At the forefront of these discussions tends to be Rambam, whose attempts to plot a traditional yet scientifically plausible path earned him condemnation from both sides. The Vilna Gaon famously criticizing him for being “corrupted by accursed Greek philosophy” while Ralbag considered that Rambam’s conclusions were overly based on “theological considerations rather than reason”.
As Judaism Reclaimed examines, Rambam rejected the prevailing Aristotelian doctrine of an eternal universe, as well as Plato’s alternative (creation from eternal matter). Despite finding their arguments to be reasonable, Rambam did not find them sufficiently compelling to justify reinterpreting the Torah’s account of Creation. Rambam’s caution was ultimately vindicated, with the Hubble Telescope and science’s adoption of the Big Bang Theory finally removing the ancient theories from their pedestals.
Judaism Reclaimed attempts to follow Rambam’s cautious approach in dealing with modern questions of Torah and Science. No firm conclusions are proposed. Both on account of my lack of serious education in the relevant fields of science, and from having heard rabbinic historian, Rabbi Berel Wein, discuss the damage that has been caused by those who have sought to interpret the Torah as reflecting scientific theories which have then themselves been disproven.
Are things different, however, when we consider twenty-first century science?
I have been told by many of today’s students of science that modern methodologies are far more rigorous and precise, and that this should give us more reason to trust the theories it produces when compared to ancient Aristotelian ideas. Similar confidence was shown in previous centuries, however, and subsequently shown to be mistaken.
Two recent works that I’ve recently come into contact with take quite different approaches to this question. On the one hand there is Professor Sam Lebens’ A Guide for the Jewish Undecided (see herehere).
In the middle section of his book, Lebens presents a couple of dozen arguments for God – one of the first being the sheer unlikeliness that the world could have evolved on its own as an arena to support human life:
“If we were to rewind things back to the beginning and replay the Big Bang…how many times should we expect to see a universe emerge that would be hospitable to life?”
Taking the law of gravity as an example, Lebens cites various studies which show that there are various strengths which gravity could have taken:
“Astrophysicists tell us that this time around we were extremely lucky. Had the force of gravity been somewhat weaker, then the stars would never have become supernovae so as to spew out the heavier elements necessary for life. Had the force of gravity been slightly stronger than it is, stars would have formed from smaller amounts of material and would have been too short-lived to support the evolution of life.”
Moreover, it was absolutely critical for the formation of a universe that the “energy density of space” would be at exactly the right value.
“If it were not precisely what it is, either space would expand at such an enormous rate that all matter in the universe would fly apart, or the universe would collapse back in on itself immediately after the Big Bang. Either way, life could not possibly emerge anywhere in the universe. Some calculations put the odds…at well below one chance in a trillion trillion trillion trillion.”
And that is before other factors are considered such as temperatures, atmosphere and further precise phenomena which had to be just so in order for complex life to evolve as science currently understands it to have done.
Yet Lebens’ stated aim does not involve proving God’s existence. Indeed, he opens the book by telling the reader: “If someone tells you that they can prove the truth of Judaism, be suspicious. I don’t even think that there are watertight proofs for the existence of God” (though to put this in the context of his field of analytical philosophy, Lebens also inform us that “Similarly, I don’t have any watertight proofs that my wife, Gaby, exists” – I would love to have been a fly on the wall when he proposed to marry her!
Instead, Lebens limits himself to the modest aim that “at least 50% chance that it came from God” – the book often presents these proofs in statistical terms.
It is to be recalled that the God of the Jewish tradition transcends the physical realm. It is not within the parameters of scientific research therefore to either directly discover or disprove His actual existence. The best that we can hope to achieve is to detect compelling indications of His carefully designed handiwork which are highly unlikely to have evolved on their own from chaos and nothingness.
Nevertheless, given the direction in which modern physics has progressed since rejecting the Aristotelian eternal constant universe which had reigned supreme for millennia, is Lebens being too modest in his claims?
A couple of rabbis with a strong grounding in physics think so. In their new user-friendly videocast “Physics to God”, Rabbis Elie Feder and Aaron Zimmer aim to show – based on matters such as universal constants and fine-tuning – that what science has now discovered about the state of the universe can justifiably be said to prove God’s existence. Have they over-stepped? How might Rambam have analyzed the arguments that they are advancing in these videos? I am reserving judgment for now but would certainly be interested in the input of members of this forum.
