Retroactive Retraction

Before my audience begins to think I'm just being argumentative for arguments sake I would like to take this opportunity to, for the time being at least (but probably indefinitely), retract the use of the term "retroactive existence". I think I understand R. Micha's criticism and accept it. "Retroactive existence" is a meaningless distinction from "past". While I still think that apparent age is an inherent aspect of the peshat (yes, that's a different discussion) and to dismiss the peshat because of it is circular, "retroactive age" implies more than I intended and I do not believe that it is accurate, nor do I think that it follows from apparent age (this R. Micha might disagree with me on based on his presentation and criticism of the apparent age approach). Rather than emphasizing that such "apparent age" can have meaning and relevance, the term converts "apparent age" into "age," obscuring the disconnect implied by the supernatural creation of the apparent age approach.


R. Micha, while this might not be as extensive of a concession as you might have hoped for, its the best I can do at the moment. :)

Response to R. Micha's Questions on Retroactive Existence

R. Micha has left me a number of question to my previous post which I think deserve to be addressed, and I am exercising my discretion as the ba'al hablog to answer in the form of a post:

Explain the difference between "retroactive existence" and the normal sort.

Good question, my point is that while you have [subsequently] used the term "fake history" to describe apparent age, for us there is no nafka mina. I might compare it to the old question, "if a tree falls in the forest." Without direct experiential observation such reality isn't actualized. Nevertheless whether you take the "traditional" approach that this was experienced in time, or the approach which I have dubbed "retroactive existence", I think that their is a purpose for the period in question, but I don't think that the purpose is served any better by the former approach than the later (and in some ways I think the later is better but that is another discussion). I guess my point is that there isn't a significant difference, for the most part, between apparent age and "past".

The first formulation is simply misleading in that it implies that Hashem has a "when".

I'm still trying to absorb this objection. How would you apply this though to the machlokes about whether the world was created in Nissan or in Tishrei, or more specifically the notion of "elu v'elu" regarding the machlokes? (Recognizing that their are different approaches to "elu v'elu", but your thoughts in relation to your objection).

That said, you would be hard pressed to find a rishon who believed in a young universe.

In addition to statements of Chazal (Chagigah 12a) indicating that B'reshis one teaches us that the length of the day and night was created on the first day of creation and that “R. Yehoshua ben Levi said: All creatures of the creation were brought into being with their full stature, their full capacities, and their full beauty” (Rosh HaShanah 11a) which imply a more simple approach to B'reishis we have:

“The result of the application of such a method of interpretation would be that there would not be an item left of the entire story of the creation [of the world] that would not be divested of its literal meaning, which is the creation and origination of things.” ( Rav Sa'adia Gaon, Emunos v'Deos , Yale Translation page 425).

“The second category consists of [those texts] which should be according to their ‘apparent’ meaning…[This category also includes]the story of the Creation, and other miracles” (Meiri, Beis haBechira, Avos 3:11, cited here Bold mine)

Additionally other relevant sources, some more than others, can be found at http://toriah.org/Torah/RZL/Our-Sages-on-Days-of-Creation.htm You are more capable than I at recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of these sources cited (and how faithfully they are presented) or those cited by myself. Apparently, however Rav Sa'adia Gaon, the Kuzari, and Rav Avraham ben HaRambam give numerical figures consistent with the traditional dating. Again, you are in a better position to judge these sources than me.

When the mishnah tells us that the pereq has no peshat.

I would be very interested in your source. This seems like a very odd subject matter for the Mishnah, no? Furthermore we have already noted that Rav Sa'adia Gaon felt the need to preserve the pshat of this perek. Likewise, when the Rambam cautions that a possible non-literal reason is not sufficient reason to reject the peshat, it is with regard to inyanim relevant to this perek!

Nevertheless, I must concede that a Mishnah which makes the statement you claim it does would significantly alter the playing field, so I look forward to you elaborating on your source.

Relevant Posts:

What Problem?

