Why Evolution Matters: a Jewish View : A Jewish View 9780853038689, 9780853038580

Citation preview

A very readable and well-conceived attempt to reconcile Judaism and evolution. The approach is thankfully honest and free of apologetics. Rutman knows the science well and summarizes it beautifully for the lay reader. Rabbi Dr Arthur Green, Professor and Rector of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Newton, MA, Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University In this interesting and challenging work, Dr Rutman demonstrates that the combination of Judaism and evolution makes for an enriched appreciation of both areas. In a direct and informal style, peppered with humorous asides, Rutman makes a valuable contribution to an area where the protagonists have all too often adopted polarized positions. Harold Liebowitz, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin

ISBN: 978 0 85303 858 0

Joel Yehudah Rutman

JOEL RUTMAN

An important work that needs to be published … anyone who is interested in exploring the issue of a Jewish perspective on evolution should read this book. John D. Loike, Director for Special Programs for the Center for Bioethics; Co-Director for Graduate Studies in Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

Why Evolution Matters A Jewish View

Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish View

In this book Joel Rutman presents an intriguing, novel approach to the issues of evolutionary science and Judaism. Rutman embraces evolution and works into it a sensitive case for Jewish religious values. His is an outstanding contribution that deserves wide attention from scientists, theologians, and philosophers, as well as from lay-persons. Yehudah Gellman, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Joel Yehudah Rutman

The diagram illustrates branching patterns in vertebrate evolution. Longer branch lengths signify longer periods of time. Branch points indicate when the last common ancestor of subsequent groups is presumed to have lived. Living species are in blue and extinct species are in pink. Note that humans are placed no higher than any other extant vertebrate group. Figure adapted from S.J. Carlson, Evolution and Systematics, www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/ education/events/carlson5.html. The Hebrew text is Genesis 1:25: ‘God made wild beasts of every kind, and cattle of every kind, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. And God saw that this was good.’

Joel Rutman has written a timely and profoundly important book on the relationship of Judaism and science. Since God is Author of both Torah and the laws of nature, these two domains cannot conflict. When they seem to be in conflict, for example in the case of evolution, we need to be wise enough to integrate the teachings of Torah and science. This book eschews obscurantism; it challenges readers to think, to be inellectually alive. That is no small accomplishment. Rabbi Dr Marc D. Angel, Founder and Director, Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals

Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish View

A graduate of the Hebrew Academy and Yeshivath Adath in Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Rutman went on to Brandeis University and Havard Medical School. He completed residencies in both paediatrics and neurology, followed by teaching and clinical practice. He was an Examiner for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with Special Competence in Child Neurology and Professor of Pediatrics (Neurology) at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas. He and his wife make their home in Zikhron Ya’akov, Israel.

Cover design by Harvey Klineman

Joel Rutman, a paediatric neurologist, draws on his own extensive experience in a branch of medicine where our evolutionary past is much in evidence. He examines the relationship of evolution to Judaism and shows how evolution deepens our understanding of classic areas of Jewish concern such as free will, moral behaviour, suffering and death. He presents a novel interpretation of biological evolution in which life’s convergences, self-organization, constraints and progress take their place as components of the divinely intended world. He explains how Genesis and evolutionary cosmology and biology reinforce, rather than contradict, one another. Rutman confronts and answers major questions that evolution poses for Judaism: How can God have created the world when evolution says everything just happened? How can we believe in the truth of Genesis when it conflicts with the facts of evolution? How does human evolution relate to our moral behaviour and to our need for divine commandments? In an accessible style this book ties together God who intends evolution with God who cares about us.

ISBN 978 0 85303 858 0 VALLENTINE MITCHELL

VALLENTINE MITCHELL

WH Y E VOLUT IO N MATTER S

Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish Approach

Joel Yehudah Rutman

VALLENTINE MITCHELL LONDON • PORTLAND, OR

First published in 2014 by Vallentine Mitchell

Middlesex House, 29–45 High Street, Edgware, Middlesex HA8 7UU

920 NE 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon, 97213-3786

www.vmbooks.com Copyright © Joel Yehudah Rutman 2014 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been applied for

ISBN 978 085303 858 0 (cloth) ISBN 978 085303 868 9 (ebook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been applied for

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

Printed by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

To Dad – who enthused over nature as we walked to shul.

‘The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide.’ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Contents

Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii Introduction xv

PART I. How can God be Considered to have Created the World when, According to Evolution, Everything just Happened?

1. The Conflict

3

2. Evolution of the Cosmos

9

3. Evolution of Life

23

4. Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life

47

5. Life Evolves Under a Loose Rein

65

6. An Intended World in Jewish Thought

83

PART II. Accord Between Evolutionary Science and Genesis

7. Resolving Conflicts between Genesis’ Creation Account and Evolution

95

8. Examples of Accord between Evolutionary Science and Genesis

121

9. Evolution Informs Jewish Views on Suffering and Death

127

viii Contents

PART III. Human Evolution and Moral Behaviour

10. How Human Beings Evolved

143

11. The Evolution of Moral Behaviour

159

12. The Evolved Brain and Judaism’s Free Will

175

Epilogue: God Cares how we Behave

183

The Answers

185

Glossary

187

References

193

Index

209

Preface

‘B

ereishit bara elokim – In the beginning God created’. We chanted these opening words of Genesis over and over, phrase by singsong phrase, in Rabbi Z’s class in third grade. The intonation of the Hebrew words, the cadence of the phrases, their mystery and majesty – all became part of me. They still are. A single, powerful elokim/God created all that is and, even though we could never see Him, He was in charge. How He accomplished all this – like the passages we skipped about sex – we could not speak of now. But never mind, we might learn how He did it as we got older. And I believe I have. He evolved the world – this book attempts to explain how. If your mind is made up and you know already that God proclaimed, and the world instantaneously became as it is now – then do not bother reading what follows. Or if you know with perfect faith that all that is came to be of itself, without plan or purpose – then what follows is a waste of time for you as well. This book is written for those who do not know all the answers, who are willing to consider ‘Could there be something to this evolution idea and what are its implications?’ and, for others, ‘Could there be something in this God idea?’ For some reason, evolution has not been discussed as much in Judaism as in Christianity. We Jews analyse much else unendingly, but evolution has somehow – with notable exceptions – stayed pretty much below our radar.1 I am not sure why. Perhaps because Jews have been grappling for millennia with how a just God can permit repeated catastrophes, so that Darwin’s threat pales in comparison. Perhaps because we are so preoccupied with Jewish survival – picking up after the Holocaust, building Israel – leaving little room for much else. Perhaps, also, traditionalists and modernists both shied away from the issue, one fearing loss of faith, and the other unconcerned because evolution was obviously true and the Bible hopelessly out-of-date. And finally, perhaps, a feeling that the debate did not really matter in daily life, or that today’s science would quickly become obsolete, so why get all worked up about it?

x Preface

I hope to show, on the contrary, that evolution does matter, and that it is here to stay. It is the 700-pound gorilla sitting in back of shul (synagogue) whose point of view can no longer be ignored. It is not just about how humans developed from earlier primates, or about what happened to the dinosaurs. It is nothing less than the entire history of our universe and all life and how everything got to be the way it is. And it is because evolution offers an alternative story of all of this that it seems to pull the rug out from Genesis. For the story of the world that has been laboriously uncovered by scientists over the past three centuries can be thought of as an alternative kind of revelation – one that rivals the Bible in explanatory power. In Alexandrian Egypt some 2,000 years ago Philo, the first Jewish philosopher, integrated the Hebrew Bible with Hellenic thought of his time. A thousand years later Maimonides (Rambam), the great medieval authority on Jewish law and philosophy, brought together Judaism and aspects of Greek and Islamic thought in his Guide for the Perplexed. The challenge that faces us in our day, 2,000 years after Philo and a millennium after Rambam, comes from evolutionary science, which is thought to have revealed a world without ultimate purpose or divine input. This is why it arouses a visceral rejection by traditionalists who resist its implications by clinging desperately to the literal truth of Genesis and by blaming ‘evolution’ for the world’s ills. Evolution is blamed for the breakdown of the family, the absence of shared purpose, the loss of a sense of right and wrong and of the feeling of the sacred in our lives. My attempt in this book is to show that evolution is not the calamitous threat to religion and to Judaism in particular that it has been made out to be. The Biblical story of how we came to be, who we are and how we should live, can be integrated with evolutionary science’s answers to the same questions. And our understanding of the Biblical message will be better for it. This book is my attempt at such integration. Since evolution includes the origin and development of both the cosmos and life it includes a great swath of science; and since the Bible and Judaism are also immense topics in themselves, the task of integrating the whole business is formidable. It is impossible to neatly summarize all that is known about the evolution of the cosmos and of life, and it is just as impossible to review all that 3,500 years of Biblical and Jewish thought have had to say about creation. Each chapter could and should be expanded to book-length. What I attempt here, therefore, will be limited to what seems most relevant. I have not included, for example,

Preface  xi

any discussion of the future of evolution and of humanity’s role in shaping that future. Would that others will come forward to clarify issues I ignore, that I pass by too quickly or in which I am mistaken. My emphases reflect my background. I remain fascinated, for instance, by the child’s developing nervous system, my field of speciality since medical school, and this is reflected in what follows. I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, have been a hazzan for decades, and lead a moderately observant lifestyle, and this too shows itself. I am firmly convinced of the truths of evolution but also of the Hebrew Bible and the Judaism that stems from it. But, as opposed to Slifkin’s fine works in which he stresses that he is not breaking new ground, I find that evolution provides new insights into God’s role in this world.2 Rambam notes that it is ‘through creation, that is, through observation and rational speculation on His wisdom as it is manifest in the orderly patterns of nature’ that we come to know God.3 Evolution teaches us some of these ‘orderly patterns of nature’, and thus deepens our understanding of God’s wisdom. Therefore, I make no apology for what is new in what follows. Housekeeping: when I say Bible or biblical, I mean the Hebrew Bible – the Torah, Prophets, and Writings (Tanach). When I refer to Genesis or Genesis 1 without further explanation, I mean the first seven paragraphs in the Hebrew Bible that describe the six days of creation and the seventh day of rest. Unless otherwise indicated, translations of the Hebrew Bible are by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS).4 Excerpts from the Babylonian Talmud (TB) use the Soncino translation.5 Translations without ascriptions are my own. I refer to dates in the past 2,000 years as CE or ‘common era’ rather than AD; BCE means before the common era. A glossary is provided to help with technical terms and Hebrew words. I frequently make the assumption that the Hebrew Bible presents a distinct point of view. This assumption is challenged by contemporary scholars who maintain that the Bible has no homogeneous point of view.6 They see the Bible as composed by many authors over hundreds of years, and as reflecting many diverse and conflicting ideas. I will ignore this objection in what follows because, when it is compared with evolution, the Biblical worldview of creation appears homogeneous. A similar problem occurs with my use of the all-inclusive term, ‘Judaism’. I use ‘Judaism’ to refer to the dominant stream of religion and culture of those calling themselves Jews after the Hebrew Bible had come to closure. When I refer to religion, I mean the theistic religions of Western thought.

xii Preface

This book is organized around three questions: First Question: How can Judaism insist on a Creator God when evolution informs us that everything out there just happened – with no plan, no purpose? The answer requires an overview, however sketchy, of cosmic and biologic evolution (chapters 2 to 3). This is followed by the main point of the book, which is a proposed way of understanding evolution that is compatible with an intended world (chapters 4 to 6). Second Question: Where do Genesis and evolution agree or disagree? The answer requires us to look at the Genesis text for its religious, rather than scientific, messages (chapters 7 and 8). Chapter 9 explains the contribution of evolutionary science to Jewish concepts of suffering and death. Third Question: How does human evolution relate to moral behaviour? The answers will require a brief summary of human evolution and brain development and their contribution to Judaism’s ideas of free will (chapters 10, 11 and 12).

Notes 1. Among notable works in this area are: N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology and Evolution (http://www. zootorah.com, Zoo Torah, 2006); G. Cantor and M. Swetlitz (eds), Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006); M.S. Cherry, ‘Creation, Evolution and Jewish Thought’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 2001); A. Carmel and C. Domb (eds), Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems (Jerusalem and New York: Feldheim, 1978). The Catholic Church, relying on its Patristic tradition of biblical interpretation, has been increasingly supportive of Darwinian evolution. For instance, the 2009 conference on Catholic teaching and evolution at the Pontifical Gregorian Institute in Rome assumed without protest the validity of biological evolution. Conservative Protestantism has been more wary, as detailed in R.I. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 2. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation, p.20. 3. Quoted in D. Hartman, Israelis and Jewish Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p.95. 4. Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985). 5. Hebrew–English Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (London: Soncino, 1990). 6. Daniel Gordis, ‘The Shape and Meaning of Biblical History’, Azure, 45 (Summer 5771/2011), pp.80–1.

Acknowledgements

K

ind souls from many walks of life have helped me in this effort. Professor Yehudah Gellman has provided encouragement and helpful critique over the past decade. I am grateful for his continued friendship. Rabbi Shubert Spero, spiritual leader of the congregation in which I grew up, is as helpful a mentor now as he was then. I thank friends in Zichron Ya’acov who have helped in many ways: Abie Burstein, Malcolm Feuerstein, Hillel Halkin and Alan Stephens. I thank Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg and his wife Judy, who opened their home to me for many years, and allowed me the use of their extensive library in San Antonio, Texas. I am grateful to Rabbi Neil Gilman and to Professor Eva Jablonka for meeting with me, and to those who have responded to my e-mails: Professors Jack Cohen, Douglas Futuyma, Dan Graur, Leon Kass and Harold Liebowitz. I express my profound debt to Rabbi Moshe Lefkovitz z’l, my uncle and teacher. Thanks to Jeremy Rutman, PhD, who critiqued the sections on physics; to Harvey Klineman, who designed the cover; and to Tony Gray for editing help. To Hedy, my indefatigable and lovely wife of fifty-one years, many a hug for her patience, understanding and interminable hours of typing. Though I have learned much from many people, I alone am responsible for this work. Zichron Yakov, Israel Av 5773

Introduction

Y

ear after year – weak at the close of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), having fasted and stood at prayer for many hours, tallit wrapped about me and facing the ark housing the sacred scrolls – I sing (as hazzan): ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One’, and the congregation responds. Then three times, ‘Blessed be His Name whose glorious kingdom is forever and ever’, and three times the congregation responds. Finally, seven times: ‘Hashem (YHVH) Hu Ha’elokim’, ‘The Lord, He is God’, and the congregation responds seven times. The shofar (ram’s horn) sounds. We escort God’s Presence back to the heavenly dwelling from which it had descended on this consecrated day. There is a God, King over all; He is One; He is Eternal. My being merges with those worshipping with me, with ancestors and posterity, with the community of Israel and all likeminded humanity, in this acknowledgement. At least at that moment, in that charged place and time, I believe. The ancient chant taps into something fundamental in my brain’s wiring. As Sinatra said, ‘When I sing, I believe.’ Shul ends. Exhilaration fades quickly. I re-enter the everyday, exchange white tallit and kittel for doctor’s white lab coat, and scurry off to my patients at the Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital. A different world – a series of disorders of brain, spinal cord, nerves and muscles, many of which make sense only in the context of their evolution.1 Some of these children have mutations in brain chemistry that lead to degenerative brain disorders, and to disordered neurons that cause epilepsy.2 Mutations of this sort are a part of the evolutionary process. Some infants were born with malformations of brain and spinal cord that betray human phylogeny, our descent as a species from earlier species. Some suffer from antibiotic-resistant bacterial meningitis, a condition based on the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest. I try to help infants who have undergone damage to their immature brain around the time of birth – damage that occurs because of the trade-off in human evolution of a vulnerable brain at birth for the

xvi  Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish View

benefits of prolonged post-natal maturation. Over and over, the disorders I try to care for as a pediatric neurologist make sense only in the light of evolution. I want the kittel that I wear as hazzan to match the lab coat I wear when making hospital rounds. This book attempts to make that match. Of course, the evolutionary way of understanding the world is about a lot more than children with neurological problems. Since evolution encompasses the origin and development of the cosmos (cosmogony) and of life (evolutionary biology) it cannot help but impinge on much in the Bible and Judaism. Their integration follows. Notes 1. A sampling of syndromes, many of which are now known to have a genetic basis, is described in S. Gellis, M. Feingold and J. Rutman, Atlas of Mental Retardation Syndromes (Washington, DC: Department of Health, Education and Welfare, US Government Printing Office, 1968). 2. An example: S. Segal, J.Y. Rutman and G.W. Frimpter, ‘Galactokinase Deficiency and Mental Retardation’, Journal of Pediatrics, 95, 5, Part 1 (November 1979), pp.750–2.

Part I HOW CAN GOD BE CONSIDERED TO HAVE CREATED THE WORLD WHEN, ACCORDING TO EVOLUTION, EVERYTHING JUST HAPPENED?

1

The Conflict Akiva’s Tallit versus Self-assembly

A

sectarian came and said to Rabbi Akiva (c. 50–135 CE): ‘Who created this world?’ He answered: ‘The Holy One, Blessed Be He.’ [The sectarian] said to him: ‘Show me clear proof.’ He answered: ‘Come to me tomorrow.’ On the morrow he came to him. Rabbi Akiva asked: ‘What are you wearing?’ He answered: ‘A garment.’ He asked: ‘Who made it?’ He answered: ‘The weaver.’ He said: ‘I don’t believe you. Show me proof.’ He answered: ‘What can I show you, isn’t it obvious that the weaver made it?’ He answered: ‘And isn’t it obvious that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, created His world?’ The sectarian left. [The Rabbi’s] students asked: ‘What does this prove?’ He answered: ‘Just as the house attests to the builder, and the garment attests to the weaver, and the door to the carpenter, so the world attests to the Holy One, Blessed be He, that created it.’1 According to Rabbi Akiva the matter is self-evident. Just look about you to see evidence of divine creation. It is obvious. A millennium after Akiva, Moses Maimonides (Rambam), physician as well as rabbi and philosopher, noted evidence of purposeful design in nature. He asked: Do you hold that it could have happened by chance that a certain clear humor should be produced, and outside it another similar humor, and again outside it a certain membrane in which a hole happened to be bored, and in front of that a clear and hard membrane? ... Could anyone with intelligence conceive that the humors, membranes, and nerves of the eye – which, as is known, are so well arranged and all of which have as their purpose the final end of this act of seeing – have come about fortuitously?

4  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

Certainly not … this is brought about of necessity through a purpose of nature … [This] craftsman-like governance proceeds … according to us [from] the act of an intelligent being who impressed all the faculties in question into all the things in which a natural faculty exists.2 The eye does not come about by chance, says Rambam, but rather through the act of an intelligent being (God) and for the purpose of seeing. But what was self-evident to Akiva in the first century CE and Rambam in the eleventh required re-examination, beginning in the sixteenth century. For it was then that Copernicus established that the earth revolved about the sun. In the next century, Newton showed that the movements of the heavenly bodies followed mathematical laws. In the thinking of the time, God’s method in bringing about His celestial universe had now been revealed. But these discoveries concerned bodies out there in space and since they did not relate to how living things came about, they could generally be ignored. Charles Darwin upset the apple cart for good in the mid-nineteenth century by showing that living species resulted from selection by nature – socalled ‘natural’ selection. This changed everything. For, once causeand-effect explanations were in place, not only for the movements of the heavenly bodies but also for the coming into being of plants and animals here on earth, the inescapable question was, ‘Why do we need God?’ The terrible possibility that now confronted traditional religion was that Akiva’s designer and Rambam’s intelligent being were no longer necessary, since the natural world self-assembled. The argument for the existence of a Creator based on design therefore threatened to come tumbling down, taking theistic religion with it. The daily morning prayer of Jewish liturgy is directed to Him ‘who forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates all’.3 But if we do not accept that He creates all, if all comes about on its own initiative, then why should we pay attention to Him? The psalmist declares, ‘My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth’,4 but if He did not make heaven and earth He is unlikely to be of much help. ‘Will you instruct Me about the work of My hands?’ asks Isaiah. ‘It was I who made the earth and created man upon it. My own hands stretched out the heavens, and I marshaled all their host.’5 But if God has not ‘made the earth and created man upon it’, why respect Him? There is even more at stake. The Bible and later Jewish thought assumed that nature had purpose, though we may not know what that

The Conflict  5

purpose is. ‘Purpose’ here is not the trivial notion that everything in nature is useful (called a ‘proximate cause’ by philosophers) – that the eye’s purpose, for example, is to enable seeing – it is rather that the universe reflects cosmic, or ‘final’ purpose, sometimes called ‘cosmic teleology’. This is clearly stated by Rav Kook who wrote that ‘religious thinking – unlike the empirical sciences – is fundamentally concerned with teleology’.6 The scientific world view of evolutionary science is thought to be in fundamental opposition to this cosmic teleology. Its adherents generally deny ‘any program on the basis of which either cosmic or biologic evolution has occurred’.7 The conventional scientific wisdom is that what is, is, what happens, happens – all on its own, with no predetermined plan or desired outcome. The confrontation is stark – final purpose or no final purpose. It is wishful thinking to paper over this difference by maintaining that religion and science occupy separate worlds of thought and therefore do not come into conflict. S.J. Gould’s separation of science and religion into ‘nonoverlapping magisteria’8 is such an attempt, and it fails because of the fundamental opposition between a world with purpose and one without. Therefore, I do not understand how one can fail to grasp the enormity of this conflict. I do not see how one can maintain that evolution ‘should not present a problem for Jewish thinkers’.9 As I see it, if evolution does not make a believing Jew – or Christian – more than a bit uncomfortable, then they have not thought about it enough. Let me say it again: the conventional scientific approach denies any need for God as Creator. He has been replaced by naturally evolving processes that come about on their own, have rational explanations, and are without final purpose. It is this impasse that this book attempts to resolve. The Traditional Biblical and Jewish Responses10

Evolution, Shmevolution! Shut your eyes. Deny any facts that appear to conflict with the way you have been taught to understand the Bible. Forget this new stuff, it will be proven wrong soon enough. I am used to my way of thinking and do not want it disturbed. It is like the old story of the two shtetl (small-town) Jews from Poland who come to the giraffe enclosure in a big city zoo. They ponder and ponder what they see. Finally one says to the other: ‘No such animal exists!’

6  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

Even revered religious leaders took this approach. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, late head of the Lubavitch Hassidim, and considered by some followers to have been the Messiah, proclaimed, God created ready fossils, bones or skeletons (for reasons best known to Him), just as He could create ready living organisms, a complete man, and such ready products as oil, coal, or diamonds, without any evolutionary process … If you are still troubled by the theory of evolution, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it has not a shred of evidence to support it.11 Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, another prominent Orthodox leader of the past generation, gave explicit advice with regard to the teaching in Jewish schools on evolution and the age of the universe: Textbooks of secular studies that contain matters of heresy (kefirah) with respect to the creation of the world are certainly books of sectarianism (minut) that are forbidden to be taught. It is necessary to see to it that the secular studies teachers do not teach from them to students. If it is not possible to obtain other books, it is necessary to tear out those pages from the textbooks.12 How sad. The evidence for evolution, as we shall soon see, has now become overwhelming. It cannot be dismissed with a wave of the hand or by ripping out pages. We badly need another approach. The Mehitza – Separation Some traditional Jewish scientists grant legitimacy to evolution, but try to keep it fenced off from their religious world. This ‘separate worlds’ approach goes something like this: Science is now seen as a kind of special skill – no more a philosophy of life than other skills. The art of writing cannot tell you what to write; driving lessons do not teach you where to drive to; and the ability to manipulate atoms, molecules and other units of matter does not teach you to what end to exercise it. Thus the growth and spread of material knowledge has put mankind in greater need than ever of Torah (a word which means not merely instruction, but rather direction). In one sense, then, the problem has been resolved: science is something to be usefully consulted on how to do things, Torah directs you as to what to do and to aim at.13

The Conflict  7

This perspective sidesteps obvious contradictions. Do we accept the account in Genesis of purposive creation, or do we accept the nonpurposive, indifferent approach of science? Do we base moral conduct on Torah, or do we understand it to be an evolved trait? One system appears opposed to the other. If A is right, then B is wrong, and vice versa. The two sides of the Mehitza may contradict one another. Besides, restricting science to ‘how to do things’ is a category mistake, and confuses ‘science’ with the function of ‘technology’. Scientific knowledge is much broader and deeper than technology. My Webster’s Dictionary defines science as ‘systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, and experimentation carried on in order to determine the nature or principles of what is being studied’. Science thus informs – although it may not answer – all aspects of human thought, including such questions as how our world came to be, how we should behave, why we die – topics previously the province of religion. The two cannot be partitioned; the only way forward is through integration. Integration ‘There is … no way to apprehend Him’, said Rambam, ‘except it be through the things He has made.’ I take this to mean that we can understand God only from knowledge of how the natural world came to be. The science of evolution cannot be dismissed or kept separate from knowledge of God, because it is knowledge of God. I can be comfortable both with my kittel in shul and with my lab coat in the hospital because both coats are the same size, they both fit me! Biblical and Jewish ideas about how this world came to be and our place in it can and should be integrated with evolutionary cosmology and biology. We begin with the physics of the very beginning. Notes   1. J.D. Eisenstein (ed.), Midrash Temurah in Ozar Hamidrashim (New York: Eisenstein, 1915), vol.2, p.583.   2. M. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), III, 19, p.479. Guide for the Perplexed referenced as GP hereafter.   3. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.88.   4. Psalms, 121:2. Translation here and throughout from Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1985).   5. Isaiah 45:11–13.   6. C. Feit, ‘Modern Orthodoxy and Evolution: The Models of Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi A.I. Kook’, in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, ed.

8  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? G. Cantor and M. Swetlitz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp.224, 217.   7. E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p.50.   8. S.J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999).   9. Feit, ‘Modern Orthodoxy and Evolution’, p.222. 10. Cantor and Swetlitz (eds), Jewish Tradition and the Challenge to Darwinism, Part 1. 11. A. Carmell and C. Domb (eds), Challenge: Torah Views on Science and Its Problems (New York: Feldheim, 1988), pp.142–9. 12. M. Feinstein, Igrot Moshe, Yoreh De’Ah (New York: Noble, 1982), Vol. 3, Responsum 72, p.323. 13. S. Leval, ‘Torah and the Scientist’, in Carmell and Domb (eds), Challenge, p.113.

