Hi, my name is Mikayla and i go to a Jewish day school, i am 15 years old and am in grade 9. My question is: What is the Torah's opinion on the theory of evolution vs. its own statement of creation, and how are we supposed to believe both? We learn both theories in school and as a scholar it is confusing. Please can you help me!!?? Thank you
 
Answer:

Dear Mikayla,

You asked how we reconcile the Torah description of Genesis with modern scientific theory. There is a discrepancy of several billion years between the two.

I will respond to the question on two levels. First I would like to qualify the question then I would like to offer a number of possible answers. Please bear with me and read it through to the end.

I am happy to respond to any questions that may occur to you in the course of reading my letter.

Science

I begin by touching on the Jewish approach to the general question of scientific findings in contra distinction to Torah truths. It is common to speak of scientific truth versus Torah claims but I deliberately chose the terms scientific findings versus Torah truths because science can do no more than find or discover information as Scientists come across it.

There is no question that the information we know is less than the information we don't. As we continue to discover newer and newer secrets (otherwise known as findings) our ideas take on new dimensions and our picture of the universe takes on greater shape. At every point in the process we must remember that we are still on the road to discovery. We still don't have all the information, our scientific picture is still incomplete, and as we gather more information and newer discoveries, our understanding of the universe will change again.

Scientific knowledge has evolved a great deal from the early days of Galileo, to the days of Sir Isaac Newton, and even since the era of Albert Einstein. Truths we held sacred in Galileo's day were found to be false in Newton's day. Truths held sacred in Newton's day were debunked in Einstein's day. Some of what we did not understand in Einstein's day is now much better understood. Science is continuously evolving and there is no telling when and where it will end.

It is clear that one can never lay claim to absolute truth when relying on scientific evidence because the truth as we know it today will in all probability evolve further. It is true that many scientific theories have been proven in laboratory experimentation but even those theories cannot withstand the test of time. As we discover newer information it may very well affect our understanding of the experiments conducted, of the results achieved, and thus affect the conclusions reached.

Cosmology

This is true of all scientific knowledge but especially of your field of interest, cosmology. Cosmology deals with the question of how the universe came about, how long did it take to develop into what it is today, and attempts to burrow down into the building blocks of physical matter - atomic and subatomic particles.

Much more is left to guess in this field science than in fields such as mathematics, medicine and astronomy. There are no telescopes that can show us what the world looked like before it was ever captured on camera. There are no microscopes that can show us how physical matter actually came to be. The best we can do is analyze the particles that make up matter as we see it today and extrapolate from there. At best we can only guess (and hope?) that the process as we observe it today has not significantly changed since its inception.

If anything has changed that might affect either the process itself or the speed by which it progresses, then all cosmological calculations would be significantly affected, especially if it has changed in ways that we cannot project. 

Torah

Contrast this uncertainty with Torah. Torah does not propose theories, attempt to corroborate them and then claim understanding, Torah lays claim to the truth from the very start. I grant that it requires a leap of faith to accept that the word of Torah is the word of G-d but irrespective of the popularity of this belief the Torah does lay claim to eternal truths; truths that need not be proven for they are known to the author of those truths. G-d created the world, knows more about it than any other, and reported those truths to us in the Torah.

Reconciliation 

The scientific "proofs" today depend on an assumptions made about rates of expansion, atmospheric density and a host of other concepts. In a sense the science of cosmology works like this: If 'A' is true and 'B' is true then 'C' must be true too. But in all honesty we have no clue if 'A' or 'B' are true. We make that assumption because without those assumptions science would be out of business.

I will offer a single example. Science can only predict what happened at 00000000000.1 seconds after the actual Big Bang. We simply will never know what happened before that point because science has no method of establishing that. All of cosmology rests on the hope that what happened before that point will not affect the outcome of calculations done after that point. This despite our knowledge that every discovery in all fields of science affects our understanding of everything we knew (about that subject) before the discovery.

In conclusion of the first point of my letter, science does not lay claim to the truth only to suggestions, possibilities and sometimes probabilities. Torah on the other hand lays claim to the truth.

Origins of the Universe

Now to answer the question itself. Torah claims that the world was created by G-d in six days, science claims it evolved as primordial gases and star dust imploded and exploded over billions of years. Which is correct?

A Believing Jew accepts the Torah account because it is the word of G-d. A Jew believes that the world was created in six days. But what of all the evidence to the contrary? Remember that this evidence is only valid if (and this is a very big if) we make the assumption that our calculations about the universe are correct. But let us, at least for the sake of argument, assume that they are correct and the evidence shows a universe that is billions of years old.

It is possible that G-d created the universe 5765 years ago1 but created it to look billions of years old. The Midrash² teaches that Adam was created a grown man; if you looked at him (at the moment of creation) you would have guessed him to be about twenty years old. The universe could have been created the same way. With tell tale sings at creation that claim a much older age than it actually is.

It is also possible that atmospheric conditions during the great flood affected the evidence and made fossils, tree rings and radioactivity, seem much older than they actually are. We don't know these two suggestions as fact but science cannot lay claim to the truth before it rejects these two possibilities. Furthermore, it is not enough to reject them with incredulity it is necessary to reject them scientifically.

Conclusion

The Torah claim and the scientific understanding are not a contradiction. They are each approaching the topic from a different perspective and each are right in their respective perspectives. Science is telling you how old the world looks, and the Torah is telling you hold the world is.

From a human vantage point the universe seems billions of years old; so science, which is the analasys of human perceivable knowledge, is accurate in its conclusion³. But the world is not a human project, it is a divine creation, so the Torah, which is a Divine memo, shares a little secret: the world is a lot younger than it looks.

Sincerely,
Rabbi Lazer Gurkow