Guiding Principals

Critique of Rabbi Jeremy Weider's "When the Torah doesn't mean what It Says"

Parshas B’reishis: In the Beginning, Brias HaOlam according to the Torah and the contemporary scientific understanding

Parshas Noach: Evidence for a Global Flood?

Here Gosse Nothing

Genetics and Apparent Age

Apparent Age

In a recent post at Seforim, R. Marc B. Shapiro takes a shot at historical revisionism at the expense of the apparent age approach:

Any written record will be rejected as a YU-Haskalah forgery, or something that God miraculously created to test our faith, all in order to avoid the conclusion that an authentic Torah scholar taught at YU http://seforim.blogspot.com/2009/10/some-assorted-comments-and-selection.html

Leitzanus is making light of the serious, and in my opinion attempts to understand the conflict between the scientific evidence and the Torah's narrative is a serious matter. While is is not clear to me that R. Shapiro would be so dismissive about the apparent age approach itself (since it wasn't really his topic and I don't recall him discussing it in anything I have read), by taking this approach to it's illogical conclusion one creates a false analogy between this position and the absurd example he hypothesized. Such mock-analogies silence a reasoned analysis of differences in favor a smug, hastily-generalized dismissal of such an "absurd" position. Even if it wasn't his intent, and it certainly wasn't his primary one, the damage is done.

Of course there is a major difference between arguing that the world was created with apparent age and the speculative argument that evidence was miraculously planted that a Talmid Chacham worked for an institution deemed politically incorrect. While in the later case we have no reason to assume such a belief, in the former we have God's own account that He created to world from nothing a couple of generations before Yetzias Mitzrayim. Likewise it is a necessary inference that the world would have some appearance of prior age based on the narrative itself, and indications from Chazal that at least the living creatures where created in full stature (despite the fact that such stature would indicate prior age/growth/development in any other context).

Granted, this doesn't in any way give us reason TO accept the Torah's account, it just simply illustrates that the conflict presented by the material evidence need not contradict the Torah's account.

I would add that I don't think that the apparent age needs to be understood as an attempt for God to test us per se. I am inclined to think that a materialistic explanation for the world's existence which seems plausible is necessary for free will. Nevertheless I think that it is reasonable to say that while God chose to create the world as He described, He coordinated the implicit apparent age in such a scenario with how He designed the world to operate according to teiva. Such a "past" isn't false, it is as real as the light we see every night from stars long dead, it is a retroactive existence which, it seems to me, fulfills both a scientific and theological role which complements the Torah as much as it conflicts.

Genetics and Apparent Age

I'm terribly sorry for the drought of posts and thank all who have continued stopping by.

Previously we have shown that the default in our tradition is that the narratives of the Torah are to be taken literally and any allegorical truth is in addition to the pshat. We have noted that additional apparent age is a logical necessity from the literal account of B'reshis and not just a speculative possibility. We have also seen that the common decent of man from our common ancestor Adam is a fundamental principle and argued that even according to the more liberal standard of the Rambam it may not be permissible to reject the literal meaning of a Torah passage without deductive proof.

I would like to pause to re-emphasize the significance of this last point. In order to discuss the propriety of allegorizing the Torah we must accept for the argument that there is good reason to believe it to be Divine Revelation and therefore true. Otherwise in the absence of such reason there is no justification for allegorizing an account that has no indications it is merely a metaphor, but rather we would logically conclude it was simply an erroneous account. [Recently a commenter at another blog argued that there was textual basis to understand the account allegorically in the term "day" being used before the creation of the sun. When I pointed out that "day" was largely understood literally, he responded that a couple hundred years ago that is how they probably would of understood it too!]

So accepting that the Torah is true, and recognizing that the burden of proof is on those who wish to say that truth is allegorical and not-literal, then we must recognize that B'reshis is essentially divinely revealed testimony about how the world was created. We also must recognize that God's general plan was that the world operate according to the laws of nature as we know them. If God has told us He created the world in a certain manner but to have done so would essentially require miraculous intervention in nature for it to be as it is today, it is an argument from silence to argue that God didn't make such interventions and therefore posit that His testimony is really allegorical.