2

Evolution of the Cosmos

Cosmic Evolution and its Jewish Implications

How Astrophysics Explains Cosmic Evolution he enigmatic passage from nothing to something remains mysterious; my task would be much simpler if I could skip it altogether and instead begin when life begins. But the rules that govern the cosmos carry over into the world of living things, and life’s atoms are all star-born, so life’s evolution is part and parcel of the evolution of the cosmos.1 For this reason, the chapter division that follows between the evolution of the cosmos and the evolution of life is artificial, and only employed for didactic purpose. Those who study such matters, cosmologists and astrophysicists, tell time and spell space in wee fragments of seconds, unimaginably tiny ‘strings’, and vast light years; they deal with temperatures that range from near absolute zero to trillions upon trillions of degrees; their language is mathematics. This is a dazzlingly complex world in which much remains unknown, and what is known is subject to wildly different interpretations. New findings, such as those from the Large Hadron Collider near Lake Geneva on the French-Swiss border, are likely to drastically revise present theories. It would be hard enough for the lay person to comprehend the implications of astrophysics even if those who understood it agreed with one another. But they do not.2 Behind their disagreements lie unsolved mysteries. What is dark matter? Dark energy? ‘Why are there three generations of elementary particles … or three different sets of quarks, of which the lowest energy set makes up the bulk of matter we find on Earth? Why is gravity so much weaker than the other forces in nature, such as electromagnetism? Why is the proton 2,000 times heavier than the electron?’3 Despite this and many other questions, I will put aside disagreements and unsolved mysteries, and present a very brief summary of today’s conventional wisdom. Some 14 billion years ago, all space, matter

T

10  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

and energy were concentrated into an incredibly hot, unified region: ‘a tiny patch of spacetime, perhaps as small as a billionth the size of a proton, which then went through a phase of rapid, exponential growth, called inflation’.4 During this inflation, the basic forces of the universe (gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces) split from each other, accompanied by an enormous release of energy familiarly known as the ‘Big Bang’. A fraction of a second after the beginning, the universe was a hot, formless soup of the most elementary particles, quarks and leptons. As it expanded and cooled, layer on layer of structure developed: neutrons and protons, atomic nuclei, atoms, stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies, and finally superclusters. The observable part of the universe is now inhabited by 100 billion galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars and probably a similar number of planets. Galaxies themselves are held together by the gravity of the mysterious dark matter. The universe continues to expand and indeed does so at an accelerating pace, driven by dark energy, an even more mysterious form of energy whose gravitational force repels rather than attracts.5 At the very high temperatures in their cores, these stars undergo thermonuclear fusion. Stars with more than approximately ten times the mass of our sun achieve sufficient pressure and temperature in their cores to make dozens of elements heavier than hydrogen, including the elements of living things – carbon, oxygen, phosphorous and nitrogen. When high-mass stars explode in death, they ‘scatter their chemically enriched guts throughout the galaxy’.6 We, and all of life, are made of elements from these exploding stars. In fact, every atom in your body and mine was once inside a star that exploded – including the iron in the haemoglobin molecules that transport oxygen to every cell in our body. As the Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai put it, ‘The red stars are my heart, the distant Milky Way / is the blood in it, in me.’7 These star-born elements are only briefly ours. They eventually return to soil, water and air in endless cycle. ‘For dust you are, and to dust you shall return.’8 With this explanation of the origin of the elements, science has given us order. Instead of the ancients’ arbitrary world of earth, air, fire and water, we now realize that all matter is composed of a graded sequence of ninety-two naturally occurring elements, from hydrogen to uranium – based on laws of quantum mechanics.9

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We return to our story. About 4.5 billion years ago, material in the cloud of gas that circled an undistinguished star, our sun, conglomerated under the spell of gravity. Earth formed. Had it formed closer to our sun, its oceans would have evaporated; farther from the sun, and they would have frozen. In either case, life, crucially dependent on water, could not have begun. Earth was fortunate (or was it more than fortune?) in other ways as well. We enjoy relative peace and quiet, for instance, because the enormous gravitational force of our neighbour Jupiter protects us from bombardment by incoming comets. As earth formed, its interior was compressed, producing immense internal heat and pressure. Gravity dictated that heavier elements were drawn into earth’s core, while lighter elements and a film of gases rose to its surface. ‘Solid’ earth is still forming, a ceaselessly changing jigsaw of diverging and colliding slabs.10 Stars continue to form and expire, the cosmos continues its inexorable expansion, earth’s tectonic plates rumble on. The universe is a work in progress. The next step, of course, is the evolution of life, but first we will pause to consider some implications of the cosmology that we have just summarized. Implications for Judaism

Creation-in-time and from Nothing 1. Creation in Time Physicists and astronomers appear to have solved the ancient question: Was the world eternal, as Aristotle said, or did it have a beginning, as related in Genesis? I began to appreciate their achievements when my wife and I visited the McDonald Observatory in West Texas some years ago. It turns out that astronomers now spend much of their time looking at spectral analyses of light from distant sources, rather than peering directly through telescopes. When the spectra receive light from distant objects, they reveal a ‘red shift’ caused by the elongation of light waves, red being the longest wavelength of light that can be seen with the naked eye. As galaxies rush away, their light waves are elongated, much as the sound waves from a police car’s siren that is racing away from us are elongated with the effect that their pitch drops. Elongated light waves produce a red shift in the light spectra that intensifies as their velocity increases. By measuring the wavelengths of light received by their instruments, astronomers can estimate the speed of recession of distant objects. They conclude that this recession began between 14 and 15 billion years ago.

12  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

This conclusion is buttressed by a second finding. As the universe expanded and cooled, electrons were captured by protons to form atoms. Photons were then able to race through space unimpeded by obstructing electrons. These primordial photons are still with us, zipping along at the speed of light. As time goes by, the photons lose energy to the expanding universe and their wavelengths become longer. Shortwavelength gamma rays and X-rays have gradually given way to longer microwaves and, in turn, these will be replaced in the distant future by radio waves of even longer wavelength. Astrophysicists can therefore estimate the time when the cosmic background radiation began by measuring its wavelength. Once again the beginning turns out to have been some 13 billion years ago.11 These two sources of evidence – the ‘red shift’ and the cosmic microwave background radiation – concur that the universe began in time. How does this conclusion relate to Genesis? One might think that the opening verse in Genesis resolved the issue once and for all. ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’12 Period. That is, before this creation there was nothing – we will get to what ‘nothing’ might be later on – and afterwards there was something. But the grammar of the Hebrew – bereishit means ‘in the beginning of ’ – has led to multiple interpretations and to Rashi’s comment that ‘This verse [Genesis 1:1] demands to be expounded.’13 I will quickly summarize the interpretations of the Sephardi rabbis and philosophers of the Middle Ages, but I urge you to read the referenced sources in order to appreciate the nuanced thinking involved. Maimonides (Rambam) concluded that we live in a world created in time – rather than an eternal world – based on the absence of contrary evidence and in accord with Jewish tradition and his understanding of the Genesis text.14 Gersonides (Ralbag) agreed that the world was created in time, although he maintained that prime matter – without shape or form – pre-existed creation.15 Yehudah Halevi was wary of Aristotle’s view that the world was eternal: And don’t be fooled by wisdom of the Greeks, Which bears flowers but no fruit, its only crop The crabby apples of an uncreated earth, A tent of heaven no one pitched, Time began at no time, and no end To the endless cycles of the moon.16

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Why did this issue matter so much to these Jewish (and non-Jewish) philosophers of the Middle Ages? What did it matter if the world had always existed or was created in time? It mattered because it determined whether or not God continued to play an active role in the world. For, if the world is not eternal but was brought into existence, it is reasonable to conclude that there was an agent responsible for its coming to be, and that this agent can act in a spontaneous fashion. Put otherwise, it is reasonable to conclude that the world is the product of God’s will. If, on the other hand, the world has always existed, then even though God may be responsible for its existence, God cannot act in a spontaneous fashion.17 To the orthodox believer, in other words, it was and remains vitally important for God to be able to act ‘in a spontaneous fashion’, for otherwise how can He play an active role in this world? How can He bring about miracles, revelation and redemption? How can He deliver us from evils and lead us to fulfilment? Only if He had intervened to create the cosmos could He be expected to intervene on earth as well. The conclusion we can draw is that the cosmologists’ argument that the cosmos began at some far distant point in time, as described in their inflationary model of the universe, fits nicely with the Jewish consensus of creation in time as formulated by the classic Jewish medieval philosophers. Modern cosmogony, therefore, provides no reason to dismiss their interventionist God. 2. Creation from Nothing The Jewish medieval philosophers, just like modern-day cosmologists, were also concerned with the nature of the ‘nothing’ that preceded the ‘something’ of creation.18 To briefly summarize: Abraham ibn Ezra, born in Toledo, 1092, maintained that the physical universe had transformed from pre-existent materials (the tohu – ‘unformed’ of Genesis 1:2) and that, through His intent, God actualized these pre-existent materials into the yet undifferentiated material universe. The view of Nahmanides (Ramban) was that the universe was brought forth from ‘nothing at all except space predisposed to be made into something’.19 (An intriguing concept, this ‘predisposed’. And is space ‘nothing’?) And Obadiah ben Jacob (Obadja) Sforno (1475–1550, Italy) held that God ‘made, out of absolutely nothing, a perfectly spherical, finitely large space’.20 Although these philosophers differed in their views, they agreed that ‘(1) there exists something that is nothing out

14  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

of which God (2) through an act of will (3) creates eternally and/or continually a universe. Furthermore (4) the created universe, in virtue of God’s intention, has meaning and moral value.’21 How does this relate to modern cosmogony? As explained by Lawrence Krauss, the space of the universe is filled by unstable energy that, in a manner analogous to the transient ‘virtual’ particles described by quantum theory, may have spontaneously initiated the Big Bang. Krauss considers the energy of empty space to be ‘nothing’ and therefore concludes that nothing can give rise to something (our world) without invoking God.22 His conclusion is open to many criticisms: Firstly, the existence of energy fluctuations in empty space (‘nothing’) that gave rise to the Big Bang is not proven. It could have happened that way but it just as well might not. Secondly, the origin of the unstable energy that fills space remains unexplained. Thirdly, as we have just seen, some medieval Jewish theologians agreed with modern physicists that the original ‘nothing’ before creation was actually something. Finally, even if the transformation of nothing (however envisioned) into something can be explained without invoking a creator God, this in no way proves that a Creator God does not exist. Therefore, creation from nothing as described by modern cosmogony does not contradict the views of the medieval Jewish theologians. But there is a big difference: Judaism ascribes intent to the processes of creation; it maintains that creation is an act of God’s will, and because of this the created universe has meaning and moral value.23 The modern physicists concerned with cosmogony,24 on the other hand, generally assume that the original creation will eventually be found to have a cause-and-effect explanation without the need to invoke a divine Creator. This can only be an assumption; no scientific finding invalidates the Jewish view that the creation of the world is intended. What Happens in the Heavens? The Differing Perspectives of Astrophysics and Judaism

The yearly transit of earth about the sun, the monthly cycle of the moon about the earth, and the phenomenon of the rainbow, highlight the differing perspectives between Jewish thought and contemporary cosmogony. 1. Yearly Transit of Earth about the Sun The earth completes its circuit about the sun every 365 days, thus forming a year. The New Year festival that celebrates this cycle, Rosh

Evolution of the Cosmos  15

Hashana, is said to be a memorial of ‘the birthday of creation, a reminder of the first day’, for ‘on this day the world was conceived’.25 But, for almost all of us, Rosh Hashana is primarily observed not because of any astronomical consideration, but because it is on this day that we are judged for life or death. Rosh Hashana reminds us of the original creation when we were all free of sin. Just as the earth renews its transit about the sun on this day, so on this day we are given the opportunity to renew our lives and once again become free of sin. The New Year thereby becomes a time of repentance, a time of renewal.26 For Judaism, astronomical considerations take a back seat and are transmuted into a basis for moral behaviour. 2. New Moon The scientific explanation of the origin of the moon is that it formed some 4.5 billion years ago after a giant collision.27 The lunar phases are created by changes in the relative positions of earth, moon and sun, as the moon orbits the earth. But the moon’s significance lies elsewhere for Judaism, which sees in the moon evidence of God’s role in creation: ‘Praise Him sun and moon, praise Him all bright stars … for it was He who commanded that they be created.’28 ‘The regularity of the moon’s waxing and waning [is] a visible reminder of the law-governed nature of the universe and the presence of an underlying order that surrounds us.’ The moon, endlessly reborn after seeming to decline, is ‘a symbol of the Jewish people, who have seemed at times to face eclipse, yet they too have recovered and given light at dark times’.29 The waxing and waning moon is important to Judaism not as a scientific phenomenon, but because of what it symbolizes – order and the fate of the Jewish people. 3. Rainbow Physicists explain that the rainbow results from the separation of light into different wavelengths by raindrops.30 The Bible offers no physical explanation for the phenomenon of the rainbow. Its significance to human beings is what matters. After Noah’s flood, God says, ‘When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and every living creature.’31 This is why, on seeing a rainbow, the traditional Jew blesses God who ‘remembers the covenant, is faithful to the covenant, and fulfills His word’.32 Understanding the physics of the rainbow in no way detracts from its human significance. Could anyone ‘seriously suggest that it spoils it to be told what is going on inside all those

16  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

thousands of falling, sparkling, reflecting and refracting populations of raindrops?’33 Of course not! The intricate physics that explains the rainbow can strengthen the idea of God’s presence. Physical explanations of the New Year, the new moon and the rainbow reflect a differing concern, but in no way diminish the religious dimensions of each. Let me now go a step further. It’s not only that what we learn from physics does not contradict the religious dimensions of creation. It’s that the findings from physics strengthen the argument for an intended world. ‘Cosmic Coincidences’ Are Intended

We live in a ‘just-right’ Goldilocks world whose properties are precisely those needed for carbon-based life to exist, the kind we know on earth.34 Some of these Coincidences and What They Might Mean 1. Carbon and Oxygen Two of the major constituents of life, carbon and oxygen, exist only because of a finely balanced sequence of physical constants. ‘A change of more than 0.4 per cent in the constants governing the strength of the strong nuclear force or more than 4 per cent in the fine structure constant would destroy almost all carbon or almost all oxygen in every star.’35 (The strong nuclear force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature said to hold quarks together inside protons and neutrons.) The living world is poised on this narrow knife-edge. 2. Alpha The fine structure constant, alpha, is an amalgam of the charge of the electron, the speed of light in empty space, and Planck’s constant, which is a value that determines the smallest amount by which energy can be changed, that is, the quantum. Alpha has been determined to be about 1/137, a ratio without units. If it were any larger, atoms could not exist. If it were any smaller, all stars would be larger than our sun. Alpha’s value is just right.36 3. Gravitational Constant The law of universal gravitation formulated by Newton states that the attractive force between two bodies is proportional to the product of their masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance

Evolution of the Cosmos  17

between them; this proportionality is called the gravitational constant. It seems to come out of the blue, not determined by any known cause. And yet, if it were any bigger, the universe would collapse before anything had a chance to evolve, and if it were smaller, the stars would never have formed. It is just right.37 4. Quantum Fluctuations Minute deviations from a totally smooth distribution of matter were needed for galaxies to form. If the deviations were smaller, there would be no galaxies. A teeny bit larger, and most of the matter in the universe would have ended up in black holes. The quantum fluctuations are just right. 5. The ‘Black Hole’ at the Centre of our Milky Way Galaxy If there were too much black hole activity, ‘there would be little new star formation, and the production of heavy elements would cease to occur. Too little black hole activity and environments might be overly full of young and exploding stars – or too little stirred up to produce anything.’38 The black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy in which we and our sun are situated is precisely the right black hole activity to allow the conditions for life to flourish. These coincidences could be continued: the cosmic number (omega), the cosmological constant (lambda), and so forth.39 A lengthy series of cosmic coincidences lies at the heart of our universe. Why should such extraordinary coincidences occur? There are three possible explanations: first, that all of these conditions are just fortuitous, which means that we are extraordinarily lucky to even exist. Second, that we live in the only possible kind of universe that can sustain conscious life, and, therefore, the supposed coincidences must be the way they are. Third, that we live in a cosmos that was purposefully designed and created. According to the ‘lucky, random world’ way of thinking, sooner or later a planet capable of supporting life is bound to form somewhere in our universe and we happened to evolve on it. The existence of a universe with such a planet is fortuitous. We are supremely fortunate even to be here, and there is nothing more to it than that. There is no plan, no purpose, no design, no intent – just plain luck. That is the way the cookie crumbled. The odds that a lucky planet such as ours, capable of supporting life, exists somewhere or other are greatly increased if you buy the argument that our universe is just one of many universes, a scenario

18  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

called variously a multiverse or a metaverse.40 The idea is that, given an immense number of universes arising and collapsing, at least a few would be governed by the physical constants that favour life, and we are fortunate because our earth is in just such a universe. The constants would be explainable by randomness plus observer selection.41 In the multiverse, the cosmic coincidences and the fine-tuned universe are not at all coincidental. They are as they are, because if they were otherwise, we would not be around to wonder about them. The physical laws and constants must be such as to allow carbon-based life and ourselves to exist – precisely because we do exist! This self-evident notion is called the anthropic principle. Yet for me, and for many others, this idea that we are ‘lucky’ to exist in a random universe is bleak and unsatisfying. It fails to explain why something exists rather than nothing, or why there should be laws and constants of any type. And the multiverse is no help. ‘All the same issues that arise in relation to the universe arise again in relation to the multiverse. If the multiverse exists, did it come into existence through necessity, chance, or purpose? That is a metaphysical question that no physical theory can answer, for either the universe or the multiverse.’42 Furthermore, Alvin Plantinga presents a logical (although involved) argument showing how the idea of a universe fine-tuned by God can be maintained, even in a multiverse.43 So I reject a random universe, not just for logical reasons but because for me personally, and perhaps for you as well, such a world is aimless and empty – tohu va’vohu, ‘wild and waste’.44 Things Have to Be the Way they Are Because they too are unsatisfied with attributing our fortunate situation to luck, some physicists have attempted a Theory of Everything (T.O.E.) in which all that is, is inevitable. In this perspective, the cosmic coincidences presented above are not really coincidences at all. Rather, they must be the way they are. This would satisfy the intuition of physicists that, at the deepest level, all physical phenomena match the patterns of some beautiful mathematical structure. A T.O.E. would be ‘beautiful because it will be elegant, expressing the possibility of unending complexity with minimal laws, and symmetric, because it will hold invariant through all space and time. And inevitable, meaning that once stated, no part can be changed without invalidating the whole’.45 The holy grail of cosmology is to uncover just such a T.O.E. This is what Albert Einstein had in mind when he wrote, ‘I cannot imagine a unified and reasonable theory which explicitly contains a

Evolution of the Cosmos  19

number which the whim of the Creator might just as well have chosen differently, whereby a qualitatively different lawfulness of the world would have resulted.’46 It is premature to critique a theory of everything because it has yet to be developed. But even if such a theory is formulated and accepted, it cannot account for its own existence. We could explain why existence must be the way it is, but not why there is such a thing as existence to begin with. A Third Possibility is that we Live in an Intended World By intended, I mean purposive, although I will be at pains to make clear in what follows that the intent I have in mind functions at a distance – allowing nature’s evolutionary processes to remain at least partially free and creative. The idea here, and to speak to the point, is that the laws and constants of our universe (the gravitational constant, the alpha value, and so forth) have been chosen by a Creator, apparently so that life would be able to evolve. This appears to be the idea behind an ancient Midrash: Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon said: ‘It does not say ‘there was evening’, but ‘and there was evening’. This teaches us that there were time sequences prior to the one being described. Rabbi Abbahu says: This teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, went on creating worlds and destroying them, until He created this one, when He declared, ‘This one pleases me; those did not please me.’47 The Holy One tried out various kinds of universes and is pleased with ours, presumably because it was capable of evolving life. In response to Einstein’s question, ‘whether God could have made the world in a different way, that is, whether the necessity of logical simplicity leaves any freedom at all?’48, this Midrash answers in effect, ‘Yes, He has such freedom.’ In an intended world of this sort, the cosmological coincidences are purposeful rather than random.49 In such an intended world the answer to the ultimate question of ‘Why existence?’ is that it is the divine will; the will of the One whose name is YHVH, ‘existence’ – derivable from a Hebrew root meaning ‘to be’ – a synthesis of ‘was’, ‘is’, and ‘will be’; past, present and future. Our section on intent in the evolution of the cosmos ends here. We move on to find intent in the evolution of life.

20  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? Notes   1. The interested reader is referred to B. Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York: Vintage, 2004); N. Tyson and D. Goldsmith, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution (New York: Norton, 2004); P. Davies, Cosmic Jackpot (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2007); J.D. Barrow, The Constants of Nature (New York: Pantheon, 2002); C. Quigg, ‘The Coming Revolutions in Particle Physics’, Scientific American (February 2008), pp.38–45; M.S. Turner, ‘Origin of the Universe’, Scientific American (September 2009), pp.22–9; B.K. Hall and B. Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution, 4th edn (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2008), Ch.4; S. Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 1993).   2. S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010). A.G. Lisi and J.O. Weatherall, ‘A Geometric Theory of Everything’, Scientific American (December 2010), pp.54–61.   3. L. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), p.136.   4. A. Jenkins and G. Perez, ‘Looking for Life in the Multiverse’, Scientific American (January 2010), p.34.   5. M.S. Turner, ‘Origin of the Universe’, Scientific American (September 2009), p.22. Physicists disagree over the idea of cosmic inflation; the case against is presented by Paul J. Steinhardt in ‘The Inflation Debate’, Scientific American (April 2011), pp.37–43. Forthcoming observations of the microwave background radiation may settle the issue.   6. Tyson and Goldsmith, Origins, p.27.   7. C. Bloch and S. Mitchell (trans), ‘Travels of the Last Benjamin of Tudela’, in The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), p.76.   8. Genesis 3:19.   9. Electrons, carriers of negative charge, can arrange themselves only in certain ways when drawn to carriers of positive charge, the protons. Hydrogen forms when a single proton with a positive charge is counterbalanced by a single negatively charged electron. Helium consists of two protons surrounded by two electrons, and so forth. As thermonuclear fusion in stars proceeds, more protons are added to the atomic nuclei. A second shell of electrons forms about the three protons in lithium following the laws of quantum mechanics, and then as the number of electrons increases, a third shell. Layer is piled upon layer as heavier and heavier atoms form: G. Johnson, Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith and the Search for Order (New York: Vintage, 1955), p.210. 10. R. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale. A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p.288. 11. Tyson and Goldsmith, Origins, Ch.3. 12. Translation from The Holy Scriptures (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1980), p.1. 13. Y.I.Z. Herczeg, ‘Bereishis’, in The Torah: With Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah Publications Ltd, 1995), p.2. 14. N. Samuelson, ‘Maimonides’ Doctrine of Creation’, Harvard Theological Review, 84 (1991), p.257; K. Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 15. Gersonides, Wars of the Lord, trans. S. Feldman (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1984–1999), p.325; Samuelson, ‘Maimonides’ Doctrine of

Evolution of the Cosmos  21 Creation’, p.257; N. Samuelson, The First Seven Days (Atlanta, GA: University of South Florida, Scholars Press, 1992); N. Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp.90–106; Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World, pp.183, 187. 16. H. Halkin (trans.), Yehudah Halevi (Jerusalem: Schocken, 2010), p.133. 17. Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World, pp.2–4. 18. Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation, pp.226–7. 19. Ibid., p.137. 20. Ibid., p.138. 21. Ibid., p.151. 22. L. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather Than Nothing (New York: Free Press, 2012). 23. In support of this, the final words of Habakkuk 3:6 could be translated as ‘His are the ancient processes’ instead of ‘His are the ancient routes’ (Jewish Publication Society, p.1068) or ‘His are the ancient ways’ (King James Bible). 24. Cosmology, as used in this work, refers to the scientific study of the origins and evolution of the universe. Cosmogony more particularly refers to the astrophysical study of how the universe came into being. 25. According to the accepted opinion of Rabbi Eliezer, Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashana (London: Soncino, 1990), pp.27a. Talmud Bavli hereafter referred to as TB. 26. M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), pp.104–7. 27. Tyson and Goldsmith, Origins, p.192. 28. Psalm 148:3, 5. 29. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p. 715. 30. R. Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (New York: Mariner, 1998), pp.45–9. 31. Genesis 9:14–15. 32. Koren Siddur, p.1002. 33. Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow, p.49. 34. M. Rees, Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces that Shape the Universe (New York: Basic Books, 2000). 35. Barrow, The Constants of Nature, pp.152–9; Jenkins and Perez, ‘Looking for Life in the Multiverse’, p.28; Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos, p.540. 36. Barrow, The Constants of Nature, p.49. 37. Ibid., p.19. 38. C. Scharf, ‘The Benevolence of Black Holes’, Scientific American (August 2012), p.27. 39. See Notes 34 and 35 for further reading. 40. G.F.R. Ellis, ‘Does the Multiverse Really Exist?’, Scientific American (August 2011), pp.18–23. 41. Davies, Cosmic Jackpot, p.231. 42. Ellis, ‘Does the Multiverse Really Exist’, p.23. 43. A. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p.203. 44. Five Books of Moses, E. Fox trans (New York: Schocken, 1995), p.13. 45. E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998), p.263. 46. Barrow, The Constants of Nature, p.40. 47. W. Shuchat, The Creation According to the Midrash Rabbah (Jerusalem: Devora, 2002), Genesis Rabbah 3:7, p.130.

22  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? 48. S.W. Hawking and W. Israel (eds), Einstein, A Centenary Volume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p.128. 49. If a multiverse is ever shown to actually exist, each of its component universes would be equally intended. The prayer book hints at this when it says: ‘We trust in You alone, King, God, high and exalted, Master of worlds’ – note the plural: Koren Siddur, p.498.

