What do Jews think of evolution?

It occurred to me recently that I never hear of “fundamentalist Jews” opposing the teaching of evolution, or arguing passionately for creationist “science”. This seems odd, since the scriptural sources that lead fundamentalist Christians to oppose evolution are common between the two religions.

So, does Judaism oppose the idea of evolution on scriptural grounds? Does a large percentage of Jews oppose the teaching of evolution, their voices being drowned out by the comparatively large number of Christians?

If not, then what makes the difference? Is Judaism less rigid about interpreting the scriptures literally? Is there a difference here between Orthodox, Conservative and Reform?

I checked a couple of sources on Jewish theology, but couldn’t find any reference to this topic at all.

Generally speaking, there’s no “party line.” Conservative and Reform Jews, certainly, feel no obligation to take the Torah (first five books of the Bible) text as literal, letter-for-letter accurate. I believe most Orthodox Jews would say that the text is letter-for-letter God-given, but that the interpretation of the text is left to humans (specifically, rabbinic traditions)… thus, evolution could easily be one of the tools that God used to create the universe, and the two concepts (evolution and a Creator) are not incompatible.

I think that a common approach within Judaism would be that, although the Torah is eternal, it is written in the language and understanding of the time it was given, about 3500 years ago. It used symbols (such as “the finger of God”) that would be understood at that time. The sections on diseases, for instance, relate to a fairly primitive understanding; God did not reveal at Sinai how bacteria cause disease. That wasn’t the purpose of the Torah. Mankind’s understanding of how God’s world works changes and grows over the centuries.

That help?

There are undoubtedly a few very right-wing fundamentalist Jews who would not accept evolution, and there are probably a few scattered through the other branches as well.

somewhere in the http://www.talkorigins.org website, they list the religions that accept evolution. I think at least one branch of Judaism did. The Roman Catholic Church does.

As a reform Jew, I can tell you that I personally believe in Evolution though that doesn’t mean I necessarily don’t believe creation isn’t possible. After all, if we go back far enough in the whole man-from-an-ape-from-a-marsupial type regression, you are still left with… where did the basic building blocks of life such as amino acids and the four base pairs of DNA originate? Why not believe that God placed them there and let life progate as it did to where we are now? And I’m not 100% sure I even believe that. I just know that I don’t know the answer right now.

The one thing I think you can say about Jews of any extreme is that the religion values education very strongly, and with education comes the knowledge of rational reasoning that allows one to surmise how things might come together, etc. This is NOT, by the way, meant to be a troll about how all creationist are uneducated idiots. I think we just differ on where God threw out the instruction manual and let the perpetual motion machine of life go on its own.

This points out one of the differences in worldview that Jews and Christians have. As a Christian who attends a Reform synagogue (it’s a long story), I ran into this difference early on. I remember asking my rabbi “What IS it that Jews believe in?” She had the good graces not to laugh in my face. She could have answered “whatever they want to, what they believe in is kind of beside the point”.

Christians are concerned what you believe, what you feel, and what mystical experiences you have (being “born again”, for instance). For Jews it’s simple (ha ha): obey G-d. So Jews don’t split theological hairs, Christians sometimes do.

The Jewish emphasis in learning in general is an natural extension of obeying the commandment to learn Torah. There is no exhortation to accept every word in Torah as literal, even in Orthodox Judaism.

The differences between Orthodox/Conservative/Reform has more to do with who’s interpretation of Torah is authoritative. Orthodox believes the Talmud is authoritative, period. Conservative, believes that new interpretations are allowable by consensus. Reform believes in personal interpretation.

Someone will feel free to correct me if I got something wrong.

It’s also, as I understand, hard to find any significant numbers of creationists even among Christians outside of the U.S.

I vaugly recall a forum on C-span involving extremly conservative (in the political sense) Jews lamenting the state of American Culture. The only one I recall clearly was film critic Micheal Medved. I do recall several other panelists denouncing evolution with the same fervor that christian fundies have.

However the question seems a little silly, if you’ll forgive me for saying so. Jews, like Christians, have all sorts of beliefs, and you’ll be able to find a Jew on any side of almost any issue

For a very interesting description of the Jewish viewpoint on evolution, read two books by Gerald Schroeder:
*Genesis and the Big Bang *and The Science of God

He shows how there is no real contradiction between the latest findings of science and the Bible’s description of the creation.

<< So Jews don’t split theological hairs, Christians sometimes do. >>

Theological hairs, no. Legalistic hairs, absolutely. An argument can be made that the Talmud is the ancestor and originator of legalistic hair-splitting.

6 days. 12 billion years. same thing.

That’s actually his point. I can’t really do the books justice in this post, and I suggest you read them. His ideas have a lot to do with the relativity of time, and how 6 days are on “Eternal time”. Only when man was created “the part of the universe where man dwells started to operate in the same space-time reference frame as its Creator. At this point, the chronology of the Bible and the flow of time on Earth became one – the common space-time relation between God and man was now fixed”.

