of experimentation and trial and error things turned out to be very different from what was expected. The planets revolve around the sun; everything is made of atoms and so on.
What modern science has discovered is that the world Hashem did create is a world where deep down, rocks are made up of ingredients very much like a cake. Specifically, rocks are made of minerals, which have a scientific process of “baking” and becoming rocks. Those minerals are in turn made up other ingredients, atoms - which are incidentally the same things everything else is made of. The physical system isn’t rocks all the way back or birds all the way back; it is one giant interconnected, organized blend of varying forms of energy and uniform building blocks. All the diversity is really a kingdom, a harmony where one is for all and all is for one.
Pardon my poetry, but the point is that while science is very (very) nice, all modern science has ever done for us ever is discover that the system is not rocks all the way back but variations of atoms all the way back. An important and beautiful idea for many reasons (as we will be’H discuss next time), but hardly a reason to change the way we view the age of the universe. Nothing new has been discovered that should make us revisit the “big” question of how old everything really is. Birds all the way back are also “older” than six thousand years - they’re eternal! But all that would’ve meant is that six thousand years ago Hashem created brand new “eternal” birds. Now, with modern science, birds are not just birds. The scientific definition of birds is that they are a composition of a rich history. This has no bearing however on if that history happened, similar to the wizard’s cake that pops out of thin air.
Don’t get me wrong, now that we understand how things work physically, we can manipulate physicality with our immense scientific knowledge. We can create cell phones and cars and space shuttles. ומלאו את הארץ "וכבשוה" - through scientific knowledge we can conquer the world and develop it like never before. Knowledge is power, and science is important and has its place; all I mean is that it has absolutely nothing to do with how old the universe actually is.
5. Evolution
When discussing biology people get flustered because we see ourselves as brand new. We look at the hand of a baby and we see a brand new hand. But evolution tells us that we aren’t born in a vacuum. Rather, what created our faces, our fingerprints, our livers – was a physical system called evolution.
I would add that it has to be this way because our hands are also physical entities. You can use the same excercise we used earlier with the cake and ask what makes a hand a hand? By its scientific definition hands have to be a product of a physical history because that continuum is what makes physical things physical - the only thing that makes physical things physical.[7]
(I’ll just throw in now again that if you have no problem rejecting the evolutionary evidence, if you’re not bothered by these questions, go learn and don’t waste your time here…)
Now, the history of a hand may be a little more complicated than that of a mountain or a rock. The components necessary to create a hand did not immediately tend to the hand in the same way that a rock or a cake’s history does. But in gruelingly long process of biological creatures changing and being chiseled this way and that, eventually a human hand is formed, the same way that any physical object is formed. And that history is imbedded into the makeup of the hand as much as the history of a rock is imbedded into a rock. This is the same idea as before, that scientifically, a hand is no more than the history which made it a hand, and the history of the hand is the very hand.
In short, saying that the world was created with a history is nothing more than saying that science exists. This is true of a rock or of a biological entity. Since we live in a physical world where things are products of their parent existence, everything has to have a history behind it. While it used to be thought that the history of a bird was that it came from other birds, through a cycle of birds being born and successively giving birth eternally, now we’ve discovered that the system is one where all biological entities are cousins.
6. Dinosaur Bones
Slifkin’s main issue with the prochronic approach is that as you flesh it out in all its details it becomes less and less likely, such as the necessity of inscriptions on caves from millions of years ago. Firstly, even if we didn’t have the full explanation, this doesn’t take away from all that we’ve said, which seems to be undeniably true and takes us most of the way there.
Besides, in these details we can defer to what RT said in the comments, “It's not really arguable that there's a lot of truth to the first approach, and the second approach also seems to almost certainly contain much truth as well. The question is where to apply what, and if the two together would cover everything.” Especially when it comes to the field of archeology, things can be very ambiguous. But dinosaur bones do have a more rigid science, and I, personally, find it unlikely to reject these. Anyone who has no problem discounting these sciences, go learn Dvar Hashem Yisborach; you have better things to do with your life.
