The Challenge of Slifkin

No, the world is not billions of years old

If you get it, you get it.

Part two 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.

The Contradiction

I am going to coast off a post from Rational Traditionalist, called “Natan and the Cavemen”,^[1] where he beautifully outlined the three general approaches to reconciling the creation with the fossil record, or more broadly, the creation with the scientific approach of the universe being billions of years old. To over-generalize his already admitted over-generalization, the three approaches are as follows: 1) the scientific method is flawed, 2) the world was created “old”, or 3) we try to squeeze the scientific account into the Torah. (Unfortunately there is a fourth approach out there that many conclude from hearing the problems with these three approaches, Rachmana litzlan.)

RT outlined what his thoughts were about each approach, and his main point, the most important point, was that we have more important things to do with our lives. This isn’t the first problem to be brought up, it won’t be the last, and it barely does anything to diminish our impeccable mesorah.

"והבדילנו מן התועים ונתן לנו תורת אמת וחיי עולם נטע בתוכנו…"

That being said, I wish to point out two things. One: the third approach (Slifkin וסייעתו’s) is directly against the Rambam and many other Rishonim. And while there is no precedent for his approach, the very sources he brings in fact completely refute his approach! I’m not quite sure what he missed.

Point number two is that the middle approach (called by Slifkin “the Prochronic Approach” or “the Omphalos argument”^[2]) is quite sensible if we just add a bit of important context and I posit that this approach is actually compelled to be true given some basic Jewish introductions. What we will suggest should be enough to resolve the issue in a big way, even if there are some small points to be debated in the end.

Let’s begin with the first point.

The Rishonim Give Us No Wiggle Room

Many have tried to claim that since the six “days” of creation are clearly not literal (before day 4 there was no sun, moon, etc.); we therefore have the flexibility to assume that these “days” embrace the scientific reality. Either the term “day” merely refers to a epoch of time, each which can consist of however many years necessary to be considered an epoch (Schroeder, l’havdil the suggestion of the Tiferes Yisroel, etc.). Or that “days” are just conceptual, perhaps to teach us a lesson; but in scientific reality, our universe was formed gradually over a great many billions of years (Slifkin).

But in fact, the Rishonim who discuss this very issue (of “days”) give a far more rigid and comprehensive answer, which leads to absolutely no room for false reinterpretation. The Rambam^[3] was the first to spell this out clearly, as the Abarbanel^[4] points out that the Rambam let out the secret, but he was only the first; the Ramban^[5] and all those that follow the Zohar all follow suit.

Here’s how long the creation took according to our mesorah: No time. At all. All that happened was that first there was no creation, and then there was.

What “days” mean in this context are in fact conceptual days as Slifkin quotes, but not in order to give us license to figure things out how we want to. No! I’m not sure how Slifkin began quoting this Rambam and ran away from the very pshat he was quoting to discuss his own ideas. He seems to think that the Rambam was giving him a right to recreate history. He wasn’t.

To elaborate slightly, while time is a physical entity, that is merely the physical embodiment of the concept of time. In its physical form, time takes, well, time. Things happen in succession - A before B, B before C. A more refined understanding of “time” however, would be a conceptual sequence, the fact that certain concepts precede others. For example, trying to understanding a father punishing his son because he loves him. It seems like a strange idea, to hit someone from love. We “first” need to understand the concept of love, of wanting the best for someone else; we can “then” understand that sometimes love is accomplished through punishment.^[6] This is not a physical sequence – the love does not take place “before” the punishment; they are happening simultaneously. The sequence which we are referring to here is in conception, that the more general concept, love, is necessary background to understanding the second, more practical consequence of that love, the punishment, to channel the son in the right to direction, to lead him to a happier life.

The six days, says the Rambam, were conceptual days. The concept of day one, oneness (or in kabbalistic terms, Chesed), comes before day two, separation (Gevura), etc. But how long did it take, physically? It took zero time. It happened instantly; the world just wasn’t and then it was.

Slifkin accepts only half of the Rambam’s teaching (that the days aren’t literal) while ignoring the other half (that they instead didn’t take any time). “Taking no time” is not translatable to “taking billions of years.” “Taking no time” means “taking no time.”