3

Evolution of Life

‘E

verything is what it is because it got that way.’ So said D’Arcy Thompson,1 and so it is. First, we will need to understand how ‘it got that way’ – what evolution is all about – and after that we will search for intent in evolution. Please forgive the technical nature of this chapter, but it is necessary in order to make sense of what follows. We now describe how life evolved on earth, the evidence for evolution, and its mechanisms. First, a brief outline of the big picture, and then we will fill in some of the transitional steps. Once upon a time, some 3.5 billion years ago, a loosely knit conglomeration of primitive cells appeared – we will see how below – and eventually separated into the three domains of life – bacteria, archaea (single-celled organisms that thrive in extreme conditions), and – about 2 billion years ago, eukaryotes (animals, fungi and plants).2 The eukaryotes were larger cells whose hereditary material was bounded by membranes. Some of these larger cells clumped together after they divided, forming multicellular aggregates. These multicellular organisms then developed means of regulating their genetic material so that a single organism could form a variety of tissues and organs. Thus began green plants, fungi and animals. Some 1 billion to 600 million years ago, a very early group of what would become animals divided themselves into two quite different groups of descendants. One group evolved into starfish, sea urchins and the like, while the other gave rise to chordates that had a firm rod extending the length of their body, a nerve cord and gill slits.3 Since most chordates, including ourselves, protect their precious nerve cord with bony vertebrae, they (we) are classed as vertebrates. While many vertebral species are fish, one group of vertebrates began to get about on land on all fours (tetrapods) about 150 million years later. Some of these vertebrates living on land gave rise, another 125 million years later, to primates adapted to living in trees. About 6 to 8 million years ago, an ape species within the primate lineage in Africa underwent

24  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

rapid evolution to become our own recent ancestors, and about 200,000 years ago the first examples of our own species are found.4 That is the whirlwind tour. Each step in this saga required a transition, a racheting up from what had existed previously to something more complex. How were these transitions accomplished?5 Major Transitions in Life’s Evolution

Non-Living to Living Early earth contained carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous and trace metals. Oxygen may have been produced by cyanobacteria (blue-green algae capable of photosynthesis), while water and amino acids may have come from meteorites that slammed into earth from space. But how did these combine to form living matter? What is living matter in any case? It was once thought that living beings possessed some sort of ‘vital principle’, but in 1828, Friedrich Wohler, a German chemist, synthesized urea from lifeless chemicals. Since the urea in living organisms is exactly the same as that produced in the laboratory, there turned out to be no ‘vital principle’ unique to the molecules of living things. Craig Venter blurred the distinction between life and non-life even further when his group synthesized a self-replicating bacterial chromosome from lifeless chemicals.6 But even if there is no ‘vital principle’, we cannot discuss life without separating it in some way from non-life. An accepted definition is that living things have the ability to self-replicate, to maintain a boundary between inner environment and outside world, and to carry out chemical reactions. How did these attributes of life begin?7 There are no fossil records of the first self-replicating molecules, nor do we know the precise conditions on earth at the time when life first began. Biologists therefore reason backwards from presentday biochemical processes in order to work out the biochemistry of life’s beginning. Foremost among these processes is self-replication, the engine-house of heredity. We will need to describe this in basic terms before we can proceed. Heredity is based on DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), a complex molecule that has the amazing ability to store and replicate information about how to build an organism. According to the model first proposed in April 1953 by James Watson and Francis Crick, a DNA molecule consists of two strands, each made up of many nucleotides, which coil around each other in a helical ‘twisted-ladder’ structure. A sugar-

Evolution of Life  25

phosphate backbone is on the outside of this double helix, and the molecules adenine (A), guanine (G), thymine (T) and cytosine (C) are on the inside. Adenine and guanine are called purines, while thymine and cytosine are called pyrimidines. A purine always pairs with a pyrimidine – G pairs with C and A pairs with T. Think of the sugarphosphate backbones as the two sides of a ladder, with the purines and pyrimidines between them as the rungs of the ladder. In effect, each strand of DNA is one side of the double-helix ladder, with the two sides held together by the nucleotide rungs. The information in this double helix is ‘transcribed’ into the closely related RNA (ribonucleic acid) that serves in turn as a template for producing a protein. Proteins are chains of amino acids. A sequence of three nucleotides (a codon) in the DNA specifies each of the twenty primary amino acids. There are four possible nucleotides at position one in a codon (A, G, T or C), four possible nucleotides at position two, and four possible nucleotides at position three. Multiplying 4 × 4 × 4, we come up with sixty-four possible arrangements of the three nucleotides in each codon. Sixty-one of these sixty-four possible arrangements code for specific amino acids, while the remaining three are called ‘stop’ codons.8 The proteins specified by the nucleic-acid code serve several crucial functions: among them are to serve as important structural elements in tissues and to do the cell’s work as enzymes. This is all fine and beautiful, but to return to our question – how did this intricate system begin in the first place? The problem seemed ready for solution in 1953, when Stanley Miller, then a graduate student in the laboratory of chemist Harold Urey at the University of Chicago, mixed ammonia, methane, hydrogen and water in a sealed flask and applied electrical charges to the mixture under conditions which were thought to duplicate the conditions of early earth.9 One week later, Miller found amino acids in his mixture, which are the building blocks of protein. The problem seemed on the way to solution. But not so fast – these amino acids could never be coaxed into forming complex proteins. Besides, subsequent to Miller’s experiment, it was found that earth’s early atmosphere was dominated by carbon dioxide, and included a pinch of nitrogen – gases not found in Miller’s original mixture. So it was back to square one. Recent research brings us closer to an answer. The nucleic acid bases (A, G, T and C) can assemble spontaneously from cyanide, acetylene and water, simple chemicals likely to have been present in the primordial mix. The problem is how to connect these nucleic-acid bases with sugar (ribose) and phosphate to form the double helix.

26  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

Investigators at the University of Manchester have succeeded in doing this. They formed the pyrimidine nucleotide bases in their laboratory in the presence of ultraviolet light from chemicals likely to have been present on earth before life began. So once again it appears that we are on the way to cracking the mystery of life’s origin.10 Once over the initial hurdle of forming nucleic acids, the subsequent steps were relatively easy. A nucleic acid can curl up into different shapes, and this may enable it to copy itself. Additionally, the nucleic acids may have been enveloped by simple membranes made of self-organizing fatty acids.11 The explanations are still murky, but we are beginning to understand the processes that brought about the beginning of life on earth. Miracles, as we usually understand them, are being replaced by cause and effect. Keep in mind that it is only one kind of miracle that science discounts – a miracle in which there is favourable intervention by the divine in the natural order of the universe, usually in response to a human plea. But the Talmudic rabbis were well aware of a different kind of miracle – that of everyday life. The daily thanksgiving prayer thanks God ‘for Your miracles which are with us every day; and for Your wonders and favours at all times, evening, morning and midday’.12 Even the most reductionist men or women of science would not deny the miraculous nature of a newborn baby or a shimmering rainbow. In fact, if miracle is considered as wonder or marvel, then to understand the miraculous is what spurs on the scientist. ‘There are only two ways to live your life’, said Albert Einstein. ‘One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.’13 Let us step back a moment. This scientific explanation of life’s beginning, although it denies miracles as usually understood, nevertheless retains religious significance. This is because evolution, as we will explore further, shows us a common origin for all of life. All living things, for instance, utilize only L (levo) isomers of amino acids, whereas D (dextro) isomers could have worked equally well. It appears that the first replicating molecules happened to be left-handed (levo), and all subsequent molecules associated with life followed suit. Further, virtually all life uses an identical genetic code. Once the initial DNA code got started, all subsequent life based itself upon that sequence. This is why the same codons (triplets of nucleotide bases) specify the same amino acids throughout the family of life.14 All life has developed from a shared, common origin. Compare this to the account in Genesis. Whereas Genesis traced all humanity back to the first couple in Eden, evolution’s explanation of a

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common origin for life goes even further than Genesis. Not only does evolution affirm with Genesis that all human beings on this planet are a single species sharing the same origin (Chapter 10), but, more than that, evolution affirms that all of life shares the same origin; from armadillo to zooplankton, all of life is one family. We will turn now to some major transitions that followed the origin of life. Non-Nucleated Cells to Nucleated Cells The simplest form of life is called a prokaryote, a one-celled organism lacking a membrane-bound nucleus. A prokaryote, more familiar to us as a bacterium, is essentially a group of chemicals covered by a firm outside wall that sustains itself and is capable of division. Such organisms first appeared on earth some 3.5 billion years ago. Some one billion years later, large cells without firm walls appear. These are the eukaryotes, single-celled or multi-cellular organisms whose cells contain a distinct membrane-bound nucleus. Amoebae are familiar examples of early eukaryotes. Some large eukaryotic cells derived their energy from burning sugar in their mitochondria – this line became animals. Others photosynthesized their energy from the sun via chloroplasts – these became plants. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are thought to be descended from bacteria that were incorporated into nucleated cells aeons ago, and have remained within the cellular structure ever since. Mitochondria contain their own DNA that, like all DNA, can mutate. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA can cause defects in the human neuromuscular system, brain and elsewhere. We can study such defects in people by recreating them in bacteria.15 This approach is based on the fact that human mitochondria were once themselves bacteria, a nice example of the practical usefulness of studying evolution.16 One Cell to Many Cells Disrupt a sponge by passing it through a sieve, and its disaggregated cells will clump together to form an entirely new sponge. The information that tells each cell where to position itself and what its function will be in the mature sponge is contained inside each individual cell. Similarly, a social amoeba, colloquially called a slime mould, begins as a solitary individual living on decaying logs. When these amoebae (Dictyostelium discoideum) run out of food, they converge in their tens of thousands to produce a migrating slug. This slug then differentiates into stalk cells and spore cells, each of which contains within itself the information needed to form the completed organism.17 The

28  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

reason that single cells were likely to have grouped together initially is because this strategy improved their chances of survival; division of labour amongst different types of cells in the same organism made for greater efficiency, because less energy was required to keep the organism going. It is as though the threads in Rabbi Akiva’s garment (that you recall from his ‘argument for design’ in Chapter 1) come together in just the right places on their own accord – without any weaver – to form the complete tallit! Pollination We tend to forget about plants when we talk of evolution, but they too have evolved following their origin as single cells equipped with chloroplasts. More than 375 million years ago, one lineage of plants developed pollen grains and seeds. Pollen, as Rob Dunn puts it, is plant sperm.18 Before pollen evolved, plants had to be near one another, almost touching, to mate. But pollen could sail through the air to reach the naked ovule containing the egg cells of another plant of the same species. Once it became possible for distant sperm and egg to join together, green plants began to cover the earth. Things changed again when, millions of years after pollination had begun, one lineage of plants, the angiosperms, evolved seeds. Seeds had the advantage that they could protect their ovules within ovaries. These eventually become surrounded by their own source of nutrition, familiar to us as fruit. This brings to mind the first mention of living things in Genesis: ‘The earth brought forth vegetation: seed-bearing plants of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it.’19 But absent from the Genesis account are algae, mosses and spore-bearing plants, all of which predated flowering plants with seeds (angiosperms).20 For that matter, also absent from Genesis is any mention of the earliest development of life – replicating molecules, cells with nuclei, organelles within cells and the first many-celled organisms. I will attempt to give reasons for these omissions in Chapter 7. Complex Bodies During the initial stages of development in multi-celled animals, the individual cells cluster together to form a sphere (blastula), because each cell is sticky at one end. The sphere develops a hollow centre because the sticky ends of the cells come together, while non-sticky regions repel.21 There is no agent ordering the cells to form a hollow

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sphere; they do so in conformity with the laws of physics, just as lipid molecules adhere to form the fatty globules in grandma’s chicken soup. This hollow ball of cells undergoes dramatic changes in the developing embryo as the cells organize themselves into layers that eventually form the adult’s tissues and organs. Cells that will form the digestive, respiratory and musculoskeletal systems are brought inside the developing embryo, while cells that will form the skin and the nervous system spread over its surface. In conjunction with these cell movements, bilateral symmetry emerges and the early ball of cells becomes indented. In the group of animals from which the human species emerged (Chapter 10) a notochord and vertebral column develop. These movements self-organize via diffusion of gene products, physical and environmental influences, and through cell-tocell interactions.22 The transition that should follow at this juncture is the emergence of a species capable of moral choice – ourselves. I’ll defer this discussion to a later section (Part Three), however, because of its unique importance. The reader should be aware that the transitions in life’s evolution mentioned above are gradual, with multiple intervening steps. Only in retrospect, as will become clear further on in this chapter, do we become aware that a certain step marks a significant transition. Evidence for Evolution of Life

Evidence comes from mutually reinforcing sources: fossilized remains of once living creatures; common features in the shapes of bodies; the ways in which embryos develop; where living things are found on earth; and most importantly, from study of the genetic instructions that make living creatures.23 Evidence from Old Rocks On the Jewish Holy Days, we declare that ‘Man is founded in dust / and ends in dust’.24 Be that as it may, fortunately for our understanding of the past, there are times when bodies do not end up as dust. Occasionally an organism resists decay by being buried and preserved in sediment, or more rarely, in tar pits or amber. Under heat and pressure, this sediment becomes part of a rock stratum, thus entombing the organism. Some of the resulting fossils are relatively common, others difficult to find. The Leakey family spent literally

30  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

decades without success, looking for evidence of early humans until they struck pay dirt at Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. Fossils provide our only evidence of innumerable past creatures that have come and gone without leaving modern descendants. Only fossils reveal past episodes of diversification and extinction; only fossils provide a time scale for evolution.25 The oldest fossils are found in the deepest rock layers, while higher layers contain remains of more recent life. In the lowest layer lie the remains of marine invertebrates, above them an increasing diversity of fish. Then come amphibians, and higher up, the reptiles, including dinosaurs. Finally, near the surface, are found remains of apes and humans.26 The older the strata in which a fossil is found – that is, the further back in time and the deeper down – the greater are the differences between that fossil and any current living relative. Charles Darwin reasoned from this that fauna and flora found in the older and deeper strata had gradually evolved into the creatures of the higher and more recent strata.27 Fossils are not just rarities in dusty museums. Visit the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. Put your hand in three-toed dinosaur footprints in Glen Rose, Texas. Hike up to the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rockies. Get up close to the impressions made by the feet of ancient man preserved in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge. Poke around in the fossil deposits behind the high school in Fossil, Oregon. Fossils are real and ubiquitous. ‘New’ fossils continue to turn up all over the world. These are some recent discoveries: 1) Dinosaurs with well-developed feathers have recently been found in China.28 These are the first birds, yours to admire at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. 2) Fossils tell us that Herman Melville got it wrong in Moby Dick. Whales are not fish, they have evolved from land-based mammals. More than a dozen transitional whale fossils connect modern whales with their four-legged hippopotamus-type terrestrial ancestor.29 3) The transition from fish to land animals is newly evidenced by the discovery in Arctic Canada of a fossil fish skeleton with limb-like fins.30 Anthropologists keep finding ‘fresh’ primate fossils that fill in supposed gaps between ape-like pre-humans and ourselves.31 There are so many of these that listing all of them would be tedious (see Chapter 10). Nowadays, finding fossils is not just left to chance. Those who find these precious bits of the past usually have a pretty good idea of where to look. They know when the organisms existed in which they are interested, and where the fossil remains from these eras are likely

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to be found. Finding a fossil in the predicted geological place and time confirms their reconstruction of the past.32 Evidence from External Shape – Morphology Charles Darwin wondered where the animals and plants on the Galapagos Islands had come from, while on his trip around the world on HMS Beagle in 1832. The islands had arisen by volcanic eruption deep in the sea and were never connected to any continent. So how did abundant life arrive there? Darwin supposed that the living creatures on these islands had crossed from the nearest mainland, either by floating on vegetation, by swimming (which he thought unlikely), or when birds were blown off course.33 He compared the external shape of the birds on the Galapagos with that of the nearest birds in South America. Darwin knew that there was only one species of mockingbird in South America, but he found a species of mockingbird on each of the three islands in the Galapagos, with each species different from the others. He concluded quite rightly that a single colonization of the South American mockingbird had given rise, by branching descent, to three different species on three different islands in the Galapagos. Then, he further reasoned that probably all mockingbirds in the world had descended from a common ancestor, because they are basically so similar to each other. He took this reasoning a further step by realizing that mockingbirds and their relatives, like thrashers and catbirds, then presumably also had a common ancestor … This chain of inferences led Darwin to the ultimate conclusion that all organisms on earth had common ancestors and that probably all life on earth had started with a single origin of life.34 This is arguably the most important conclusion ever reached in biology. The evidence that Darwin most frequently cited for what is called ‘common descent’ comes from the shape of animals, their morphology. The human arm, cat’s front leg, whale’s flipper and bat’s wing – adapted respectively for grasping and manipulating, running and scratching, swimming and flying – are each composed of similar bones. Each of these appendages has a single bone in the upper arm, leg or fin which articulates with two bones in the forearm, which attach to a cluster of smaller bones, which connect to a series of five ‘rods’ that make hands, feet or wings. It is a one-pattern-fits-all system. ‘Want to make a bat

32  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

wing? Make the fingers really long. Make a horse? Elongate the middle fingers and toes and reduce and lose the outer ones. How about a frog leg? Elongate the bones in the leg and fuse several of them together.’35 In this way, body form testifies to common origin. Location, Location, Location – Evidence from Geography After exploring the Brazilian rain forest in 1852, the then obscure naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, realized that the monkey species in the Amazonian rain forest were ‘localized either on one side or another of the three great converging rivers, the main stem Amazon, the Negro, and the Madeira. This was curious. If God had created all species from scratch and placed them in their appropriate locations, why hadn’t he put these monkeys on both sides of a given river?’36 When Wallace then explored the Malay Archipelago of Southeast Asia, he noticed that west of an imaginary line, ‘in Bali we have barbets, fruit thrushes, and woodpeckers’, whereas across a narrow deep-water strait to the east, ‘these are seen no more, but we have an abundance of cockatoos, honey suckers, and brush-turkeys’.37 Wallace identified two distinct biogeographical regions, the Indian and the Australian. Primates, carnivores and other distinct Indian and Asian species are found to the west of the artificial line (later to be called ‘Wallace’s line’) between Borneo and Celebes (Sulawesi), and southward between Bali and its neighbouring island of Lombock. To the east of Wallace’s line are found non-Asian birds and marsupials akin to Australian and New Guinea species. Why should the fauna of these two regions be so different when their environment is so similar? Wallace concluded that the current location of a species relates to where the species originated. The explanation for Wallace’s line is that what we call ‘solid earth’ is not so solid, but is constantly changing, along with the life upon it. When, for example, the land mass that became Australia split off from Gondwana, the name for earth’s original land mass, it carried with it the mammals that had originated on Gondwana. Gondwana began to break up about 167 million years ago, when its eastern section, comprising present-day Antarctica, Madagascar, India and Australia, began to separate from Africa. Those mammals on what became Australia eventually developed abdominal pouches outside their bodies within which their foetuses were nourished. Hence they are called marsupials, from the Latin marsupium for pouch. Mammals that had dispersed from Gondwana everywhere else on earth beyond Australia developed placentas within their bodies that safely protect the foetus

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until delivery. This is why marsupials are only found east of Wallace’s line, in Australia. The point is populations which were originally similar proceeded along separate evolutionary paths after having been divided by geography. Evolution while you Watch

You may ask, if evolution is occurring, why can’t we observe it now? The answer is that evolution can and does happen in the present and does not necessarily take millions of years. Here are some examples. Dedicated researchers Peter and Rosemary Grant banded and numbered each and every finch on one of the Galapagos Islands and found that the finches’ beak size and shape changed from year to year depending on the size of available nuts.38 Researchers in Madrid infected worms (C. elegans) with the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.39 After one week, they found that the bacterium had killed all the worms except for those in one Petri dish. The surviving worms in this dish had mutated and changed their behaviour so that instead of twisting and vibrating like normal worms, they wiggled. (Don’t ask me to describe the difference – it is apparently obvious if you are from Spain.) The researchers found at least seven protein changes in the surviving worms, which were well on their way to becoming a new species. A third example is provided by biologist Richard Lenski who studies changes in E. coli bacteria in his microbial ecology laboratory. Since bacteria multiply rapidly, he can watch them evolve over thousands of generations in a short time period. Evolution while you watch!40 Evidence from Embryology Ecclesiastes cautioned humility in the face of embryonic mysteries: ‘As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, nor how the bones grow in the womb of her that is with child, even so thou knowest not the works of God who makes all.’41 The preacher’s admiration for ‘how the bones grow in her that is with child’ was shared by Rambam, physician as well as philosopher–rabbi, for whom embryogenesis was a prime example of God’s governance: ‘One apprehends the kindness of His governance in the production of the embryos of living beings.’42 Our admiration for embryonic growth increases ever more as scientists probe the relationships between evolution and the development of the embryo. We are learning in detail how inherited genetic programs bring about the embryos of living beings. This knowledge explains many things that would otherwise be mysteries if organisms were designed beforehand in all their particulars.43

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Why, for instance, should the embryos of mammals such as ourselves have gill arches? Fish need gills to extract oxygen from water, but gills are useless in air-breathing mammals and in their embryos. So what are they doing there? Who needs them? The answer is that they are leftovers from the past that now serve as ‘organizers’. In humans, for instance, parts of gill arches in our embryos help to organize the little bones of our middle ear. One of these three little bones, the stapes, comes from the first embryonic gill arch, while the others, the malleus and incus, come from the second arch.44 Genetic ‘switches’ in our embryo turn off the program that makes functioning gills, while other ‘switches’ channel the now redundant gill arches into middle ear bones. Evolution works by taking what is to hand – gill arches used by our fish ancestors to extract oxygen – and fashioning what is needed for current use – middle-ear bones for hearing on land. Much of the development of each embryo recapitulates what has happened in that organism’s evolutionary past. The mystery posed by gill arches and similar vestiges of the past, is thereby solved. Transient gill arches in our embryos are evidence of our species’ evolution from sea to land. Previous genetic programs were not tossed out, but were conserved and gradually altered as our species evolved. You will note that we have moved here from describing evidence for evolution, to explaining its mechanism. The two are frequently inseparable. The same sort of process occurs in the development of our kidneys: During our time in the womb, we form three different kinds of kidneys, one after the other. The first kidneys are clumps of tissue that line the body and open to the body cavity, much like those seen in jawless fish. The second, like those of bony fish, run the length of the back to a common plumbing system. The adult kidney, which appears at the end of the first trimester, replaces both of these. In our first three months, we track our fishy past.45 You would have no problem if I asked you to identify an adult rabbit, cow, pig, chicken, tortoise, salamander or fish one from another. But if I asked you to identify their early embryos, you would have a big problem, because they are almost indistinguishable. Only as the embryos of each group mature do the group’s unique characters become apparent.46 This happens because the distinguishing adult characteristics, being more recently evolved in each species’ history,

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only become apparent as the individual organism matures. A late stage in evolution generally corresponds to a late stage in maturation, and vice versa. The organism’s individual development, its ontogeny, generally reflects the evolution of its ancestors, its phylogeny.47 Thus, how the organism develops in embryo becomes a major witness to how it evolved. Genetics tells us how this happens. Evidence for Evolution from Genetics Genetics validates the evolutionary tree that had originally been constructed based on fossils, morphology, geography and embryology.48 Genes of ‘higher’ organisms, such as ourselves, can now be traced all the way back to similar genes in bacteria. Studying the genome, the entire complement of genetic material carried by an individual, has become the modern-day equivalent of studying the fossil record. Both demonstrate how a species has changed over time, and its relationships to other species.49 The genetic programs of each generation are those that the organism needed to survive; these programs are conserved from one generation to the next, and gradually modified to suit changing conditions. Therefore, the DNA that each generation inherits constitutes a repository of how that organism’s ancestors lived, ‘the food they sought; the predators they escaped; the climates they endured; the mates they beguiled’.50 Neil Shubin prefers a tastier analogy: ‘Like a cake recipe passed down from generation to generation, with enhancements to the cake in each, the recipe that builds our bodies has been passed down, and modified for eons. We may not look much like sea anemones and jellyfish, but the recipe that builds us is a more intricate version of the one that builds them.’51 The more closely related organisms are, the more similar they are, not just in their externals such as body structure, but also in their proteins and DNA. Since we now can measure amino-acid sequences in proteins, and nucleotide bases in DNA, we no longer need to rely on how an organism looks to decide where to place it in the tree of life. Classification and branching points in evolution can now be precisely measured. (This book’s cover diagram shows such branching points.) Cytochrome C, for instance, is an ancient enzyme (protein) involved in the transfer of energy. It is found in the mitochondria of every cell of every species and organism whose cells are nucleated. Cytochrome C’s structure is almost exactly the same, whether it occurs in a tuna from the deep sea or in rice growing in a rice paddy.52 It is a one-size-fits-all enzyme, serving the same function in human

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beings, fish, birds, horses, rats and insects. It can even be successfully transferred into yeast, where it continues to transfer energy. It is as though the carburettor from an old model-T Ford can be swapped into a Toyota and work just as well because both cars share similar mechanisms. The structure of the cytochrome-C protein, however, is not exactly the same in all these species, and the minor differences are telling. During the billions of years of its existence, the gene that makes cytochrome C has occasionally mutated. Humans and chimps have an identical cytochrome-C amino acid sequence that has not changed in the 6 to 7 million years since their lines diverged from a common ancestor. Going back further in time, however, the differences between human cytochrome-C protein and that of our more distant relatives increase. Yeast cytochrome-C protein, for instance, which separated from the branch that led to humans billions of years ago, has fifty-one aminoacid differences from the sequence in humans and chimps. The farther apart species are situated on the tree of life, the greater the number of mutations that separate them. Back to the carburettor analogy: the older the carburettor, the more different it will be from current models. The more ancient the cytochrome C, the more different it will be from cytochrome C in more recently evolved species. Therefore, by measuring the differences in cytochrome C, we can estimate when organisms diverged. This method (called the ‘molecular clock’) is a tremendous help in determining where to place organisms on the tree of life. Cytochrome C has more to teach. Why should all organisms use it to transfer energy if there are numerous proteins that could serve the same function? The answer is that nearly all forms of life – fish, bird, mouse, insect, yeast and human – have inherited this identical protein from our common ancestor. Once again, there is but one tree of life and all of its branches are related.53 So-called ‘Regulatory’ Genes Provide another Source of Evidence that all Living Creatures are one Family Regulatory genes cause changes in the timing, location, amount and types of cells that form in the embryo. An example is the so-called ‘eyeless gene’, originally discovered in a Drosophila (fruit- fly) mutant with greatly reduced or missing eyes. Mammals have a similar mutant gene called Pax 6, which also causes eye reduction. Pax 6/eyeless genes work by activating regulatory proteins that control eye development. Normally, activation occurs only at sites where the embryo forms its eyes, but,

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amazingly, when researchers genetically engineered Drosophila to express eyeless in various parts of the body where it is not normally expressed (ectopic expression), ‘eyeless’ induced ectopic eyes in all kinds of weird places. Even more astounding is the functional conservation of the Pax 6/eyeless gene between vertebrates and invertebrates. Pax 6 genes from both mouse (vertebrate) and squid (invertebrate) can induce ectopic eyes when expressed in Drosophila.54 Animals as different as fruit flies, squid and mice each use the same genetic mechanisms to make eyes! Another proof that all life is related. To summarize: multiple sources of evidence – rocks, embryos, tectonic plates, body form, genes and more – reinforce one another to support the conclusion that life has evolved from a simple common ancestor. We are now in a position to tie all this together to explain the mechanisms of evolution. Mechanisms in the Evolution of Life

Life’s evolution is based upon the modification of organisms or populations over time in their descent from a common ancestor. In this process, a common ancestral population may subdivide into distinct descendant populations. The factors responsible are variation, natural selection and isolation. Act One: Variation in Populations Genesis 1 refers to fixed ‘kinds’: ‘herb yielding seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind’.55 In evolutionary biology, groupings of this sort are necessary for classification but are acknowledged to be artificial – whether called ‘kinds’, ‘types’ or ‘species’. Individuals within such groupings are not identical, not even the barnacles that Darwin had studied for years. Animal and plant breeders seize upon individual differences and select the characteristics they want – the fastest horse or the most luscious strawberry – for reproduction. Breeders also select for personality – Yoyo, our precious golden retriever, owed her gentle ways to selective breeding. You do not have to search any farther than the domesticated dog to see how tinkering with genes causes organisms to differ. Dogs can be big or small, tall or short, and display extremes of variation in terms of coat colour and texture, skull shape and size, leg length and width and a host of other traits. Regulatory genes that are switched on or off explain the variations in the dog family:

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Body size, hair length, fur type, nose shape, ear positioning, coat color, and the other traits that together define a breed’s appearance are controlled by somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 genetic switches. The difference between floppy and erect ears is determined by a single gene region in canine chromosome 10, or CFA 10. The wrinkled skin of a Chinese shar-pei traces to another region, called HAS 2. The patch of ridged fur on Rhodesian ridgebacks? That’s from a change in CFA 18. Flip a few switches, and your Dachshund becomes a Doberman, at least in appearance. Flip again, and your Doberman is a Dalmation.56 The direct relationship between master-gene switches and differences in dog breeds brings home the role of genetics in accounting for animal variation. We may refer to all of them as dogs, but the names we give to groups of animals – dogs, barnacles, horses, strawberries or whatever – are shorthand ways of referring to varying populations of similar but not identical organisms. Strictly speaking, there are no golden retrievers as a precise unvarying class. There are only individual dogs like Yoyo with more or less similar characteristics that we decide to group together as a distinct class. The group name is a convenience without independent existence. Variation among and within populations exists with numerous borderline cases that cannot be clearly assigned to one species or another. Is it a wolf or is it a dog? This is biology’s ‘muddy reality’, in contrast to the ideal types of Genesis 1 (see Chapter 7). Why do barnacles vary? How does individual variation come about? The usual source of heritable variation comes from each individual’s unique genetic profile. This is called the genotype. It stands in contrast to the phenotype, which is the total of all observable features of a developing or developed individual; the phenotype results from the interaction between the genotype and the environment. Why is each individual’s genetic profile unique? The two main reasons are recombination and mutation. During the formation of both sperm cell and ovum, similar chromosomes are randomly pulled apart, thereby producing new chromosome sets. The sperm and ovum each end up with recombined parental genotypes. This recombination produces random fluctuations, or drift, in the frequencies of alleles (alternative forms of a gene), and this accounts for much of the genetic variation within populations.57 These differences in genotype account for differences in phenotype – taller or shorter, blonde or brunette, and so on.