A majority of Orthodox Jews oppose the idea of evolution. Including myself. Whereas there are passages of the bible which may be subject to a non literal interpretation, this has not been accepted with regards to evolution. The feeling is that much of evolution is based on unknowable speculation, and the scientific underpinnings of the theory have enormous unexplained gaps. I would rather go with what has been passed down for generations.

The reason their voices are not heard is, besides the reason cited in the OP, because the vast majority of Orthodox Jews do not send their children to public schools. Thus they do not battle over the curriculum to be taught there.

CKDextHavn, right you are. Christian theologians form factions of folk who believe the same way, and the fights can get ugly. The forced conversions of the Inquisition and burning “heretics” at the stake were all outgrowths of that focus.

On the other hand, you’ve got the Talmudic rabbis going to extremes (in my opinion), especially when it comes to Kashrut. I didn’t take biology in high school, but the last time I checked, chickens don’t suckle their young. Yet cream of chicken soup is considered treyf (sp?) presumably because it might not actually be chicken.

IzzyR

But the sad fact is the science is on extremely solid ground, so this cannot reasonably be the justification for opposing evolution.

IzzyR:

Well, certainly many do. However, there’s any number of Orthodox Jews who are on the fence regarding the issue. One thing for certain, though: even those Orthodox Jews who decide that the theory of evolution is reconcilable with the Torah (and there are a few different schools on how to do this, if it’s to be done at all) would oppose the idea of evolution by chance. If evolution happened, it was directed by G-d, not by random mutations.

Joltsucker:

I think this is only partially correct. I think the reason it’s trayf is not so much because the substance the eater thinks is chicken might not actually be chicken, but because since chicken is so much like mammal meat, if someone is used to eating chicken with dairy products, it’s a simple mistake to go from there to eating meat with dairy products.

Thanks for the polite response to my flippant remark. I would be interested in seeing his line of thinking, but from what I have seen in the past, many of these types of accomodations are not based on any evidence.

Also note that Big Bang Theory and the Theory of Evolution (two entirely separate subjects by the way) do not deny the existence of God, even though they are often brought into such discussions because they contradict some interpretations of scripture.

Hardcore:

Is this so? I haven’t looked into the matter in quite some time, but I got the opposite impression? Are you sure you’re not referring to the very basic concepts (random mutations, natural selection etc.)? It’s a long way from there to a full blown explanation of the world based on evolution.

(I think I once saw Isaac Asimov writing that you could not disprove evolution based on the fact that as it presently stands it is rediculously improbable that such a sequence of events should actually occur, as there may be as-yet-undiscovered natural laws which guided the process. True, but not very confidence-inspiring).

I think it was Sherlock Holmes, or some other fictional detective, who said “when you’ve eliminated the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the correct solution”. My gut feeling is that the popularity of evolution as a theory is due to the fact that to men of science, the biblical creation of the world by God is “impossible” - it is simply not within their range of thought. Evolution is “whatever is left no matter how improbable”.

IzzyR,

Would the opinion of every Nobel prize winner living in the US in 1986 convince you? They filed a brief with the Supreme Court in support of evolution at that time stating that it had been “…as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept.”

Since you haven’t done so in quite some time, do yourself a favor and investigate the latest evidence for evolution. Pay particular attention to the recent discoveries in the field of Genetics. The abundance of information will astound you if you are willing to see it.

Trying to state that a sequence of events is “ridiculously improbable” has little meaning. Shuffle a deck of cards, and no matter what their exact order is, it is extremely improbable you will have arrived at that order. Yet there you are.

The popularity of evolution as a theory is due to the fact that to men of science, it is the only one that fits all of the available evidence.

IzzyR:

Good grief, man, just look at my signature line! Of course it’s Sherlock!

And, I must say, this very issue is one of the reasons that I like my signature line so much.

Chaim Mattis Keller

hardcore:

It would not. These men are among the best and brightest in their fields, but they are all biased by being scientists. As such they will not accept as a possibility any concept that has not been established through scientific methods. Furthemore, these men see the very battles over creatonism as a battle over the supremacy of science itself, and in this battle they are determined to see science get the upper hand. As I mentioned, it’s been a while since I have looked into the concepts of evolution, but I am quite certain that the idea that evolution is “as thoroughly corroborated as any biological concept” is ludicrous. There are many biological concepts that are observable, testable and verifiable. The very fact that these scientists are making such outlandish statements is testimony to the fact that they are making their assertion without careful regard for the truth.

This is part of a larger issue, perhap worthy of a thread of its own, of scientists treating the sum of scientific knowledge in a given field as truth, and not acknowledging the extent of their inability to get a good grasp of the facts through scientific methods. Someday…

The field of evolution is a large field, and I don’t think it’s something you could just look up here and there to “pick up the latest developments”. But I’ll keep my eyes open, in case I come across anything.

This is an excellent point, and one which must be borne in mind in this discussion. However, there is one significant difference between the deck of cards scenario and the one that where discussing. It is that for the deck-of-cards scenario no particular arrangement has any significance, whereas for evolution only one arrangement will work at all. So supposing a creature had to evolve an eye, for example. Out of the billions of mutations that could have created some appendage, only one will create a functioning eye. Evolution requires that this one be the one that actually happened. And this must be duplicated for many other evolutionary developments as well.