Wolfishmusings.blogspot.com/2007/02/goodbye-gosse.html makes an argument that seems to be a very good way at "testing" the Apparent Age approach's ability to solve the difficulties. In it he points out that through genetics science can identify when a species most recently shared a single common ancestor and it is common that they have not shared a common ancestor since long before Adam HaRishon's time.

In the generations following the Mabul, but especially those from Adam HaRishon, would not have enough genetic variety to support a healthy population. The association between birth defects and relatives, especially siblings, reproducing has long been recognized. Divine intervention would not be a matter of hashgacha pratis, but merely of hashgacha klalis, a necessary measure for the healthy development of the species.

Conceding that such divine intervention took place, as we must from an account which on the one hand presents the origin of the species from at the most a handful of pairs and on the other is completely unconcerned with the long known and statistically significant chance of genetic defects from such unions, it is more reasonable than not that the genetic variation necessary would be correlated with the general plan He had for the biological laws of nature. Again, while the account does not explicitly elaborate on such an intervention, it is a necessary condition for the simple meaning of the account even based on a pre-modern understanding of the reproduction of close relatives. And if something is inferred by necessity by the simple meaning then evidence which it can account for does not provide sufficient reason to allegorize the account.

Now it is all well and good to argue that apparent age is a logical necessity for the simple meaning of the text, and that divine intervention in the gene pool is also a logical necessity. It is not, however, logically necessary that there be a correlation between apparent age and genetics. But neither is there correlation an argument for allegorization. And while it is not logically necessary, insofar as the world was created as a way to conceal God to allow for free will, the alignment of the physical evidence in a [generally] unified and coherent scientific/materialistic system, despite several directly supernatural occurrences, is understandable if not expected.

I hope to elaborate/explore the role of free will's relevance to the natural world more thoroughly later, as well as the relationship between the teivah/nature as God way of running the world and it's applicability to the pre-Creation era/Retroactive Existence.

I do not mean to make light of the challenge this argument presents, but starting with the assumption that we have reason to believe that the Torah is God's account of Creation I do not believe the challenge is sufficient to disregard it. And if we remember that, insofar as common ancestry via Adam HaRishon is a "fundamental principle" which cannot be allegorized if there is any other alternative even according to the Rambam, the theoretical possibility of divine intervention negates the basis to allegorize even without the above reasons to infer it occurred. The conclusions of genetics are immanently reasonable inferences from the scientific evidence, not deductive/demonstrable proof of what occurred.

The Rambam warns that if one, "reject[s] things as impossible which have never been proved to be impossible, or which are in fact possible, though their possibility be very remote, then you will be like Elisha Aher; you will not only fail to become perfect, but will become exceedingly imperfect" (Guide 1:32, Freidlander page 42, emphasis mine).

Natural Selection is Apikorses. Period. (כנ"ל anyways)

In light of my earlier discussion on Creation Yesh m’Ayin inevitably leading to the appearance of age (and perhaps best thought of as actual "Retroactive Existence") prior to that creation, one might recognize that I have a tendency to let empirical science operate according to its own methods and assumptions and see no inherent need to conform its conclusions to the Torah and certainly no need to conform Torah to its conclusions. I suspect that there are those who will see such an approach as either radically liberal and to still others it will appear stubbornly conservative. For the most part I believe that the same conclusions apply to the evidence of the fossil record and genetics (I know I still owe you a post on this one) with respect to the Theory of Evolution. There is one important caveat to my position on Evolution that I must discuss.