Evolution of Life  39

Variation over the long term, however, derives from mutations, which are errors in the assembly-line process by which DNA is replicated whenever a cell divides. In a mutation, either a triplet of nucleotides (a codon) will change – for example, CAC will spontaneously change to CAA; or a chunk of DNA will be relocated, lost or duplicated. Some mutations occur spontaneously, others are induced by such things as cosmic rays that may affect reproducing cells. Mutations are mechanical, not mystical. Mutations that duplicate a segment of DNA, for instance, are like a stamping machine that does not completely separate the parts that it presses out, causing the parts to stick together. Or the DNA stamping machine may get stuck and repeat a stamped part over and over. The mutated gene is then passed on to the next generation. Mutations in how DNA is copied are similar to errors in scribal transmission of Torah scrolls. Despite great care, scribes make occasional errors in copying by hand from an old scroll to a new one. Such errors may be faithfully replicated by the unwitting next scribe, and continued in subsequent scrolls. Mutations in ‘regulatory’ genes are especially important. For instance, regulatory-gene mutations may speed up or slow down the rate of production of nerve-cell precursor cells (neuroblasts) in the early embryo’s brain, thereby increasing or decreasing the number of neurons in the adult brain. The rate of production of neuroblasts is controlled by genetic ‘master switches’ – regulatory genes that do not make any proteins of their own, but tell other genes what to do, where to do it, and for how long.58 Natural selection may act primarily on such switches rather than on genes that directly make proteins. Because of genetic recombination and mutation, there is no idealized ‘normal’ genome in any grouping of organisms, whether it be called species, kind or type. Instead, each individual differs slightly from the abstract ideal.59 How much do human individuals differ from each other? When a composite ‘reference’ human genome sequence was compared with that of J.D. Watson (of the Watson-Crick DNA double-helix model) and with that of Craig Venter, founder of Celera Genomics, it showed that Watson’s and Venter’s genomes each differed from the reference sequence by roughly 3.3 million single nucleotide base-pair changes.60 This sounds like a lot, but your genome and mine each consist of about three billion nucleotide bases. This works out to variation in one of every 1,000 nucleotide bases. That is how much you and I and all humans on our planet are likely to differ from one another.

40  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

Epigenesis When I began writing this book, about a decade ago, the conventional wisdom was that environment – everything that influences the organism as it develops – could be discounted as a source of variation because only genetic variation (the genotype) is passed on to the next generation. To put it graphically, generation after generation of infant Jewish boys has been circumcised, but the percentage of Jewish boys born without a foreskin has not increased one whit!61 Geneticists have recently found increasing evidence, however, that other kinds of environmental influences are passed on by what is called epigenesis, that is to say, influences from beyond, or in addition to, genetics.62 Gene activity can be altered without changing the genetic code itself. Most importantly for evolution, these alterations can be passed on to descendant generations. How does this work? Methyl groups that enter our body from food or other sources attach to regions of DNA or modify the proteins around which DNA winds, thereby inactivating the DNA. Two examples: neurons, liver cells and muscle cells each have the same DNA but produce different proteins because different segments of the DNA of each type of cell are methylated and switched off. Second, the nutrition received within the womb by a foetus not only affects the metabolism of the subsequent adult but also changes the metabolism of several generations that follow; the methylated DNA of the foetus is passed on to the DNA of the next generation(s). Thus the genome by itself does not determine our behaviour. Rather, environmental influence modifies the genome. The die is not fully cast when sperm enters ovum. In summary, genetic recombination, mutation and epigenesis all contribute to variation between organisms. This variation is acted upon by the sieve of nature. Act Two: Natural Selection and Adaptation Darwin observed that the number of individuals in a given species tends to remain constant, and that species produce more offspring than ever reach maturity. A struggle for survival is the result. Those individuals with the highest probability of surviving and reproducing successfully are the ones whose characteristics are best adapted to that particular environment. Better-adapted individuals tend to leave more progeny, and therefore their descendants become more numerous over time. Nature selects in two ways, for physical survival and for reproductive success. The bones of a snake’s skull are adapted for physical survival. In most terrestrial vertebrates, the skull bones are rather rigidly attached to one another. In snakes, however, the skull bones are loosely joined,

Evolution of Life  41

allowing the snake to swallow prey that is much larger than its head. ‘The lower jaw bones (mandibles) articulate to a long, movable quadrate bone that can be rotated downward so that the mandibles drop away from the skull, thus greatly increasing the mouth opening.’63 The bones of the snake’s skull have been modified from the same bones that are found in other reptiles. The modification enables the snake to swallow large prey. The point is that since snakes with movable skull bones survived better than those without, the modification was passed on to future generations. Other examples of traits selected because they help in physical survival include the capacity to overcome adverse weather conditions, escape enemies, better cope with parasites and pathogens, or compete successfully for food and habitation. The other great category of genes for which nature selects is those that contribute to reproductive success. An example comes from the large, bright-red neck pouch in male frigate birds, such as those in the Galapagos Islands. Those frigate birds with larger red neck pouches attract more females, have more offspring, and therefore pass on more of their genes. These neck pouches therefore tend to increase in size over the generations, until their growth is halted by some countervailing factor, such as pressure on the neck from a bulging pouch. I have said that a great many (most?) of an organism’s traits are adaptations to its environment, brought about via natural selection acting over many generations. But not all traits are adaptations. Some may be a necessary consequence of physics or chemistry, for example, the red colour of haemoglobin could just as well be blue; its redness does not contribute to survival or reproduction. Some traits evolve by random genetic drift; that is, by changes in gene frequency brought about by chance rather than by selection. Other traits have evolved, not because they confer any adaptive advantage, but because they are correlated with another feature that does confer some advantage. Still others may be a consequence of an organism’s phylogenetic history, its line of descent, without any adaptive advantage. Evolution, however, comes about by selecting for those traits that are adaptive. Natural selection can be thought of as a sieve that constantly filters out organisms whose traits are less well adapted – either for physical survival or for reproduction – and retains those whose traits are better adapted.64 This sifting process takes the place of the human breeder in

42  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

providing direction to evolution. But in contrast to the breeder, who has a certain kind of Scottish terrier, fighting cock or tomato as his goal, natural selection is said to have no goal or end point in mind other than the survival and reproduction of the individual. This, at least, is the conventional wisdom. I will take issue with this view in Chapter 5. The final act in this drama is the formation of species. Act Three: Isolation and Species Formation New species, the hallmark of evolution, develop when populations of parental species become isolated. The isolation may be caused by geography – a river, a mountain range or unfavourable intervening habitat. This physical barrier reduces gene flow between the populations, and eventually, random genetic drift and mutations increase sufficiently to establish genetic differences between the populations. Finally, the genetic differences accumulate to such a degree that even if the isolated populations come back into contact with each other, their genes cannot be exchanged, and they cannot reproduce with each other. They are now separate species. The present-day diversity of organisms results from this branching of lineages brought about by variation, natural selection and isolation over immense time. Each point of divergence marks the origin of two species from one, reaching back to the beginning of life.65 Keep in mind that the initial differences between groups of organisms are minor, just as the differences between the first mockingbirds on each of the Galapagos Islands would have been vanishingly small when the process began. Rather, given isolated communities of organisms and sufficient time, differences between populations become increasingly apparent as natural selection continues. Momma dinosaur did not gasp in astonishment when she hatched out her baby ‘bird’ offspring! Rather, the first chick worthy of the name ‘bird’ was virtually indistinguishable from its parent, a feathered flying dinosaur. Only over time and many generations did creatures evolve that deserve the name ‘bird’ rather than ‘dinosaur’. It is this same slow accumulation of differences that accounts for the transitions we discussed at the beginning of this chapter. It may be helpful to compare evolution with language. The speech of the first child who spoke something that one might call French was little different from that of her slightly more Latin-inflected parents. Only with time and isolation did the original Latin slowly become what we identify as French, Spanish, Italian or Romanian. Similarly, the dividing line between dinosaur and bird is arbitrary. It becomes apparent to us only in retrospect, once the differences between the two have become more obvious.

Evolution of Life  43

To conclude, in the 150 years since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, innumerable interlocking findings have strengthened his original insight: all organic beings that have ever lived on this earth and that are alive today have descended with modification from a primordial form. We have presented major transitions in this evolutionary process, evidence that supports evolution, and the processes that bring it about. Virtually all of the scientific community accepts that life evolves, and that evolution accounts for the diversity of plants and animals on earth. It is surely necessary for those who take Judaism seriously to incorporate an evolutionary perspective into our picture of the world. In trying to do so we confront this fundamental issue: Does our world come about by intent, as maintained by traditional Judaism, or does it just happen, as the evolutionary approach seems to indicate? The next chapter begins the reconciliation of these views. Notes   1. D.W. Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917).   2. W.F. Doolittle, ‘Uprooting the Tree of Life’, Scientific American (February 2000), pp.90–5.   3. R. Buchsbaum, M. Buchsbaum, J. Pearse and V. Pearse, Animals Without Backbones (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p.490.   4. D.J. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005), pp.17–18. Chapter 10 below has more detail about human evolution.   5. I have included only a partial list of many transitions in what is to follow. A few others, but by no means all, are included in Chapter 4 in the section on progress.   6. D.G. Gibson, J.I. Glass, C. Lartigue, et al., ‘Creation of a Bacterial Cell Controlled by a Chemically Synthesized Genome’, Science (2 July 2010), pp.52–6.   7. R.M. Hazen, Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2006); J.M. Smith and E. Szathmary, The Origins of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999); C. Zimmer, ‘Evolutionary Roots: On the Origins of Life on Earth’, Science (9 January 2009), pp.198–9; R. Shapiro, ‘A Simpler Origin for Life’, Scientific American (June 2007), pp.24–31; S. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p.47; G. Johnson, Fire in the Mind (New York: Vintage, 1995), p.223; A. Ricardo and J.W. Szostak, ‘Life on Earth’, Scientific American (September 2009), pp.38–45.   8. D. Grauer and W. Li, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), ch.1.   9. S. Miller and H. Urey, ‘Organic Compound Synthesis on the Primitive Earth’, Science (July 1959), p.245. 10. M.W. Power, B. Gerland and J.D. Sutherland, ‘Synthesis of Activated Pyrimidine Ribonucleotides in Prebiotically Plausible Conditions’, Nature (14 May 2009), pp.239–42; A. Lazcano, ‘The Origins of Life’, Natural History (February 2006), pp.36–40.

44  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? 11. H.J. Morowitz, Beginnings of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992). The lipid membranes that surround nucleic acids bring to mind a tasty memory. I was fascinated as a child by the clear fatty droplets that floated on the surface of Grandma Lefkovitz’s Friday-night chicken soup. I stared at them as they coalesced and separated. It turns out that water molecules are polar, charged positively at one end and negatively at the other. Oily hydrocarbon chains, on the other hand, are non-polar and have no charge, so that they can never stick to water molecules. That is why oil and water do not mix. The wondrous fatty droplets in grandma’s chicken soup were self-generated by molecular polarity and surface tension. Life seems to have begun inside such droplets. Grandma’s chicken soup as the mother of all life – we knew it all along! Chicken soup notwithstanding, life may have begun instead, or in addition, at very hot volcanic vents on the floors of deep oceans, far from sunlight. According to this theory, primitive early organisms called archaea arose by oxidizing the sulphides that emerge from these deep ocean vents (R. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale. A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life [Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004], p.542). Still others believe that life was imported by means of meteorites that brought amino acids and organic carbon molecules to earth. Of course this explanation fails to explain how these extra-terrestrial molecules came to be in the first place. 12. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.128. 13. This quote is widely attributed to Einstein: Alice Calaprice, The Expanded Quotable Einstein (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), p.319. 14. Grauer and Li, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution, pp.425–6. 15. S. Luciolo, et al., ‘Introducing a Novel Human DNA Mutation into the Paracoccus Denitriticans COX1 Gene Explains Functional Deficits in a Patient’, Neurogenetics, 7, (2006); N. Shubin, Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5 Billion-Year History of the Human Body (New York: Pantheon, 2008), pp.198–9. 16. L. Margulis and D. Sagan, Acquiring Genomes (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2002). 17. Dawkins, Ancestor’s Tale, p.504. 18. R. Dunn, ‘How Plants Mate’, National Geographic (December 2009), pp.124–7. 19. Genesis 1:12. 20. B.K. Hall and B. Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution, 4th edn (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2008), pp.26–7. 21. G. Forgacs and S. Newman, Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 22. S.F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000). 23. An interesting reference is Nature’s ‘15 Evolutionary Gems’ at http:www.nature. com//evolutiongems. 24. The Koren Yom Kippur Mahzor, introduction, translation and commentary by Jonathan Sacks (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2013), p.850. 25. E. Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.18; D.R. Prothero, ‘The Fossils Say Yes’, Natural History, 52 (November 2005). 26. G.G. Simpson, Fossils (New York: Scientific American Books, 1983). 27. Mayr, What Evolution Is, p.13. 28. X. Xing, M. Norell, et al., ‘Basal Tyrannosauroids from China and Evidence for Protofeathers in Tyrannosauroids’, Nature, 431 (7 October 2004), pp.680–4; C. Zimmer, ‘The Long Curious Extravagant Evolution of Feathers’, National Geographic (February 2011), pp.32–57. 29. D.H. Chadwick, ‘The Evolution of Whales’, National Geographic (November 2001), pp.66–72; J.G.M. Thewissen, et al., ‘Whales Originated from Aquatic Artiodactyls

Evolution of Life  45 in the Eocene Epoch of India’, Nature (December 2007), pp.1190–4; K. Wong, ‘The Mammals that Conquered the Seas’, Scientific American (May 2002), pp.70–9. 30. N.H. Shubin, E.B. Daeschler and F.A. Jenkins Jr, ‘The Pectoral Fin of Tiktaalik Rosea and the Origin of the Tetrapod Limb’, Nature (2006), pp.764–71. 31. C. Stringer, ‘Human Evolution: Out of Ethiopia’, Nature (2003), pp.692–5; and Chapter 10 below. 32. Shubin, Your Inner Fish, Ch. 4. 33. Mayr, What Evolution Is, p.21. 34. Ibid., p.2. 35. Shubin, Your Inner Fish, p.30. Futuyma, Evolution, pp.479–80; S.B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005). 36. D. Quammen and R. Clark, ‘The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin’, National Geographic (December 2008), p.122. Similarly, why should God have decided to put chimpanzees and gorillas on the right side of the Congo River in Africa, whereas bonobos, a close cousin of the chimpanzee, are to be found only on the left bank of the Congo? D. Quammen, ‘The Left Bank Ape: An Exclusive Look at Bonobos’, National Geographic (March 2013), p.105. 37. Quammen and Clark, ‘The Man Who Wasn’t Darwin’. 38. Hall and Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution, pp.26–7. J. Weiner, ‘Evolution in Action’, Natural History (November 2005), p.47; H.A. Orr, ‘Testing Natural Selection’, Scientific American (January 2009), p.34. 39. L.M. Ariza, ‘Evolution in a Petri Dish’, Scientific American (December 2007), p.17; A. Nava, G. Cobas, M. Talavera, et al., ‘Experimental Validation of Haldane’s Hypothesis on the Role of Infection as an Evolutionary Force for Metazoans’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 104, 34 (August 2007), pp.13728–31. 40. R. Lenski, ‘Chance and Necessity in Evolution’, in S.C. Morris (ed.), The Deep Structure of Biology (Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008), pp.3–16. 41. Ecclesiastes 11:5, Koren Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1970); Job 10:11; II Maccabes 7:22. 42. Rambam, Guide for the Perplexed I, 54, p.125. 43. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. 44. Shubin, Your Inner Fish, Ch.10. 45. N. Shubin, The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets and People (New York: Random House, 2003), p.42. 46. Futuyma, Evolution, p.56. 47. However, there is no one-to-one correspondence in the re-enactment of phylogeny by ontogeny – the so-called ‘biogenetic law’. At times, the development of individual parts may be accelerated, as in the vertebral heart, which appears far earlier in individual embryogenesis than in its phylogenetic development. S.J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), pp.8–9. 48. Futuyma, Evolution, p.31, fig. 2.10. 49. S.B. Carroll, The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 2008). 50. Dawkins, Ancestor’s Tale, p.22. 51. Shubin, Your Inner Fish, p.115. 52. See the magnificent images of this enzyme in Futuyma, Evolution, p.449. See also Hall and Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution, p.258.

46  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? 53. ‘Facts of Evolution’ (www.CassioPeiaProject.com, 2008), Ch.5. 54. Futuyma, Evolution, p.483. See also S. Wawersiok and R. Maas, ‘Vertebrate Eye Development as Modeled in Drosophila’, Human Molecular Genetics, 9, 6 (April 2000), pp.917–25. 55. Genesis 1:11, Koren Jerusalem Bible. 56. E. Ratliff, ‘Mix, Match, Morph: How to Build a Dog’, National Geographic (February 2012), p.46; A. Shearin and E.A. Ostrander, ‘Canine Morphology: Hunting for Genes and Tracking Mutations’, PLoS Biology, 8, 3 (March 2010), e1000310. 57. Futuyma, Evolution, Ch.8. 58. Gilbert, Developmental Biology, pp.286, 366, Fig. B, and p.683 on homeotic mutations. 59. Futuyma, Evolution, chs 8, 9. 60. Watson’s genome is found in D.A. Wheeler, M. Srinivasan, M. Egholm et al., ‘The Complete Genome of an Individual by Massively Parallel DNA Sequencing’, Nature (17 April 2008). Venter’s genome is found in S. Levy, G. Sutton, P.C. Ng, et al., ‘The Diploid Genome Sequence of an Individual Human’, PLoSBiol 5, 10 (2007), e254 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050254. 61. An English physician in the mid-twentieth century reported one family in which father and son were born without a foreskin, and another family in which grandpa, son and grandson were similarly affected. These infants were born into non-Jewish families in which circumcision had not been practised. (T. James, ‘Aplasia of the Male Prepuce with Evidence of Heritable Transmission’, Journal of Anatomy, 84, 4 [October 1951], pp.370–2.) The Rabbis of the Talmud were well aware that on occasion an infant is born without a foreskin (Hebrew-English edition of the Babylonian Talmud Shabbat: 135a [London: The Soncino Press, 1990]). The point is that being born without a foreskin may be an inherited trait on rare occasions, but its heritability is uninfluenced by circumcision. 62. E.B. Keverne and J.P. Curley, ‘Epigenetics, Brain Evolution and Behaviour’, Frontiers in Neuroendocrinology, 29 (2008), pp.398–412. For an introduction to epigenesis, see E. Jablonka and M.J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005). 63. Futuyma, Evolution, p.249. 64. Rabbi Akiva hinted at adaptation in his comments on the verse, ‘How manifold [diverse] are Thy works, O Lord’ (Ps. 104:24). He said, ‘Thou hast creatures that live in the sea and Thou hast creatures that live upon the dry land; if those of the sea were to come upon the dry land they would straightaway die, and if those of the dry land were to go down in the sea they would straightaway die ... “How manifold are thy works, O Lord”.’ (Soncino Talmud TB Hullin, 127a). In other words, animals are adapted to their environment. 65. Futuyma, Evolution, Chs 15 and 16 on speciation.

4

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life

T

he facts of evolution presented thus far are accepted as true by the scientific community, setting aside any mistakes in my account of the subject. But I have left out aspects of the evolutionary processes that, at least to my mind, show that the whole process may be purposeful, and intended. This would make a dramatic difference, if true, for only if the natural world about us is intended can the traditional Jewish belief in a divine Creator be sustained. This chapter lays the ground for us to find intent at the very heart of the processes of life’s evolution. Predictability

The path to an intended world begins with evolution’s predictability. Predictability, in turn, is based on processes that circumscribe, contribute to, or channel the Darwinian mechanisms of variation, natural selection and species formation that we have just presented. These processes underlie and intertwine with Darwinian mechanisms, rather than replacing them. I will begin with the constraints that operate on evolution. Constraints The book of Job graphically illustrates what is meant by constraints. ‘I am full of words’, says Elihu Ben Barakh’el HaBuzi to Job, ‘The spirit within me constrains me (he’tsi’kat’ni). Behold my belly is like wine which has no vent; it is ready to burst like new wineskins. I will speak that I may find relief.’1 ‘Constraints’ here means ‘forces’ – that Elihu’s words would be forced to pour out in a definite and channelled direction.2 As applied to evolution, ‘constrain’ means promoting change in a particular direction. Or, simply, the way things must be.3 I will present mathematical, mechanical and genetic kinds of constraints that operate within and upon evolution.

48  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

a. Mathematical Constraints ‘Take any line segment and divide it into two parts such that the longer part of the line segment is in the same proportion to the shorter part as the entire line segment is to the longer part.’4 This ‘golden ratio’ (phi) determines a ubiquitous angle in nature. Phi describes the arrangement of sunflower seeds on the flower, ‘the branching of leaves on a stem; the flight path of a diving falcon; the breeding of rabbits; the spiral shapes of nautilus and other mollusks; the shapes of spiral galaxies; and the way black holes change from one “phase” to another’.5 This is the ratio that Gaudi borrowed from nature to design his cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. Why should this mathematical relationship be found in living things? Apparently, because ‘by arranging themselves according to an angle determined by phi, the floret of the sunflower or the leaves of a plant can fill the spaces in the most efficient way possible, with the least amount of overlap.’6 Another kind of mathematics explains stripes and spots on mammals, fish and snails. Alan Turing proposed that two homogeneously distributed solutions interact to produce stable patterns during animal development.7 The physics involved in the relationship between the solutions is explained by mathematics and constrains it. The resulting patterns are analogous to the harmonics of a guitar’s vibrating strings. Using Turing’s reaction-diffusion model, a computer can simulate the zebra’s coat! Nature’s fractal order is still another kind of mathematical constraint in which a geometric pattern repeats itself at ever larger scales to produce irregular but self-similar shapes. Fractal order shows itself in the repetitive shapes of clouds, mountain ranges, lightning bolts, coastlines, snowflakes, ferns and even vegetables such as cauliflower and broccoli.8 Much of the natural world follows the mathematical order of the golden ratio (phi), reaction-diffusion equations and fractal order. They impose boundaries and regularities – constraints – on an otherwise whimsical or chaotic natural world. b. Mechanical Constraints Examples of mechanical factors that dramatically influence human evolution include the size of neonates’ skulls and the orientation of bony trabeculae. Human babies ought to be born, one would think, with large, mature brains and fully developed neuromuscular systems so that they could be independent from the very start, like the newborn wildebeest that is up-and-running a few minutes after birth. That would save parents a lot of bother. But human mothers must have a

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  49

narrow pelvis to be able to walk upright. The narrow maternal pelvis constrains the newborn’s head size that, in consequence, must remain small in order for the baby to be born. Neonates with large brains and big skulls will not be able to make it through mum’s narrow birth canal. Natural selection therefore strikes a balance between what is best for baby’s parturition – a small head; what is best for the baby’s post-natal development – a large brain; and what is best for mum – a narrow pelvis. Newborn head-size is mechanically constrained. The Orientation of Bony Trabeculae. D’Arcy Thompson wrote almost a century ago, Internal trabeculae [supporting bands of calcium-containing tissue] in the head of the human femur strengthen the bone along the precise lines of its greatest need for buttressing against compressive forces. When bones break and heal improperly, the trabeculae are constantly being formed and reformed, demolished and formed anew … under the direct action and control of the forces to which the system is exposed.9 Mechanical factors constrain bony trabeculae to form in certain directions only; they are a pervasive influence over how our bodies are constructed. c. Genetic Constraints Genetic controls over development constitute another type of constraint. Arthropods (the ‘jointed feet’ group, which includes butterflies and lobsters) and vertebrates (the group that includes fish, frogs and humans) share a basic similarity in that each member of these large groups has a head, thorax and abdomen. Just as some segments of arthropods have antennae, wings or legs attached to them, so certain of the vertebrae in all vertebrates have ribs, forelimbs or hind limbs attached to them. In both groups, so called ‘placement’ genes (Hox genes), which have been conserved – that is, retained – throughout hundreds of millions of years of animal evolution, determine where these appendages are placed. Hox genes determine where a fly’s wings and legs are to be located, and where to put our own arms and legs. When certain of these genes are not ‘turned on’, as in snakes, no limbs at all form on vertebrae.10 Since you were paying attention in the last chapter, you will remember another kind of gene conserved from our distant past,

50  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

variously called ‘Eyeless’ in the fruit fly and Pax 6 in other animals. This gene controls eye development up and down the evolutionary tree. It became an integral part of programs that made eyes early on in evolution and has been conserved ever since. It was ‘easier’ for evolving species to stick with reliable, old-fashioned genes for making eyes, rather than ‘inventing’ new genetic programs.11 Since eyes remained crucially necessary for survival, evolution persisted with a tried-andtrue method of making them; the way eyes form is constrained by the past. The point of these two examples, appendages and eyes, is that the manner in which current species are constructed is ‘constrained’ by inherited genetic programs conserved from distant forebears. Another kind of genetic constraint is illustrated by lancelets – small, laterally compressed, semi-transparent animals that live on shallow sandy bottoms in warm marine waters.12 These are classified as ‘chordates’ because of the turgid rod (notochord) that extends the length of their body.13 The notochord serves as a firm but flexible axis for the lancelet so that it can execute powerful side-to-side, undulatory movements. We humans are also classed as chordates because our embryos have notochords, even though our notochords do not serve any purpose once we mature. So why do human embryos have notochords? It turns out that notochords make a protein called ‘Sonic hedgehog’ (great name, no need to bother your head about where it comes from) that controls the development of our spinal cord. Those cells in the embryo’s spinal cord which receive high concentrations of Sonichedgehog protein from the notochord become one kind of neuron; while the adjacent group of cells, exposed to slightly less Sonichedgehog protein, become another kind of neuron, one which moves muscles.14 Absent a notochord at a crucial time in your embryonic life and you cannot move a muscle! The notochord in the human embryo is a survival from the notochord of our early lancelet-like forebears. Vertebrate genetic programs keep making notochords in early embryos because they are part of the inherited production line that makes spinal-cord motor neurons. The transient appearance of human embryonic notochord is locked into the assembly line that makes us. It is part of a process that is constrained by our evolutionary past. d. Physical-Chemical Constraints Still another kind of constraint is based on physical chemistry. In the non-living world, electron shells arrange themselves about protons in

