TORAH & SCIENCE-----science nature and torah
MODERATOR Posted - 31 July 2005 14:41
Torah is to the natural world what a blueprint is to its edifice, or what DNA is to an organism. Histakel B'Oraysa Ubara
This happened because the very reason - the only reason - the world was created in the first place was as a tool to fulfill the Torah.
(see http://www.frumteens.com/topic.php?topic_id=73&forum_id=13&topic_title=Part+I%3A+The+Creation+of+the+Universe%3A+Why%3F&forum_title=Basic+Judaism&M=0&S=1 ).
How can you fulfill the Mitzvah of Pri Etz Hadar without an Esrog tree? How can you fulfill the Mitzvah of Kibud Av Va'em if you don’t have parents? How can you make Kiddush Friday night without such things as night, or wine, or words?
Those are easy examples. But Hashem does nothing without a reason, and creates nothing without a reason. And if Hashem created it, it has one reason and one reason only: to facilitate the fulfillment of the Torah. Because without that reason, the world had no reason to exist.
So everything in the world - every little detail, every little subatomic particle, every little spec of space dust - is here to somehow facilitate the fulfillment of the Torah. Just as every part of a car is to facilitate the comfortable and efficient transportation of humans from one place to another, so too every part of the world is to facilitate the transportation of humans to Gan Eden by way of Kiyum HaTorah.
But a difference between a car and the Torah is, whereas there may have been several possible version of how to make a car, and several possible alternatives to the actual car that was created that would have facilitated juts s well the goal of transporting people form on place to another- different types of cars, trucks, planes, bicycles, etc - there was only ONE possible way to facilitate the goal of getting people into Gan Eden, and that was by creating this particular world. No other world, not even in the slightest detail, would have done the job.
Just as the Torah is infinitely precise in its details, so does the natural world reflect the infinite precision of the Torah. When Hashem created an Esrog, which shaken in the proper manner, would connect the shaker's soul to Hashem Himself in the particular way that the specific Mitzvah of velkachtem lachem pri etz hadar does, He created the Esrog, the joints and limbs of the person shaking it, the water and soil and sunlight and gasses that the Esrog consolidates, the mind and body of the person shaking the esrog, the circumstances surrounding the buying of the esrog - its value, its purchase price, the precise difficulty involved in obtaining it, --- every single factor that comprises the act of the mitzvah, its nisyonos, and its ramifications -- were created with infinite precision, down to the sub atomic level in order to best produce the desired effect.
Because the world itself - the entire universe - is designed to be the place where, when Moshiach comes, the spiritual energy that was emitted upon the performance of the Mitzvos, combined with Hashem's revelation of His Oneness, matures into the spiritual environment Olam Habah, which is en eternal connection between the Mitzvah-doers and Hashem Himself, the entire world, every molecule and sub atomic element it consists of, every single segment of time and space itself, every sub-sub-sub atomic component of every single square micro-inch of the entire universe, was created in a way that it will fulfill its spiritual purpose - of intimately connecting humans to Hashem through its being used by humans to be turned into a connection between the human body-and-soul, and Hashem.
That was the only single solitary idea that Hashem had in mind when creating the world. That was the only single solitary reason the world was made. And just as Hashem is one, and the Torah is one, and could not e any other way, the world, in order to fulfill its purpose as becoming the connection to Hashem was created in the only way it could have been, using the Torah as its blueprint, as its DNA. And that mean not only the physical shell of the world, but every single nuance of every single sub-atomic detail of the world, was created using the Torah as its blueprint. The Torah and nothing else is what the world reflects, on an infinitely sublime level.
This is why the Rambam states (Yesodei HaTorah 2:2) that the natural world contains "wisdom that has no measure and no end". Because juts as the Torah has infinite wisdom, so does the world, which is a reflection of it.
The calculations and details that went into this world are bottomless. And its nature reflects the nature of the Torah itself; is details reflect the details of the Torah, in the same way that the details of the organism reflect the details of the DNA molecule.
To be continued.
MODERATOR Posted - 31 July 2005 16:57
So far we know that nature and Torah relate in that the Torah actually dictates what goes on in nature - histakel b'oraisa ubarah almah - just as the blueprint of a building decides how the building will be built, the Torah, in the same sense, decided how nature works. And just as the DNA controls the structure and makeup of the organism, so too it is the Torah the controls the structure and makeup of the world. There is not a single spec of the natural universe that is not ruled and determined by the Torah. As Rabbeinu Bachyai writes in the Introduction to Chumash, all wisdom and science in existence is contained in the Torah.