Reading various discussions amongst Orthodox Jews regarding how to relate to Evolution, and works which discuss it, I was always aggravated by two interrelated problems. One was that the primary focus was always on the “history” side of the equation, which I found to be of little to no consequence. The second was those who sought to live their lives and form their opinions based on Torah, but found it absolutely inconceivable that one could identify Evolution as heresy (even though HaRav Moshe Feinstein zt’l paskened to edit/censor textbooks which contained such references[1]). The common denominator to either issue is the overlooking the real problem with evolution: Natural Selection.

“natural selection the mechanism proposed by Charles DARWIN by which gradual evolutionary changes take place. Organisms that are better adapted to the environment in which they live produce more viable young, increasing their proportion in the population and, therefore, being selected. Such a mechanism depends on the variability of individuals within the population. The variability arises through MUTATION, the beneficial mutants being preserved by NATURAL SELECTION.” (The Harper Collins Dictionary: Biology, Page 377).

For the theist who seeks to incorporate Evolution into his or her worldview, whether due to not wishing to seem as a boor to academia or due to an actual understanding and acceptance of the empirical evidence which underlies Evolution, I believe the full implication of Natural Selection and its philosophical significance have been overshadowed. The notion that variations in a population allow them to adapt better to their environment and in turn to be more successful in producing offspring is essentially observable so in light of the other evidence it does not seem improbable to attribute such adaptation could lead to speciation given sufficient time.

Nevertheless “Natural Selection” is not just “natural selection” of variations which help the species adapt. More is implied by the term.

“This thesis is the Principle of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. It asserts that natural selection operating on variations is not only a sufficient condition for the origin of a species but also the only sufficient condition[2] for the origin of any species” (The Logic and Methodology of Science and Pseudoscience, Fred Wilson, page 150).

Not only can such a process be understood as a theory in accordance with the laws of nature, but it can and should be understood as in and of itself sufficient to explain the existence of life and all of its species without any divine guidance. Any attempt at suggesting a Creator’s involvement is unnecessary and undesirable. “Guided” evolution is anathema to “Natural Selection”.

This distinction is not merely the later spin of those antagonistic to faith. Already in Darwin’s writings we read such an implication.

“Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural Selection. Some have even imagined that natural selection induces variability, whereas it only implies the preservation of such variations as arise and are beneficial to the being under its condition of life…Others have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the animals which becomes modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants have no volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! It has been said that I speak of natural selection as an active power or Deity” (The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin Chapter 4 page 89, Mentor Edition).

Darwin found it necessary to respond to early detractors who did not find his use of the term “natural selection” materialistic enough. Whether a deity, choice of the animal itself, or a force in and of itself, their understanding of “natural selection” was deemed to be too active. Darwin reassured them “natural selection” was merely a passive description of the positive outcome brought by random changes which proved beneficial to that species. “Natural Selection” is only personified by verbal necessity, in truth it meant to obviate the need for such active design of variation. It is a strictly material process which allows the clock to function in the absence of the clockmaker, if indeed there was a clock maker.

Such a view is unacceptable within Judaism. It is one thing to interpret data in exclusively according to the laws of Nature. It is quite another to declare the laws of Nature independent of the Creator. The laws of Nature are entirely dependent upon the existence of Hashem, “If one would imagine that He does not exist, no other being could possibly exist” (Rambam Yesodei HaTorah 1:3). While one may recognize that something has a naturalistic explanation one may not deny God’s active participation since nature itself is an act of God.

This is the real the heart of the conflict between Torah and Evolution and the common philosophy of science in the academic world today. Prior to the theory of Evolution many issues which we consider conflicts between religion and science had arisen, but none had led to such a degree of agnosticism and atheism. While material explanations could be found for the works of nature, the existence of the Universe and especially life in its complexity testified to the existence of a Designer. But Darwin’s theory of “Natural Selection” seemed to provide the mechanism by which, by chance, variations could lead to the multiplicity of life forms on Earth. “The British biologist Richard Dawkins, an outspoken defender of Darwin and nonbeliever famously wrote that evolution ‘made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” (Newsweek Nov. 18, 2005 page 56). Even life, it seemed, could now be understood as originating in a strictly materialist way without resorting to a Creator.

