Avodah Mailing List

Volume 13 : Number 068

Saturday, August 14 2004

• lice
• Gilgul
• Yom Tov in the Torah
• cancer as punishment
• Re: cancer as punishment
• Re: Michael Behe: *Darwin's Black Box*
• Re: Michael Behe: *Darwin's Black Box*
• Re: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Re: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Re: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Re: Michael Behe: *Darwin's Black Box*
• Evolution vs. Design
• RE: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Re: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Evoluton and Creation
• RE: Scientists and religion
• Re: WAS Evolution and Creationism
• Evolution shmevolution...
• RE: Michael Behe: *Darwin's Black Box*

RDE writes
> Does anyone know of any poskim who say that the halacha has changed
> because of the scientific rejections of spontaneous generation? I
> have found only a single source - the Pachad Yitzchok. Even the Pachad
> Yitzchok's rebbe insisted that the halacha did not change ...
>                                          . Furthermore even such an
> advocate of scientific knowledge as Rav Hertzog (Heichel Yitzchok #29) -
> insisted that the halacha about lice has not changed because of scientific
> discovery....

The question is why this emphasis on lice. It is well known that numerous
poskim including RMF have changed individual halachot because science
has changed. Usually with the answer of nishtane hateva. One example
is the possibility of a pregnant woman becomg nidah and of course the 8
month fetus. There are many other examples discussed in R. Gutal's book
and other articles.

So why not just simply state that though lice may have spontaneously
generated in the days of chazal they no longer do so and so it is
forbidden to kill them on shabbat like the Pachad Yitzchak.
In summary the Pachad Yiyzchak may be a single posek in the case of lice
but his sevara is used by many other poskim.
This is in fact the thrust of the article by Shlomo Sternberg in BDD
without mentioned the Pachad Yiyzchak.

kol tuv,
Eli Turkel

From:shmuel [via RSBA]
>> We ended our last round of gilgul with a statement by one to the
>> effect that we find no source prior to the Ari regarding gilgul in
>> lower forms of life.....
>> The sefer Avodas HaKodesh (R' Meir ibn Gabbai - born approx 50 years
>> before the Ari/Remak) part 2, chapters 32-34 in chapter 33 lambasts the
>> Ikkrim for his scepticism:
...

From: "Seth Mandel" <sm@aishdas.org>
> This should not come as a surprise to anyone. It is well known that
> the Ari did not invent the idea of gilgulim. the question is how did
> they come to pre-expulsion Spain, when they were not mentioned at all
> by earlier rishonim, even by the m'qubbolim such as chasidei Ashk'naz,
> and contradict some of their ideas. But no one serious claimed that they
> did not exist in the time of the later rishonim.

Rabbenu Bachaye and Isaac of Acco (Perush to Ramban) openly discuss
gilgulim.
Are you saying that it would be a chiddush if the Rokeach did?

HG Schild

In Yalkut Shimoni Devarim (Perek 16, Remez 902)and elsewhere, it brings
that there are three places where Yamim Tovim are mentioned in the
Torah....paraphrased... Emor for their order, Pinchas for Korbanot and
Reeh for the Tzibur (Aliyah L'Regel).

There are "really" 4 counting Ki Tissa. Do any mefarshim elaborate why
this was necessary and the meaning of the exceptions within this rule
(as in Shofar being mentioned in Pinchas)?

HG Schild 

Micha writes
> Second, Rav Eliashiv doesn't say that a person gets cancer ch"v because of
> his chata'im. Rather, that the upsurge in number of cancer (makah she'ein
> lah refu'ah, which I presume is meant idiomatically as cancer) patients is
> because of an upsurge in chata'im. Not an assertion of onesh behai alma
> on a personal level, but rather an observation of the state of the nation.

Since the rate of cancer has not risen faster among Jews than among
non-Jews one is forced to conclude that this type of schar ve-onesh
applies to all nations and not just Jews

Again, I am never clear why cancer is singled out of all diseases.
As others have pointed out actually recent medicines have a greater cure
rate. If I had to pick THE disease that is connected to chataim I
would assume AIDS has a greater connection.

kol tuv,
Eli Turkel

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 07:08:04PM +0300, eli turkel wrote:
: Again, I am never clear why cancer is singled out of all diseases.
: As others have pointed out actually recent medicines have a greater cure
: rate. If I had to pick THE disease that is connected to chataim I
: would assume AIDS has a greater connection.

