"A Sephardic woman who kisses a Torah book," said Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz of Shas, "surpasses forty professors who teach that man is descended from monkeys."
Yaron London
From: The Bulletin for Biology Teachers, Booklet C, Shebat 117, 1989, Published by: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem - The Science Teaching Center.
Of all the nonsense that was uttered during the election campaign and was completely forgotten from my memory, one thing was not forgotten: "A Sephardic woman who kisses a Torah book," said Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz of Shas, "is superior to forty professors who teach that man is descended from monkeys." The visible message in this sentence is heresy in the theory of the evolution of species. The hidden message is contempt for education, powre of ignorance, male chauvinism and reinforcement of Spanish inferiority. The deadness of the heart of a "Spanish woman" - neither a Sephardic man nor an Ashkenazi woman - is placed against the wisdom of science. Rabbi Peretz did not recite a Hasidic legend by Peretz (Yod Lad) the writer, did not pour into the ears of his listeners a sweet parable about the power of innocent faith against arrogant logic, but forged the Sephardic weakness into a political weapon, flattering his voters by saying that their ignorance is virtue and their weakness is strength.
No, these were not words of flattery. The flatterers don't believe what they say, while Peretz does. Didn't he believe that the train accident at the Bonim junction was caused by defects in the mezuzos of the Beit Sifram of the dead children? Does he not believe in the power of vows and the power of a strange ceremony, lust in the eyes of researchers of remote tribes, to be granted?
Precisely because of the beautiful correspondence between the sayer and the said, this sentence confirms what its speaker sought to contradict: not only that apes and humans have a common ancestor, but that some of us, Rabbi Peretz among them, did not stray far from that ancestor, with heavy jaws and a narrow forehead.
This book was inspired by witty words said by Thomas Henry Huxley, an ally of Charles Darwin, during an excited discussion of the "British Association for the Advancement of Science". The hegemon Wilberforce, a bitter opponent of the theory of the evolution of species, threw Huxley the hissing question: "Don't you care that your grandfather was a monkey?". Huxley replied that if he had to choose between a wretched monkey and a respectable man, turning a serious scientific debate into a gallows, he would, without hesitation, choose the monkey.
Since these words echoed in the space of the Oxford library, on June 30, 1860, biology was conquered for the theory of the evolution of species, not easily. As in the case of Copernicus, as in the case of Freud, so in the case of Darwin, the church was the main opponent. Not only the Christian Church but also the Bolshevik Church. From the finding that learned skills are not inherited, Stalin deduced that communist education will not succeed in creating a new person and that in each generation a despicable child may appear who will be blamed for the existence of the king's clothes. The rogue agronomist Lysenko calmed down the dictator and explained to him that Darwin was wrong.
Soviet biology enslaved Lysenko and remained silent for twenty years. The schools of "Hashomer HaTsair" in Israel have adopted the Kremlin biology. Between Yaakov Hazan and Yitzhak Peretz, there is a common denominator.
Prof. Yosef Neuman is one of those professors who, according to Rabbi Peretz, there are dozens of them who are not equal to one armed Sephardi woman. He teaches biology and philosophy at Tel Aviv University and a central area of his thought is the theory of the evolution of species. Neuman is equipped with the ability to articulate, which saves his interviewers the trouble of editing.
* * *
- Give me the Torah in a layman's edition.
According to the theory of evolution, the living organisms on earth are the tips of the branches of a "tree" whose stem originates from a common ancestor. The various species of organisms developed gradually and slowly (in a process of many millions of years), as a result of internal changes that occurred in the living beings and as a result of changes in the environmental conditions. Darwin was not the first of the evolutionists, but he was the one who proposed the obvious natural mechanism, the main mechanism driving the development of species. He based his proposal on observation of living nature and an ingenious ability to draw conclusions. His main findings are twofold: first, he noticed that in any population of organisms, the individuals are not exactly the same. Each individual is different from another in these features.
Second, he noticed that the reproductive capacity of the organisms is much greater than the carrying capacity of the environment. The multiplication is done in a geometric column and therefore, as in the well-known legend about the inventor of the game of chess and the Persian chess, if the number of wheat kernels is doubled in each square, all the grain of the world will not be enough to pay the chess's debt to the inventor. Even a pair of elephants, if they were allowed to reproduce undisturbed, within a few generations their offspring would cover the face of the earth. But, as we all know, we do not step on the backs of elephants and the reason is that only a few of the organisms that could exist, actually do. Then Darwin asked himself: Who is the survivor? Is this a random thing? And his answer was that those who survive are those who are better adapted to the environmental conditions and their way of life.
