One thing. What do you mean that falsifiability as a necessary component of science is a myth? Isn't that the very definition of the scientific method? (true induction being ultimately impossible, the scientific method establishes facts "for all intents and purposes" through repeated and comprehensive attempts at disproving them under laboratory conditions. Or at least that's what I've always been taught. Was I lied to?)
You weren't lied to. Falsification in a very general sense plays an important role in the overall outlook of science, but only in a general sense. Here is an excerpt from the link:
"...I’m about to explain why most philosophers of science think falsificationism, despite its appeal, is actually mistaken. In order to understand why, we must take a closer look at what people actually do when they test a theory. Let’s go back once again to Newton’s law of universal gravitation and think about how one would go to test it. On its own, the law does not have any observable consequences, because it just says something about the forces that exist in the world and forces are not observable. You can’t see the gravitational force one physical object exerts on another. What you can see is only the effect it has on the motion of that object.
So you need something that provides the link between the forces that act on a physical object and its motion. This is precisely what Newton’s second law of motion does. This law of motion, expressed mathematically as F = ma, says that the total force on a physical object is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration. . Since the acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect to time, it connects something unobservable, i. e. the total force on the object, to something observable, i. e. the position of this object at different times. In order to use to test the law of universal gravitation with the help of Newton’s second law of motion, however, you also need to know something about the masses of the physical objects, as well as their position at different times. This requires using various instruments to measure position, mass and time, which in turn means that you have to make several assumptions about the way in which those instruments work, guaranteeing they are reliable.
Thus, in order to test even a theory as straightforward as Newton’s law of universal gravitation, you need to make a lot of auxiliary hypotheses. The law of universal gravitation by itself doesn’t make any observable prediction. This isn’t just true of the law of universal gravitation, it’s true of any theory whatsoever. Just take any theory you’d like and think about how you’d go about to test it and you’ll soon realize that, in order to so, you need to make a lot of hypotheses that are not part of the theory itself. In general, a theory is never testable on its own, but only with the help of various auxiliary hypotheses or background assumptions. This means that a theory is never falsifiable simpliciter, but only relative to a set of background assumptions. Therefore, if we say that a theory is only scientific if it’s falsifiable, then it follows that no theory, not even a theory as successful as Newton’s law of universal gravitation, is scientific. Of course, this is absurd, so falsificationism is false.
But this was a bit quick and perhaps you are not entirely convinced yet, so let’s continue to examine the implications of the fact that a theory is only falsifiable relative to a set of background assumptions. Suppose that you derive a prediction from the law of universal gravitation, plus a bunch of auxiliary hypotheses, but it doesn’t come true. From a purely logical point of view, the only conclusion you can draw from this is at least one of the hypotheses you used to derive the prediction is false, but logic doesn’t tell you which one. It could be the law of universal gravitation, but it could also be one or several of the various auxiliary hypotheses you had to make in order to derive the prediction, you just don’t know. Strictly speaking, since the failure of a prediction derived from a theory plus a bunch of background assumptions doesn’t logically imply the falsity of the theory, it can’t falsify it. The failure of the prediction only falsifies the theory if you assume that the background assumptions necessary to derive that prediction are true.
In practice, although they frequently pay lip service to falsificationism when they talk about methodology, scientists are perfectly aware of that and don’t behave at all like they should according to naive falsificationism. Indeed, when a prediction derived from a theory they take to be well-established fails, scientists don’t just throw away the theory and start looking for a replacement. Instead, they generally assume that one of the background assumptions necessary to derive the prediction, which are often left implicit, was false and try to figure out which one it was. Moreover, it’s not just that, as a matter of fact, scientists don’t behave as naive falsificationism implies they should, they are typically right not to do so."
הספר חובות הלבבות שער א - שער היחוד פרק ו, מחדד טענה הזאת, ובין השאר מתבטא שם, אשר כל אדם "בריא" בנפשו, ודאי אינו מסוגל לסבור שהעולם נוצר, בלי כוונת מכוון. רק אדם בלתי שפוי, יכול להעלות על דעתו אפשרות כזאת
(= YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE TO THINK SO)!