But I would suggest two points that take care of the problem. First, since scientifically there is a system, that means that the history is imbedded into the earth, as well as in our hands. For reasons we will discuss in the next post, the history imbedded into the world is not one where we are examining mountains as mountains and stars as stars. Rather, the scientific system sees the entire world as one gigantic ecosystem. So, a world where fossils didn’t exist would mean our hands too would look different.
In other words, what if we lived in a world where dinosaurs didn’t fossilize? This would be a scientifically different world which would have ramifications across the whole spectrum of creation. Fossilization is a natural process, very much part of the world we live in. A history where nothing ever fossilized, or where just a few things fossilized over so many years is a world where things would be different today. As it is fossilizations are rare given the myriads of creatures that “died” in the past. So yes, fossilized bones are also a part of what makes the world what it is.
But there’s a second, more important thought here. It is fair to say that the amount of precision necessary to create these six thousand years in the way that are is also extremely specific. We can apply to this what’s commonly known as “the butterfly effect”, the idea that small things can have large impacts in a complex system. (The concept is imagined with a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon. Of course, a single act like the butterfly flapping its wings cannot cause a typhoon. Small events can, however, serve as spurs that begin larger processes.)
Even a minor detailed that “happened” a few million years ago can have an effect on, say, how a person’s nose would be shaped today. If this small thing wouldn’t have happened, this person nose would be slightly pointier. This is one small example of how every detail requires a specific history. The natural history needed to chisel out the details of each human in the way they look, to forecast (literally) all of the millions of daily weather patterns, and for that matter, how everything else looks and acts, needs an extremely, extremely careful history. Therefore, the details of these six thousand years (it is a given in this discussion that these details are all planned to the “t”) show a careful history and vice versa, the careful history is necessary to physically cover all the details. In short, every single detail we see today in the world is an exact product of the ever complicated history, and there is nothing in the world today that is not a product of that history, so a specific history is nothing more than a highly sophisticated attention to detail in the world we see and live.
For these reasons together, dinosaurs have to be in our historical backstory, because if not we would be living in a different world. The world we live in is one where dinosaurs “existed”.
IMHO, I think we are okay.
But our work isn’t quite done. We still need to explain why Hashem created these two realities to be so very different from each other. That is coming next, do hold your breath.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/jun/09/science-cake-baking-andy-connelly
[2] I couldn’t find the source that I heard it from originally, but I found what probably is from that same general source - https://hotbookworm.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/noam-chomsky-%E2%80%93-language-and-the-rest-of-the-world-%E2%80%93-lecture-transcript-part-four/
[3] https://cdn.britannica.com/75/95275-050-5FC96002/Radio-waves-rays-light-gamma-ultraviolet-electromagnetic.jpg
[4] We are using here the Brisker method of thinking, what’s known as “tzvei dinim”. The Chazon Ish would presumably disagree because he rejects the whole Brisker derech. See https://www.rationalistjudaism.com/p/on-knowing-how-to-learn.
[5] We can take this even further - for eggs to be formed in the way that are in the cake, time is also an ingredient. The cake needs to bake in an oven for a certain amount of time in order to become a cake as the process of cake making takes time. Therefore, even time itself is built into the cake; i.e. one could figure out how long the cake was in the oven for by looking at the cake. If the eggs are constructed now in a certain way, which happens through being in the oven, and we know how long it takes for such a process to occur, we can say honestly that this cake is that many years into its process. But if the wizard poofed the cake into existence, it wouldn’t be twenty seven minutes into the process; it would be zero minutes. But at the same time, the new cake he created is a cake that is twenty seven minutes into the process in the world as we know it.
[6] See https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/the-challenge-of-slifkin footnote 10
[7] Many creationists feel the need to reject evolution. Besides for the fact that I feel that the compelling evidence is overwhelming, and the questions, though strong, hardly knock out the theory, but more importantly, the only need to knock the theory down is because creationism seems to be at odds with evolution - and to be clear, if they indeed were at odds, I would side with the Torah for many reasons. But in our view, there is no contradiction; in fact we’d expect there to be a physical explanation for all physical things; that is what is physical about them. We will accept with open arms that what we see in front of us is the process of evolution. We will only reject the unfalsifiable notion that the history of evolution happened.
 | A guest post by
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Age of the earth is the one the Rishonim were busy with. Nishteneh Hateva is already in the Rishonim (i think even earlier). Its spiritual is already in the rambam. Scientists are kofrim anyway is also in the Rambam (Bshinui Lashon). Blah Blah Blah I think ive seen on one of slifkins blogs.