Well, in summary: in any population of organisms, the individuals differ from each other, and these differences have a hereditary basis. Some are more adapted and some are less adapted to the conditions of the environment. The adapted are the ones that survive and reproduce while the others, the vast majority, become extinct. And this process, when it accumulates over the generations, over hundreds of millions of years, causes the appearance of the different species, the different types, and the different groups of animals and plants.
- From which directions do the attacks on the theory of species development come?
The appeals come from several directions. First, there are the "Creationists", who are divided, according to their reasoning, into three classes. I think there is something to do with the differences between them. Those with a religious view claim that all biological species were created at once on the earth and have not changed since the moment they were created by the power of God.
Other creationists accept Darwinism for all creatures, but not for man, because man was created in God's image and the thought that the laws of evolution apply to him cannot be tolerated.
There are others, a third type of creationists, who agree that all species were created through an evolutionary process and that the human body was also created this way, but not the human "soul", not its developed mental qualities. Interestingly, to this type belonged Alfred Wells, an English scientist, who came up with the theory named after Darwin, independently of Darwin and at the very same time. At the end of his days, he gave not bad reasons at all for his disbelief in the possibility that the higher mental qualities of man - the capacity for abstract thinking, the moral sense, the aesthetic sense - were also created in an evolutionary process. He said that these qualities were created by other, unique, spiritual forces.
- Is there a creationist attempt to deal with the theory of the evolution of species with scientific tools?
No. The approach of the creationists of the first two types, the simple ones, is based on a belief that is superior to any argument. What do the American creationists, who have made a lot of noise in recent years, claim? Their main claim is that Darwin presents a hypothesis, just a hypothesis, and in front of it there is another hypothesis, the one described in Genesis. In the name of individual freedom, and freedom of choice, the student should be presented with the two hypotheses and let him choose the one he prefers.
- rather a claim that explains Ozan.
It stems from a refusal, or an inability to distinguish between faith and science. Scientific theory, unlike faith, rises and falls based on evidence. It is true that science is also based on a system of assumptions, but science puts its assumptions to the test and if it turns out that the results derived from it are wrong, the assumptions are changed (sometimes, after strong objections). There is a current among creationists known as "scientific creationism", whose followers try to exploit the holes in our knowledge to their advantage. Whenever there is a difficulty in explaining a phenomenon from natural phenomena, they bring out the God who reasons everything, who solves the tangle. The great geneticist Dobzhansky mocked them by saying that they believe in "THE GOD OF THE GAPS".
- What are the notable differences?
First of all there are gaps in the sequence of fossils. According to Darwin, the development of species is supposed to be gradual, but we do not find fossils that testify to all the stages of development, and link all groups of organisms.
- And what is the answer to this claim?
The gaps are constantly being closed, but there may be stages of development that will never be fossilized. What it means? This means, all in all, that conditions suitable for their preservation did not prevail, or that there were certain "jumps" in the evolution process. But there is another interesting angle of attack on Darwinism: it is claimed that the theory explains transitions between species, but fails in its attempt to explain the formation of the large groups, i.e. how the first fish jumped out of the water and began to fly. The example that leads to such an impossible leap is the eye of the supreme beings, an infinitely complex organ, that even if only one of its parts does not function correctly, it does not function at all. How is it possible, they ask, that such a complicated organ was created in an evolutionary process. Well, the general answer is that the complex eye is the result of a long development, at the beginning of the chain the eye was an organ with very limited abilities, but the creature that won this eye, immeasurably improved its chances of survival. Between total blindness and blurred vision, there is a huge difference. And so, in a long process of gradual improvements, while selecting the individuals that had slightly better vision than other individuals, the eye of the creatures of our time was created.
- One of the reasons for refusing to agree with Darwin stems from the insult of attributing the human race to a monkey. What are, in fact, the connections between us and these red-butts?
It is worth clarifying a simple matter: the human-like apes living today - the chimpanzee, the gorilla and the orang-utang - are not our ancestors. No creature alive today can be the ancestor of another creature alive today. The development of species is not ladder-like, but tree-like. The branches of this tree develop and branch in the process of evolution, and most of them are already extinct.
- And does that mean that the human-like monkeys are not our ancestors but our cousins?
This means we have a common ancestor.
– Who moved further away from him, us or the apes?
I don't know by what standard you can measure closeness and distance. We have evolved in our mental capacity, but the chimpanzee has developed other traits. Each branch developed according to the demands placed on it by the environment.
- When did the common ancestor live for us and our cousins?