מאז זמן החובות הלבבות, מלפני 900 שנה ועד עתה, הנה נתגלה המורכבות
(= COMPLEXITY)
שבבריאה, הלא
מיליוני פעמים
.יותר! מן הנודע בתקופתו
I HAVE NEVER HEARD OR READ ANY COHERENT ANSWER AT ALL, TO THE SIMPLEST QUESTION HE PLACES THERE:
והלא תראה, אם ישפך לאדם דיו פתאום על נייר חלק, שא"א שיצטייר ממנו עליו כתב מסודר ושיטות נקראות כמו שיהיה בקולמוס. ואלו הביא אדם לפנינו כתב מסודר ממה שאי אפשר להיות מבלי מצוע קולמוס, ואומר, כי נשפך הדיו על הנייר, ונעשתה צורת הכתב עליו מעצמה, היינו ממהרים להכזיבו על פניו, שאיננו נמלט מכוונת מכוון
IF EVOLUTION CAN CREATE THIS UTTERLY AMAZING UNIVERSE, WHY CAN'T IT FORM EVEN ONE PAGE OF SENSIBLE SCRIPT, WHETHER AT ONCE, OR OVER 14 BILLION YEARS??
:הערה נוספת
.לפי שיטת בעלי האבולוציה, הרי הכלל הגדול הוא שהחזק שורד ("כל דאלים גבר")
!אבל מסתבר, כי האמת להיפך לגמרי: החלש שורד דווקא
WHO'S STRONGER , DINOSAURS OR MAMMALS, AND WHO SURVIVED??
WHO'S STRONGER, ANCIENT EYGPT, BABYLONIA, PERSIA, GREECE, ROME, ETC., ETC., STALIN AND THE COMMUNIST REGIME, HITLER AND THE THIRD REICH, OR THE POOR JEWS, AND WHO SURVIVED??
WHO'S STRONGER, PUTIN AND HIS GREAT RUSSIA, OR ZELENSKY (THE JEW...) AND HIS UKRAINE ...
So you are rejecting Slifkin's evolution on scientific grounds-not theological ones-but you seem to have no problem rejecting the same science on theological grounds...I'm confused.
Are you willing to accept Slifkin's theory - yes or no? Why are you suddenly bound by the scientific position that you reject. You reject that position because it is predicated on Atheism, but you say it is for that very reason - Atheism - that science rejects Theistic Evolution. So simple math would say if you reject the Atheism part but still accept the science, you can accept Slifkin's theory.
I don't agree it is simple math. I believe that Darwinian natural selection is the central claim of the theory of evolution. It is not just some side point. Theistic evolution, to whatever extent you can call it a "theory", is no more scientific than saying Hashem made many separate creations. Is it technically possible? As I say in the end, sure, maybe (provided it can somehow fit into the Torah). I don't reject it out of hand. But science it is not (currently, as far as we know).
I think there are 2 totally separate ideas that often get mixed together is discussions like this. They are inherently separate ideas, and we should speak about them separately.
1. Evolution. The scientists claim that everything we see is the product of evolution. What they mean, is that there is no God, and all life that we see is the product of random mutations and natural selection. This is completely incompatible with our Torah. The Torah says that Hashem created life, that means evolution, as described by the scientists, is flat out wrong.
One can make the argument that evolution was not random, but it was a process guided by Hashem to get specific results. That means, life we see was not because of random mutations and natural selection. It is a result of Hashem 'tinkering' with life to get specific, intended results. The mainstream scientists, from what I have seen, do not really give this idea any credence at all. They start off assuming there is no God, and work from there.
2. Age of the world. This is really a separate idea than evolution. The responses to this are not necessarily the same responses to evolution.
These 2 ideas often are mentioned hand in hand. In order for the theory of evolution to work, there has to be billions of years. You will not find an evolutionist who believes the world is only thousands of years old. They HAVE to maintain that the world is billions of years old. If one can prove that the methods used by scientists to date the world are wrong, then evolution can not have happened. End of story.
