re: #277 Alouette

I wonder how many of our youth have gone “off the path” because no one could or would seriously answer questions they had about Torah and evolution.

Part of the problem is the acceptance in the yeshiva world, of “intelligent design” propaganda which was popularized in the 1970’s by Rabbi Avigdor Miller. He cited Discovery Institute talking points, and Immanuel Velikovsky to “disprove” the facts of evolution.

And Gerald Schroeder keeps it up to this day. From a Kiruv point of view it is an even more dramatic issue.

Suppose you have some kid from a secular background who is bright and well educated. Suppose (s)he is finally curious about the Heritage. Now imagine that some really good hearted rabbi is there with some wonderful Torah, that if this kid heard, it would change that kid’s life.

But alas, that rabbi says something stupid about science. He is automatically labeled an idiot in the mind of that kid, and whatever beautiful the Torah the rabbi would give over, will now also bee seen as the words of a fool.

As to observant kids leaving because of people refusing to be good with science, we have a Midrash for that which really says it all. You know the one with how the serpent got Eve to eat the apple?

The story goes that Hashem tells Adam, don’t eat the fruit or you will die. Now Adam, wants to make a fence around the law, so he tells Eve, “don’t touch the tree or you will die.”

The serpent tries to tempt Eve, she says are you kidding, “if I touch the tree, I’ll die.” The serpent pushes her into it and asks “what else were you lied to about?”

Same thing here. You get observant kids who learn the science and realize that they were lied to about it. From there all sorts of other questions naturally follow.

If you are a Jew, you believe that Hashem made the universe according to His rules. It follows then that to lie about the universe is to lie about the will of Hashem, and nothing good can come of trying to say that His will was anything other than what it is.