More blaring is that the Rambam’s whole point is that the “days” mentioned in creation are in fact literal, only that they are meant to be understood in the conceptual sense. This is a fine point, but nonetheless true. Conceptual reality is as real as (if not more real than) what we laymen perceive to be the mere physical reality. The Rambam talks about this abundantly throughout the Guide.^[7] (In quite the same way that the Malachim of Parshas Vayera were not in a la la dreamland, but in a real spiritual conception of what reality really is; the world of minds. I’m not sure the author of tCoC understand this concept - it is one of the deepest concepts of Judaism - but it is undeniable that this is the Rambam’s take on oh so many issues. Although the mekubalim disagree with the Rambam there by the angels because the Torah has to be read according to its simple understanding, but by maaseh breishis they agree that “mikra yotzei midei pshuto” in this sense.) To take the Rambam away from what he clearly meant to say is inexcusable! You can say your own pshat if you’d like,^[8] but don’t blame it on the Rambam.

The Rambam and the (other?^[9]) mekubalim are clear that the creation was definitely not a couple billion years. There is no license to assume that the Rambam would’ve changed his opinion today, being that nothing new has been discovered to have reason to change our old opinions, as we will discuss soon in part three. Also, the Rambam didn’t come up with this idea to answer the scientific question, rather he knew it from various other sources (shall we call it “sod Hashem li’yreiov?), as a fact of what creation ex nihilo is.^[10] To say that creation took longer than that is against our mesorah, which we should be trying to defend – because that will lead us to the truth.

Back to the Contradiction

This leads us back to the question, how to deal with the scientific evidence of an aged universe. Of course we first have to swallow that we are full blown “creationists” and still face the highly intellectual world who thinks we’re crazy, something not many MODOX people will be willing to do. But if we could have some real pride and stand tall with the rishonim kemalachim, we’ll be on our way to the actual truth.

Personally, I find it unreasonable to say that we should discount the science body (approach one) as we will, bl’n, explain later on (mostly in part four). But in fact, there is no need to! We can accept that the world was created with a history, be it a faux history of billions of years and dinosaurs, with some anyways crucial background.

The concern with this “world created old” approach is what RT summarized briefly, that many “…reject option number two because they consider it unreasonable for Hashem to put aged fossils in a new earth”. See DNS’s book (Ch. 11) for a detailed analysis.

We will try to answer this question momentarily, but first, to add RT’s footnote:

“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.”

There is Midrash^[11] where Rabbi Yochanan says that Adam was created as a twenty year old, Chazal^[12] say that everything was created “b’tzivyonan”, commonly translated as “in their full growth”, and as famously quoted, Adam presumably had a bellybutton. Is it unreasonable to say that the universe was created brand new, a billions of years old construct?

Even so, there some difficulties with this approach, or as we will call them, kinks which need to be ironed out. As HGLP points out in his comment^[13]:

“It seems that you (RT) favor the second approach, called by Natan in his book the "Prochronic approach". However, as Natan points out, it is also the scientific consensus that there was already human civilization and even cities more than 5783 years ago… So I think that your second approach still relies somewhat on the first approach, that is, a partial rejection of the Most Current Scientific Consensus (TM), no?”

Basically, Dr. Slifkin points out that as we discovered the tremendous detail in ancient history, be it entire ancient civilizations or comprehensive dinosaur fossils, it becomes more difficult to assume that all of that was built in for no reason.

In the next section be’H we expose the fallacy behind the thought that there even is a contradiction. As we put things in their proper context, everything will fall into place and we’ll see that the question doesn’t even begin, IMHO.

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[1] https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/natan-and-the-cavemen

[2] Omphalos, meaning navel, referring to the discussion if Adam had a bellybutton.

[3] Maimonides, Guide Part 2, Ch. 30, quoted extensively in tCoC

[4]  Peirush on B’reishis, ib. Incidentally the Abarbanel himself, while disagreeing with the Rambam, is also clearly at odds with DNS’s approach.

[5] tCoC ib., and for more sources

[6] Not coincidentally am I describing Chessed and Gvurah…

[7] He even says that those who don’t understand this should not be reading the book. Just saying…

[8] Not recommended – it’s wrong. But I guess you can physically say it.

[9] Was the Rambam a “mekubal”? (Ramak says clearly that Rambam actually had access to the Zohar, while the Vilna Gaon famously understood not.)

[10] Also, we might add, the Torah gives a detailed account of how old everyone was when they were born and had children, precisely to be able to calculate the years since the creation, because the age of the universe is a testimony to chiddush ha’olam. This is pretty basic in the Rambam; the Torah itself is pretty clear that it wants us to think that the universe was created 5,783 years ago.

[11] Bereishis Rabbah 14:7, quoted by Slifkin ib.

[12] Chulin 60a, Slifkin ib. (I’m giving him credit because if nothing else, he did a wonderful, almost encyclopedic job on the subject, laying all the approaches and their problems. I’m not sure I would have known all of these sources without him.)

[13] Originally I had this whole beginning written up differently, but it is really convenient to coast off their comments, so pardon my laziness.