The theory of evolution itself, is very sketchy. Scientists constantly change their minds about how things happened. There is so much that is unexplained, that had this been any other theory, it would have been rejected out of hand by the scientific community. It is only the necessity on their part to deny God that allows such a dysfunctional theory to have any credence whatsoever.
In my mind, questions about the age of the universe require a more serious discussion. The scientists have various methods to date various things (rocks, fossils, stars etc.), and each of these need to be addressed. Using the ideas in the previous post, that the world was created in a mature state, can answer much of these questions.
Excellent post. Slifkin actually deals with this in his The Science of Torah, which is much better (and far less kefirahdik) than his later Challenge of Creation.
There are two main parts of evolution- the fact that everything came from one organism, which matches the fossil and other evidence very well and i think is indisputable, and the mechanism. I personally also have trouble with the claimed mechanism being completely accidental. I think it is one of the niflaos haborei in that He made life so adaptable. It is far more efficient to make one form of life that can adapt to any environment than to make many different forms of life. That alone is proof of Hashem in my opinion.
The Gosse hypothesis is insufficient to account for the detailed evolutionary history, Dovids posts not withstanding.
I agree that the mainstream consensus is that everything came from one organism, but the creationists do dispute this. As I mention here, I am not sure if I find the evidence convincing. Among my questions are - why would evolution dictate that everything come from one organism? Why couldn't multiple organisms arise simultaneously or over time? Or are you saying that that is just how Hashem made it?
The Ramban does entertain the possibility of the Greek idea that the world started with the Hyle,(היולי) only that God made it. That shouldn't pose much of an issue. Although see the beginning of sefer haIkrim that this goes against the Rambams understanding of יש מאין.
(Evolution does not have a satisfactory explanation for the first cell. It is far more difficult to explain the origin of life than its evolution. They claim the odds are so low it could only have happened once. I claim it happened once because Hashem wanted it to happen once.
Yes, I have. I found it... to put it nicely... very interesting. It's a great read, for sure.
But it belongs under fantasy, not science. You can't make up your own sevaros to shtim some selected midrashim (but not all) taken literally with some scientific facts, while ignoring both the rest of science, the impact your theories should have in the real world (many of his theories do not match with existing scientific evidence at all, except for the ones he selectively and mistakenly cites), and common sense.
He's a frum Velikovsky, but taken to the next level.
I am not a fan. Let's leave it at that. I have addressed it in the comments elsewhere I believe.
There is no such thing as fundamental time. He does not understand relativity at all. At the end he also uses google maps to find natural formations that look like adam and chava !?
He also misuses Mary Shweizer's famous dinosaur tissue discovery, postulating that dinosaur tissue decays according to "fundamental time" (whatever that means). However, if true, every such dinosaur should have remnants, not just one! Far more likely it is actually millions of years old, and some weird fluke of nature kept the tissue whole in this fossil.
Your erudition is impressive. I cite him because here in this post we have evolutionists arguing that if there was creation then why do species have so much in common? Why don't they have completely separate body designs? Says Rabbi Brown in that book, why should the Creator bother with new designs if the old one worked fine?
Or in longhand, my words not Rabbi Brown's, on the fifth day pentadactyl limbed water creatures were created (maybe also bats) and וירא אלוקים כי טוב... ויהי ערב ויהי בוקר יום חמישי. And seeing that they were טוב, the Creator used the same design on יום השישי for that day's creatures too.
I feel like we haven't discussed this adequately, and you haven't been satisfied by my responses yet. I agree that this pre-Adamite civilization may be the biggest issue, as DNS pointed out in his book. Can you please outline which parts you find unsatisfying with what I said and why?
My basic response so far is that:
1. There couldn't be a physical world in the way we know it today without these physical histories. The Grand Canyon, by its very definition, is millions of years old. There is clear evidence of water passing through that area, forming the beauty we see today. This isn't bothersome (correct? I'll make no assumptions) because that is what the Grand Canyon is; its history is its very makeup.