AIDS is not well enough correlated for this explanation to do much.

As I understood him based on REMT's email to Areivim, RYSE was
paraphrasing "Kol ham'vazeh talmid chacham ein r'fuah l'makaso". The fact
that "makah she'ein lah refu'ah" is an idiom (BH often an inaccurate one)
in some circles for cancer implied it was that particular machalah in
mind. I don't know if that's really what RYSE meant, or how the reporter
took it.

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "I hear, then I forget; I see, then I remember;
micha@aishdas.org        I do, then I understand." - Confucius
http://www.aishdas.org   "Hearing doesn't compare to seeing." - Mechilta
Fax: (270) 514-1507      "We will do and we will listen." - Israelites

T613K@aol.com wrote:
> Have you read Behe's book? It doesn't sound like it. You really should
> read it, it's a great book, and fascinating to anyone with some knowledge
> of and interest in science.

I have read a summery of his views and I think I know what he is trying
to say. At best, "irreducible complexity" is a misnomer, IMHO beacuse
it implies an infinite number of complexities which would make cellular
construction infinite in nature. To say that the cell is exeedingly
complex with each componenet interacting in perfrect harmony with every
other component is one thing. To say it is irreducible is another.

HM

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 11:19:24AM -0700, Harry Maryles wrote:
: I have read a summery of his views and I think I know what he is trying
: to say. At best, "irreducible complexity" is a misnomer, IMHO beacuse
: it implies an infinite number of complexities which would make cellular
: construction infinite in nature...

First, irreducible complexity isn't really about cellular construction.
Behe is a microbiologist, so his examples are in that venue. And therefore
so will the counterarguments and the rest of the dialogue. But there
are examples on the organ and even ecosystem levels.

"Irreducible complexity" refers to a system of multiple parts
("complexity") that need to all coexist in order to have value, and
furthermore that one or some of the parts without all of them would be
detrimental to survival ("irreducible").

Something with just two interacting parts can be an example of irreducible
complexity.

Since evolution is supposed to be gradual, Behe couldn't see how two
components that each need eachother could arrive on the scene at the
same time. Impossible? No. But negligable.

Someone armed with the anthropic principle can inisit that the negligable
happened. However, at some point Occam's Razor is on the side of Intent,
not happenstance.

BTW, RHM's earlier post requires I repeat the notion that there are
two versions of the anthropic principle.

RHM defined it (and I've seen this in books) as simply justification
for ignoring the odds. Ex post facto, the long shot happened. This is
often calls "hard AP".

I defined it (also baesed on what I read) assuming "soft AP": means
of showing the odds are not as small as you thought. What's relevent
is that an existance capable of asking "Why?" emerged. That it is in
the form of human beings on this planet in this universe is simply the
winner of the lottery wondering why they won. You therefore don't have
to wonder why water was perfect for our kind of life, or the laws of
physics right for the kind of particles, atoms, elements, etc... that
make us up -- because it needn't have been our kind of life and water,
or even life at all. That's just part of why we won the lottery and not
someone else. The relevent point is that someone won -- which is of much
higher probability. Whoever won would be the one wondering!

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger                 Life is complex.
micha@aishdas.org                Decisions are complex.
http://www.aishdas.org               The Torah is complex.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                                - R' Binyamin Hecht

R' Yair Ggntor wrote (and several other posters seem to agree with him):
>  I can't possibly agree with the idea that the world was created having
>  "aged." ... Saying such a statement allows for the argument that
>  world was created ten minutes ago - aged - and that all our memories
>  part of that history that never actually played out.

These questions are adressed to those who feel similar to the above
quote. Do you have some reason *why* you can't accept it? Or is it simply
that you feel vaguely uncomfortable with the idea that the world was
created ten minutes ago?

Personally, I have no problem with this concept. Sure, it is a bit
unsettling that my memories might be false, but that doesn't hold up as a
logical argument. We have said many times that the Torah is not a history
book; it instructs us on many things, and we must act AS IF the events
in it occurred. Whether they really did occur or not is rather irrelevant.

Don't mistake the above to be a declaration of my personal views. I
straddle the fence on this one, and can argue either side, because
there's no practical nafka mina either way. I am quite willing to accept
the idea that I was created with a set of memories ten minutes ago, or
that Adam HaRishon was created 5764 years ago in the form of a mature
adult, or that Adam HaRishon was born as a perhaps above-average ape, and
then one particular morning, 5764 years ago, when he was already mature,
HaShem breathed a Nishmas Chayim into him, and he became a human. They're
all equally debatable, as I see it.