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  51

obedience to the laws of quantum mechanics.15 Galaxies assume spiral shapes; sand dunes undulate in repetitive contours, and pebbles on the beach arrange themselves in rows parallel to the seashore. All of this is determined by the laws of physics. Living things are similar: they too march to the tune of physics and chemistry. Carbon atoms link themselves together in ‘daisy chains’ to form the skeletons of life’s molecules – bound together by chemical bonds. Linked amino acids fold themselves into beautiful proteins whose three-dimensional structures are at least partially predictable from amino-acid physical chemistry. Laws of physical chemistry constrain the shapes of essential molecules in living things. Thus, the twenty common amino acids are the simplest structures imaginable that have repeating units (peptides) as well as the ability to react with water. The five carbon sugars in nucleic acids are the smallest sugars that form closed rings, and thereby are able to confer spatial orientation on other molecules. The purine and pyrimidine nucleic acid bases have the unique ability to interact with one another with particular specificity.16 There may be so little ‘wiggle room’ in how living things are constructed that the structures of fundamental molecules of life are inevitable. In sum, mathematics, mechanics, genetics and physical chemistry constrain the way the living world has evolved. The point here is that to the extent that they do so, the course of evolution can be predicted. Self-organization Self-organization supplies a second support for predictability in evolution. Lazybones, go to the ant; Study its ways and learn. Without leaders, officers, or rulers, It lays up its stores during the summer, Gathers in its food at the harvest.17 The author of Proverbs recognized that ants self-organize. So do other living things: A system of living cells or organisms builds a pattern … with no external directing influence … Instead the system’s components interact to produce the pattern, and these interactions are based on local, not global, information. In a school of fish, for instance, rather than knowledge of the global behavior of the entire school

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… [all that’s needed is to] apply a few simple rules of thumb such as these: “Approach neighbors if neighbors are too far away”; “Avoid collisions with nearby fish.”18 The resulting movements of the school of fish resemble the response to a leader’s instructions – but there is no leader! What is seemingly a directed group movement emerges by adding together many individual self-directed contributions. Other examples of individuals organizing themselves into groups include the soaring movements of birds that flock together and the synchronous flashing of fireflies. Self-assembled biological structures include polypeptide chains that fold themselves into proteins, nucleic acids that assume functional forms, and individual cells that group together to form multi-celled organisms. Self-organization helps explain the classic conundrum of how the eye, with all its complexity, could have evolved. Researchers in Japan found that cultures of stem cells from the pigmented layer of the mouse retina spontaneously folded inward to form a shape reminiscent of the embryonic optic cup and even generated stratified neural retinal tissue. Think of it! Cells in tissue culture organized themselves to form the rudiments of an eye!19 Even the brain self-organizes. Researchers took cortical tissue from eighteen-day-old embryonic rats, dissociated it and cultured it in a dish upon a multi-electrode array. The ‘dissociated neurons begin forming connections within a few hours in culture, and within a few days establish an elaborate and spontaneously active living neural network’,20 which soon developed spontaneous bursts of electrical activity. ‘You see one [neuron] extend a process, pull it back, extend it out – and it may do that a couple of times, just sampling who’s next to it, until over time the connectivity starts to establish itself.’21 In a related study, a group of investigators in Japan cultured mouse embryonic stem cells and found that they formed a three-dimensional pituitary gland containing both neural and functional endocrine cells.22 Amazingly, stem cells were able to form an anterior pituitary gland all on their own. Spontaneous coming together is a ubiquitous pattern in nature.23 On first consideration, it might appear that if nature self-organizes it has no need of any external creator, director or organizing force. And indeed, phenomena that we have discussed, including the orderly sequence of elements, protein folding, replicating molecules, zebra stripes, social insect behaviour, flocking in fish and birds and the formation

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  53

of functioning, complex cellular networks in eye and brain, show no apparent evidence of being specified in advance by any outside agent. But consider. The eventual emergence of each of these phenomena is in some sense predictable. The periodic table can be predicted from rules of quantum mechanics; protein folding from physical chemistry of linked amino acids; zebra stripes from Turing’s mathematical model of diffusion; and group social behaviour in ants from simple rules-ofthumb programmed into each individual ant. Even the self-organization of cells to form an optic cup or a neural network can be predicted from the properties of the individual cells. As I see it, therefore, selforganization joins with constraints as evidence of nature’s predictability. Convergences A third support for predictability comes from convergence – meaning that evolution finds common solutions to common problems. Even though species are geographically isolated and genetically distinct, they develop similar characteristics (they converge) as they adjust to similar environments. Hundreds of examples of these common solutions have been found.24 For example, echolocation is the process of locating distant or invisible objects, such as prey, by sound waves. It has evolved at least four separate times: in bats, toothed whales, oil birds and cave swiftlets. These animals dispense with visual systems because they live in the dark. Instead, they have converged on echolocation to find their way, a common solution to their common problem.25 Four distantly related lineages have teeth shaped like sabres: ‘a mammal-like reptile, a marsupial, a nimravid (cat-like) carnivore and a true cat’.26 The conclusion must be that evolution selects hunters with big sharp canine teeth, despite disparate evolutionary origins, because such teeth are really efficient for grabbing prey. Birds, insects and bats each developed wings despite being widely separated on the tree of life. Each group independently ‘discovered’ that wings are of great help if you are trying to get about in the air. Fish and sharks, as well as mammals such as whales, porpoises, seals and otters, all developed a smooth external shape, excellent for getting about quickly in water. All these mammals originally evolved on land but smoothed off their rough edges to a fusiform shape (tapered at both ends) as they adapted to aquatic life. Many animal groups converge toward increasing intelligence. Even though crows lack a prefrontal cortex, they can think, reason and solve novel problems. ‘Intelligence has evolved both in these corvids (the group that includes crows) and in primates through a process of

54  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

divergent brain evolution, yet convergent mental evolution.’27 That is, although their brains are constructed quite differently, mammals and crows can do many of the same tasks. The same applies to dolphins, which also accomplish complex tasks using a brain very different from ours.28 They have a complex social life, sophisticated means of communication, and can mimic and learn. ‘This … suggests that while the routes to adaptive success, of which one is a higher intelligence, may be quite strikingly different (as in dolphins and humans), the endpoints converge again and again.’29 Even octopuses are intelligent (yes, that is the correct plural). They ‘turn out to be uncannily familiar creatures, not nearly as unlike you and me as one might expect – given their startlingly different physiques and the 1.2 billion years of evolution that separate us from these eight-armed marvels of the sea’. Octopuses even show evidence of distinct personalities. ‘Aquarium workers [in Seattle] gave names to only three kinds of animals in their care: seals, sea otters, and giant Pacific octopuses. The workers named the octopuses for their distinctive behaviors – including Leisure Suit, Larry, Emily Dickinson, and Lucretia McEvil.’30 Smart crows, dolphins and octopuses demonstrate common patterns in the evolution of animal groups widely separated in the tree of life. On this planet, for instance, it so happened that high intelligence came about in primates, but on some other planet it might come about in a wholly different type of creature.31 And even here on earth, if we wait awhile, Lucretia McEvil, along with her boneless fellow octopuses, might learn her ABCs! The important point here is that life appears to converge towards greater intelligence. In sharp contrast to S.J. Gould’s conclusion that a rerun of the tape of life from its beginnings would produce markedly different creatures, these examples of convergence show us that as often as the tape of life is rerun, the result is likely to be much the same. That is, creatures that need to get about in the air will develop wings, those who adapt to a water environment will become streamlined, those who live in the dark will develop echolocation and there will always be a place for creatures that survive by their intelligence. These aspects of evolution are predictable. What drives convergence? Given sufficient time, chance provides equivalent mutations in very different species. Nature selects traits that are needed for survival from this variation. Convergence occurs when species with common needs ‘select’ similar traits to satisfy these needs. Of course species don’t actively ‘select’. Rather, nature acts as a sieve

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  55

to confer reproductive advantage on those organisms whose traits are better adapted to their environment.32 In sum, convergence joins with constraints and self-organization as a third support for predictability in evolution. As we move along in trying to make the case for intent in evolution, we now need to consider whether or not evolution progresses. Progress

That life progresses is not as obvious as it might first appear. Strong arguments are made against it. I’ll present arguments supporting and negating progress, and then explain why progress wins, in my view.33 The Argument against Progress in Evolution In Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf the little bird says to the duck (presumably a non-flying duck), ‘What kind of a bird are you, if you can’t fly?’ Says the duck to the little bird, ‘What kind of a bird are you if you can’t swim?’ Which leads to the question, what is ‘better’, flying or swimming? Which yardstick should we use to measure what is ‘best’? In any contest, porpoises and bats would choose the ability to find one’s way via echolocation as their yardstick, and they would come out on top. The albatross would pick ability to fly vast distances over oceans; sequoias would pick bulk and longevity; and, of course, Homo sapiens would pick intelligence as our golden yardstick. But why is any one of these traits ‘better’ than any other? Why is human intelligence ‘better’ than the Sequoia’s bulk and longevity? Some would argue that ‘better’ means more complex and that this represents progress. According to this line of thinking, cells with nuclei are more complex and therefore ‘better’ than cells without nuclei – they have progressed; multicellular organisms with differentiated cell types represent progress over aggregations of undifferentiated cells; and societies (both insect and human) in which individuals have differentiated roles represent progress compared with isolated individuals. Fair enough. But nay-sayers will respond that basic body plans of current living forms do not show progress – they are no different from those found in the Burgess Shale of 550 million years ago;34 that some organisms (parasites, for example) have lost characteristics they once had and are simpler now rather than more complex; and that many formerly social organisms have reverted to being solitary. They would conclude from this that there has not been any consistent increase in complexity, and therefore, no progress.

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Others propose greater efficiency and adaptedness as criteria of progress. It is likely, for instance, that hawks, albatrosses and homing pigeons are more efficient in their unique flight specialties than their reptilian flying ancestors. But again, are these contemporary bird species ‘better’ than the first flying birds? Some argue that extinction of ‘inferior’ species implies progress; that the sum of life improves a little every time an ‘inferior’ species disappears. But the dinosaurs were wiped out because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – not because of any deficiency on their part. The gentle dodo bird owes its extinction to being ‘too good’ for this world – it did not have the sense to fly away from danger. Does its gentleness mean it was inferior? Neanderthals may have died out because they could not keep up with our human ancestors in the business of hunting down and murdering fellow hominids. Did that make Neanderthals inferior? The total number of species on earth has increased fairly steadily over the past several hundred million years. But should increase in numbers of species be called ‘progress’? Gould damned progress as a ‘noxious, culturally embedded, untestable, non-operational, intractable idea that must be replaced if we wish to understand the patterns of history’.35 Lewontin joined him in denying progress, but for a different reason: ‘The reason that there is no general progress is that the environments in which particular species live are themselves changing and, relative to the organisms, are usually getting worse. So most of natural selection is concerned with keeping up’36 – not with improving. But despite the large body of opinion that denies progress in evolution, my money still favours it. Progress Affirmed

Some of the biggest names in evolutionary biology have concluded that evolution does progress. Ernst Mayr, doyen of twentiethcentury evolutionary studies, referred to ‘the series of steps from the prokaryotes to the eukaryotes, vertebrates, mammals, primates, and man as progressive. Each step in this progression was the result of successful natural selection. The survivors of this selection process have been proven to be superior to those that were eliminated’.37 Progress, asserted E.O. Wilson, prominent professor of biology, is a property of the evolution of life as a whole by almost any conceivable intuitive standard, including the acquisition of goals and intentions in the behavior of animals …. To the extent that

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  57

it exists, progress comes about by the retention of the genetic programs for what works into the next generation ... The overall average across the history of life has moved from the simple and few to the more complex and numerous. During the past billion years, animals as a whole evolved upwards in body size, feeding and defensive techniques, brain and behavioral complexity, social organization and precision of environmental control.38 Even the controversial Richard Dawkins accepts a nuanced view of progress: The origin of the chromosome, of the bounded cell, of organized meiosis, diploidy and sex, of the eukaryotic cell, of multicellularity, of gastrulation, of molluscan torsion, of segmentation – each of these may have constituted a watershed event in the history of life … boosting evolution itself in ways that seem entitled to the label progressive … In this sense there may be a one-way ratchet of progressive innovation in evolution.39 By the way, the ratchet idea is useful – evolution progresses because it is based on a one-way process that retains improvements. ‘The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn’t, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving.’40 In the same way that breeders improve pigeons, racehorses or tulips, so natural selection improves species. In this way, as Charles Darwin concluded in his Origin of Species, ‘from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved’.41 As the self-appointed judge in this matter, I come down in favour of progress in evolution. It is intuitively obvious, as E.O. Wilson says, that our species has progressed when compared to early self-replicating molecules or to amoebae. This is a terribly important conclusion, because progress is a vector that implies direction towards an endpoint. It therefore raises the plausibility of intent in evolution. More on this in Chapter 6. To sum up so far in this chapter: underlying processes in evolution – constraints, self-organization, and convergence – argue for evolution’s predictability. Common sense, as well as eminent evolutionary biologists, concludes that the evolution of life shows progress. We will

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put predictability and progress together shortly, but before proceeding, some boundaries need to be placed on life’s predictability; that is to say, predictability interacts with contingency in life’s evolution. What is Contingency? Since evolutionary events are explicable in retrospect, we cannot say that they have come about by chance. We need another word to describe events that are non-predictable in advance, but explainable in retrospect – this word is ‘contingent’. I take contingent to mean occurring or existing only if certain other circumstances are the case. A contingent fact is one that cannot be predicted from the laws of nature – it could have happened in a different way. But once it has happened, we can explain why it happened. The recently discovered protofeathers on the limbs of some dinosaurs serve as an example of how contingency works.42 These early feathers are like the fuzzy down of a modern baby chick rather than the stiff plumes of an adult bird. Dinosaurs with such protofeathers could not fly, so that their protofeathers are presumed to have evolved to serve some other need, perhaps insulation. Much later on, as modern birds evolved from these dinosaurs, the protofeathers were modified into true feathers, enabling birds to fly. Both protofeathers and the true feathers that followed arose as modifications that increased survival chances for those who possessed them. With hindsight, we can now see how the path that led to true feathers began with earlier protofeathers. The development of true feathers is therefore a ‘contingent’ rather than a chance event because it was dependent on earlier protofeathers. But – and this is the point – it could not have been predicted in advance that dinosaur protofeathers would evolve into true bird feathers.43 According to this contingent way of looking at evolution, there was no predetermined plan, no intent to eventually evolve true feathers from proto-feathers. Evolution simply ‘took’ what was at hand – protofeathers – and modified it to make what was needed – feathers. The conventional wisdom has it that contingency of this sort characterizes evolution. The opposite notion, that past events are directed towards a goal and were set up in advance to bring about the present, was mocked long ago by Voltaire’s Candide: ‘Everything is made for the best purpose. Our noses were made to carry spectacles, so we have spectacles. Legs were clearly intended for breeches, and we wear them.’44 To paraphrase: legs existed and breeches followed, but Voltaire’s point is that it is preposterous to argue that legs were made so that people would be able to wear breeches; it is as preposterous to argue that noses were

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  59

made to carry spectacles. Voltaire’s argument appears to apply here as well: protofeathers did not evolve so that feathers would follow. Gould applies this argument to all of evolution: ‘Why did mammals evolve among vertebrates?’ he asks: Why did primates take to the trees? Why did the tiny twig that produced Homo sapiens arise and survive in Africa? When we set our focus upon the level of detail that regulates common questions such as these about the history of life, contingency dominates and the predictability of general form recedes to an irrelevant background .... And so the question of questions boils down to the placement of the boundary between predictability under invariant law and the multifarious possibilities of historical contingency.45 Gould decided that ‘almost every interesting event of life’s history falls into the realm of contingency’.46 One thing followed on another and could not have been predicted. With all due respect to Gould, I will now make precisely the opposite argument – that the interesting events of life’s history are, to a large extent, predictable. Predictability Trumps Contingency

The example I used above of dinosaur protofeathers argues, to my mind, for predictability more than it does for contingency. After all, we could have predicted that one or the other of life’s many branches would hit upon flying through the air as a means of getting about on this planet. Any modification, such as feathers, that helped bring this about (of course, in incremental steps) would have been conserved. Feathers are, therefore, not only contingent on previous protofeathers; they also could have been predicted to evolve sooner or later, as life adapted to fill vacant space in the air. A vacant niche was predictably filled. More examples follow of interesting events of life’s history in which predictability trumps contingency. These predictable events are brought about by the interaction of all the processes we have mentioned – constraints, self-organization and convergence interacting with classical Darwinian variation, natural selection and species formation. Life’s Beginning is Predictable The early earth’s crust consisted of boiling hot magma. At this stage the whole planet was under hellish bombardment by objects from

60  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

space, not exactly the right conditions for life to begin. But around 4 billion years ago, when the crust cooled and the bombardment from space lessened, primitive organisms quickly emerged. Life started just as soon as it could.47 The mechanism may have involved the selforganization of molecules present in liquid environments on early earth that finally achieved something akin to a ‘phase transition’, like water to ice.48 These molecules appear to have been constrained to replicate by their physical-chemical characteristics. It is as though these characteristics, dare we say it, were ‘set up’ for self-replication – the major characteristic of life. ‘Life on earth evolved quickly and is as old as it could be. This fact alone seems to indicate an inevitability, or at least a predictability, for life’s origin from the chemical constituents of atmosphere and ocean.’49 Body Shapes are Predictable Following fertilization of an ovum by a sperm, the resulting cluster of cells forms a sphere (blastocyst). As this sphere self-organizes, it develops a hollow centre because the sticky ends of the cells attract each other and non-sticky regions repel.50 The formation of the blastocyst is constrained by physical laws of repulsion and attraction; its shape is predictable. The formation of major body forms in the so-called Cambrian ‘explosion’ may be another example of predictability. The ‘explosion’ refers to the relatively brief period of time, 550 million years ago, during which virtually all animal phyla that exist today burst forth. The best evidence for this explosion is found in the sedimentary rocks of the Burgess Shale in Yoho National Park in Canada. In a time interval of merely 20 million years, our planet went from a place devoid of any animals that could be seen with the naked eye to a planet teeming with invertebrate marine life. No new phyla have evolved since then.51 There is no agreed solution to the question of why the Cambrian explosion occurred when it did, or why so few phyla have subsequently appeared. It is one of the yet-to-be solved problems of evolutionary biology. But it may be that the physics of the environment constrained body plans. Physics ‘decides’, for instance, which body shapes enable flight, speed or manoeuvrability, and natural selection must eventually comply with the demands of physics. Since the physics has not changed, there was no impetus for selecting new body plans from nature’s variation. All of the basic body plans could have been predicted from existing mechanical constraints.

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  61

Our Genetic Code is Predictable Nearly all life forms use the same alphabet (AGCU) in their genetic code (Chapter 3). Why? After examining a million hypothetical codes other than our own, investigators concluded that our particular code ‘might indeed be the best possible code’.52 Therefore, ‘Given a world of DNA and amino acids, perhaps the genetic code we know is more or less an inevitable outcome’,53 the most efficient and effective code that could possibly be. It is a code that self-organized, is constrained to be the way it is, and was selected because it worked. If it is the only way to go, then it is predictable. Lungs are Predictable Small organisms, such as a grasshopper, obtain oxygen via a system of tubes (spiracles) on the surface of their bodies. Larger organisms (elephant, humans) have a problem. Their body surface cannot supply enough oxygen to their internal cells because of a mathematical constraint: the volume of a sphere increases with the cube of its radius, while surface area increases only by the square. Therefore, as animals grow bigger, their surface area lags behind their volume. To compensate for this, larger animals have evolved an internal organ we call a lung, whose alveoli provide enough surface area to keep up with demand. Otherwise large animals could not have become bigger! Lungs are the predictable results of a mathematical constraint. High Intelligence is Predictable Natural selection will predictably converge toward creatures with high intelligence in some lineage or other because high intelligence almost certainly confers an adaptive advantage – it helps survival. Hence, the high levels of intelligence in dolphins, octopuses and crows, as well as primates. In all of these examples, predictability and contingency each play their intertwined roles and bring about evolution’s progress. On the one hand, we need to give contingency its due; that is, it is undeniable that what happens today does depend on what happened yesterday. On the other hand, there appear to be tides in the affairs of evolution (such as in the preceding examples) upon which contingent facts are borne along. These are predictable tides, and they account for major transitions. So evolution, looked at as a whole, is, in large part, predictable. Why does this matter? Because a predictable world, and especially one which progresses, suggests intent, and intent can bring us to belief in a creator – as in the following chapter.

62  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? Notes   1. Job 32:17–19, Koren Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1970).   2. S.J. Gould, The Structure of Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), p.1025.   3. Ibid., Ch.10.   4. M. Livio, ‘The Golden Number’, Natural History Magazine (March 2003), p.65.   5. Ibid., p.65.   6. Ibid., p.66; S. Kauffman, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).   7. Turing was one of the founders of computer science and the man who cracked the German ‘Enigma’ code during the Second World War. His biological model is found in A.M. Turing, ‘The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 237 [B] (14 August 1952), pp.37–72; S.F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), pp.20–2.   8. J. Gleick, Chaos (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987).   9. D. Thompson, On Growth and Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1917), p.237. 10. D. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005), pp.47–8; R. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale. A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p.422; V.J. Lynch and G.P. Wagner, ‘The Birth of the Uterus’, Natural History (December 2005–January 2006), pp.36–41. In contrast to this evolutionary explanation of limbless snakes, Genesis uses the limbless snake to teach a moral lesson (Genesis 3:14). Both explanations have their place. 11. The words ‘easier’ and ‘invent’ imply deliberate choice on the part of inanimate genes – which, of course, they do not have. That is why I enclose these words in apostrophes. 12. R. Buchsbaum, M. Buchsbaum, J. Pearse and V. Pearse, Animals Without Backbones (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p.490. 13. See Chapter 3 for a discussion of the vertebrates. 14. Gilbert, Developmental Biology, pp.388–9. 15. J. Ambjorn, J. Jurkiewicz and R. Loll, ‘The Self-Organizing Quantum Universe’, Scientific American (July 2008), pp.42–9. 16. N. Pace, ‘The Universal Nature of Biochemistry’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98 (30 January 2001), p.806. 17. Proverbs 6:6. 18. S. Camazine, J.L. Deneuborg, N.R. Franks, J. Sneyd, G. Theraulaz and E. Bonabeau, Self-Organization in Biological Systems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), Ch.2. 19. M. Eiraku, N. Takata, M. Kawada, E. Sakakura, et al., ‘Self-organizing Opticcup Morphogenesis in Three-dimensional Culture’, Nature, 472 (7 April 2001), pp.51–6. 20. T.B. DeMarse, D.A. Wagenaar, A.W. Blau and S.M. Potter, ‘The Neurally Controlled Animat: Biological Brains Acting with Simulated Bodies’, Auton Robots, 11, 3 (2001), pp.305–10. 21. T.B. Demarse, ‘Brain in a Dish Acts as Autopilot, Living Computer’, University of Florida News (22 October 2004). 22. H. Suga, T. Kadoshima, M. Minaguchi, M. Ohgushi, et al., ‘Self-formation of Functional Adenohypophysis in Three-dimensional Culture’, Nature (9 November 2011), pp.57–62.

Evidence for Predictability and Progress in the Evolution of Life  63 23. E. Jantsch, The Self-Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (New York: Pergamon, 1980). 24. S. Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); S. Carrroll, Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), p.150. 25. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale, pp.589ff. 26. Futuyma, Evolution, p.111. 27. N.S. Clayton and N.J. Emery, ‘Canny Corvids and Political Primates: A Case for Convergent Evolution in Intelligence’, in S. Conway Morris (ed.), The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2008), Ch.7. 28. I. Marino, ‘Convergence of Complex Cognitive Abilities in Cetaceans and Primates’, Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 59 (2002), pp.21–32. 29. S. Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp.256, 282. 30. J. Mather, ‘Eight Arms, with Attitude’, Natural History Magazine (February 2007), pp.30–6. 31. Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, pp.256, 283; C. Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience (London: Penguin, 2006), p.122. 32. Some evolutionary biologists deny any significant role for convergence in evolution. J. Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), pp.211, 213. To my mind, the numerous examples cited by Conway Morris provide overwhelming evidence for convergence: S. Conway Morris and S.J. Gould, ‘Showdown on the Burgess Shale’, Natural History, 107, 10 (1998), pp.48–55. 33. Futuyma, Evolution, Ch.21; M. Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 34. Conway Morris and Gould, ‘Showdown on the Burgess Shale’, Natural History. 35. S.J. Gould, ‘On Replacing the Idea of Progress with an Operational Notion of Directionality’, in M.H. Netecki (ed.), Evolutionary Progress (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), p.319. 36. R.C. Lewontin, New York Review of Books (20 October 2005). This argument is expanded in M. Abraham, God is Playing Dice (Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2011) [Hebrew]. 37. E. Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p.214. 38. E.O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), p.187. 39. R. Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p.216. See Glossary for definition of these terms. 40. H. Berg, quoted by C. Zimmer, in ‘A Fin is a Limb is a Wing: How Evolution Fashioned Its Masterworks’, National Geographic (October 2006), p.110. 41. C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London: John Murray, 1859; New York: Gramercy, 1979), p.459. F. Darwin and A.C. Seward, More Letters of Charles Darwin (London: John Murray, 1903), vol.1, p.344. 42. C. Zimmer, ‘The Long Curious Extravagant Evolution of Feathers’, National Geographic (February 2011), pp.32–57. 43. The matter is confused by the misleading term ‘protofeather’. When they first appeared, they were not ‘proto’ anything – they just were. 44. Voltaire, Candide (New York: Random House, 2003), Ch.1.

64  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? 45. S.J. Gould, Wonderful Life (New York: Norton, 1989), p.290. 46. Ibid. 47. If life is so inevitable, why has it proven to be so hard for anyone, despite great effort, to actually produce something we might agree to be alive? Most tellingly, Professor Stanley Miller (of the famous Miller–Urey experiment, see Chapter 3), who has tried to produce life for many years, concludes that, ‘The problem of the origin of life has turned out to be much more difficult than I, and most other people, envisioned.’ (J. Horgan, Scientific American [1991], pp.101–9). Difficult, yes, but the solution may be close at hand. As noted in Chapter 3, investigators at the University of Manchester formed the pyrimidine nucleotides (cytosine and uracil) in their laboratory from plausible prebiotic chemicals in the presence of ultraviolet light. Even though the formation of guanine and adenine remains unexplained, a major first step in the formation of the crucial replicating entities of life appears to be on the way to a solution: M.W. Power, B. Gerland and J.D. Sutherland, ‘Synthesis of Activated Pyrimidine Ribonucleotides in Prebiotically Plausible Conditions’, Nature (May 2009), pp.239–42; A. Lazcano, ‘The Origins of Life’, Natural History (February 2006), pp.36–40. 48. S. Kauffman, Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p.285. 49. S.J. Gould, ‘The Evolution of Life on the Earth’, Scientific American (October 1994), p.87. 50. G. Forgacs and S. Newman, Biological Physics of the Developing Embryo (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 51. Conway Morris and Gould, ‘Showdown at the Burgess Shale’, Natural History. 52. S. Freeland and L. Hurst, ‘The Genetic Code Is One in a Million’, Molecular Biology and Evolution, 17 (2000), pp.511–18. 53. Conway Morris, Life’s Solution, p.18.

