Update Oct 8, 2014
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_evolution
update - added additional sources Oct 2, 2014
While
the majority position in the Chareidi world is that Evolution is heresy
as is the belief that the world is more than 6000 years old - there
are minority views. Regarding the age of the universe - I asked both Rav
Yisroel Belsky and Rav Shmuel Kaminetsky this question and both said it
is not heresy because there are statements of Chazal that indicate an
old universe. [There is a list in Torah Shleima Bereishis]. Similarly
regarding evolution - aside from Rav Kook - it seems that Rav Soleitchik
accepted an evolutionary creation of Man. Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky was
asked about it and he said it not a horrible thing to belief in an
evolution process - which is similar to the view of Rav Hirsch. Rav
Kasher wrote an article providing sources in Chazal that supported an
evolutionary creation process.
====================================
NY Times EVERY
year around this time, with the college year starting, I give my
students The Talk. It isn’t, as you might expect, about sex, but about
evolution and religion, and how they get along. More to the point, how
they don’t.
I’m
a biologist, in fact an evolutionary biologist, although no biologist,
and no biology course, can help being “evolutionary.” My animal behavior
class, with 200 undergraduates, is built on a scaffolding of
evolutionary biology.
And
that’s where The Talk comes in. It’s irresponsible to teach biology
without evolution, and yet many students worry about reconciling their
beliefs with evolutionary science. Just as many Americans don’t grasp
the fact that evolution is not merely a “theory,” but the underpinning
of all biological science, a substantial minority of my students are
troubled to discover that their beliefs conflict with the course
material.
Until
recently, I had pretty much ignored such discomfort, assuming that it
was their problem, not mine. Teaching biology without evolution would be
like teaching chemistry without molecules, or physics without mass and
energy. But instead of students’ growing more comfortable with the
tension between evolution and religion over time, the opposite seems to
have happened. Thus, The Talk.
There
are a few ways to talk about evolution and religion, I begin. The least
controversial is to suggest that they are in fact compatible. Stephen
Jay Gould called them “nonoverlapping magisteria,” noma for short, with
the former concerned with facts and the latter with values. He and I
disagreed on this (in public and, at least once, rather loudly); he
claimed I was aggressively forcing a painful and unnecessary choice,
while I maintained that in his eagerness to be accommodating, he was
misrepresenting both science and religion.
In
some ways, Steve has been winning. Noma is the received wisdom in the
scientific establishment, including institutions like the National
Center for Science Education, which has done much heavy lifting when it
comes to promoting public understanding and acceptance of evolution.
According to this expansive view, God might well have used evolution by
natural selection to produce his creation.
This
is undeniable. If God exists, then he could have employed anything
under the sun — or beyond it — to work his will. Hence, there is nothing
in evolutionary biology that necessarily precludes religion, save for
most religious fundamentalisms (everything that we know about biology
and geology proclaims that the Earth was not made in a day).
So
far, so comforting for my students. But here’s the turn: These
magisteria are not nearly as nonoverlapping as some of them might wish.
As
evolutionary science has progressed, the available space for religious
faith has narrowed: It has demolished two previously potent pillars of
religious faith and undermined belief in an omnipotent and
omni-benevolent God.[...]
UPDATE
=======================Rav Kook ============
Rav Kook(Letters
1:91):[[ 1. Even to the ancients, it was well known that there were many periods
that preceded our counting of nearly six thousand years for the current era.
According to the Midrash [Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit ch. 3], "God built
worlds and destroyed them," before He created the universe as we know
it. Even more astonishing, the Zohar [Vayikra 10a] states that there existed
other species of human beings besides the 'Adam' who is mentioned in the Torah.
2. We must be careful not to regard current scientific theories as proven
facts, even if they are widely accepted. Scientists are constantly raising new
ideas, and all of the scientific explanations of our time may very well come to
be laughed at in the future as imaginative drivel. 3. The fundamental belief of
the Torah is that God created and governs the universe. The means and methods
by which He acts, regardless of their complexity, are all tools of God, Whose
wisdom is infinite. Sometimes we specifically mention these intermediate
processes, and sometimes we simply say, 'God formed' or 'God created.' For
example, the Torah writes about "the house that King Solomon
built" [I Kings 6:2]. The Torah does not go into the details of
Solomon speaking with his advisors, who in turn gave instructions to the
architects, who gave the plans to the craftsmen, who managed and organized the
actual building by the workers. It is enough to say, 'Solomon built.' The rest
is understood, and is not important. So too, if God created life via the laws
of evolution, these are details irrelevant to the Torah's central message,
namely, the ethical teaching of a world formed and governed by an involved
Creator. 4. The Torah concealed much with regard to the process of creation,
speaking in parables and ciphers. Creation - referred to as "Ma'aseh
Bereishit" by the Kabbalists - clearly belongs to the esoteric part
of Torah [see Chaggigah 11b]. If the Torah's account of creation is meant to be
understood literally, what are its profound secrets? If everything is openly
revealed, what is left to be explained in the future? God limits revelations,
even from the most brilliant and sublime prophets, according to the ability of
that generation to absorb the information. For every idea and concept, there is
significance to the hour of its disclosure. For example, if knowledge of the
rotation of the Earth on its axis and around the sun had been revealed to
primitive man, his courage and initiative may have been severely retarded - by
fear of falling. Why attempt to build tall buildings on top of an immense ball
turning and whizzing through space at high speeds? Only after a certain
intellectual maturity, and scientific understanding about gravity and other
compensating forces, were human beings ready for this knowledge. The same is
true regarding spiritual and moral ideas. The Jewish people struggled greatly
to explain the concept of Divine providence to the pagan world. This was not an
easy idea to market. Of what interest should the actions of an insignificant
human be to the Creator of the universe? Belief in the transcendental
importance of our actions is a central principle in Judaism, and was
disseminated throughout the world by her daughter religions. But if mankind had
already been aware of the true dimensions of the cosmos, and the relatively
tiny world that we inhabit - could this fundamental concept of Torah have had
any chance in spreading? Only now, that we have greater confidence in our power
and control over the forces of nature, is awareness of the grandiose scale of
the universe not an impediment to these basic ethical values. To summarize:
Ancient Jewish sources also refer to worlds that existed prior to the current
era of six thousand years. One should not assume that the latest scientific
theories are eternal truths. The purpose of the Torah is a practical one - to
have a positive moral influence on humanity, and not to serve as a primer for
physicists and biologists. It could very well be that evolution, etc., are the
tools by which God created the world. Some ideas are intentionally kept hidden,
as the world may not be ready for them, psychologically or morally. [adapted
from Igrot HaRe'iyah vol. I, pp. 105-7] Copyright © 2006 by Chanan Morrison