Akiva Miller

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 06:37:55PM +0000, kennethgmiller@juno.com wrote:
:R' Yair Ggntor wrote (and several other posters seem to agree with him):
:>  I can't possibly agree with the idea that the world was created having
:>  "aged." ... Saying such a statement allows for the argument that
:>  world was created ten minutes ago - aged - and that all our memories
:>  part of that history that never actually played out.
: 
: These questions are adressed to those who feel similar to the above
: quote...

As I wrote, my problem is that the concept of "preaging the universe",
including the notion of time, is meaningless. What's "pre" time?
Fake aging and real time are the same thing!

RHM disagrees, but he doesn't say why/how.

But otherwise, I see RAM's point. So what if the only reason why we know
we weren't created 10 minutes ago is that the concept of a lying Borei
doesn't make sense, and He told us when He created the universe.

:-)BBii!
-mi

"kennethgmiller@juno.com" <kennethgmiller@juno.com> wrote:
> the idea that the world was created ten minutes ago?

> Personally, I have no problem with this concept. Sure, it is a bit
> unsettling that my memories might be false, but that doesn't hold
> up as a logical argument. 

Try this. 

There is no physical universe at all. It is all a "dream" in the "mind"
of God. We are led to believe that there is a corporeal universe and
are given 5 senses to detect evidence of it. But can we know anything
beyond our senses? Are they real? Do they really tell us that there is a
such thing as matter? If we had no senses at all (no sight, no hearing,
no touch, no smell, no tatse) would we even know that an "outside" world
exists? Since we must rely on or senses to "prove" an outside world I
submit that there is no real world at all. We are in effect "fooled"
into believing that we are in one.

HM

Micha Berger <micha@aishdas.org> wrote:
> First, irreducible complexity isn't really about cellular construction.
> Behe is a microbiologist, so his examples are in that venue. 

OK. I accept your correction. My bad.

> "Irreducible complexity" refers to a system of multiple parts
> ("complexity") that need to all coexist in order to have value, and
> furthermore that one or some of the parts without all of them would be
> detrimental to survival ("irreducible").

As I indicated "Irreducible complexity" implies that something is so
complex that it is not "possible" to have a sudden mutation that is
in harmony with and beneficial to all of its complex and interacting
functionalities. This... I maintain makes any such entity infinite in
nature. It is "only" extremely improbable.

> Since evolution is supposed to be gradual, Behe couldn't see how two
> components that each need eachother could arrive on the scene at the
> same time. Impossible? No. But negligable.

The key word is negligible... not impossible. Modern evolutionary theory
(taht of Darwin)is based on sudden random mutations and is not considered
gradual. One mutation can suddenly occur that radically changes something
in a positive way for reproduction (even though most mutations are
astronomically negative in number). But the negative mutations do not
reproduce, only the positve ones do.

HM

[RHM:]
> I have read a summery of his views and I think I know what he 
> is trying to say. At best, "irreducible complexity" is a 
> misnomer, IMHO beacuse it implies an infinite number of 
> complexities which would make cellular construction infinite 
> in nature. To say that the cell is exeedingly complex with 
> each componenet interacting in perfrect harmony with every 
> other component is one thing. To say it is irreducible is another.

I believe that it is not sufficient to read a summary of Behe's work. One
really needs to read the original, the detailed criticisms that have
been made and Behe's responses to these criticisms.

In addition, Behe's work has been updated in Dembski's "No Free Lunch"
to fit into a Fisherian specified complexity paradigm. This gets into
the complex issue of elminative Fisherian vs. comparative Bayesian
methods. The article titled "Irreducible Complexity Revisited" at
http://www.designinference.com/ has a list of some of the latest
references.

 From HM replying to JSO: 
> Natural selcetion is a S'vara. The Gammara reffers to this 
> S'vara as Kol Dalim G'var" It is a logical deductuion based 
> on facts in evidence. Here's how it works: Those individuals 
> having a variation that gives them an advantage in staying 
> alive long enough to successfully reproduce are the ones that 
> pass on their traits more frequently to the next generation. 
> Subsequently, their traits become more common and the 
> population evolves. The underlying principle in evolutionary 
> theory is reproduction. Whatever trait favors reproduction is 
> the trait that is modst likely to survive. That is the theory 
> in general and it is a sound one. 