2. I now posit that evolution is the very same thing! The very makeup of your hand includes those histories you find in archeological sites. Your hand is the process of these histories, and without them we wouldn't have a physical hand. Unlike the Grand Canyon, which was molded by water and minerals, the earth and its history is the molding ground for our physical hands. Are the details of the sites too overwhelming? If so, what would you have done as God; isn't the alternative to have gaps of ambiguaty in the Earth?
3. If your issue is if Adam had a mother in law (he didn't) being that this also must be a part of our history, that will be addressed (parenthetically) in my next post beH.
If the world was created with all the histories baked in, then there would have needed to be many people created as well at the time of creation, for the same reason. You can't have it both ways.
Well, we'll touch in the next post why I don't think, for example, that Adam Harishon had a Shvigger bossing him around. The histories built in were of a specific genre. Although I won't deal with this directly, I will be setting my humble guidelines for this... But yes, the archeological civilizations should fit in with my guidelines, as detailed as they are.
There are supposedly many civilizations that existed straight through the supposed time of creation, such as many Indian civilizations. I find it funny Hashem would make such supposedly human created evidence, as opposed to natural evidence which can fully accept.. Eg, caveman drawings, ancient temples etc.
"working through nature" according to an atheist means through blind chance, and "natural selection" means the fittest traits that developed by chance are the most likely to survive. This whole idea as a way of explaining the development of sophisticated life-forms that appear to be designed, if it was possible, is something that bypasses the need for G-d.
Amazing stuff. Koi lechoi!
One thing. What do you mean that falsifiability as a necessary component of science is a myth? Isn't that the very definition of the scientific method? (true induction being ultimately impossible, the scientific method establishes facts "for all intents and purposes" through repeated and comprehensive attempts at disproving them under laboratory conditions. Or at least that's what I've always been taught. Was I lied to?)
You weren't lied to. Falsification in a very general sense plays an important role in the overall outlook of science, but only in a general sense. Here is an excerpt from the link:
"...I’m about to explain why most philosophers of science think falsificationism, despite its appeal, is actually mistaken. In order to understand why, we must take a closer look at what people actually do when they test a theory. Let’s go back once again to Newton’s law of universal gravitation and think about how one would go to test it. On its own, the law does not have any observable consequences, because it just says something about the forces that exist in the world and forces are not observable. You can’t see the gravitational force one physical object exerts on another. What you can see is only the effect it has on the motion of that object.
So you need something that provides the link between the forces that act on a physical object and its motion. This is precisely what Newton’s second law of motion does. This law of motion, expressed mathematically as F = ma, says that the total force on a physical object is equal to the product of its mass and its acceleration. . Since the acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect to time, it connects something unobservable, i. e. the total force on the object, to something observable, i. e. the position of this object at different times. In order to use to test the law of universal gravitation with the help of Newton’s second law of motion, however, you also need to know something about the masses of the physical objects, as well as their position at different times. This requires using various instruments to measure position, mass and time, which in turn means that you have to make several assumptions about the way in which those instruments work, guaranteeing they are reliable.
Thus, in order to test even a theory as straightforward as Newton’s law of universal gravitation, you need to make a lot of auxiliary hypotheses. The law of universal gravitation by itself doesn’t make any observable prediction. This isn’t just true of the law of universal gravitation, it’s true of any theory whatsoever. Just take any theory you’d like and think about how you’d go about to test it and you’ll soon realize that, in order to so, you need to make a lot of hypotheses that are not part of the theory itself. In general, a theory is never testable on its own, but only with the help of various auxiliary hypotheses or background assumptions. This means that a theory is never falsifiable simpliciter, but only relative to a set of background assumptions. Therefore, if we say that a theory is only scientific if it’s falsifiable, then it follows that no theory, not even a theory as successful as Newton’s law of universal gravitation, is scientific. Of course, this is absurd, so falsificationism is false.
