A question from a reader of the magazine to know, 1991 XNUMX "If Einstein believed in the creator of the world, why wouldn't someone less than him in genius believe in him?"
By: Raphael Fleck
According to the system, the following letter was received from a religious person
Are the claims against the theory of evolution, which have been heard recently, true?
- If they are true, why do they continue to mislead us with something that is not true? - Isn't there a danger in the theory of evolution to the destruction of society's values and morality? - Why is it difficult for scientists to believe in a creator of the world, who created the first material and determined the laws of physics, chemistry and biology? - If Einstein believed in the creator of the world, why wouldn't someone less than him in genius believe in him?
Prof. Raphael Fleck's response
----------
It is evident from the person asking these questions that he is troubled by problems related to the relationship between science and faith and by the consequences of contemporary evolution theory on social and moral values. It is difficult to address these big questions in a nutshell but I will try to do so.
I will start from the end. Among the scientists, as among all people, there are those who believe in the Creator of the world and those who do not believe in him. Although it is difficult to give a comprehensive definition of a scientist, a key characteristic of such a definition is that the scientist investigates systematically. Scientists who identify a problem do not take people for granted. A primary condition in scientific work is casting doubts and examining the support and achievements for the claims.
An important principle of the scientific method is openness to new ideas and new claims, examining them against each other in order to formulate a theory that is compatible with them. This theory - which is the brainchild of human scientists is open to criticism and changes and even - to refutation, therefore scientists are constantly examining their theories and changing them. They must refrain from claiming that their determinations are above criticism and appeal. Like all humans, scientists also tend to cling to their opinions and the method of scientific investigation was formulated out of the awareness of these human "weaknesses", in the hope that it will serve as a barrier to them. In this way, the pursuit of science differs from faith, and many are those who do not see a contradiction between their faith and their scientific investigation, just as there is no subject in the field of scientific investigation in which criticism or appeal to the agreed, known or accepted is prohibited, so there is no supreme samba that is indisputable.
Anyone who is aware of the tolerances of Einstein's life and the development of his worldview will doubt the questioner's assertion that Einstein believed in a Creator. It seems to me that the questioner's claims are based on Einstein's statement that it is hard for him to believe that God determined things randomly, or as he said: that God played dice. But even if we are convinced that Einstein was a devout and meticulous believer, this will not convince another scientist to believe in the creator of the world. Errba, if this is the reasoning, then the scientist has made his scientific method a Band-Aid, since in science there is no supreme authority. Anyone who brings claims that would contradict Einstein's claim deserves to be examined, and if they stand up to the test, they will be accepted without losing a hair from Einstein's intellectual genius.
The reasoning of the questioner regarding the belief in the creator of the world, "who created the first matter and determined the laws of physics, chemistry and biology" is a reasoning based on faith, which cannot be accepted within the framework of scientific argument.
The questioner assumes that the laws of nature are given things, which scientists have to discover and nothing else. A more critical approach reveals that the "laws" are formulations of humans (scientists) who organize the data in a way that fits their perception of reality. That way they can explain it in a concise and consistent way and deduce from it what will happen in the future, when the conditions are right. The laws by which we explain nature depend on us, who study them, and on our point of view.
It was the genius of Einstein, who noticed this and undermined the 300-year rule of the laws of Newtonian physics. Einstein showed that Newton's laws are limited to a certain field of reference and that they are not eternal "laws of nature", standing forever, independent of scientific theory. The same is true of the laws of chemistry and physics. forest. In fact, we are aware of this truth too, David! in our daily lives and express it by saying that every rule has an exception. It follows from this that the only field where, in principle, laws that have no exception can exist, are arbitrary laws. These are laws that relate to culture, which is the product of man's spirit, whether these are the laws of faith or the laws of logic or mathematics.
Hence the answer to the first question. The theory of evolution, like any other scientific theory, changes and develops. Details that were previously unknown become clear, researchers' worldviews change and their approach to settling the data changes, all of these lead to the "evolution of evolution". Comparing Darwin's original book, which first appeared in 1859, with modern theories of evolution, one can easily argue how much the details of the theory have changed. He will also be able to demonstrate how deeply rooted and established Darwin's fundamental concept was about the existence of the process of evolution of species and about the mechanism of selection from existing variation. Of course there is no room here for "misleading" by saying things that are not true.
It is convenient to classify the evidence for the very existence of the process of evolution of species and the description of the development of species into 3 areas. The most well-known is the field of fossil finds, that is, the remains of creatures that lived in the past and died. The more the fossils originate in older rock layers, the greater the difference between them and modern creatures. Furthermore, researchers can draw lines of evolution linking creatures from different eras. Different creatures today are converging into common forms. The greater the difference between the groups in the details of structure, behavior, and embryonic development, the farther the point of intersection between their lines of evolution, that is, their common ancestor is earlier. But these lines of development are only known to us from a few points, so that the course of the line and sometimes even its very existence, will depend on evidence that is not from the field of fossils.