The question is whether natural selection can account for biological
complexity. That depends on the probabilities (see the references above
for the details). This is also why Dawkins writes (to repeat my earlier
post) that: "Darwinian natural selection, which, contrary to a deplorably
widespread misconception, is the very antithesis of a chance process,
is the only known mechanism that is ultimately capable of generating
improbable complexity out of simplicity."

The main point here is that you need more than just a sheer possibility
and Darwinists agree to this. Appealing to a highly improbable sequence
of accidental events does not in and of itself constitute a scientific
explanation. Do you disagree?

> The details that explain 
> complex microbiological mutations which have caused a single 
> cell to evolve into Human beings have yet to be explained, if 
> ever. But whether it can or it can't ultimately be explained, 
> doesn't prove whether such a process took place or not.

Just because something could concievably be true does not make it true. 

Imagine the whole of Scotland Yard searching for 150 years for actual
leprechauns. They don't find any nor do they find any clues such as tiny
leprechaun fingerprints. After systemic failure it is still concievable
that leprechauns might exist, but nobody takes their existence seriously.

What you need is some evidence. A single detailed testable Darwinian
trajectory for some biologically multi-part complex organism would
constitute evidence rather than wishful thinking.

"The response I have received from repeating Behe's claim [that the
evolutionary literature fails to account for irreducible complexity] is
that I obviously have not read the right books. There are, I am assured,
evolutionists who have described how the transitions in question could
have occurred [i.e., how, contra Behe, Darwinian pathways could lead
to irreducibly complex biochemical systems]. When I ask in which books
I can find these discussions, however, I either get no answer or else
some titles that, upon examination, do not in fact contain the promised
accounts. That such accounts exist seems to be something that is widely
known, but I have yet to encounter someone who knows where they exist".
[From "Religion and Scientific Naturalism", by philosopher David Ray
Griffin.]

Kol Tuv ... JSO

[RHM:]
> There is no physical universe at all. It is all a "dream" in the "mind"
> of God. We are led to believe that there is a corporeal universe and
> are given 5 senses to detect evidence of it....

Perhaps, but I think Occam's Razor would apply here.

Stuart

On Fri, Aug 13, 2004 at 12:32:06PM -0700, Harry Maryles wrote:
: There is no physical universe at all. It is all a "dream" in the "mind"
: of God...

Again I would say this is a false difference. You've just defined
"physical universe". I might not agree with that definition, but Rn
Gil Atwood (whose signature file used to speak of us being "pixels in
G-d's imagination") would.

:         We are led to believe that there is a corporeal universe and
: are given 5 senses to detect evidence of it. But can we know anything
: beyond our senses? Are they real? Do they really tell us that there is a
: such thing as matter?

And this is exactly Bishop Berkley's position; reality is something G-d
does to our awareness. Which is why he thought that a tree that fell in
the forest with no one there to hear it, wouldn't make a sound. For that
matter, the tree wouldn't exist, nor that part of the forest.

Kant has a different ontology, one which speaks of phenomenal (as
experienced) vs neumenal (as it "really is") worlds.

And so on. The topic you raise is probably the subject of one of RSCarmy's
courses -- not something that can be dismissed in a single email.

:-)BBii!
-mi

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
micha@aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.

My simple question (admittedly rhetorical, admittedly provocative)
has produced an avalanche of responses, but not one that really answers
the question I posed. To review: RNS claimed that in comparison to the
questions that challenge the theory of evolution, "there are far more
questions to be raised with Creationists [who insist the world was created
roughly 5,000 years ago in six days]," I asked: "Really? Are there many
'questions' other than those that exist simply because the questioners
refuse to accept the principle (which was not first invented to 'answer'
evolutionists) that Hashem created the universe in full form...?"

 From the responses received (heated and otherwise, which basically just
re-state "refusal principle"), the answer implied is: no.

The "many" questions are really predicated on the one "axiom" I had
stated: This object looks older than 5,000 years, that one looks older
than 5,000 years, many things look older than 5,000 years, and I refuse
to accept the principle that Hashem Created an aged world.

And so the merit of the refusal becomes not one of quantity of proofs
but of the quality of just one. If the reasoning behind that refusal
can be shown to be baseless, and especially if it can be shown to be
false, then all the "far more questions to be raised with Creationists"
are blown away in one fell swoop.

A recurrent explanation for the refusal is the challenge: The only
reason Hashem would create a world that looks older than it is, would
be to deceive us (or, a variation, to test our belief), and that is
unacceptable. And therefore Hashem didn't.