And the opposite is true as well - the Avos knew and fulfilled the entire Torah even though it had not yet been revealed by Hashem. Avrohom Avinu made and donned a pair of Tefillin. Now there are maybe 10 or so Halachos L'Moshe Misinai involved in making a pair of tefillin. How did Avrohom Avinu know how to make a pair of Tefillin?
The answer is that Hashem looked into the Torah and based on it, deciphered nature; Avrohom reperformed that process the other way: He looked into the Tevah, the natural universe, and deciphered the principles upon which it was based, the reasons why it was created in precisely the way it was, and, with precision accuracy, the details of that Torah which is reflected in nature. He looked, for instance, at his own body, and he deciphered from his 248 limbs and his 365 sinews, the 248 Mitzvos aseh and the 365 mitzvos lo saaseh. He deciphered the Torah by studying its reflection - the universe - the same way a skilled architect can decipher the blueprint of a building by studying the building.
So he made a pair of Tefillin.
Nature is created by, from, and as a reflection of Torah. Nature follows Torah law, not vice-versa. And although nature, on the surface, follows surface-level physical laws, on a deeper level, on the deepest, deepest level of science, all of nature, all of the universe, follows a system of laws that are designed to facilitate the purpose of Creation, namely, its eventual maturation, nurtured by the study of Torah and performance of Mitzvos by the Jewish nation, into a spiritual entity known as Olam Habah.
In a nutshell, those Laws of Nature are simply a reflection of the Laws of the Torah itself. When the physical universe, which is a reflection of Torah, is nurtured by the Torah-acts of the Am Segulah, it becomes a vessel for the connection of the souls and bodies of the Am Segulah to the Creator of the Torah.
That is the cosmology of the world in a nutshell.
to be continued...
MODERATOR Posted - 11 September 2005 8:42
So the natural world and the Torah are inexorably connected. The Torah is the blueprint of the natural world, and the natural world is a reflection of the Torah. Avrohom, Avinu, or someone on his level, could look into nature and discover how to make a pair of Tefillin; and Chazal were able to look into the Torah and discover things about nature. [Rabeinu Bachyai, Ramban].
But there is a reason that the natural world was tied to the deepest levels of the Torah. G-d could have made a world whose blueprint was physical laws or some other system of rules. Why did Hashem chose the Torah as the blueprint of creation?
The answer is because the purpose of creation is one and one only – to be our Olam Habah. When Moshiach comes, the world will be transformed into, literally, heaven on earth. This transformation is done by us, by doing Torah and Mitzvos, we slowly “sanctify” the world – including, of course, our own selves, first and foremost! - , bringing it to a point that it can accept and process the spiritual energy to which it will be exposed when Moshiach comes, which will transform it into Gan Eden.
So every Mitzvah we do “feeds’ not only our own physical bodies, giving them their spiritual nutrition that they need to be able to rise from death at Techiyas Hameisim and live in the spiritually charged Olam Habah, but our Mitzvos also “feed” the very universe, , transforming it into the spiritually charged world that is ready to become Olam Habah.
That is the entire purpose of the natural world. Nothing more and nothing less. Its purpose is to reach its potential through our Torah and Mitzvos. Clearly, then, the blueprint of the world, the way the world is structured on the most sublime and deep levels, depends on what it says in the Torah.
It’s like if you make a car to transport human beings – the basis for the car’s creation is going to be the human transportee. Your car will have pedals because the driver has feet down below; it will have a mirror because the driver has eyes up above; it will have seats that are shaped a certain way, a trunk that opens with a key that can be conveniently carried around by the human transportee, etc. So too the natural world was built with only one thing in mind: how will it transport the human race into Olam Habah.
And so, juts as if you don’t know what a human being is, you will never understand the details of the car design, and if you don’t understand Torah, you will never understand the natural world.
And that is how Avrohom Avinu made a pair of Tefillin by looking into the natural world with the eyes and understanding of the Avos, and saw how the world needs Tefillin in order to fulfill its purpose, and how exactly those Tefillin need to be made. By seeing the sleeve, you can understand the shape pf the arm, and by seeing an arm you can understand the design of the sleeve.
That is the relationship between Torah and the natural world.