I just removed this from my next post because it was getting too long. So here is a possible answer, to keep you busy in the meantime, as to why Hashem created these two realities to have such drastically opposing spirits:
The Illusion of Reality
Our senses give us a very definite picture of reality. We sense that the objects around us have an inherent color, have weight and substance (mass) and that they are intrinsically either hard or soft.
Science has shown in a large number of ways that these very perceptions are just an illusion. Scientifically, the different colors are just how our brains process different wavelengths of photons interacting with our retinas. In fact, color is not actually an inherent property of an object, rather that when light hits an object, it absorbs certain wavelengths and reflects others. These reflected wavelengths are then detected by the cone cells in our eyes and sent to the brain for interpretation. The object isn’t “actually blue”; it merely contains certain properties which absorb the longer wavelengths and reflect the shorter ones. An apple appears red to us because it’s surface contains pigments called anthocyanins, which absorb blue and green light and reflect mostly red light. The reflected red light enters our eyes, and our brain interprets this as the color red. A blue toy, on the other hand, appears blue to us because it’s surface contains pigments that absorb light of longer wavelengths (like red and orange) and reflect mostly blue light. (The sky is blue for a different reason, along the same lines, because the Earth's atmosphere scatters short-wavelength blue light more than other colors, making it more visible to us.)
Another illusory aspect of reality is mass. We perceive objects as having weight and substance, but according to modern physics, matter is not quite as solid as it appears. In fact, most of the space in an object is actually empty, with the particles existing as tiny vibrations in a field of energy. The particles that make up matter are constantly in motion, and they are not as tightly bound together as we once thought. Interestingly, as per Einstein equation of E=mc2, if one were to take a bunch of massless particles which are pure energy (e.g. a light particle, a photon) and place them in a box and have them bounce around back and forth, this energy (if there were enough photons), would be perceived as actual mass. In fact, 99% of our own mass comes from the fact that within the atoms that we are made of, specifically within the protons and neutrons that make up the nucleus of the atom, there are these massless particles (called gluons) which are constantly exchanged between the constituents of the protons and neutrons (known as quarks), and this constant speed of light movement is what results in more that most of our mass. (For those familiar with the Higgs field understand that the other 1% is basically the same thing, though its details are a tad more complicated.)
There are so many more examples of this, and we’ll just use one more, that even our sense of space and time is illusory. Einstein's theory of relativity showed that time and space are not fixed and absolute, but rather depend on the observer's relative motion. Time can appear to pass more slowly for someone in motion than for someone at rest, and distances can appear to be shorter or longer depending on the observer's perspective. As an object speeds up closer and closer to the speed of light (close to 300 million meters per second), its time slows down. According to this theory, if an object were to travel faster than the speed of light, it would travel backwards in time! Famously, in a black hole, where the mass creates such a strong gravitational pull that the escape velocity (the minimum speed required for an object to escape the gravitational pull of another object, used when sending rockets beyond) is greater than the speed of light, the light being pulled back in has to be travelling faster than the speed of light, and you know what that means for time! If so, time itself is not only not fixed, but it can move backwards. Our entire understanding of cause and effect - the bedrock of what science is - which is wholly dependent on time’s forward motion, is but an illusion!
(This is already enough to highlight my point, but anyone who is familiar with the quantum world knows all the more just how true it is that reality as we know it is just an illusion of the quantum world where energy is seen for what it is.)
This is the first point we wish to make, that science has shown us that the universe as we know it really is but an illusion. These examples we provided are isolated, but the point holds true for all of modern science. According to Einstein’s E=mc2, everything we see is just different forms of energy. We hardly know what energy is; all science can say is that it is the ability of a system to do work. (Incidentally, the Vilna Gaon points out that חכמה is “כח מה”; it is a כח - a force, an energy; but מה, what is it really?) Despite that we don’t understand the illusive nature of energy, reality is nothing but different forms of this.
The entire scientific system is a perfect reflection of its true illusory nature...