But this was a bit quick and perhaps you are not entirely convinced yet, so let’s continue to examine the implications of the fact that a theory is only falsifiable relative to a set of background assumptions. Suppose that you derive a prediction from the law of universal gravitation, plus a bunch of auxiliary hypotheses, but it doesn’t come true. From a purely logical point of view, the only conclusion you can draw from this is at least one of the hypotheses you used to derive the prediction is false, but logic doesn’t tell you which one. It could be the law of universal gravitation, but it could also be one or several of the various auxiliary hypotheses you had to make in order to derive the prediction, you just don’t know. Strictly speaking, since the failure of a prediction derived from a theory plus a bunch of background assumptions doesn’t logically imply the falsity of the theory, it can’t falsify it. The failure of the prediction only falsifies the theory if you assume that the background assumptions necessary to derive that prediction are true.
In practice, although they frequently pay lip service to falsificationism when they talk about methodology, scientists are perfectly aware of that and don’t behave at all like they should according to naive falsificationism. Indeed, when a prediction derived from a theory they take to be well-established fails, scientists don’t just throw away the theory and start looking for a replacement. Instead, they generally assume that one of the background assumptions necessary to derive the prediction, which are often left implicit, was false and try to figure out which one it was. Moreover, it’s not just that, as a matter of fact, scientists don’t behave as naive falsificationism implies they should, they are typically right not to do so."
Great pictures!
Thank you!
Happy, r u Eli Yitzchak Fine?
למה זה תשאל לשמי
:סליחה על שאני מגיב גם בעברית
טענת כותב מאמר זה מן התכנון
(= DESIGN)
!היא עצומה, ניצחת, ואין עליה תשובה
הספר חובות הלבבות שער א - שער היחוד פרק ו, מחדד טענה הזאת, ובין השאר מתבטא שם, אשר כל אדם "בריא" בנפשו, ודאי אינו מסוגל לסבור שהעולם נוצר, בלי כוונת מכוון. רק אדם בלתי שפוי, יכול להעלות על דעתו אפשרות כזאת
(= YOU HAVE TO BE INSANE TO THINK SO)!
מאז זמן החובות הלבבות, מלפני 900 שנה ועד עתה, הנה נתגלה המורכבות
(= COMPLEXITY)
שבבריאה, הלא
מיליוני פעמים
.יותר! מן הנודע בתקופתו
I HAVE NEVER HEARD OR READ ANY COHERENT ANSWER AT ALL, TO THE SIMPLEST QUESTION HE PLACES THERE:
והלא תראה, אם ישפך לאדם דיו פתאום על נייר חלק, שא"א שיצטייר ממנו עליו כתב מסודר ושיטות נקראות כמו שיהיה בקולמוס. ואלו הביא אדם לפנינו כתב מסודר ממה שאי אפשר להיות מבלי מצוע קולמוס, ואומר, כי נשפך הדיו על הנייר, ונעשתה צורת הכתב עליו מעצמה, היינו ממהרים להכזיבו על פניו, שאיננו נמלט מכוונת מכוון
IF EVOLUTION CAN CREATE THIS UTTERLY AMAZING UNIVERSE, WHY CAN'T IT FORM EVEN ONE PAGE OF SENSIBLE SCRIPT, WHETHER AT ONCE, OR OVER 14 BILLION YEARS??
:הערה נוספת
.לפי שיטת בעלי האבולוציה, הרי הכלל הגדול הוא שהחזק שורד ("כל דאלים גבר")
!אבל מסתבר, כי האמת להיפך לגמרי: החלש שורד דווקא
WHO'S STRONGER , DINOSAURS OR MAMMALS, AND WHO SURVIVED??
WHO'S STRONGER, ANCIENT EYGPT, BABYLONIA, PERSIA, GREECE, ROME, ETC., ETC., STALIN AND THE COMMUNIST REGIME, HITLER AND THE THIRD REICH, OR THE POOR JEWS, AND WHO SURVIVED??
WHO'S STRONGER, PUTIN AND HIS GREAT RUSSIA, OR ZELENSKY (THE JEW...) AND HIS UKRAINE ...
Great post! Clear and sophisticated as usual. EDIT would love to discuss details, here or email?
Let's have this discussion in email
So you are rejecting Slifkin's evolution on scientific grounds-not theological ones-but you seem to have no problem rejecting the same science on theological grounds...I'm confused.