5

Life Evolves under a Loose Rein

Predictability and Progress Argue for a Degree of Intent in Life’s Evolution

M

y reasoning is this: if major events in evolution can be predicted in advance, and if these predictable events demonstrate progress (however defined), then a logical conclusion is that the evolutionary process is set up in advance to progress towards predictable end points. Granted this does not establish with certainty that evolution is intended, but it seems reasonable and consistent with what we know of evolution. As an example, it could be predicted that creatures with high intelligence would eventually evolve to fill an otherwise vacant niche in the environment, and most of us would agree that the evolution of such creatures is evidence of progress. The conventional wisdom accounts for this outcome by invoking the mantra that evolution is so constituted that adaptive advantage drives nature to select for intelligence, and that nature’s systems can therefore be expected to bring about such an outcome. My argument is, rather, that the system that brings about humans with high intelligence is intended. I reason as follows: the consecutive stages in the development of each infant and child follow a predictable, elaborately choreographed trajectory – sitting between five and six months, standing at ten to twelve months, and so on. (Of course, especially as we get to more advanced stages such as speech and reading, the milestones are increasingly influenced by environmental influences so that they are only partially predictable.) Further, it is quite obvious that brain complexity and intellectual abilities increase with age until adulthood is reached. Each human life, therefore, evidences predictability, at least in part, as well as progress in brain capability. The goal of this development, if any, in classic evolutionary thinking is nothing more than to produce an adult human being who can survive and reproduce.

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But the incredible processes of brain development in our species surely count for more than this. The predictable processes that drive human brain development forward so that the adult man or woman can understand the physics of the very beginning of all things, explore the neurophysiology that underlies thought, wrestle with questions of good and evil, and ask ‘Why existence?’, argue for an intended process: that the elaborate evolutionary saga has wittingly brought about a species that can question. It seems inadequate to me at least, to argue that this outcome is simply contingent – one thing merely happened after another, which led to us. The predictability of child brain development and the brain’s eventual capacities argue instead for intent; for a process which was meant from the beginning to result in highly intelligent creatures such as ourselves. The remainder of this chapter will further explain and defend this argument. Keep in mind that I am not throwing contingency out of the window. There is no question, for instance, that the extinction of the dinosaurs was causally related to the comet that slammed into the Mayan coast of Mexico a long time ago. Clearly, dinosaur extinction was contingent on this comet (more on this shortly). And there can be no question that a child growing up in China is more likely to speak Chinese than Turkish; the particular language one speaks is contingent on the language one is exposed to in childhood. What I am proposing, rather, is that evolution is not limited to contingency, but that it also contains an important element of intention. Separating all this out in any individual case is not easy – it is like trying to separate nature from nurture in child development. Nevertheless, it is possible to tease contingency apart from intent, at least at their extremes. Contingent Events These are examples of contingent events in evolution that demonstrate an apparent lack of intent: The seeming absurdity of nature’s 400,000-plus species of beetles. This is an example of genetic variation gone wild. Would not a thousand beetle species do just as well? Mutation has proceeded here with exuberance, without any evident intent. It is difficult to imagine any cosmic purpose for all these beetle species. The left-sided aortic arch in your chest and mine. There is no particular benefit to an aorta that arches to the left as opposed to the right. It happened to start one way, that way worked, and so it has continued ever since without apparent rhyme or reason. Again, no hint of intent here, no cosmic purpose – just contingency.

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The predominance of left-handed (levo) amino acids and righthanded (dextro) sugars. These appear to have been random ‘choices’ when life began. There is no component of intent, so far as anyone can tell, lurking behind being a levo or dextro molecule. Carbon-based life forms somewhere else in the universe could theoretically have evolved opposite handedness and work just as well. By contrast, other phenomena in nature appear to have a much greater component of intent. Predictable Events The predictable events discussed in the previous chapter – a planet that can support life; life’s origin; our DNA code; lungs, and highly intelligent beings – each originates in a contingent manner. That is to say, the reason that they evolved can be explained in retrospect. But the fact that their end points are predictable and that they demonstrate progress suggests a significant component of intent in each. I will try to demonstrate how contingency and intent interact in just one of these examples – human origins. I will also explain how my concept of a broadly intended world differs from one which is tightly designed, and why I reject the latter. Human Origins Considered from Contingent, Tightly Designed, and Broadly Intended Points of View

The current scientific wisdom about human origins is more or less as follows. Some 63 million years ago the Mayan coast of Mexico was the site of one of earth’s major disasters. It was then and there that a giant comet struck, causing worldwide destruction and wiping out the dinosaurs.1 Without dinosaurs, vacant niches opened up in the natural world, which were eventually occupied by the small mammals that had survived the disaster. Some 40 million years later in East Africa, shifts in tectonic plates began to create the Great Rift Valley and this, in turn, was followed by a change from forest to savannah. A sub-group of East African mammals then began to walk upright in the newly formed savannahs. This group of mammals, called primates, eventually led to Homo sapiens (Chapter 10).2 These events can be interpreted in several ways. As Evidence of a Contingent World This point of view would argue that because of the laws of physics, stray bits of matter in outer space eventually coalesced into comets.

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One of these comets happened to be trapped by our planet’s gravity, and slammed into Earth with great force. The resulting crash was not planned in advance, but in retrospect is entirely explainable. The crash destroyed the dinosaurs that happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Smaller mammals then flourished fortuitously because new niches were now available to them. Because of another unforeseeable but explicable development – the opening of the East African Rift – another chain of events was set in motion as a consequence of which a group of smaller mammals evolved into Homo sapiens. Each step in this progression was contingent on, and in retrospect can be explained by, prior events. The end result, however, was not part of any overall scheme that was carefully planned in advance. It just happened this way, one thing after another. It all could have turned out quite differently. To my mind, this contingent way of looking at the facts is plausible but rather unsatisfying, for it fails to answer a series of ‘Why’ questions. Why should a planet like ours exist, with its special conditions conducive to life? Why should living organisms gradually ratchet themselves up, one adaptation on top of another, to produce the amazing creatures that fill our world? Why should creatures that can analyse their own evolutionary origins exist? Why are we here? Why does anything exist? The contingent answer to all these questions is that it all just happened, which is not very satisfying. And neither was it satisfactory to Blaise Pascal: ‘Cast into the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not’, lamented Pascal, ‘I am frightened.’3 Many of us are frightened, along with Pascal, of our insignificance in vast space. We feel lost, our existence pointless. In consequence, many who yearn for something more have sought a world that has purpose, and therefore have adopted the idea that our world is designed in all its detail. A Tightly Designed World Tight design can mean several things. I will discuss two options: a ‘created’ world, and alternatively, an ‘evolved’ world whose every aspect was designed by a Creator. a. Created World In such a world, an outside agent (God) purposely and miraculously created the heavens and the earth and all of life’s organisms by sudden fiat. This is the view of those who take Genesis 1 literally. This kind of world, while replete with purpose and meaning, in my view makes unacceptable assumptions. It claims that the world came into being a

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relatively short time ago (‘young earth creationism’), and that there is no descent-with-modification of organisms from a common ancestor. Rather, any changes in the kinds of plants and animals that exist occur only within fixed limits from those originally created. From the perspective of a created world the fossil record is said to be explicable by a single worldwide flood, and events such as the Yucatan comet and the African Rift are irrelevant as explanations of human origins. Further, creationism denies any familial relationship between ourselves and other primates. God decided to make primates, and there were primates, and, quite separately, to create Homo sapiens, and so we exist.4 To my mind, ‘creationism’ of this sort is a magical approach to the origins of the natural world. It assigns God the unworthy role of chief magician. For instead of evolution’s gradual step-by-step development over immense time, creationism proclaims – accompanied by a roll on the drum and a puff of smoke – ‘Here be elephants! Here be orchids! Here be stars! Here be Africa!’ What has been called ‘intelligent design’ in the United States is a variant of this approach – although it is not at all clear what its advocates mean by this term. The Encyclopaedia Britannica defines intelligent design as ‘the argument intended to demonstrate that living organisms were created in more or less their present form by an “intelligent designer”’. The general idea comes through in the testimony of Michael Behe, spokesman for ‘intelligent design’ in the 2005 Tammy Kitzmilleer, et al. v. Dover Area (Pennsylvania School District) lawsuit over the teaching of evolution: The star witness for the defense, Behe, tried to educate the court on the difference between intelligent design theory and young earth creationism. When a lawyer for the plaintiffs read a passage from Of Pandas and People [Behe’s book], explaining that ‘intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency with their distinctive features already intact, fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks and wings, etc.’, Behe acknowledged that the statement was ‘somewhat problematic’. When asked to describe the mechanism of intelligent design, he defined it vaguely as ‘intelligent activity’.5 Intelligent design, in Behe’s view, appears to be much the same as creationism. And creationism fails to account for evidence of ‘poor design’ in living creatures (as discussed below); it does not make sense of known genetic relationships among populations; it fails to explain

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why species should be created only to become extinct; and it fails to explain the fossil record or the geographic distribution of species. It denies facts that, if they did not lead to a conclusion that is rejected in advance – that is, a world without a creator – would otherwise be accepted, since evolution is based on the same scientific methodology that is accepted in all other contexts. Because of these difficulties with the creationist approach, various attempts have been made to preserve the idea that God has complete control over the universe, while accepting that evolution occurs. b. An Evolved World that has been Designed in all its Detail by God This other kind of ‘design’ accepts that the earth is ancient, that all species have a common origin, and that Homo sapiens result from evolution. But it maintains that God has intended each and every step in this long process. Every detail of all that exists and has ever existed has been planned in advance by an all-encompassing intelligence. In this view, the Yucatan comet, the East African Rift, the mutations that brought about our large cranial capacity – they all were planned in advance. Yes, we evolved, but each stage in our evolution was part of a grand design. I am afraid that this approach leads to the ridiculous conclusion that such things as the left-sided aortic arch, the 400,000 plus species of beetles, useless ‘fossil’ genes, vestigial whale pelvic bones, and species that have become extinct, all have been expressly designed by God. Designed evolution of this sort makes no better sense than creationism. An approach is needed that incorporates the contingent features of evolution into a purposeful universe. I call this a world ‘under loose rein’. A Broadly Intended World under ‘Loose Rein’ By this phrase I envisage a world in which God brings about His intent via the evolutionary mechanisms I have delineated. That is, He acts via classic Darwinian mechanisms as well as via constraints, self-organization and convergence. These processes interact to bring about a world that is predictable and shows progress – a world compatible with intent. How does this kind of intended world differ both from one that is contingent and from one that is tightly designed? In the broadly intended world I am suggesting, certain outcomes are inevitable, as well as being contingent on what preceded. To return to the example of human origins, if the Yucatan comet had not struck

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when and where it did, then some other series of contingent events would eventually have triggered high intelligence in another group of organisms – although not necessarily primates. This could be predicted because life converges toward higher intelligence as an aid to survival.6 In such an intended world, the Yucatan comet, the African Rift, and the fact that high intelligence emerged in the primate line are fortuitous, contingent details. Sooner or later, the processes that govern evolution would have brought about intelligent creatures in some population or other, although it might have occurred in dolphins, octopuses or crows rather than primates. The point here is that not every detail of human and non-human evolution is planned, organized or designed in advance, but nevertheless, the overall outcome, in this instance intelligent beings, is intended. Our world is contingent but it is also intended.7 In Central Texas, where we lived for many years, to ride with a ‘loose rein’ meant that the rider allowed the reins enough slack so that the horse could choose its own way – yet the rider retained control. The evolution of life also appears to be controlled by reins that are loose enough to allow a good deal of creative wandering about in the contingent world, yet the reins remain tight enough to bring about the Creator’s intent. Thus the evolution of life is on a loose rein. One might alternatively spell ‘rein’ in this context as ‘reign’: that evolution is under God’s loose reign or rule. In this way, we can have our cake and eat it too. We can find meaning in our existence as part of an intended world, while at the same time acknowledging that much of what transpires in this world, for example, the more than 400,000 species of beetles, is free to pursue its contingent, wandering way. In what follows I explain in greater detail why the alternative of a tightly designed world does not make sense. We know from plate tectonics that the earth’s surface consists of massive plates that change position because of pressure from underlying hot magma in the earth’s interior. Because of such tectonic shifts, present day Australia and New Guinea have drifted away from their ancient connection to a pre-existent land mass.8 The unique taxa that then evolved in these areas are nicely explained by Darwinian mechanisms. But what would be the point of specially designing animals with pouches for their embryos (marsupials) just in these areas? Precise design leaves us with no sensible explanation for the unique fauna of Australia and New Guinea. Plate tectonics also tells us that a land bridge formed a few million years ago that connected North and South America for the first time.

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Species could then migrate from north to south and vice versa. But if all is purposely designed in advance, why separate these continents to start with, only to hook them up later on? Why not join them from the beginning? Why should an intelligent designer have purposely organized such a roundabout system? Tight design has no better explanation than to invoke God’s whimsy. Plate tectonics explains that such continental shifts are the way our planet has formed, in conformity with the laws of physics and chemistry. Further evidence against ‘tight design’ comes from useless biologic features. Examples abound. ‘Fossil genes’ are mutated DNA segments similar to functional genes, but with defects that prevent the DNA from expressing itself.9 In effect, the DNA is present but turned off. These fossil genes functioned in previous generations and still exist because they have not yet been eliminated by natural selection. Take genes for smell, for example. Smell was a high priority in species from which we descended, but counts for much less in modern humanity. Many human genes for smell, therefore, gradually became defunct. Mutations in them gradually accumulated, which made them inoperative. Since those individuals with inoperative genes for smell did just as well in survival and reproduction as everyone else, there was no selection pressure to keep these genes functional. They have been conserved but ‘turned off ’ and exist now only as a record of the past. Evolution thereby explains these ‘fossil’ genes quite nicely. But, from the perspective of ‘tight design’, why purposely design genes that do not work? The same question arises in whales – typical mammals that come equipped with hair, breasts, a three-boned middle ear, and even rudimentary legs. Whales are thought to have evolved from ancient land animals akin to hippopotamuses. But in their current, but relatively new, aquatic environment, whales have precious little to smell. Nevertheless, they retain non-functioning useless genes for smelling, thus betraying their land origins. Once again, these ‘fossil’ genes are explained by Darwinian evolution, but why on earth should whales have been created or expressly designed with useless genes for smelling? Darwin cited vestigial structures as evidence for evolution over 150 years ago.10 Our third molars (‘wisdom teeth’) are a too-familiar example. At about 18 years of age, these scourges of humanity attempt to erupt into the often too-small jaws of young adults, driven by genetic programs inherited from our primate ancestors. Third molars helped our forebears grind their fibrous food. Although we have switched to a less fibrous diet, and no longer need ‘wisdom teeth’, our genetic

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program has not had time to catch up, and so third molars linger. Eventually, natural selection is likely to drop the program that makes them. In the meantime, they serve as painful reminders of our past, their only function to provide employment for oral surgeons. Wisdom teeth are explained by evolution, but why should such useless and troublesome teeth be purposely designed? Why should God have created blind salamanders and blind mole rats with vestigial eyes that do not work? Why not just create these creatures without eyes? What is the point in designing them with nonfunctioning vestigial eyes? For a brief period before birth, every human embryo develops fishlike gill arches that never serve their ancestral function of extracting oxygen from water. Instead, evolution has adapted these useless gills for a new purpose – to hear sound that travels in air. As part of our ancestors’ transition from sea to land, evolution modified now useless gills into middle ear bones that were necessary for hearing sound on land. The transient appearance of gill arches in our embryos, therefore, makes good evolutionary sense.11 They are left-over reminders of our fishy origins. But, adopting the point of view that all things are designed in their particulars, what is the point of purposely designing fish-like gills in the embryos of land animals? Why resort to such a convoluted method of making middle-ear bones? Flounder larvae begin, like all vertebrates, with one eye on each side of their head. This is the ancestral condition embedded in vertebrate genes. But by the time the flounder reaches maturity on the sea bottom, its body has flattened and it views the world with both of its eyes on the same side of its head! One eye migrates across the mid-line during the flounder’s life on the bottom of the sea. Evolution explains that the ancient program that forms eyes on both sides was not changed completely, but was modified so as to bring about a more useful field of vision.12 Tight design, however, ‘flounders about’, unable to explain why baby flounders are not formed from the start with both eyes on the same side of their fishy heads. According to the geologic record the vast majority of species that have ever lived on our planet are no longer around. Evolution explains that species become extinct because they fail to adapt to changing environments. But if nature is planned in advance in every particular, why were these species created only to become extinct? Brains of people who have died from stroke sometimes have toonarrow connections between the blood vessels at the base of the brain. If the diameter of these communicating arteries were just a little larger,

74  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?

blood flow to the brain would not be compromised and death might be avoided. Why not design larger diameter communicating blood vessels at the base of the brain? Evolution explains that the circle of communicating arteries at the base of the brain, the circle of Willis, was not specially designed at all, but is an outcome of evolution’s makedo system. Precise design has no explanation other than the Creator’s whim. One cause of hydrocephalus (enlarged fluid chambers within the brain) is that the aqueductal channel that drains fluid from these chambers is too narrow. Why not design an aqueductal channel (the aqueduct of Sylvius) of wider diameter? It is the same answer: the channel was never specifically designed at all – it evolved. The neuroblasts (cells on the way to becoming neurons) that line the fluid chambers of the foetal brain are in the wrong place at the wrong time. When a premature baby’s blood pressure fluctuates, bleeding destroys many of these neuroblasts – one of the causes of cerebral palsy.13 Why place these neuroblasts in such a vulnerable place? It is the same answer: the vulnerable position of neuroblasts in the foetal brain is determined by evolution – it was never ‘specially designed’. My background in paediatric neurology is obvious in these examples, but every medical specialty could furnish its own instances of poor ‘design’. Most telling is that 20 per cent of human pregnancies end in spontaneous, natural miscarriage during the first two months of pregnancy. This occurs more than 20 million times worldwide each year.14 Do we really want to place blame for miscarriages on a God who is the abortionist par excellence? Does God decide to make foetuses only to cruelly murder them? How preposterous. How much more sense it makes to realize that natural selection, which we can understand as God’s method of bringing about the living world, uses miscarriage to eliminate foetuses with genetic defects. Each spontaneous abortion is brought about by the sieve of natural selection so that only the fittest survive: God’s processes in action. Can we Rescue the Idea of Tight Design by Arguing that God Guides Each Mutation in the Direction He Desires?

One might propose that God designs creatures by influencing when and where mutations occur. If He wants creatures that could fly, He designs mutations for feathers, hollow bones, and so forth. But this

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approach cannot fly because mutations are random with respect to their effect on the fitness of the organism that carries them. That is, mutations occur with the same frequency under conditions in which they confer an advantage as under conditions in which they confer no advantage. ‘It may seem a deplorable imperfection of nature’, said the eminent geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, ‘that mutability is not restricted to changes that enhance the adaptedness of their carriers.’15 Therefore, it should not make any difference how God might influence mutation (by cosmic rays, control of quantum fluctuations or whatever), because it is natural selection that provides direction to evolution, not mutational variation. Even if mutations were guided by an outside agency (or God), the course of evolution would not change. This is because mutations are subject to natural selection that picks out those it will keep and those it will discard. In fact, all variation – whether brought about by mutation, genetic recombination, epigenetics, symbiosis, lateral gene transfer or transposons (see Glossary) – is subject to natural selection, which is the final arbiter. Variation will not make any difference to the end product unless natural selection preserves the variation. G. Schroeder concluded the opposite – that an ‘outside force’ must guide nature in producing proteins.16 But it is not the mutation of proteins that determines the course of evolution at all – it is natural selection.17 Possible Objections to an Intended World under Loose Rein Having rejected ‘tight design’, I switch now to objections to my favoured alternative – a broadly intended world – only to resolve them. We know from telescopes and satellites and from voyages to the moon, Mars and Venus, that earth is a small planet that revolves around a not very impressive sun that in turn sits obscurely in the great Milky Way galaxy. Our much-vaunted sun is actually a bit lost among the several hundred thousand million other suns in our galaxy. And there are yet more galaxies beyond the Milky Way, thousands of millions of them, each containing about as many suns as there are in our own galaxy. In the cosmos we are relegated to the remote suburbs, and among living things, Darwin, according to some, further diminished us. As poet Miller Williams put it, In the sixteenth century Nicholas Copernicus told us the earth was a ball, and what was worse, was not the center of the universe. ‘Well and so’, we wanted to know, ‘where does that leave us in the scheme of things?’

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Wherever it left us, we were just about learning to live with it, when three centuries later Charles Darwin grabbed our attention with the news that we were cousins to the kangaroos. ‘And so’, we wanted to know, ‘where does that leave us in the scheme of things?’18 We want dignity, to be of consequence amongst the starry heavens. We want to be intended. How demeaning to be nothing more than an incidental by-product of natural selection out in the middle of nowhere! To have been intended may be our devout wish – but wishing does not make it so. Those who scoff at an intended world argue that what we long for is irrelevant. Our wish to be part of something intended and significant does not mean that we are either intended or significant. We may be self-deluded. Our minds play tricks on us. Our yearning for an intended world is based, say the sceptics, on psychological biases; we have a pressing need to feel ourselves part of some grand purpose. But now that we know better and understand our biases, they would argue, it is time to grow up, to discard childish fantasies, and deal realistically with the world and our insignificant perch in it. What we wish for is irrelevant. I disagree. Consider the following analogy from a long-ago vacation trip in Utah. ‘The Three Gossips’ and ‘The Tower of Babel’ come into view as one drives up the road past the visitor centre at Arches National Park. About five miles further north, ‘The Garden of Eden’ and ‘The Parade of Elephants’ appear, sandstone formations that have been carved over millennia by wind and water. The names come from the pattern-recognition neuronal networks in our visual-association cortex that these formations trigger. Our brains are wired to look for such patterns, perhaps because rapid pattern-recognition helped us survive in our evolutionary past. A brief glimpse of two pointed ears had to quickly mean ‘wolf ’ and ‘danger’, or else we were supper. So we will agree on our need for rapid pattern-recognition. But at times visual patterns play tricks on us. We interpret them in ways that exist only in our brains and not in reality. When we climb close to the sandstone formations, for instance, we discover that the ‘Gossips’, ‘Babel’, ‘Eden’ and ‘Parade’ exist only in our minds, gossamer concepts spun by our imagination. They are examples of ‘hereditary biases in mental development usually conditioned by emotion, that influence concepts and decisions made from them’.19 They contrast

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with empirical reality, that is, with the objective knowledge revealed by science. According to this line of thought, human beings have been selected by evolution to think in terms of ‘agency’, something animate bringing about events. We cannot help but assign human qualities to the ‘agent’ in question. That is why we imagine a personal Creator, an anthropomorphic God who with His hands creates the universe and ourselves, and that is why we think ‘Three Gossips’ when we see certain sandstone formations. Both are nothing but a trick that our minds play on us. Sceptics argue that the idea of a grand purpose for the world is another kind of deceiving and non-existent illusion created by our brains. The implication is that since we now have insight into our biases, we can discard this baggage left over from the way our minds have evolved in the past and face the truth – that in the cold, real world, there is no intent or intender; that the notion of a purposeful world is a figment of our imagination. When we get up close to see the world as it really is, we will see how we were deceived. Why an Intended World is not Wishful Thinking I have introduced this argument only to reject it, because what we long for, at least in this context, may be the way things actually are. As I see it, getting up close to the way the natural world works does not necessarily disprove intent or an intender. There is no reason to reject our evolved need for agency or our wish for significance, even if we have discovered how easily our brains can distort reality. This is why. Evolutionary psychologists argue that important human traits and behaviours – art, humour, sexual behaviour and even moral behaviour – were pre-programmed in our emotional brains because of their utility in helping our earliest hunter-gatherer ancestors to survive in East Africa. They use this reasoning to claim that we have an inherited predilection to postulate a non-existent Creator God in order to explain our world. Nowadays, they argue, we can dismiss this imaginary God because, when we get up close to reality, we discover scientific law rather than God. To return to our analogy from Arches National Park, when we get up close, the ‘Three Gossips’ crumble into wind-blown sand. I do not buy this argument, because ‘agency’ (an intender, a Creator God) responsible for evolution may be how things really are, and not something conjured up by our brains. That is, when we have penetrated as close as we can to the underlying processes of evolution, we have discovered the possibility of intent both in cosmology and the evolution

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of life (Chapters 2 and 4). To be sure, the fact that we are wired by evolution to believe that something is true does not mean that it is, in fact, true. But it does not mean that it is false either. Just because we crave intent, want to be part of a purposive world, and seek some sort of meaning in our place in the universe, does not mean that what we wish for is false. That for which we yearn may well be true! Why not? Furthermore, any attempt to deprecate the role of emotional thinking in determining what is true or false is doomed to failure. Studies of patients with prefrontal lobe damage show that emotions play a crucial part in how we decide between various logical options. ‘Flat’ emotions lead to wrong decisions, and decisions cannot be made at all without using the emotional parts of the brain.20 To argue that emotions should play no role in our decisions is absurd. Even theoretical physicists rely on emotion. Physicist Brian Greene tells us that triumphs of rational thought, such as special and general relativity or Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, are true not only because they ‘make predictions that have been repeatedly confirmed by precision experiments … Physicists also believe these theories are on the right track because, in some hard-to-describe way, they feel right.’21 [Emphasis mine] So, feelings do count in determining truth. We need not dismiss the idea of an intended world just because we have an emotional need for such a world. The fact that the ‘Three Gossips’ crumble into windblown sand when we get up close does not necessarily mean that our brains can’t be trusted to find ‘the’ truth. They may be programmed to find a different kind of truth. The intended world as I have described it leads toward what are called ‘final’ ends (teleology). Such final ends are decisively, even derisively, dismissed by most scientists. The eminent evolutionary biologist, Ernst Mayr, unequivocally rejected ‘cosmic’ teleology, which he defined as an overall program leading to a final end, on the basis of which cosmic and biological evolution occurs.22 But Mayr’s rejection of teleology is not based on anything that science has actually learned, for there is no scientific discovery that rules out final ends. ‘The exclusion of teleology is not an inductive result but is an a priori prohibition of modern science.’23 In fact, so-called final ends have been excluded from science, only because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the

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phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.24 It is useful here to distinguish between science and naturalism. It is only ‘naturalism’ – the idea that the material world has come about by natural, non-divine means – that rules out any kind of theistic evolution.25 Science itself does not. As Plantinga points out, it is possible to fully accept the whole scientific enterprise, but still allow a divine explanation for intent and direction in evolution.26 Nothing in science rules out this theistic approach. The rejection of final ends by most scientists is more a prejudice than a factually based conclusion. Another argument against an intended world is based on natural selection’s ‘lack of foresight’. That is, natural selection only screens existing information in the here and now, and cannot ‘foresee’ the future and plan accordingly. Therefore, it is argued, the natural world is entirely contingent and without intent. But what I have argued is not that natural selection has foresight, but that evolution is so constituted that certain predictable ends will result over time. By dint of natural processes going about their business day by day, that is, by virtue of constraints, self-organization and convergences interacting with natural selection, progress is made, and intended final ends are eventually brought about. Natural selection may not have foresight, but no matter – it nevertheless brings about an intended world. Summary: The preceding two chapters establish that aspects of the evolution of life may be intended. This buttresses and extends our previous conclusion (Chapter 2) that the evolution of the cosmos may be similarly intended. We have not as yet addressed, however, just what the intent of the cosmos and of life might actually be. To these weighty considerations we now turn, using traditional sources from Judaism as our guide.