Agreed, it is unacceptable that Hashem would do things "just to deceive
us." I will also grant that in this case, He did not create the world as
He did to test our belief (although there are those--including Rambam
in his Hakdama to his Mishnah commentary, although not in his Mishneh
Torah--who understand the navi shekker's miracles to be bona-fide,
granted by Hashem, for the sole purpose of being the emunah-test the
Torah refers to [Devarim 13:4]).

But the fact is that Creation, by definition, is the bringing into
existence of things at a stage that they would by nature require longer
periods of time to reach. If we are talking "Creation," we must discuss
it on its own terms. Did you think that Adam was created as a fetus? Or
as a sperm cell? Did you think the Torah was telling us that when Hashem
"brought forth" the trees and grass and animals, it is speaking about
saplings and seeds? Did Adam have to wait years for the Tree of Knowledge
to go fruit?

Was Hashem deceiving Adam by bringing him into such a world? Did you
think that at Creation, the seas were not already salty? That the earth
was not instantaneously teeming with insects and bacteria, including
those needing rotting "old" logs and crumbling "old" rocks for their
habitat or sustenance? Did Adam require years to develop the ability to
speak grammatically complete sentences? The concept of Creation denotes
that the world was created in a mature state. What else did you think
Creation means?

Chazal clearly recognized this, and stated, (Chullin 60a; Rosh HaShonnah
11a) "Kol Maaseh B'raishis B'Komoson niv'ra'u,"--"Every [one of] the
[creations of] the Execution of Creation was created at a stage of full
development." (See Maharal MiPrague, Derech Hayyim, 322 perek 6.) Hashem
created the world in the form that we see it. This mature look is the
look He wanted the world to have from the start.

Why would Hashem create the star's light waves already reaching earth,
you ask? Come now, and think with an open mind, following through the
concept of Creation logically.

Hashem created the star's light waves already reaching earth--so that
we could see the stars.

A stronger question would be, Why would Hashem create light with the
limit of speed it has, and then create stars at such a distance so as
to make them invisible to earth! And as for stars that are so far away
that earth would not see them until generations after Adam, and stars
at such a distance that earth will never see them, the answer is the
same as to the question of, Why did Hashem create the gigantic stars
and galaxies at all, at such distances we will never reach?

A major reason can be culled from a passage in the Rambam's Mishneh Torah
(Hilchos Y'soday HaTorah 2:2): "And how does one go about gaining ahavas
Hashem and Yiras Hashem? The moment a man would contemplate His deeds and
creations, wondrous and great, and will see from them His inestimable and
endless wisdom, immediately he loves and praises and lauds, and develops
a great craving to fully know HaShem HaGadol. In the words of David:
'My soul thirsts for G-d, for the Living G-d' (Tehillim 42:3). And when
he will ponder these very things, immediately he will recoil and feel
fright and terror, and realize that he is a puny creature, obscure and
lowly, standing with comprehension slight and shallow before the One of
Perfect Knowledge, as David said (ibid. 8:4-5): "When I see your heavens,
the work of Your hands... [I wonder,] What is [the significance of]
a human, that you [even bother to] consider him!"

When man contemplates the vastness of the universe, and everyone,
whether believer or atheist, has his breath is taken away by it; when
man discerns that these heavenly bodies are many times the size of the
earth, yet look so small because of the even more enormous distance they
are from earth, when he discerns that there must even be stars so far
away that their light has not yet reached us, he gains a glimmer of the
grandeur of Hashem. "'Is not G-d in the height of heaven? And behold the
height of the stars, how high they are' (Iyov 22:12); that is to say,
learn from the height of the heavens how far we are from comprehending
G-d, for there is an an enormous distance between us and these corporeal
objects... How much more incomprehensible then is their Maker, who is
incorporeal!" (Moreh Nevuchim 3:14).

(As for dinosaurs, these are merely extremely large animals that Hashem
created along with the others and which eventually became extinct. I
know RNS dismisses the thought that dinosaurs roamed the earth 5,000
years ago, but his basis for that dismissal probably lies within the
dating processes which again depend upon the thinking track of the
"refusal principle" that for some reason one cannot get off.)

