For as long as I’ve been blogging, I’ve been commenting on the seemingly endless array of “Torah & Science” posts, as well as writing some of my own. But in none of my previous comments or posts have I really expressed my thoughts in a comprehensive way. So for what it’s worth, I want to lay out what I think is the real dilemma evolution presents for religion and offer an approach I find compelling, even if incomplete.
In The Emergence of Ethical Man, R. Soloveitchik writes:
[O]ne of the most annoying scientific facts which the modern homo religiosus encounters and tries vainly to harmonize with his belief is the so-called theory of evolution. In our daily jargon, we call this antinomy “evolution versus creation.” The phrase does not exactly reflect the crux of the controversy, for the question does not revolve around divine creation and mechanistic evolution as such. We could find a solution of some kind to this controversy. What in fact is theoretically irreconcilable is the concept of man as the bearer of the divine image with the equalling of man and animal-plant existences. In other words, the ontic autonomy or heteronomy of man is the problem.
I think the Rav is basically right but I want to expand on it. Evolution per se isn’t the problem. The real issue is, more generally, the irreconcilability of natural causation and providence. How can we say that a given event is both a result of natural forces and a result of God’s will? Doesn’t one have to be the actual cause and the other a facade? It may sound nice to say that God works through nature but aren’t we kidding ourselves? Either it’s God making things happen or not. If God is constantly fine-tuning natural events to get the results He wants (which is the direction some intellegent design advocates go), then nature, as science conceives of it, might as well not exist at all. Evolutionary theory, then, isn’t a unique problem for religion. It’s just a particularly glaring example of a more general (and difficult) one.
Leibniz recognized this dilemma. Consider the following passage:
We know that while there have been, on the one hand, able philosophers who recognized nothing except what is material in the universe, there are, on the other hand, learned and zealous theologians who, shocked at the corpuscular philosophy and not content with checking it’s misuse, have felt obliged to maintain that there are phenomena in nature which cannot be explained by mechanical principles; as for example, light, weight, and elastic force. But since they do not reason with exactness in this matter, and it is easy for the corpuscular philosophers to reply to them, they injure religion in trying to render it service, for they merely confirm those in their error who recognize only material principles. The true middle term for satisfying both truth and piety is this: all natural phenomena could be explained mechanically if we understood them well enough, but the principles of mechanics themselves cannot be explained geometrically, since they depend on more sublime principles which show the wisdom of the Author in the order and perfection of his work.
For Leibniz, the laws governing the natural order require God. Even if Leibniz is right, it doesn’t solve the causation problem. When we say three times daily, “God heals the sick”, do we merely mean that God designed the world in such a way that nature would offer remedies for illness? I suppose some may mean that but I don’t think that’s tefillah’s intent. I think it’s that God takes a special interest in the individual person and heals him. Herein lies the problem. Working backwards, it’s clearly possible (theoretically if not practically) to pinpoint the specific events leading to a sick person’s recovery. So I ask, when we say that God heals the sick, are we being disingenuous?
I don’t think so. Consider an analogy from Oedipus. Upon learning the truth about his parents, Oedipus gouged his eyes out. Why? One explanation is because he realized that he had killed his father and married his mother and the humiliation overwhelmed him. But here’s another explanation: Sophocles was making a deep observation about the complexity of familial relationships. The mechanism he used to convey it was having Oedipus gouge his eyes out. The first explanation is from the story’s perspective - Oedipus reacted to the pathetic reality of his past. The second is from the author’s - Sophocles created Oedipus to deliver his message. But, of course, there’s no contradiction. Indeed, if you confuse these two explanations or believe that one of them is sufficient, you miss the point. The audience is expected to understand both the plot and the moral.
Similarly, we find ourselves in a world that behaves according to discoverable laws of nature. As Leibniz put is, “[A]ll natural phenomena could be explained mechanically if we understood them well enough.” That includes the origin of species. But the play has an Author. We perceive Him when we recognize that our story has a theme and we confront Him when we react to that theme. He, in turn, reveals Himself to us.