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Jewish View of Evolution
Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch (Feldheim Publishers) Collected Writings of R. S.R. Hirsch v. 7
(p. 257) In light of the foregoing, would Judaism not be justified in viewing this idea of a universal unity, which inquiring minds have already pieced together from the textbook of the universe and which man�s consciousness years to express, as nothing less than the long-awaited triumph of the truth of Judaism? This is the truth with which, thousands of years ago, Judaism first appeared in the midst of a chaotic multitude of gods, proclaiming that there is only one, sole God in heaven and on earth, and that all the phenomena of the universe are founded upon His Law. This idea, the concept of the Unity of God, is the truth for which Judaism has endured a course of martyrdom without parallel in world history. It is true, of course, that most natural
scientists today are satisfied to stop at the point where they have surmised
some sort of unity at the foundation of all nature. They do not attempt to
proceed upward from there to one, sole Creator and Composer of that unity.
They do not even suspect that, with every step they take toward the
discovery of unity in nature, they add another step to the universal throne
of the one, sole God. Without knowing it, and perhaps even against their
will, they confirm the sole sovereignty of the One to Whom, as Judaism
firmly believes, all mankind will ultimately do homage, even though at
present these scientists narrow-mindedly seek to eliminate this though from
the minds of their own generation and from those of generations to come. This will never change, not even if the
latest scientific notion that the genesis of all the multitude of organic
forms on earth can be traced back to one single, mot primitive, primeval
form of life should ever appear to be anything more than what it is today, a
vague hypothesis still unsupported by fact. Even if this notion were ever to
gain complete acceptance by the scientific world, Jewish thought, unlike the
reasoning of the high priest of that notion, would nonetheless never summon
us to revere a still extant representative of this primal form as the
supposed ancestor of us all. Rather, Judaism in that case would call upon
its adherents to give even greater reverence than ever before to the one,
sole God Who, in His boundless creative wisdom and eternal omnipotence,
needed to bring into existence no more than one single, amorphous nucleus
and one single law of �adaptation and heredity� in order to bring forth,
from what seemed chaos but was in fact a very definite order, the infinite
variety of species we know today, each with its unique characteristics that
sets it apart from all other creatures.) This would be nothing else but the
actualization of the law of le-mino, the �law of species� with which God
began His work of creation. This law of le-mino, upon which Judaism places
such great emphasis in order to impress upon its adherents that all of
organic life is subject to Divine laws, can accommodate even this �theory of
the origin of species�. After all, the principle of heredity set forth in
this theory is only a paraphrase of the ancient Jewish law of le-mino,
according to which, normally, each member of a species transmits its
distinguishing traits to its descendants. This law of creation wields such
power over the organic world that even seeds discovered in ancient Egyptian
sarcophagi were found to have remained so potent after thousands of years
that, when they were placed into the soil, they produced plants similar to
those that grew in the immediate vicinity of the tombs in which the seeds
had lain unsown for so long. Nowhere in all recorded history do we learn of
a farmer who harvested, say, barley after he planted wheat. Jewish View of Evolution  RELATED ARTICLES: The Case for Evolution Evolution claims that all living creatures evolved out of inorganic matter. What scientific evidence has been offered to show such a possibility? Quoting sources from Darwin to scientific journals, Mr. Gans investigates all the existing evidence of such an occurrence. SimpleToRemember.com - Judaism Online |