Darwin was not, however, the first to suggest life in its complexity originated through a serious of chances.

First Theory—There is no Providence at all for anything in the Universe;…This is the theory of Epicurus, who assumes also that the Universe consists of atom, that these have combined by chance, and have received their various forms by mere accident…Aristotle has proved the absurdity of the theory, that the whole Universe could have originated by chance; he has shown that, on the contrary, there is a being that rules and governs the Universe. Guide to the Perplexed 282

“But it would be quite useless to mention the opinions of those who do not recognize the existence of God, but believe that the existing state of things is the result of accidental combination and separation of the elements, and that the Universe has no Ruler or Governor. Such is the theory of Epicurus and his school, and similar philosophers, as stated by Alexander [Aphrodisiensis]; it would be superfluous to repeat their views, since the existence of G-d has been demonstrated whilst their theory is built upon a basis proved to be untenable.” (Guide to the Perplexed page 173, emphasis mine)

The Aruch explains that the Hebrew term for “heretic”, Apikores, was derived from the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Epicurus’ belief that the world was the result of accident and chance could be understood as the archetypal k’firah (heresy). But Epicurus’ approach wasn’t rejected because it failed to provide a natural history account of the origin of the species; it was rejected because any such scenario based on chance was in-credible. Darwin’s observations about the fossil record, variations in species allowing them to adapt better, and his recognition that better adaptation increases the possibility of survival and reproduction produced a theory which far exceeded anything Epicurus could have produced in his wildest dreams with respect to a natural history. But Darwin’s theory did no more to show that such natural processes could be plausibly understood as accidental occurrences independent of Design. The argument from design doesn’t assert that we cannot account for creation by “natural means”. Rather it argues that it cannot be relegated to chance. To the materialist who believed that if God existed, He played no active part in the running of the world, the possibility of explaining our development according to natural laws was automatically equated with confirmation of this materialistic assumption. But there is a difference between explaining a process, albeit “natural”, and demonstrating that process is possible by mere chance. As evidence for strict materialism “Natural Selection” was preaching to the choir. It allowed an atheist to feel “intellectually fulfilled”, but in truth it only pushed the argument from design under the rug.

The difficulty with Natural Selection is not the process but the philosophical assumption that is bundled in with the term in its standard use. Undoubtedly there are many scientists who in their own philosophy of science are much more liberal in their understanding of “natural selection”. They may not have difficulty understanding it as a naturalistic explanation that does not demand rejection of the supernatural, or at least are not bothered by those who take such an approach. Perhaps it is perfectly acceptable for a theist to speak of “natural selection”, but despite the clear overlap in meaning it is essentially only verbal agreement. We may accept survival of the fittest as a natural law, not as a self-sufficient explination for the creation of the species. Perhaps a book which speaks of natural selection without explicitly discussing its hard-line philosophical rejection of the supernatural may not be strictly prohibited, but it might be analogous to a Christian discussion on the Unity of God which doesn’t directly address their belief in the Trinity.[3] Should such need arise one must consult a competent Posek. Any work which speaks of “Natural Selection” in such a way that it is obviously meant to preclude the need, or even possibility, of the Divine is heretical and forbidden to be read by Jewish law other than the purposes of refuting them. Regardless of one’s feelings regarding evolution, Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection contains elements which are heretical and forbidden by Jewish law to believe or to study.

[1]It appears to me that while Rav Feinstein zt’l did not explicitly mention evolution etc. but being a p’sak on practical halachah the only reasonable inference is it discussed such subject matter and it is impossible to infer he spoke of only hypothetical k’firah.

[2]“A sufficient condition for the occurrence of an event is a circumstance in whose presence the event must occur.” (Introduction to Logic, Irving M. Copi, page 400, bold mine)

[3]The difference being one can think of better reasons to learn from a science textbook than a Christian theological discussion of G-d’s unity but…