Notes   1. This event is referred to as the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction. It ended the Mesozoic (‘middle life’) era of the dinosaurs and began the Cenozoic (‘new life’) era that extends to the present.

80  How can God be Considered to have Created the World?   2. O.R.P. Bininda-Emonds, M. Cardillo, K.E. Jones, R.D.E. MacPhee, et al., ‘The Delayed Rise of Present-Day Mammals’, Nature (29 March 2007), pp.507–12; S. Conway Morris, Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.96; R. Leakey and R. Lewin, Origins Reconsidered (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp.84–91. The savannah theory of human origins is undergoing considerable challenge: M.J. Mehlman, Transhumanist Dreams and Dystopian Nightmares: The Promise and Peril of Genetic Engineering (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), Ch.7.   3. B. Pascal, Pensées ([1670] London: Penguin Classics), p.205.   4. R.I. Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p.7.   5. Ibid., p.392.   6. Some argue that high intelligence is not inevitable, and that many successful groups (rats, beetles, bacteria) have thrived without it. J. Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), p.213.   7. For a somewhat different view of God as designer of a self-organizing system, see I. Barbour, Nature, Human Nature, and God (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), p.25; and comments on Barbour’s ideas in L. Troster, ‘The Order of Creation and the Emerging God’, in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, ed. G. Cantor and M. Swetlitz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Ch.10.   8. B.K. Hall and B. Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2008), Ch.5.   9. S. Carroll, The Making of the Fittest (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006), Ch.5. 10. C. Darwin, Descent of Man (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1998), Ch.1. 11. S.F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), pp.418– 19. 12. Ibid., pp.548–9. 13. J.J. Volpe, Neurology of the Newborn (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders, 2001), Ch.11. 14. F. Ayala, Darwin’s Gift to Science and Religion (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry, 2007), p.157. 15. D. Grauer and W. Li, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), p.38. It is true, however, that mutations are not random with respect to where they are located in the genome or with respect to their frequency. Certain ‘hotspots’ on the genome, for example, are more sensitive than others to ultraviolet radiation. These ‘hotspots’, however, may or may not enhance adaptedness, and therefore are not evidence for tightly designed mutations. S. Conway Morris (ed.), The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal? (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation, 2008), p.47; E. Jablonka and M.J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005), p.88. 16. G. Schroeder, ‘Finding the Intelligence Within the Design’, Jewish Action (Fall 5767/2006), pp.17–22. 17. Grauer and Li, Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution, p.29. One might try to hang on to tightly designed evolution by positing that God not only directs which mutation will come about, but also causes the desired mutation to arise at the right time and place so that it will be selected by nature and become widespread.

Life Evolves under a Loose Rein  81 In this case, however, those individuals with the directed gene would need to be selected over many generations as the population with the mutated gene gradually adapted to its environment. The degree of control entailed would need to persist over a long period and would be at some remove from the initial mutation. This scenario, therefore, would seem to fit better with the concept of a world ‘under loose rein’ in which an initial contingent event (the mutation) is coupled with overall broad intent (the natural-selection process). 18. As quoted in M.M. Ruse, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p.262. 19. E.O. Wilson, ‘Biological Basis of Morality’, Atlantic Monthly (April 1998), Part 1. 20. A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Penguin, 1994), Ch.4. 21. B. Greene, Fabric of the Cosmos (New York: Vintage, 2005), p.225. 22. E. Mayr, Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp.47–51. 23. H. Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Philosophical Aspects of Darwinism (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2001), p.34. 24. R. Lewontin, ‘Billions and Billions of Demons’, New York Review of Books (9 January 1997), p.31. This attitude is referred to as ‘scientism’, the belief that science is the only reliable guide to truth. J. Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995), Ch.1. 25. R. Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), p.353. 26. A. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p.203.

6

An Intended World in Jewish Thought

Differing Approaches to Intent

I

t takes more than a bit of hutzpah to define the purpose of the cosmos and of humanity. Many would say that these daunting questions are unanswerable. The Book of Job pointed out long ago how puny we humans are when compared to the immeasurably vast universe, and how presumptuous therefore for us to question God’s purposes. My excuse for doing so, however, is that evolution forces us to rethink the ancient questions afresh. If, indeed, our world has evolved by a combination of contingency and intent, as I have argued above, does this shed any new light on its purpose? And how does this fit in with previous Jewish conceptions of intent? What follows are preliminary attempts to answer such questions.

Denial Those who adhere to what has been called ‘scientism’ (or ‘naturalism’) would say that there is no such thing as intent to the universe or to humanity and no need to posit any divine role in creation. They claim that science alone can render truth about the world and reality and that only that which is empirical or testable provides access to truth. Since there is no empirical evidence of intent or of any divine input into the creation, neither exists. End of question. I respectfully disagree. Certainly the multiple references to the scientific literature in this book show our indebtedness to science. But science cannot explain why we ought to behave in one way rather than another (see Chapter 11).1 And it cannot tell us whether or not there is any intent or purpose to the world because its methods of gathering facts and experimentation are not appropriate to that kind of question. So intent cannot be summarily dismissed.

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Another approach has been to choose some outstanding characteristic of our world and seize upon that as the world’s purpose. Some argue, for instance, that the wondrous creativity of the world is sufficient to be its purpose.2 J. Haught proposes that aesthetic beauty is nature’s purpose and that the evolution of life and mind are included in a ‘cosmic adventure toward an ever greater breadth of beauty’.3 Well, perhaps. Who could argue against creativity or beauty? But is either one the purpose of the world? Is it not rather hutzpadik to think so? What I will present instead, consistent with the overall theme of this book, are classic Jewish approaches to creation’s intent. Intent Implies Intender

Traditional Jewish thought maintained that an agent – God – exists who stands outside the intended world and creates it. Isaiah sees God enthroned in glory, surrounded by angels who sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy! The Lord of Hosts!’4 ‘Holy’ is a translation of the word kadosh, having the sense of ‘set apart, distinct’. In reference to God it refers to His transcendence; that He stands outside nature as its creator and sustainer. Morning prayer says this very simply: ‘Blessed is He who creates the universe.’5 Of course, even those who might be willing to accept that the cosmos or humanity is intended may reject either the ‘agency’ or the anthropomorphism, or both together, that is implied in the word ‘Intender’. They might argue that whatever intent exists is brought about by physical and Darwinian processes and that there is no intending agent, transcendental Being, Mind or divinity. Thus, Arthur Peacocke, biochemist and priest of the Church of England, writes that ‘the processes themselves, as unveiled by the biological sciences, are God-acting-as-Creator, God qua Creator’.6 Traditional Judaism, however, insisted and insists on a high and mighty mehitza (separation) between He who intends and that which is intended. The Creator (borei) is not to be identified with His creation (briyya).7 Similarly, the processes involved in evolution are not to be equated with He who has intended them. For this reason, nature’s creativity, albeit a precious part of evolution, cannot be equated with God, for creativity is an outcome of evolution’s processes, not its cause.8 What we learn from evolution offers no reason to deviate from the traditional Jewish view that there is an Intender who stands outside what He has intended and is responsible for the processes that bring about the world rather than being identical with them. ‘It was You who

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existed before the world was created, it is You now that the world has been created.’9 The Intended World of Rambam and Ramban

Moses Maimonides (Rambam), befitting his medical background, used the development of the embryo as his example of how God accomplishes His intent: ‘One apprehends the kindness of His governance in the production of the embryos of living beings, the bringing of various faculties to existence in them.’10 I understand this to mean that the Deity brings about His intent (will) via natural biological processes. In a later chapter, he discusses this further: For while we [Jewish scholars] believe that the world was produced in time, none of our scholars and none of our men of knowledge believe that this came about through the will and nothing else … The particulars of natural acts are all well arranged and ordered and bound up with one another; all of them being causes and effects; and none of them is futile or frivolous or vain, being acts of perfect wisdom, as it says: ‘Ma rabu ma’ase’kha, Adonai, koo’lam b’hohkma asita’ – ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast thou made them all.’11 While it is perilous to equate concepts from one era with those of another, it seems appropriate here to liken Rambam’s use of the term wisdom (hokhma) – by which he means that natural acts are based on ‘causes and effects’ – to the contingent world of nature that I described above. The processes involved in the origin and development of the cosmos and of life are, in Rambam’s terms, manifestations of God’s Wisdom, and it is this Wisdom that accomplishes Divine Will.12 Of the many shades of meaning of the word hokhma, usually translated as ‘wisdom’, I understand it here to mean the practical means by which God fashions the world. Thus, Bezalel, the craftsman who designed and built the tabernacle, is endowed ‘with the spirit of God in practical-wisdom (hokhma), in discernment and in knowledge, and in all kinds of workmanship to design designs, to make (them) in gold, in silver, and in bronze’.13 Martin Buber pointed out the close parallel between God’s hokhma in fashioning the world for man to dwell in and Bezalel’s hokhma in fashioning the wilderness tabernacle (mishkan) for God to dwell in.14 Both refer to a practical kind of wisdom.

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I need to make clear that I see no difference between ‘will’ and ‘intent’. The only reason I have preferred to use the word ‘intent’ is that the English term ‘will’ can have other meanings. To restate my argument, the wisdom that God uses to fashion the world is much the same as the contingency that takes place in evolution. The point is that evolution, in which contingent processes are intertwined with intent, corresponds nicely with Rambam’s conception of a world created by wisdom intertwined with will. Nahmanides (Ramban) also explains that creation comes about by God’s Will. He interprets ‘Va’yo’mer elokim yehi or’ – ‘And God said let there be light’ – to mean ‘and God intended there to be light’. ‘“Saying’, here’, writes Ramban, ‘indicates desire rather than actual speech … For such was God’s will, that there should be light.’15 The opening paragraphs of Genesis repeat this phrase, ‘God said’, no less than eleven times, re-emphasizing each time that the world comes about by His will. Traditional Jews express this synthesis in morning prayer: Blessed be He who spoke and the world came into being, blessed is He. Blessed is He who creates the universe. Blessed is He who speaks and acts. Blessed be He who decrees and fulfills.16 God’s will is expressed via speech and decree. His will actuates the processes involved in bringing that will into fruition. Can we say anything more specific about God’s purpose in willing the world into existence? Righteous Humanity

One prominent Jewish view is that the purpose of the world is to bring about righteous humanity. The six days of creation are considered to be progressive steps towards the goal of creating the tzaddikim – righteous human beings. These may be real flesh-and-blood personages, or an ideal standard towards which we each can strive.17 I realize that the term ‘righteous’ smacks of elitism. But I take it as an inclusive term to include all ordinary mortals, Jews and non-Jews, who aim ‘towards a human future in God’s image’.18

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This is quite different from the view that aesthetic beauty is the world’s purpose. Yes, the world is awesomely beautiful (as praised in Psalm 104 or the Song of Songs), but the predominant Jewish view is that it is behaviour that counts, not beauty. Each day of creation is pronounced ‘good’ and the whole shebang is ‘very good’. We wish each other a good Shabbat (gut’n Shabbes), a good week (shavu’a tov) and a good year (l’shana tova). Not beautiful, but good. Numerous Judaic sources support righteous behaviour as creation’s goal: When the Holy One, blessed be He, came to create Adam, He saw the righteous and the wicked issuing from Him. He said: ‘If I create him, wicked men will issue from him, but if I do not create him, how are the righteous to issue from him?’ What then did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He removed the way of the wicked out of His sight and associated the quality of mercy with Himself and created him.19 The purpose of Adam’s creation, this Midrash implies, is ‘the righteous’ who descend from him. The first creation account in Genesis concludes, ‘Such is the story of heaven and earth when they were created.’ The Hebrew for ‘when they were created’ is ‘be’hi’bar’am’. The rabbis took the liberty of rearranging the letters to spell be’Avraham. The sentence would then read: ‘Such is the story of heaven and earth for Avraham.’ That is, the creation came about for the sake of the first righteous man, who is Avraham.20 ‘God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.’ Rabbi Eleazar asks how light could be created on the first day, since the luminaries were not created until day four. He explains that when ‘the Holy One, blessed be He, beheld the generation of the flood and the generation of the dispersion [the Tower of Babel] and saw that their actions were corrupt, He arose and hid it [the original light of day one] from them. And for whom did He reserve it? For the righteous in the time to come.’21 From the very beginning of creation, the goal was that there be righteous human beings. Rashi (Rav Shlomo Yitzhaki) tells us that, ‘Even though it was revealed before God that human destiny was to sin, He did not refrain from creating them [human beings] because of the righteous who are destined to arise from among them.’22 Many other Jewish sources could be cited to support righteous humanity as creation’s goal.23

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Of course, this human-centred approach to the purpose of the universe, well established as it is in Jewish thought, has not been Judaism’s exclusive point of view. Humanity Cannot Know the Purpose of Creation

Others felt that it was excessively anthropocentric to claim that a certain kind of human was the goal of the universe. This is expressed in Yom Kippur’s (Day of Atonement) closing prayer (ne’ilah): Master of all worlds, not because of our righteousness do we lay our pleas before You, but because of Your great compassion. What are we? What are our lives? What is our loving-kindness? … Are not all the mighty like nothing before You? The men of renown as if they had never been, the wise as if they know nothing, and the understanding as if they lack intelligence? For their many works are in vain, and the days of their lives like a fleeting breath before You. The preeminence of man over the animals is nothing, for all is but a fleeting breath.24 How can we puny humans hope to know the purpose of the universe? Wisdom literature (primarily Job, Ecclesiastes and Proverbs) similarly maintains that humanity is not capable of knowing God’s purpose in creation. In one thundering sentence after another, the Lord ridicules Job for his hutzpah in presuming to do so: ‘Who is this who darkens counsel, Speaking without knowledge? … Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? … Have you ever commanded the day to break?’25 And Ecclesiastes intimates that not only are we incapable of knowing God’s purpose, there may not be any purpose: For in respect of the fate of man and the fate of beast, they have one and the same fate: as the one dies, so dies the other, and both have the same lifebreath; man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing. Both go to the same place; both come from dust and both return to dust.26 Fast-forward a few millennia to Rambam, who similarly acknowledged human inability to know the final end: The final end is: God has wished it so, or: His wisdom has required this to be so. And this is the correct answer. Accordingly

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you will find that the Sages of Israel have inserted into the text of their prayer [in ne’ilah, recited at the conclusion of the Day of Atonement]: Thou hast set man apart from the beginning and acknowledged him that he should stand before Thee. Yet who shall say unto Thee, What dost Thou? And if he be righteous, what boon is this to Thee? Thus they have explicitly stated that there does not exist a final end, except the Will alone … It should not be believed that all the beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of something else … We are obliged to believe that all that exists was intended by Him, may He be exalted, according to His volition and we shall seek for it no cause or final end whatever.27 I take Rambam to mean here that the world has intent but we cannot know what that will/intent may be. The tree of life, to paraphrase, has some reason to exist, but we, perched on one of its twigs, cannot presume to know the reason why the tree that brought us into being – and all twigs on the tree – should exist. Does evolution provide any reason for its own existence? Not that I can find. Richard Dawkins famously pointed out that the purpose of living things is simply to perpetuate their genes.28 But this kind of intent is not what I am seeking for it leaves the larger question of why there should be living things in the first place unanswered. What I search for, instead, is ‘cosmic teleology’ – an overarching purpose to the evolution of all that is – and I do not find it within evolution.29 This unknowability corresponds nicely with the unknowable purpose of the world described in the alternate stream of Jewish thought just quoted, wisdom literature and Rambam’s statement in his Guide. On the other hand, nothing in evolution rules in or out the other Jewish position – that the tzaddik is the goal of creation. Therefore, evolutionary science appears to be compatible with both classic Jewish positions: a world whose purpose is the tzaddik, and a world whose purpose is unknowable.30 I will take the position in the remainder of this book, however, that the tzaddik’s righteous behaviour is creation’s goal. I do not do this because it is a more logical position, and I do it in spite of its possible grandiose and self-congratulatory tone. It seems to me that these considerations are outweighed by the sobering responsibility that this gives to human beings. If we take the position that the entire world

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comes into existence to provide our species with the opportunity to further divine intent in a righteous manner, then how can we possibly shirk this responsibility? If the billions of years it has taken to evolve human beings are to mean anything, then how can we fail to measure up? The chances of the world becoming a better place are increased if we accept that the tzaddik is creation’s goal. Conclusion to Part I

Our question was, how can God be considered to have created the world, when evolution says everything just happened? Is a Creator God therefore superfluous? The answer is that underlying processes in evolution (constraints, convergences and self-organization interacting with natural selection) show us that everything does not just happen. The world is not just contingent. Rather, evolution’s processes lead both to predictable ends and to progress. This provides a basis on which to conclude that the evolution of the world is intended – perhaps intended to lead to beings who will choose to behave as tzaddikim. Evolution shows us how this comes about. What could matter more? Notes   1. How to know truth is discussed within the Judaic tradition as far back as Saadia Gaon in his Book of Beliefs and Opinions S. Rosenblatt (trans) (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948), and Moses Maimonides (Rambam) in Guide for the Perplexed. A succinct approach from science is that we know truth when we find repeatable, verifiable patterns.   2. S. Kauffman, Investigations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p.135ff. According to Lurianic Kabbalah, God makes room for the world by abandoning a region within Himself. This retreat, called tsimtsum, is what allows a creative world to come into existence. G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), p.260ff.   3. J.F. Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1995).   4. Isaiah 6:3.   5. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.63.   6. A. Peacocke, ‘Welcoming the “Disguised Friend” – Darwinism and Divinity’, in R.T. Pennock (ed.), Intelligent Design, Creationism and Its Critics (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2001), p.473.   7. For a contrary view, A. Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven, CN: Yale University Press, 2010).   8. Authors who identify creativity with God include S. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred (New York: Basic Books, 2008); M. Kaplan, The Meaning of God in Modern Jewish Religion (New York: Reconstructionist Press, 1937), p.76; J.F. Haught, God After Darwin (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2000), p.199.

An Intended World in Jewish Thought   91   9. Koren Siddur, p.38. 10. M. Maimonides (Rambam), Guide for the Perplexed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 1:54, p.125. Other authorities of his time in the early Middle Ages had thought that an angel intervened in every pregnancy and moulded matter into an embryo! 11. Ibid., III:25, p.505. Emphasis mine. 12. N. Gillman, Doing Jewish Theology (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 2008), p.4; K. Seeskin, Maimonides on the Origin of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp.8–9; M. Fox, Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics, and Moral Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p.198. 13. Exodus 35:31, E. Fox, The Five Books of Moses (New York: Shocken, 1995), p.467. 14. M. Buber, ‘The Man of Today and the Jewish Bible’, in On the Bible, 18 Studies by Martin Buber, ed. N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken, 1968), cited in N. Liebowitz, Studies in Sh’mot, 2 (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1976), pp.475–81. 15. Ramban on Genesis 1:3, in The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary, ed. Y. Blinder (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 2004), p.30. This is also Saadia’s understanding as quoted in, Da’at Mikra on Sefer Bereishit, ed. Y. Kil (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1997), p.7 [Hebrew]. 16. Koren Siddur, p.62. 17. D. Abudarham, Sefer Abudarham, commentary on the Siddur Genesis 3; originally published in Prague (Beck-Katz, 1784) [Hebrew]; A.J. Wertheimer (trans), Abudarham ha-Shalem (Jerusalem: Usha, 1963). 18. Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition, p.31. 19. W. Shuchat, (ed. and trans) The Creation According to the Midrash Rabbah, Bereishit Rabba 8:4, (Jerusalem: Devora, 2002), p.291. 20. Genesis 2:4. See Schuchat, Bereishit Rabba, 12:9. The rabbis tell us that in the Masoretic text of the Torah, the hei in be’hi’bar’am is written as a small letter because Abraham’s name was originally Avram without the letter hei. 21. Genesis 3:4. See Hagigah, 12a [TB]. See also Rashi on Genesis 1:4, nicely explained by A. Bonchek, What’s Bothering Rashi? Bereishis (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1997), pp.13–7. 22. Rashi on Genesis 6:6, Y. Herczeg (trans) The Torah with Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1995), p.62. 23. J. Neusner, Genesis Rabba: The Judaic Commentary to the Book of Genesis (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1985), v.1, Genesis 1:31; Ecclesiastes Rabba 7:13 (Kohelet Rabba, Me’u’tse’vet internet edition, ed. Zahava Glitz, 2006) [Hebrew]; see Rashi on Genesis 6:6, footnote 22. M.H. Luzatto, Derekh Hashem/Way of God, A. Kaplan (trans) (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1998), pp.36–45. ‘The Bible is not a history of the Jewish people, but the story of God’s quest for the righteous man.’ A.J. Heschel, Man is not Alone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), p.245. A.G. Zornberg, ‘To consummate creation with a free-standing tzaddik, that always was the point of the enterprise.’ Genesis: The Beginning of Desire (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996), p.35. 24. Koren Siddur, pp.34–5. 25. Job 38:2–12. 26. Ecclesiastes 3:19–20. 27. GP III:13, pp.452–4. Elsewhere, Rambam follows the general consensus when he states that ‘all existing things in the sublunar world were created for the sake

92  How can God be Considered to have Created the World? of man, alone’. Rambam’s qualifying words, ‘in the sublunar world’, may imply that man is the purpose on earth, but not outside it, and that therefore we cannot know God’s purpose in the rest of the cosmos. See Z. Lampl (trans), Maimonides: Introduction to the Talmud (New York: Judaica, 1998), pp.157–8. 28. R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). 29. E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), p.50. 30. As you might guess, these two views do not exhaust the list of proposed reasons for the creation of the world. Saadya, for instance, is of the opinion that ‘God created the world for two reasons: to manifest His wisdom through the order of creation, and to bestow happiness upon the beings to be created, through the medium of the Law.’ Amanat, pp.72–3 [Arabic and Hebrew], p.38, quoted in A. Altmann, ‘Saadya Gaon: Book of Doctrines and Beliefs’, in Three Jewish Philosophers (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p.93.

Part II ACCORD BETWEEN EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE AND GENESIS

7

Resolving Conflicts between Genesis’ Creation Account and Evolution

T

here is no way to avoid this much belaboured subject since Genesis, especially its first seven paragraphs, has been of such overwhelming importance in shaping Jewish and Christian views of the natural world. To begin, I need to clarify how I use the words ‘evolution’ and ‘creation’. I take evolution to be the way in which the intended creation comes about. ‘In the beginning God created’ means the same thing to me as ‘In the beginning God caused to evolve’. ‘Let there be light’ is equivalent to ‘Let the physical processes responsible for light come into action.’ When I say ‘the creation’ or ‘the created world’, I do not mean a world instantaneously sprung into existence as the world we know, but rather a world that has evolved over time. But I tend to prefer the term ‘the creation’ when referring to the natural world, simply because it has a lot more gravitas and poetry about it than does ‘the evolved world’. Genesis 1–2 incorporates two ways of looking at creation. The initial account, concerned with all of creation, is the one on which we will focus and is contained in the Hebrew Bible’s initial seven paragraphs (Genesis 1 to 2:4a).1 The second account is primarily concerned with how human beings fit into the world, and will be of less concern to us, at least for now. Genesis’ first seven paragraphs, cryptic though they may be, are the clearest statement that the Bible makes about creation. In consequence, every word, every letter has been minutely and justifiably scrutinized over many generations. I will make no attempt to review this immense literature, but will confine discussion only to selected passages that are relevant when comparing evolution with Genesis’ creation account.

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Genesis Concerns Religion, Not Science2

This is pretty obvious, yet the point is frequently missed. I agree with Yeshayahu Liebowitz who insisted that the opening verses of Genesis did not teach the order of creation, the processes of astrophysics, or even creatio ex nihilo. In fact, this Israeli polymath continues, these verses were not intended to give factual information of any sort.3 Rather, they teach that there is a God who created the world. It is as simple as that. The world did not come into existence on its own. This God is transcendental, independent of and outside the world. It is for this reason that the Hebrew Bible compresses the entire story of the creation of the natural world – from astronomy to zoology – into seven brief paragraphs, thirty-one short sentences, while the building of the tabernacle in the wilderness takes up over 400 sentences! The Torah, we can surmise, is primarily concerned with humanity’s stance in relation to God, and much less concerned with how the natural world came about. Genesis is not a Scientific Text Some apologists for Judaism, usually with a background in physics, have attempted to prove that every single word of the Genesis creation account is factually compatible with contemporary science.4 I think these attempts are misguided. I mentioned above that the Rabbis asked why sun, moon and stars were needed on Day Four if light had already been created on Day One. ‘This world’, answered Nahmanides (Ramban), ‘was not fit to make use of the original light of Day One without an intermediary.’ Therefore God ‘stored it away for the use of the righteous in the next world’.5 The original light of Day One symbolizes the world to come, while the present-day world must make do with light from sun, moon and stars. In the Rabbis’ hands, light becomes a symbol; it has nothing to do with waves or particles. To this day, the descendants of Aaron, the high priest, bless the congregation by saying ‘May the Lord make his face shine on you [literally, ‘cast His light towards you’] and be gracious to you.’ In the morning liturgy, we pray ‘Bless us, our Father, all as one, with the light of Your face, for by the light of Your face, You have given us, Lord our God, the Torah of life and love of kindness.’6 ‘The Lord is my light and my help’, said the Psalmist (Psalm 27:1). ‘Light’ is associated with the divine in Jewish consciousness, not with physics. This was Isaiah’s understanding as well:

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No longer shall you need the sun For light by day, Nor the shining of the moon For radiance [by night]: For the Lord shall be your light everlasting. Your God shall be your glory. Your sun shall set no more, Your moon no more withdraw, For the Lord shall be a light to you forever.7 God’s light is a source of inspiration to Isaiah, not a physical phenomenon. Lurianic Kabbala developed elaborate theories concerning the original divine light, which was considered to have been captured and then broken. Salvation meant tikkun, restitution of the original whole light.8 Kabbala teaches that light is holy – divine illumination – not physics. ‘Every single day’, says the Kabbala, ‘a ray of that light [from Day One] shines into the world and keeps everything alive, for with that ray the Blessed Holy One feeds the world. And everywhere that Torah is studied at night one thread-thin ray appears from that hidden light and flows down upon those absorbed in her.’9 Nevertheless, some modern-day physicists try valiantly to square Genesis with current scientific theories of the nature of light. They may, for instance, equate Genesis’ light of Day One with the light from the original quark and photon soup.10 The original light, presumably related to the cosmic microwave background radiation, would have persisted in the background, only to be supplanted later by our familiar sun, moon and stars. In such a scenario, ‘darkness on the face of the deep’11 is supposed to refer to dark energy or dark matter, or both. These kinds of explanations are presumably meant to reassure the faithful that the Bible is up-to-date with scientific advances, and thus to strengthen faith in the reliability of Genesis. But I am afraid they raise more questions than they answer. There always seem to be neglected facts that are ignored or do not fit. Genesis 1:2, for instance, speaks of earth, wind, water, the deep – all of this apparently in existence prior to light. But if the energy in original light is the source of all matter (Einstein’s E=mc squared) then where did the pre-existent matter in Genesis 1:2 come from? Further, if the light created on Day One precedes the sun created on Day Four, how do we explain the alternation between evening and morning (on Days One through

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Three) that depends on the earth spinning about a sun that had not yet been created? Scientific apologetics for Genesis can be bizarre. After Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres in 1543, it became evident that the previously accepted view – that the earth was the centre of the world – was in error. Copernicus showed that the earth, along with the other planets, revolved about the sun.12 Fast forward to our day. In his attempt to reconcile Genesis 1 with the heliocentric world, Aviezer translates the word rakia in Genesis’ second day as ‘the solar system’!13 Rakia is commonly understood to mean the vault of heaven or ‘firmament’ that divides the waters above from the waters below. To translate rakia as ‘solar system’ not only violates its plain meaning, but introduces a concept – that the earth revolves about the sun – about which the text itself is completely silent. What is more, once Aviezer translates rakia as solar system, he must resort to interpreting ‘the waters below the rakia and the waters above the rakia’14 as referring to icy asteroids! Of course, ice is not water. But more importantly, how can one have a solar system on Day Two when the sun is not created until Day Four?15 I am afraid this approach is unworkable. It allows words to have any meaning that we would like them to have and leads to unending difficulties. Genesis tells us that green plants were created on Day Three, that is, before the sun began to shine on Day Four. But scientists tell us that the sun formed about 4.5 to 5 billion years ago, while cyanobacteria, an early form of green plant, began to photosynthesize some one billion years after the sun formed. How did the green plants of Genesis photosynthesize before there was a sun? My point here is that we should not treat Genesis as a manual of science, because it is about something other than science. Further, and equally important, science does not provide a gold standard by which to judge Genesis. The scientific process constantly assembles and evaluates new evidence, and its conclusions, therefore, require frequent updates. Here are some examples. Newton’s celestial mechanics were considered to be the last word until tweaked centuries later by Einstein’s space-time theory. Newton had been correct, but only partially so. Accepted biological wisdom had been that a similar set of genetic instructions could never specify the bodies of species as disparate as fruit flies and humans. But this is precisely what the Hox genes were found to do! I was taught in medical school that environmental influence could not be passed on to the next generation. But this is exactly what epigenetics now proposes.