There is a dispute. Until about twenty years ago, the opinion was widespread that the separation took place 20-15 million years ago, but today there is a serious school of thought that brings the date of the separation up to 5 million years. These hypotheses are based on comparing the proteins in human and chimpanzee cells, a complicated matter.
- What are the chances of the chimpanzee to give birth to a chain of creatures that will eventually create a human like us. I ask if the apes are chasing us up the evolutionary ladder?
Absolutely not, absolutely not. This, after all, is one of the things related to understanding the roots of Darwinism. The developmental direction is not given in advance. It was not predetermined that a creature like man must be created, we did not pave some kind of path where other organisms must follow. The formation of man is the result of random hereditary factors that are infinitely rare combined, and of environmental conditions. The people love the image of the ladder at the top of which stands man, the crown of creation, and I repeat that it is not a pyramid, but a tree whose branches are constantly splitting and being pruned.
Moreover, the man alive today is not the product of biological evolution alone. For the past thousands of years his life has been shaped mainly by social and cultural evolution, not by biological evolution. Culture, its institutions, tradition, develop through imitation and learning, and are passed down from generation to generation, not by genes, but directly and at an infinitely faster rate than biological changes. Man is born into a culture, and has no existence in "nature".
- Let's examine the creationist appeal of the third type, the one that says that it is not possible that man's high qualities were also created through a process of natural selection. Is it possible that this is how the qualities in which we see the permissible human being were created: consciousness, language, imagination and conscience?
Yes. Yes, but to my positive answer I would like to add a caveat: despite having a sequence in evolution, new things are created. The new creations of nature have unpredictable properties and no "omnipotent" mind could have predicted the appearance of the new things before they appeared. This is true even for chemical compounds: water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, but according to the properties of these two elements, it was impossible to guess what the properties of water would be. Every step in evolution is an innovation, starting with the creation of life in the oceans in a pre-biological process, continuing with exiting the water, continuing with flight, until the appearance of radical changes such as the existence of sensations. You find the beginnings of sensations in certain animals that can feel sensations such as hunger and pain. This is a new thing. It does not exist in plants and in simple animals and appeared at a later stage in the evolution of certain animals that have a complex nervous system.
- What do you have in your hand to confirm the theory that the high mental qualities of man also developed in the process of evolution?
There are many difficulties here. For the evolution of organisms, we have direct evidence in the form of fossils, but not so for intermediate stages of mental development. We do not know if an ancient human-like creature knew or did not know how to speak. By the size of the brain box, one can infer the size of the brain, but only a little about its internal organization. To investigate the development of mental skills, we use indirect, circumstantial evidence, such as the presence of certain tools near discovered fossils. Let's take language as an example: well, as we know, there is communication between animals, but it is innate communication from birth and lacks a syntactic structure. Is it possible that the human language started with a dictionary of physical gestures and from that came the language of symbols?
- Is this what they are trying to test in the experiments to teach monkeys the human language?
Right. And the results are controversial. There are those who claim that in these experiments one of the key features of human language was discovered in monkeys - creativity, the ability to understand and create new combinations of words, which is a distinct feature of human language, and there are those who claim that the production of signals by the chimpanzees are automatic responses, the result of rewards by the experimenter Studies in a different direction examine the location of various supervisory functions in the brain. We know where the areas of the brain responsible for creating speech are located, and we are trying to reconstruct how the nervous system, which is the basis of linguistic ability, developed. The assumption also accepted by the celebrated linguist, Noam Chomsky, that the human language is a unique phenomenon inherent in us, only in us, and that its origins should not be sought in other creatures, is not accepted in the opinion of a Darwinist.
- But there are evolutionists who claim that not everything developed slowly and gradually, but that sudden jumps also occur?
There is a school of thought that holds that in evolution there are what can be called peaceful periods and stormy periods. This is a scale of millions of years. This does not, in my opinion, contradict the basic Darwinian assumptions.
- One of the most difficult Darwinist internalizations to digest is that acquired traits are not inherited. Many generations of people will be involved in lifting weights, and this will not mean that the next offspring in the chain of generations will be a muscular guy. It's pretty badass.
