Rabbi Slifkin's Challenge

After sharing my post relating to Rabbinical VS Ptolemaic Cosmology, I was recommended to read Rabbi Natan Slifkin's "The Challenge of Creation." Knowing that his book was banned in Chareidi circles didn't hurt the decision, and I bought a copy and see what he had to say. Now it's time to note what I consider about this book.

Rabbi Slifkin begins chapter one by quoting Jewish sources that defines Gods place in the Universe, and then gives a valid Jewish argument for having a Creator. In these first couple of pages, he is speaking from a solid footing. And in the page that followed, he presented the types of irrational arguments that the anti-Science people often parrot, and he rightly winks at them.

Rabbi Slifkin noted in his forward that he would be honest and straightforward and that he would not include out-of-context quotes. And I can say that this is certainly the case. He does cite a lot of sources, and he does treat them honestly.

Unfortunately, he is quoting sources that have a shared agenda, which is to present the idea that religion and science are not incompatible, and, in fact, science has it's very foundation in religion, and one can be a ideologue and a scientist at the same time. This is the core presentation of his first chapter.

Under the subtitle, "Forgotten Foundations" his book tries to prove that not only is science compatible with religion, but that Science owes it's very existence to religion, and the implication is that one exists hand-in-hand with the other. This was not unexpected, since science and Judaism are apparently the author's two great loves.

Rather than being content with this cognitive dissonance, keeping religion distinct from science, Rabbi Slifkin attempts to unite his two great and incompatible loves, and uses the first chapter to justify their uniting. And I am certain that Rabbi Slifkin is being honest in his presentation - it is just that he is unwilling to accept that, like Abraham's dilemma of Sara and Hagar, the honest evaluation is that they cannot live together.

Quoting other authors, some Christian, Rabbi Slifkin tries to support his problem by touting a fictional scientific belief rather than the actual scientific method. He does this by quoting authors who play linguistic games with words like "faith" and "belief" and applying them incorrectly when speaking of scientific inquiry. It would be akin to equating that the belief that angels tell the grass to grow is no different than the theory of gravity, which is equating a scientific theory to a belief.

In the quote used by Rabbi Slifkin, the idea is brought forth that science could not come from anything but from Western Civilization with the Church at its center. I am certain that Euclid, Ptolemy, and Pythagoras would have disagreed, even though Rabbi Pliskin will later claim that Greece never formed real science, quoting Christian author, Rodney Stark, a revisionist when writing of Church history and it's influences.

The development of the scientific method can be traced back to 1600 BCE, to about the time of the giving of the Torah. But the recorded method did not come from the monotheistic Jews, but from the polytheists of that same period. You can read of this history here, on Wikipedia. All of these discoveries in relation to medicine, astronomy, and physics too place by polytheists, while the Jews continued to believe that the world was flat, and that the sun and the moon were simply lights. The views of the Jews were contrary to those of their polytheistic neighbors who developed, through scientific inquiry, the model of the spherical earth, with a moon that was not made of the same stuff as the sun. Can you imagine what would have happened had a Jew suggested such a thing? The heresy laws of Judaism at that time could cripple one for life, if the infections from the whippings didn't kill him first. It is obvious that science certainly could not have blossomed in a monotheistic controlled world.

But with the fall of the second temple, and the rise of Christianity, a new level of barbarity would occur. Yes, it was true that scientific inquiry took place in order to validate the faith, but since there was so little that one could validate, science was not propelled, but impeded. Faith without proof was not only a doctrine, but was seen as a character trait worth developing. The belief in demons causing diseases, rather than the infected rats, would cause the faithful to kill cats, who worked with demons, cats which could have killed the rats and prevented the Black Plague. In short, theocracy has promoted ignorance over systematic and logical thinking, and accepted death over truth.

It would take the church more than 15 centuries before it would accept a heliocentric solar system, one that had been proposed before Christianity ever came into being, and had already been ignored by the Jews. It was the fear of the Church had kept such ideas buried, calling them heresy and punishable by death, and burning all heretical documents. Galileo declared it, not because of the Church, but despite the Church, and, in the end, after this old man was beaten and tortured, he recanted, and damned any scientist by being forced to say:

Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this vehement suspicion, justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy,  and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but that should I know any heretic, or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be.

The full confession can be viewed here.

And yet Rabbi Slifkin would have you believe that not only is science compatible with religion, but that one birthed the other.

If it was a birth, it was an overdue one that barely survived after a series botched abortion attempts.

The fact is that, after thousands of years of Jewish, and then Christian dominance, there was no real scientific advancement by the very observant within their sects. Not for thousands of years. And then, "boom", you have a sudden explosion of science. And Rabbi Slifkin would say "See, monotheism made Science happen!"

This sudden burst of science (after thousands of years of very little by monotheism), does not point to religion as giving rise to science, but, rather, that Science escaped the shackles, despite the attempts of monotheism to kill it. It was the act of those who saw its beauty and risked their lives to keep it alive that caused the boom. They nurtured it despite that it was forbidden to by the True Faith.

We have Rabbis as late as the 17th century declaring that the earth is flat. Why? Because the Sages said so. Period. There is to be no discussion to the contrary, for those discussions are heretical. And you have Christians who resent that recently, hundreds of years after Galileo died, the Church finally forgave him!

Most respected theologians accept the proofs of science, but it was not because it was a natural expression of their faith, but because they were dragged to a point where disagreeing with objectively proven truths was just plain stupid. You can only claim that the moon is nothing more than a light in the sky for so long, but once you have photos of someone walking on it, it's time to put that argument to rest.

If the Temple and the Sanhedrin never fell, it is obvious that there would have been equal attempts to persecute and destroy those who would do true scientific inquiry, just as the Church did. The sages condemned any Jew who would read the secular works of the Greeks, threating them with no share in The-World-To-Come. And it is unlikely, if the world was controlled by a monotheistic theocracy, that we would never have had a man walk the moon at all. And now that the child, the one that the Judeo-Christian revisionists call "son", has become strong and powerful despite the countless failed attempts to abort it, the cause of it's delayed birth would say "But you come from us!"

And this is the biggest problem that Rabbi Slifkin has. On the one hand, he tears apart the view that the all of the words of the Torah are completely true (geocentric, flat.), and quotes the Keepers of Science to do just that. On the other hand, he loves Torah, and so tries to undo any destruction that he has already done, claiming (perhaps by having some sort of navuah since this claim would infer that he knows the mind of God) that God had to lie to the Jews because they wouldn't have understood the truth. In doing so, he reduces the Torah into a book of fables, while, at the same time, holding that it is the Word of God. And it was for this that this book was rightly banned by the Chareidim.

When it comes to Torah and Science, Rabbi Slifkin would transform the intent and meaning of Torah and Science, turning what is most desirable by the supporters of each incompatible view of the world, into something silly.

Rabbi Slifkin loves Torah and loves science. That is apparent. And, unlike the Rambam who knew the limits of Jewish Rationalism, and where to stop in order to keep being an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Slifkin does not. Rabbi Slifkin has a challenge, which is to make a choice.

You might like some parts of this book, but it will be the rare person who is comfortable with it completely, be you Scientist or Talmudist.