Let me put it like this: The universe has the mature look of billions of
years of age. For all of us who accept that the world was, at some time,
created, this may either be because (a) it was created at an immature
stage, destined reach its present stage, some billions of years ago, or
(b) because it was created maturely some 5,000 years ago. Which way was
it? Hmmm...If only the Torah would somehow indicate to us the solution
to this question. If only it explicitly told us how long Hashem took
in creating and perfecting the universe, so that we could know which of
the two possibilities is the truth. It does? Oh.

The Torah clearly states the world was created in six days. There is
nothing unclear about what a day is, unless one is also unsure about how
long Succos is supposed to last (millennia?). Days are approximately 24
hours long. Chazal and the Rishonim (more about this in another posting,
b'ezras Hashem) understood this. After all, Hashem could easily have
written that the world was developed over a period of billions of years,
or over a "very, very long time."

Why would Hashem write that the world was created 5,000 years ago in
six days just to deceive us?

Zvi Lampel

[R' Saul Stokar:]
>  Which God-fearing 
> scientists have recently been denied the right to publish in 
> a peer-reviewed journals because they attend synagogue, 
> church, mosque or ashram? As Professor Turkel has written, I 
> too have met many believing scientists in disparate fields of 
> scientific endeavor. I cannot imagine what bad personal 
> experience shaped Ms. Katz's opinion of the scientific 
> community, but it fails to conform to the facts I have 
> encountered over the past 25 years as a practicing scientist.

An op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal some years ago detailed
what happened to Dean Kenyon, a professor of biology at San Francisco
State University. Kenyon received his Ph.D. in biophysics from Stanford
University. In the late 60's he himself firmly held to the neo-Darwinian
synthesis, even writing a seminal book on the topic of prebiotic
evolution called "Biochemical Predestination". By the late 70's he began
to entertain doubts about his views. When he changed his position, not for
religious but for scientific reasons, he found that research moneys dried
up and that a not-so-subtle persecution began. In one of his introductory
biology courses Kenyon presented the standard neo-Darwinian theory and
then pointed to some difficulties in it, stating that he himself holds
to a design hypothesis. His department used this as a pretext to remove
him from teaching introductory biology and to relegate him to supervising
lab experiments even though he was a senior faculty member. Every review
committee confirmed that Kenyon's department had violated his academic
freedom. It took three meetings of successively more weighty academic
review committees at his institution to lean on the biology department
sufficiently to reinstate Kenyon's right to teach introductory biology,
probably as a result of the Wall Street Journal article.

There are other examples of this type and intelligent design theorists
will certainly confirm the difficulties they face. A dear friend of mine
who has a Ph.D in biology from a good university told me that to raise
any problems in her department with the orthodox theories of biology
was in effect an academic death warrant.

Kol Tuv ... Jonathan

Micha Berger <micha@aishdas.org> wrote:
> And this is exactly Bishop Berkley's position; reality is something G-d
> does to our awareness. Which is why he thought that a tree that fell in
> the forest with no one there to hear it, wouldn't make a sound. For that
> matter, the tree wouldn't exist, nor that part of the forest.

This is precisely what I was articulating... the philosophy of Bishop
Berkley. I do not think his philosophy can be disproven. Nor do I believe
it is true. Similarly, I believe that God would not deliberately fool
us by giving us vast evidence that indicate an old universe while in
reality he created it 6000 years ago to "look" that way, despite R. Zvi
Lampel's argument of it as truth.

HM

Seeing I know almost nothing about the subject of evolution, I will try
and stay out of this.
But could one of those here, who are trying to say that the 6 days of
creation were not our standard 24 hour days and more like the '1000 years
= 1 day for HKBH', please explain to me, why the RBSO needed such a long
time to create something that He can do keheref ayin?

Is there any more kovod saying that it took Him 6000 years rather than
the poshut pshat of 6 days?

Meanwhile, I touched upon this subject with Rav Shimon Opman who tells
me that in his opinion the best writing on this is from the LR z'l. I
have made a search and come up with this link;
[Maybe our Lubavitcher members know of others?]
http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=112083

> The key word is negligible... not impossible. Modern evolutionary theory
> (taht of Darwin)is based on sudden random mutations and is not considered
> gradual.

Actually, Modern evolutionary theory is NOT Darwinian.

(Never mind that Darwin himself rejected much of his earlier thery before
his death...)

Keep in mind that what is taught in high school (let alone popular
understanding) is usually decades behind the current theories.

Akiva

--
"If you want to build a ship, then don't drum up men to gather wood, give
orders, and divide the work. Rather, teach them to yearn for the far and
endless sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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