Are you willing to accept Slifkin's theory - yes or no? Why are you suddenly bound by the scientific position that you reject. You reject that position because it is predicated on Atheism, but you say it is for that very reason - Atheism - that science rejects Theistic Evolution. So simple math would say if you reject the Atheism part but still accept the science, you can accept Slifkin's theory.
I don't agree it is simple math. I believe that Darwinian natural selection is the central claim of the theory of evolution. It is not just some side point. Theistic evolution, to whatever extent you can call it a "theory", is no more scientific than saying Hashem made many separate creations. Is it technically possible? As I say in the end, sure, maybe (provided it can somehow fit into the Torah). I don't reject it out of hand. But science it is not (currently, as far as we know).
As an anti-vaxxer (for scientific reasons!), I don't and can't agree wuth that part.
All the rest is very convincing and well argued
As a moon denier! (For scientific reasons!)
As a flat earther! (For scientific reasons!)
I think there are 2 totally separate ideas that often get mixed together is discussions like this. They are inherently separate ideas, and we should speak about them separately.
1. Evolution. The scientists claim that everything we see is the product of evolution. What they mean, is that there is no God, and all life that we see is the product of random mutations and natural selection. This is completely incompatible with our Torah. The Torah says that Hashem created life, that means evolution, as described by the scientists, is flat out wrong.
One can make the argument that evolution was not random, but it was a process guided by Hashem to get specific results. That means, life we see was not because of random mutations and natural selection. It is a result of Hashem 'tinkering' with life to get specific, intended results. The mainstream scientists, from what I have seen, do not really give this idea any credence at all. They start off assuming there is no God, and work from there.
2. Age of the world. This is really a separate idea than evolution. The responses to this are not necessarily the same responses to evolution.
These 2 ideas often are mentioned hand in hand. In order for the theory of evolution to work, there has to be billions of years. You will not find an evolutionist who believes the world is only thousands of years old. They HAVE to maintain that the world is billions of years old. If one can prove that the methods used by scientists to date the world are wrong, then evolution can not have happened. End of story.
The theory of evolution itself, is very sketchy. Scientists constantly change their minds about how things happened. There is so much that is unexplained, that had this been any other theory, it would have been rejected out of hand by the scientific community. It is only the necessity on their part to deny God that allows such a dysfunctional theory to have any credence whatsoever.
In my mind, questions about the age of the universe require a more serious discussion. The scientists have various methods to date various things (rocks, fossils, stars etc.), and each of these need to be addressed. Using the ideas in the previous post, that the world was created in a mature state, can answer much of these questions.
Excellent post. Slifkin actually deals with this in his The Science of Torah, which is much better (and far less kefirahdik) than his later Challenge of Creation.
There are two main parts of evolution- the fact that everything came from one organism, which matches the fossil and other evidence very well and i think is indisputable, and the mechanism. I personally also have trouble with the claimed mechanism being completely accidental. I think it is one of the niflaos haborei in that He made life so adaptable. It is far more efficient to make one form of life that can adapt to any environment than to make many different forms of life. That alone is proof of Hashem in my opinion.
The Gosse hypothesis is insufficient to account for the detailed evolutionary history, Dovids posts not withstanding.
I agree that the mainstream consensus is that everything came from one organism, but the creationists do dispute this. As I mention here, I am not sure if I find the evidence convincing. Among my questions are - why would evolution dictate that everything come from one organism? Why couldn't multiple organisms arise simultaneously or over time? Or are you saying that that is just how Hashem made it?
The Ramban does entertain the possibility of the Greek idea that the world started with the Hyle,(היולי) only that God made it. That shouldn't pose much of an issue. Although see the beginning of sefer haIkrim that this goes against the Rambams understanding of יש מאין.
It could have. This is just how it happened.
(Evolution does not have a satisfactory explanation for the first cell. It is far more difficult to explain the origin of life than its evolution. They claim the odds are so low it could only have happened once. I claim it happened once because Hashem wanted it to happen once.