That is why scientific knowledge can be derived the Torah. The Gemora in Bechoros 8a derives from a Posuk in Bereishis the fact that a snake‘s development stage is longer than the rest of the animal kingdom. This is cited by the Ramban (Toras Hashem Temima p.159 in Chavel edition) as but one example of how Chazal knew facts of science from the pesukim in the Torah that describe Brias HaOlam. He cites more.
Rabbeinu Bachyai writes in the Introduction to Chumash that all wisdom and science in existence is contained in Torah. Some scientific facts were known through rabbinic tradition. The Rashba cites a rabbinic tradition from Sinai that a treifah cannot live more than 12 months. (Rav Yonason Eyebushitz (kreisi Upleisi 40) writes that such traditions are not to be disregarded even if found to be against “all the laws of heaven and earth”, since they are part of Torah shebal peh.)
see also my post of Posted - 04 November 2002 14:04, at
http://www.frumteens.com/topic.php?topic_id=2028&forum_id=25&Topic_Title=To+what+extent+is+belief+in+ALL+midrashim+mandator&forum_title=Asking+Questions
mo Posted - 13 September 2005 21:37
While not all of Judaism's commentators are in strict agreement, a respectable segment of our sages does not view evolutionary workings within an evolutionary process as necessarily incompatible with or hostile to Judaism. They point out that the purpose of creation is to enable man to rise through successively higher levels of accomplishments and morality to the ultimate level of human perfection. Indeed, the account of Genesis is a model of transition from matter to vegetable, then to animal and finally to human. but, these sages caution, the point that must always be kept foremost in one's mind is that Judaism views these stages as the products of divine ordering and purpose, not of chance.**
What can you say on that, Reb MODERATOR? Is it kosher book to keep in Jewish houses and libraries?
VaYoel Moshe Posted - 19 September 2005 10:23
BS"D
this topic is great and much-needed. thanks so much R' Moderator for addressing this issue!!!
MODERATOR Posted - 02 October 2005 7:26
Mo,
What you are quoting in the name of that book is both untrue and against the Torah. What the author wrote is not just an inaccuracy or an error. You should not read such books.
mo Posted - 27 December 2005 3:51
**What you are quoting in the name of that book is both untrue and against the Torah. What the author wrote is not just an inaccuracy or an error. You should not read such books.**
So what to do to remove such books from libraries? This is one of many others of this kind even in some yeshiva libraries, too?
MODERATOR Posted - 27 December 2005 4:43
That Hashem first made man from dirt and then blew into him a Neshama is not in question. But to say that the Torah can agree with the theory of evolution is another matter entirely. The theory of evolution - and the word itself, which means slow change, the opposite of "revolution," which means sudden change - requires many generations of gradual development, and man was already functioning on the day he was created.
But perhaps even more importantly, the only reason anyone would want to say that humans evolved from monkeys is the lack of any better way to explain the existence of humans, as well as monkeys and other species of life. There is no scientific evidence that humans evolved from monkeys - there is not even any evidence that things evolve altogether. No evolutionist has ever seen or brought any evidence that even a single new organ has ever appeared through evolution, never mind a new species.
And the evidence against evolution is so obviously compelling - the dependence on the completeness of biological systems for the survival of the organism has evolutionists nailed to the wall. (The first male member of the species had to already have available counterpart with a fully functional female reproductive system, and vice versa, else the species would not have had a chance to survive long enough to develop into anything; the first chicken egg had to be just thick enough to contain the newborn during the incubation period, but thin enough to allow it to break free.
The reason the evolutionists created and still cling to that theory is because they have no better way to explain how we got here. If the world is accident, then evolution is the best they can come up with, even though it is unreasonable; if the world was created, then it is simply unreasonable.
So for example, "evidence" such as "vestigial" organs is only evidence if you assume that the world is an accident. But if Hashem created the world and (c"v) "guided" evolution, it would mean that He sloppily provided humans with useless organs that He neglected to "guide" through the evolutionary process. And if you will give G-d enough credit that these organs actually do have a purpose that we do not know of, then the vestigial-organ evidence is down the tubes to begin with.
The whole idea makes no sense.
I know there are those who like to talk this way in a Kiruv situation when encountering the naive or unsophisticated who will not think outside the box they were placed in by trendy pseudo-science and will not open their minds to more logical, yet unfashionable thinking. People say such things in order to save the souls of the closed minded. But as an actual possibility, this idea does not qualify.
As far as what to do about the books, you should approach the rabbi who is in charge of that library, or a rabbi who the person in charge follows, and show it to him.
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