You probably mean Lamarck's theory which had several components: First, he claimed that the changes in organisms are the result of some internal desire and the use and non-use of organs and skills. Secondly, he claimed that changes that occur in the organism during its lifetime are transmitted to future generations, and he had another idea according to which there is some impulse that leads life as a whole to perfection and progress; These assertions are incorrect. Darwin's theory freed us from the need to explain the evolution of species with the help of some metaphysical impulse. All attempts to cut off mice tails, to prove that they will give birth to mice with cut off tails, have failed, and we, the Jews, are born with a foreskin, even though our ancestors have been circumcised since the days of Moses. Modern biology explains to us that the genetic material does not change as a result of changes occurring in the organism. The development of the muscles does not change the properties of the genetic material found in the sperm cells (from which the children will be created) of the owner of the muscles.
- The evolutionary process takes place, because the unadapted are destroyed and the adapted survive. That is, a new trait that was preserved must have given its owner some kind of advantage. What advantage is imparting to a person a trait such as altruism, the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the sake of others?
Zoologists have discovered that manifestations of "sacrifice" for other individuals are found in various groups of animals, such as the alarm call of certain birds, which warn of the approach of a predator, and they may ultimately bring profit to his genes (that is, increase the chances of his genes passing to the next generation) . Maternal behavior, like breastfeeding, is also behavior for the benefit of others. Zoologists call these phenomena altruistic behaviors, but what we call altruism in humans is not measured only by the type of behavior, but mainly by the motives. In humans, the altruistic act is not automatic, it is not guided by the genes, but it involves a choice (and usually) with consideration.
- You told me about the fact that there are areas in the brain related to the operation of speech. Is there an area responsible for our moral considerations?
It is not known about it and it is also unlikely. I would say that human morality is based on two things - on the features of social life, the beginning of which is already found in pre-human beings, and on another essential element - human reason. Regarding the first factor: we know that man was social before he was intelligent. Social beings live in frameworks that force them to "consider" others. An individual who does not "consider" the group - is destroyed, and in the sorting process of the survival of the fittest, animals are created whose behavior takes into account (not consciously) the fact of being individuals within a group, and these behavior models are embodied in their genetic load. It is, if you will, a kind of moral precedent. The difference between it and morality lies in society's role as an educator, and in having a rational consideration.
The beginning of reason is rooted in biological needs. This is practical wisdom - orientation in the field, distinguishing between family members and strangers, learning from past experience, developing memory, a certain ability to sort. The beginnings of these skills are already found in the developed monkeys, and they must have appeared in the evolutionary ancestors of man. But in man, reason developed into a new quality, mainly thanks to language. The ability for abstract thinking, foresight and generalization appeared. In the context of morality - the ability to see yourself in the other person's place, and the conclusion that your needs and interests are not superior to those of other human beings - are a rational principle, and some philosophers claim - a principle necessarily embodied in reason.
Another factor in the moral context is human freedom and freedom of choice. Here, really, we touch upon the great difference between man and all other creatures. Man can rebel against the genetic commands, even despite the most important commandment: Pro and Rebu!
- Perhaps the use of birth control and birth control is nothing more than a genetic imperative by which we improve our chances in the evolutionary competition: will only the populations survive that will be able to adapt their size to the needs of the new world, while the other populations will destroy themselves, like those elephants, multiplying unstoppably?
If it were so, the elephants would have to subordinate their needs for the benefit of all elephants, the reptiles for the benefit of all reptiles, etc. The good of the group in humans is rooted in unique human factors, whereas in nature, behavior is driven by genes. The organisms are machines for replicating their genes. A "successful" gene is a gene responsible for a characteristic of the organism that makes it more adapted to its environment and increases the chances of its genes being passed on to its offspring. As for your idea that limiting the birth rate is nothing more than a genetic imperative to improve the survival chances of the human race, scientific speculation must not cloud what is certain for us: I ask you, when you decided to plan the size of your family, do you have any doubt that you did so by virtue of your decision?
- My decision was the result of social conventions.
You probably mean "also of the social conventions". After all, not in all areas do you submit to social conventions. The freedom of human will and choice embody, in my opinion, the greatest revolution since the beginning of life. Until now, all the processes of development were the result of the play of the forces of nature. Humans, although they too are of course limited by the laws of nature, and a large part of their actions are conditioned by hereditary factors, innate tendencies from birth, emotional impulses, etc., they have a margin of freedom and the ability to act according to judgment and rational decisions. In our generation, we are even capable of changing the direction of evolution. We limit the birth rate, we correct nature's errors with the help of genetic engineering and we maintain sick humans, who could not exist without modern medicine. We have different options and we invite you to choose. It is allowed.
Notes: * This list was published in the "Headline" issue 313 of 30.11.80/XNUMX/XNUMX and is published here again at the initiative of Prof. Y. Neuman and with the consent of Mr. Y. London.
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~362788106~~~262&SiteName=hayadan