Hi, I see that you are well read with R Bogacz'es book. Have you read this one too?
https://menuchapublishers.com/collections/rabbi-dovid-brown/products/mysteries-of-the-creation
Yes, I have. I found it... to put it nicely... very interesting. It's a great read, for sure.
But it belongs under fantasy, not science. You can't make up your own sevaros to shtim some selected midrashim (but not all) taken literally with some scientific facts, while ignoring both the rest of science, the impact your theories should have in the real world (many of his theories do not match with existing scientific evidence at all, except for the ones he selectively and mistakenly cites), and common sense.
He's a frum Velikovsky, but taken to the next level.
Wonder then what you have to say about Alexander Hool's book "the six days of creation"...
(Or any of his other books for that matter)
I am not a fan. Let's leave it at that. I have addressed it in the comments elsewhere I believe.
There is no such thing as fundamental time. He does not understand relativity at all. At the end he also uses google maps to find natural formations that look like adam and chava !?
He also misuses Mary Shweizer's famous dinosaur tissue discovery, postulating that dinosaur tissue decays according to "fundamental time" (whatever that means). However, if true, every such dinosaur should have remnants, not just one! Far more likely it is actually millions of years old, and some weird fluke of nature kept the tissue whole in this fossil.
Your erudition is impressive. I cite him because here in this post we have evolutionists arguing that if there was creation then why do species have so much in common? Why don't they have completely separate body designs? Says Rabbi Brown in that book, why should the Creator bother with new designs if the old one worked fine?
Or in longhand, my words not Rabbi Brown's, on the fifth day pentadactyl limbed water creatures were created (maybe also bats) and וירא אלוקים כי טוב... ויהי ערב ויהי בוקר יום חמישי. And seeing that they were טוב, the Creator used the same design on יום השישי for that day's creatures too.
I've read every book on Torah and Science I could get my hands on.
Rabbi Brown's pshat seems quite farfetched, IMO.
I will also add I find the evidence for pre-Adamite civilizations very compelling.
I feel like we haven't discussed this adequately, and you haven't been satisfied by my responses yet. I agree that this pre-Adamite civilization may be the biggest issue, as DNS pointed out in his book. Can you please outline which parts you find unsatisfying with what I said and why?
My basic response so far is that:
1. There couldn't be a physical world in the way we know it today without these physical histories. The Grand Canyon, by its very definition, is millions of years old. There is clear evidence of water passing through that area, forming the beauty we see today. This isn't bothersome (correct? I'll make no assumptions) because that is what the Grand Canyon is; its history is its very makeup.
2. I now posit that evolution is the very same thing! The very makeup of your hand includes those histories you find in archeological sites. Your hand is the process of these histories, and without them we wouldn't have a physical hand. Unlike the Grand Canyon, which was molded by water and minerals, the earth and its history is the molding ground for our physical hands. Are the details of the sites too overwhelming? If so, what would you have done as God; isn't the alternative to have gaps of ambiguaty in the Earth?
3. If your issue is if Adam had a mother in law (he didn't) being that this also must be a part of our history, that will be addressed (parenthetically) in my next post beH.
If the world was created with all the histories baked in, then there would have needed to be many people created as well at the time of creation, for the same reason. You can't have it both ways.
Well, we'll touch in the next post why I don't think, for example, that Adam Harishon had a Shvigger bossing him around. The histories built in were of a specific genre. Although I won't deal with this directly, I will be setting my humble guidelines for this... But yes, the archeological civilizations should fit in with my guidelines, as detailed as they are.
Agreed. Well put.
There are supposedly many civilizations that existed straight through the supposed time of creation, such as many Indian civilizations. I find it funny Hashem would make such supposedly human created evidence, as opposed to natural evidence which can fully accept.. Eg, caveman drawings, ancient temples etc.
"working through nature" according to an atheist means through blind chance, and "natural selection" means the fittest traits that developed by chance are the most likely to survive. This whole idea as a way of explaining the development of sophisticated life-forms that appear to be designed, if it was possible, is something that bypasses the need for G-d.