Other areas through which the existence of the lines of development are concluded are: comparing the anatomical structure of creatures, their physiological processes, the course of their embryonic development - and in recent years - the details of their molecular structure, and their geographical distribution over continents and seas. The embryo that our jaws, like those of all mammals, develop from embryonic gill arches, as they are found to this very day in fish embryos - (and from which the gill arches of the adult fish develop), is in good agreement with fossil data, according to which the origin of mammals, like the origin of fish, is in ancient - Fish. According to this claim, our jaws are gill arches that have changed their function over millions of years and the arches of the mammalian embryos are nothing but living evidence of the changes that have taken place. Other important evidence for evolution is based on the geographical distribution of creatures in the world, such as the fact that marsupials (the kangaroo and its relatives) are limited to Australia, a relatively isolated continent - where they were protected from the invasion of the more successful placental mammals, which took their place on the other continents. In recent years, when genetic studies have increased, especially those related to the sequence of amino acids in proteins, it is possible to follow the changes that have occurred in these molecules over the generations.
All these phenomena add up to a complete and consistent description only if it is assumed that modern-day creatures were created in a long process of evolution. Moreover, every discovery of new details and information requires changes and adjustments in the details, but aligns nicely with the general picture and thus confirms it (but please note, it never proves it beyond any reasonable doubt). Darwin not only established the theory about the evolution of life on Earth, he also proposed a mechanism by which it took place.
Darwin pointed out that there is variation between creatures of the same species, which encompasses every possible trait, regardless of the "benefit" it confers on its owner. Since creatures with different traits may produce a different number of offspring, the representation of those with certain traits will be higher in the next generation than in the previous generation. If these traits have a hereditary basis, those with this trait may be even more represented in the next generation, and so on. This is a mechanism - natural selection based on the existence of genetic variation.
Since the days of Darwin we have learned a lot about mechanisms that may contribute to the creation of variation and ways in which natural selection is carried out. Those who delve into the details will find that there have been far-reaching changes in the 100 years and more since Darwin published his theory. There is no doubt that in many details he was not accurate and many researchers claim that he made a mistake in interpreting the data or ignored extremely significant facts. Thus, for example, in the last decade, the claim that the rate of species change was not uniform was brought up again.
That is, very long periods in which almost no new species were created (even though existing species changed) were replaced by relatively short periods of the creation of many new species (by the word "short" we mean several hundreds of thousands of years or several million years. For comparison, the oldest evidence of human culture , according to anthropologists, they are only 10 thousand to 20 thousand years old!).
Researchers claim that not all transitions from one species to another were caused by the accumulation of many small changes; There were also "sudden", one-off and far-reaching changes. These are important details that are based on laboratory experiments and field experiments from which they try to project past events and conclude how crops would have occurred.
Another criticism points out that it is impossible for changes that occurred according to evolutionists, to have occurred in periods of time that were available to them. These problems are indeed difficult problems, but a theory does not stand or fall following this or that finding that does not agree with it, contrary to the claim that a scientific theory can be disproved by one contradictory finding.
A scientific theory is based on a wide and complicated network of assumptions, observations, experiments and hypotheses. This network is expandable and important for our purpose - for repairs and changes. These corrections and changes do require adjustments, but they do not undermine the position of the entire network.
However, we must all remember that the theory of evolution, which tries to describe in a consistent way the history of life on Earth and the forces that brought about this process, is a theory of human beings, about their weaknesses and their cultural background. The scientific method is indeed aimed at reducing the influence of these factors, or at least increasing the alertness of the scientists to these factors, but it cannot prevent the influence of the researcher's environment, his opinions and his cultural and moral background on his theory.
In formulating his theory, Darwin is influenced by the social concepts of his time, just as the changes nowadays (with emphasis in the study of evolution) are the result of today's worldview. It is important to emphasize that the Torah itself does not refer to the question of the cultural origin of our social values and morals, but to the biological origin of living beings.
As early as Darwin's time, social institutions and thinkers drew conclusions about the so-called "natural" social order or morality. Among them there were those who saw in Darwin's theory a basis for their racist ideas, or for their exploitative class view, just as others saw it as a theory that preaches social equality, or the correction of the world through revolution and re-education. All of these tried to harness a theory that refers to the biological development of species to the concept of their social and moral world; Henry Ford - to justify capitalism and Karl Marx - to justify the socialist revolution, the Nazis - to justify racism and members of the upper classes all over the world - to perpetuate their advantage in the education systems.
However, as many philosophers have concluded, a distinction must be made between what is present and what is desirable. Do not tap from what is found in nature regarding what is desirable for man and his culture. Human culture was indeed created by creatures created in the process of biological evolution, but why must processes that exist in biological development guide us in the development of our social boxes?
Furthermore, the questioner refers to the "law of the jungle" which ruled Nazi Germany. There are no living creatures in the jungle that could commit acts such as those the Nazis did to their own kind. Society's values and morality (or lack thereof) characterize the human species, which during its evolution reached the ability to develop a complex social system that no other creature has reached. What we, humans, do with these tidings in our hands is that we should not shirk our responsibility by pointing out patterns of behavior that exist in the animal and plant world, in their special frameworks and environmental conditions.