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The science of the Middle Ages, derived from Aristotle, maintained that the world consisted of four humours – earth, air, fire and water. Not to be outdone, Jewish philosophers of the time found evidence of these four humours within the Genesis text. Thus, according to Gersonides, the world was fashioned from earth (aretz), water (tehom), air (ruah) and fire (ruah elokim),16 thereby proving that Genesis was true and up-to-date. But now that science has abandoned the four Greek humours, these erstwhile proofs of the truth of Genesis have likewise been abandoned. The lesson is that we cannot lean on science’s tentative understanding of the world to prove the truths of Genesis. Instead, the gold standard by which to evaluate Genesis is through Genesis itself. Its opening sentences are sufficiently ambiguous to fit almost any scientific conclusion. They can be interpreted as consistent with creation from nothing (Rambam), or as creation from something (Gersonides); as creation in time, or as initiating time. If the idea of a multiverse should become accepted, then an ancient Midrash can be trotted out to show that we knew it all along; but if a multiverse is rejected by the scientific community, then this Midrash will rest in obscurity. Genesis’ significance to us must be based on its own truths, not those of science. Science’s truth, most simply put, consists of repeatable, verifiable patterns. No more, no less. Genesis is about a different kind of truth – as we will see shortly. When we interpret the Biblical text so that it corresponds to the ‘real’ (by which is meant the scientific) truth, we forfeit the Torah’s truth. Truth becomes whatever science says it is. Genesis becomes irrelevant. Furthermore, if the opening of Genesis is meant as science, it is poor science. If one is serious about learning scientific facts concerning the origin and development of the cosmos, life, or human beings, look elsewhere. Consult up-to-date textbooks of astronomy, genetics, evolutionary science, developmental biology, physical chemistry, plant biology, primatology, ichthyology, planetary studies, and so on. They contain pages and pages of supporting references, graphs, photographs and analysis. Why rely on the first seven cryptic paragraphs of Genesis, which cannot possibly contain all the factual information about the evolution of the natural world? There are powerful reasons to study the opening of Genesis, but they have little to do with science.

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Genesis’ Creation Account is Religious, Rather than Scientific, Teaching

A visual masterpiece, according to a favourite art book of my motherin-law, is a work … that contributes to our vision of life and leaves us profoundly moved. Moreover, it does so to many people over time and space. In other words, it can bear the closest scrutiny and withstand the test of time … We must keep an open mind by giving the artist the benefit of the doubt and making every attempt to understand his work on its own terms … [Picasso’s] Guernica does not represent the event itself; rather with a series of powerful images, it evokes the agony of total war.17 Precisely. The Genesis creation account is just this kind of masterpiece, using words rather than images; a masterpiece ‘which contributes to our vision of life and leaves us profoundly moved’. It is as senseless to read Genesis 1 as a scientific account of creation as to look at Guernica as a factual account of the Spanish Civil War. Guernica’s abstractions are more effective in conveying the agony of resistance to Fascism in the 1930s than any number of detailed photographs or historical facts could be. How foolish to criticize it because its perspective is ‘wrong’, because its abstract images do not conform precisely to what we ‘know’ is true, or because its figures are not in orderly sequence. And how foolish to criticize the Genesis creation account because its facts are out of order, or because it leaves out what we deem to be important scientific information. Rather, Genesis’ text is a written masterpiece; its artistry is religious rather than visual; its concern with the sacred, rather than science. That the sacred is the concern of Genesis is obvious when we consider that the culmination of its creation narrative, the Sabbath, does not tell us anything about how the world came to be. If Genesis is meant to be a scientific presentation of how the world came into existence, why include the Sabbath? The Sabbath is included to teach that the sacred is what matters in creation, not the natural world itself. ‘And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy because on it God ceased from all the work of creation that He had done.’18 As Eliade said, ‘The outstanding reality is the sacred.’19 Our weekly Sabbath observance sanctifies God’s role in creation, rather than creation itself, because holiness is what is important, not details of creation.

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This is why Judaism considered the six days of creation to be preliminary to the main event, the Shabbat. In the words of the Friday evening hymn that ushers in Shabbat – Leha dodi, ‘Come, My Beloved’20 – Shabbat is the ‘source of blessing’ which, although ‘last in deed’, is ‘first in thought’.21 As Franz Rosenzweig observed: ‘This feast [Shabbat] instituted at the close of creation is creation’s meaning and goal. That is why we do not celebrate the festival of the primordial work of creation on the first day of creation, but on its last, on the seventh day.’22 The Sabbath is proof that the masterpiece that opens Genesis represents sacred rather than scientific truth. The different perspectives of Genesis and evolutionary science are clearly seen in the ways that each accounts for the pain women experience in giving birth. Genesis considers painful parturition as a punishment for Eve and all subsequent women: ‘And to the woman He said, “I will make most severe Your pangs in childbearing: In pain shall you bear children.”‘‘23 The evolutionary explanation is that painful childbirth results from an improvised system that evolved to balance different adaptive needs. Among these are the human assumption of upright posture, which limited the size of the female pelvis; the need for an optimal intra-uterine environment in which to grow as large a brain as possible; increasing metabolic stress on mother as pregnancy proceeds to term; the possible advantage of an extra-uterine environment in which the infant can absorb culture; and the need for wide shoulders that had been necessary in our ancestors to enable swinging by the arms from branch to branch. The result of all these factors is that the foetal head and shoulders are just barely able to emerge, hence painful childbirth.24 The differences in approach are clear. One utilizes the fact of painful childbirth to teach a moral lesson – disobedience to God’s command brings retribution. The other is mechanistic, factual, without moral weight. In this particular instance, Gould’s ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ has it right.25 Resolving the Differences between Genesis and Evolution

The truths of Genesis, however, are liable to be ignored if the text in which they are contained is dismissed as out-of-date or full of factual errors. We will not study Genesis at all if it seems at odds, at least on

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first glance, with what we know of evolutionary science. Therefore, we will now consider a series of apparent discrepancies between the text of Genesis 1 and evolutionary science and try to harmonize them. The first glaring discrepancy is that between a proposed creation period of six days and 14 billion years. The current scientific wisdom is that time, space and matter all began some 14 billion years ago (see Chapters 2 and 3). The universe then expanded and cooled over its first billion years as matter gravitated into galaxies. Some 7 to 8 billion years later, our sun was born. Some hundreds of millions of years thereafter, earth accreted out of the cloud of gas circling this sun.26 The first fossil evidence of life on earth dates from about 3.5 billion years ago. Clearly, if Genesis’ ‘days’ are considered to last twenty-four hours this schema does not match up with six days of creation. The obvious answer is to suggest that each ‘day’ represents a much longer period of time. But this does not work either, because there appears to be no reason, other than the Biblical account itself, to divide up the time from creation to the present into six periods, whatever their length. Each day can be as long as we would like it to be, and Genesis’ schema will still be at odds with the evolutionary account because nothing in physics or biology definitively separates time from the beginning of the universe to the present into six, or any other number, of periods. The number of pieces in the pie of time since the universe began depends on who does the slicing. Tyson and Goldsmith divide creation into five parts: 1. the origin of the universe; 2. the origin of galaxies and cosmic structure; 3. the origin of stars; 4. the origin of planets; and 5. the origin of life.27 Richard Dawkins itemizes thirty-nine ‘rendezvous’ points between Eubacteria and humans. Hall and Hallgrimsson list twelve stages in life’s development, while Futuyma counts eight.28 The number of periods or stages varies with each classifier because each puts his own spin on the same facts. It is only Genesis that tells us to divide the elapsed time since ‘the beginning’ into six sections. Nothing in nature favours six or seven divisions over five, eight, twelve, thirtynine or whatever number. Bear with me for a way of resolving this, but first consider a related issue. In contrast to the ‘days’ of Genesis 1, which seem to be of equal length, time periods in evolution speed up as we approach the present. It took some 8 billion years from the postulated Big Bang until our sun and solar system formed; only about half that time, 4 billion years, until life first appeared on earth; only about half that time, 2 billion years, from then until the earliest eukaryotes (2.5 billion

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years ago); and less than 2 billion years from then until the Cambrian ‘explosion’ some 0.55 billion years ago. After that, things really got moving. In periods of only roughly 100 million years, evolution zipped from the Cambrian to the first jawed fish (440 million years ago, or mya); from the first jawed fish to the reptiles, amphibians, and early vascular plants (350 mya), and from then until the birds and first flowering plants (200 mya). Mammals appeared only 144 mya. The line that led to humans diverged from our common ancestry with apes, some 6 million years before the present. Homo sapiens first appear in the fossil record only about 200,000 years ago (see Chapter 10). Therefore, the time between major evolutionary events has progressively shortened – first measured in billions of years, then millions, and most recently in thousands. It is as though the whole schema is now on fast-forward. This telescoping of events as we approach the present does not accord with the even and measured pace of Genesis, whose ‘days’ appear to be of equal length, each characterized by the same phrase, ‘It was evening, it was morning.’ Attempts by Orthodox physicists and Rabbinic authorities to solve difficulties such as these have been nicely reviewed by Natan Slifkin, and found wanting. Slifkin concludes, ‘If Genesis can only be reconciled with science via obscure theories, relevance to irrelevant phenomena, drastic and very difficult textual reinterpretation, and ingenious intellectual gymnastics, then it is not a very impressive scientific account.’29 Exactly! Genesis is not an impressive scientific account because it is not science. Reconciliation needs to be based instead on our best understanding of the purpose of the Genesis text, rather than trying to shoehorn the text into science-based truth. Exploring the Days of Creation

Human notions of time begin with everyday experience. Before sundials, hourglasses, clocks and digital read-outs came along, human beings marked time into cycles of night and day, evening and morning. If there is one thing that every human being on our planet knows to be true about time, it is that the sun rises every morning and sets every night. Evening and morning are literally built into our brains; darkness stimulates our pineal gland to put out melatonin, while light limits its output – a persisting reminder that we evolved in an alternating dark-then-light environment. So it should come as no great surprise that Genesis uses night-and-day alternation to demarcate time. No

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other unit – not year or millennium and certainly not light year – is so attuned to human perception. In the simpler time of our ancestors, electric lights did not blur night into day. Each sunrise and sunset was a stark reminder of He ‘who forms light and creates darkness’ and whose ‘word brings on evening’. Hence Genesis divided time into ‘it was evening, it was morning’ – each such division attesting to divine order. The use of the term ‘days’ in Genesis is justified as the most humanly relevant and meaningful way to divide time. Why Six Days of Creation? The number six is crucial in Genesis because of its relation to seven. That’s not a joke! Jonathan Sacks explains: Seven in Judaism is not a simple prime number. It is the oneafter-six. Six represents the material, physical, secular. Ancient Mesopotamia, the birthplace of Abraham, originally used a numerical system based on the number six. Western civilization still bears traces of this in the 24 hour day (2 times 6 hours of light, plus 2 times 6 of darkness); in the 60 (10 times 6) minutes in an hour and seconds in a minute; and in the 360 degrees in a circle (6 times 6 times 10)….Judaism acknowledges this six-part structure of time and space, but adds that God exists beyond time and space. Hence seven – the one beyond six – became the symbol of the holy.30 The six days of creation crowned by the seventh day are not random numbers. They advance the Biblical worldview and may even exist in some abstract realm.31 Genesis’ numbers six and seven may have an independent existence in some yet undiscovered dominion, analogous to the cosmic coincidences (see Chapter 2). This may not be as farfetched as you might think. According to the Greek mathematician Nicomachus of Gerasa (c. 100 CE), ‘The universe seems … to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought and the mind of the creator of all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number preexistent in the mind of the world-creating God.’32 This idea persists today. John Barrow, professor of mathematical sciences at Cambridge University, considers ‘the universe to be fashioned by nothing more than numbers … They are the bar codes of ultimate reality, the PIN numbers that will unlock the secrets of the universe one day.’33 Could six and seven be such numbers?

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Genesis describes days of equal length, even though the pace of evolution has gradually increased. This may be because equal days reflect the measured, deliberate role of a Creator who cannot be hurried or slowed down. Equal days reflect total control and serene mastery over the entire process of creation. They lead the reader to conclude that rigorous order is imposed by the Creator; that He knows His final purpose and proceeds inexorably toward it. At the end of Day Six, the curtain comes down on Genesis’ creation. The drama is now complete and Sabbath begins. Evolution’s course, on the other hand, never was and never will be complete. The starry sky may look peaceful, but it houses continuing fiery collisions and collapsing black holes, and its expansion constantly accelerates. On planet earth, mountains rise up and erode, volcanic islands form, seas emerge and evaporate, Africa slowly splits in two, and the Atlantic Ocean is a fraction wider each day. Species come and species go, all is a work very much in progress. The discrepancy is resolved by recognizing that the Torah is geared to our everyday lives. As the Rabbis said, ‘The Torah speaks in human language.’ Tectonic plates may shift inexorably and genomes may vary over countless generations, but these changes are generally too slow to be noted in the brief span of our lifetimes. Even Methuselah’s 969 years are insufficient to appreciate evolution. That is why we are more at ease in the world of Genesis in which it seems to us, the readers of the Biblical text, as though ‘The heaven and the earth were finished, and all their array.’34 We want the stable world promised to Noah: ‘While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.’35 In effect, God promises Noah that what you see about you is the way things are, and for all intents and purposes, the way they will remain. Trust me. Do not bother your head about changes over millions and billions of years because they are irrelevant in your lifetime and in that of your foreseeable descendants. For all practical purposes, the world will remain as it is. Let us get on, implies Genesis, with the important issue – how you should behave. A second way around this conflict is to realize that Genesis may not actually describe a completed world. Jewish sources refer to the Creator God as ‘borei olam, He who creates the world’ – present tense – not as ‘bara olam, He who created the world’, past tense. The blessing before the Sh’ma in the morning liturgy refers to He ‘who in his goodness, continually renews the work of creation, day after day’,36 and to He ‘who creates all’ and ‘who gives light’ – all in the here and now rather than completed in the past.

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Still another way to harmonize Genesis’ completed world with evolution’s continual change is to invoke Gould and Eldredge’s model of ‘punctuated equilibrium’.37 They propose that life’s history has not followed a steady, slow course. The more common pattern, they theorize instead, consisted of long periods in which organisms were static, interrupted by brief major disruptions of the physical environment that precipitated periods of rapid biological change. This punctuated equilibria model may correspond with the pulse of creation and rest in Genesis. The seventh day of rest follows the creativity of the rest of the week, just as stasis in the evolutionary record follows bursts of rapid change. Our weekly observance of a day of rest can be considered as a reminder of evolution’s periodic stasis following bursts of rapid change. Conflict is also apparent between the neat divisions in Genesis and the fuzzy world of evolution. Genesis makes use of distinct either/or categories – light and dark, waters above and waters below, dry land and seas, night and day. Things that do not have place – for example, light – are separated from things that have place. Things that have place are partitioned into those that lack local motion (plants) and those that possess it. Things that possess local motion divide into those that lack life (heavenly bodies) and those that possess it. Living things divide into terrestrial or non-terrestrial. Terrestrial life divides into created in the image of God (humanity) and not so created.38 These symmetrical, ideal divisions are satisfying in theory, but break down in practice. Does ‘birds that fly’39 include bats which are mammals rather than birds? How should we classify seals or whales that originated as land animals but later adapted to a watery life? Should birds, which evolved from feathered terrestrial dinosaurs, be classed as terrestrial or non-terrestrial? Genesis’ idealized divisions can be problematic. The same sorts of problems arise when kinds (minim) in Genesis are compared with species in evolution. Genesis’ ‘kinds’ are idealized, fixed Platonic categories with sharp borders and without intermediates. Biological species are somewhat unstable, only temporarily selfperpetuating entities without sharp borders. One reason that kinds and species do not necessarily match up is because no high wall in biology separates one species from another. Tigers and lions occasionally interbreed in the wild; camel and llama have been mated to produce a ‘cama’. Even male and female shade one into another. ‘The world is not divided into sheep and goats’, observed the famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey. ‘Not all things are black, nor are all things white. It

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is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories.’40 The platypus has long stumped the classifiers. This Australian maverick has fur and mammary glands like a mammal, lays eggs like a reptile, and has a duck’s bill. It does not fit anywhere. In the end, we humans decide what constitutes a species, we decide what is male and female, what is a reptile and what is a mammal or a bird, while nature constantly mocks us with hard-to-classify intermediates. Why then does Genesis employ these idealized categories? The answer relates once more to Genesis’ purpose. Recently I received a guidebook that groups birds in Israel into birds of the Mediterranean shore, birds of the Sea of Galilee, birds of the Negev desert, and so on. The authors are well aware that evolution relates groups of birds by ancestry, not by habitat. But they based their classification on habitat because they wanted their handbook to be useful. Habitat is more congenial to the way most people think than is evolutionary descent. Genesis’ classification similarly reflects the practical way most of us think about nature. A standard textbook of evolution tells us that, ‘the question of what criterion to use for classification is not a matter of truth or falsehood, but of what the community of users will find most useful’.41 ‘Most useful’ in the case of Genesis is a schema that emphasizes nature’s divine order. Since it is order that is of primary concern, intermediates that do not quite fit are beside the point and can be ignored. Another discrepancy. The Bible argues that the world is a benign divine creation rather than the indifferent result of natural processes. ‘And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good.’42 ‘Why good? Why not beautiful?’ asks Abram Joshua Heschel. ‘After the Lord had created the universe’, Heschel answers, He took a look at His creation. What was the word that conveyed His impression? If an artist were to find a word describing how the universe looked to God at the dawn of its existence, the word would be sublime or beautiful. But the word that the Bible has is good. Indeed, when looking through a telescope into the stellar space the word that comes to our mind is grandeur, mystery, splendor. But the God of Israel is not impressed with splendor; he is impressed with goodness.43 While ancient Greek–Roman civilization esteemed and strove for beauty, Hebrew civilization valued goodness. And viewed through appropriate spectacles, the world brought to us by evolution is

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good. Earth’s climate is propitious for life; extraordinary flora and fauna flourish and diversify via natural selection; food and drink are a pleasure; sexual exchange of genetic information is frequently a delight; and humanity has emerged with amazing intellect and capacity to improve the world. Genesis emphasizes this beneficent aspect of the natural world.44 Similarly, the morning prayer emphasizes the goodness of creation. Isaiah wrote, ‘I [God] form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil.’45 When the Rabbis included this passage in the morning liturgy, they changed ‘creates evil’ to ‘creates all’, so that the resulting prayer blesses God, who forms light and creates darkness, makes peace and creates all [including evil]; In compassion He gives light to the earth and its inhabitants, And in His goodness continually renews the work of creation, day after day.46 The Rabbis subsumed evil into ‘all’ and considered that all was good. But do we really live in such a ‘good’ world? What about natural disasters and extinctions, not to mention the intractable question of suffering (which I discuss in Chapter 9)? Comets, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, drought and other natural disasters continue to alter evolution. How can they possibly comport with a good world? The Bible appears to argue that the Creator intended His world to be good, but humans introduce misfortune. If, then, you obey the commandments that I enjoin upon you this day, loving the Lord your God and serving Him with all your heart and soul, I will grant the rain for your land in season, the early rain and the late. You shall gather in your new grain and wine and oil – I will also provide grass in the fields for your cattle – and thus you shall eat your fill. Take care not to be lured away to serve other Gods and bow to them. For the Lord’s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is assigning to you.47 In this way of thinking, drought is punishment for disobedience to God’s commands. In similar manner, the Bible blames both Noah’s

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flood and the natural disaster that destroyed Sodom on human culpability. We live in a good world, the Bible says in effect, and we have only ourselves to blame for disaster. In the world of evolution, on the other hand, natural disasters happen, whether or not we are in the way and regardless of our behaviour. If we happen to live too close to Mount St Helens in the State of Washington when it blows its top, or are enjoying the Thai beach when the tsunami hits, or make our home in Port-au-Prince adjacent to a fault zone, our fate is not part of some malevolent divine plan, nor is it punishment for our sins. We are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Natural disasters are contingent phenomena in a world whose vast scale does not consider the fate of any one species or individual. It is not all about us or me. Abraham asked God, ‘Will the judge of all the world not do justly?’48 Genesis uses the destruction of Sodom (presumably via an earthquake accompanied by an eruption from earth’s interior) to teach, among other things, that immorality brings retribution. Well, immorality certainly needs all the discouragement it can get, but nevertheless evolutionary science would insist that Sodom was destroyed because of geological forces that were indifferent to whoever happened to be annihilated as the continents ground on. The difference between Abraham and us is that he had no explanation for the Sodom cataclysm other than God’s intervention, whereas we nowadays can explain that Sodom’s destruction was caused by massive geological forces that proceed regardless of humanity that may be in their way. In the terms we used above, the destruction of Sodom would be considered a contingent rather than an intended event. Furthermore, evolutionary science might add, it would make little sense for God to intrude into nature and alter it on my behalf or yours in violation of processes for which He Himself is responsible. These processes are what causes tectonic plates to shift, rain to fall, or crops to grow – our moral behaviour has nothing do with it. Rain falls for contingent reasons related to temperature, humidity, wind, and other variables. The earth quakes because of pent-up geologic forces. Crops grow depending on soil, moisture, temperature, plant genetics, and so forth. But whether I worship one or 27.2 gods, whether I pray for rain or do not, love my neighbour or not, rainfall and harvest will not be affected one whit. And nor will immense shifts in the earth’s crust be affected by my behaviour; natural disasters are uninfluenced by our wishes or our conduct or even by fervent prayer, although we may wish it otherwise and consider it a regrettable

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imperfection. Abraham was frustrated because God’s intervention at Sodom was not just. But the present-day mechanistic world view denies Abraham’s underlying assumption that natural disasters are caused by God’s pique at human misbehaviour. At this point the indifferent world of science pulls the rug out from under the Biblical benign world. I will now explore some ways in which this conflict might be reconciled. We have the power to bring into accord the Biblical view of a benign world with evolution’s indifferent world through our behaviour. What we do can minimize the effects of natural disasters or prevent them. For instance, we can help insure our food supply and prevent famine by seeing to it that our soil has proper nutrients, our air is clean, and our fresh water is conserved. The passage from Deuteronomy that I cited above might then mean that the success or failure of our crops depends on our own actions in maintaining nature’s balance. In a similar manner, we can minimize the damage of Sodom-type disasters by locating our villages and towns away from fault zones and by ensuring that our buildings are earthquake-proof. Our world then becomes a good world, just so long as we work to keep it that way. Yes, nature is indifferent but it becomes a good place if we help make it so. Another way of avoiding the mismatch between indifferent nature and Genesis’ good world is to consider even nature’s disasters as good, since they are an integral part of a world that progresses. Natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods are part of ‘doing business’ on planet earth. What we consider to be disasters might be seen as the price that we, and life in general, must pay for being part of the only known system in the universe that produces and sustains life. In order to enjoy adequate rainfall, we have to endure occasional floods; in order to bring needed trace elements to the earth’s surface, we must suffer erupting volcanoes; a healthy forest requires occasional fires to create open space and to spread spores. We might consider natural disasters to be unavoidable transient setbacks in a good world of remorseless progress (Chapter 4). Nature is therefore both good and indifferent. The death of a species seems tragic, whether it occurs in a contingent or an intended world, for it subtracts from the wonderful diversity and creativity of life. In a world considered to be contingent (just one thing after another) extinction is additional evidence of the lack of meaning in evolution; aeons of mutation and selection events all leading up to – nothing, to waste and wild. And in an intended world, the extinction

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of a species is even more tragic. For to the extent that a species owes its existence to divine intent, to that extent its disappearance diminishes divine will. In either case, the extinction of species does not appear to fit into a good world. But not so fast; extinction may be a good thing after all. First: the rate at which species become extinct may be decreasing over time.49 This raises the ‘intriguing possibility that during the history of life, the world has become populated with progressively better “adapted” organisms, more resistant to extinction’.50 Such a decrease in extinction rates would be another sign of evolutionary progress. It would mean that our world is getting better all the time; pruning out those species that are less well adapted. Second, extinctions may be ‘good’ because their disappearance makes room for the efflorescence of new groups.51 Mass extinctions may wipe the slate clean for new evolutionary developments that are largely decoupled from those that existed previously, thereby making room for creativity in evolution. Consider: after a huge asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula some 63 million years ago, huge tidal waves spread outward from the impact site … leaving a trail of destruction in their wake and a monstrous strandline of beached and bloated dinosaur carcasses skewered on uprooted trees. The surviving scavengers of the world are in paradise. The smell of decay is everywhere … The tropical trees and shrubs begin to die; the creatures that live in them or feed on them begin to die; the carnivores that depend on these smaller herbivores as food begin to die … Temperature swings produce more death, more extinction. The dinosaurs die out as do most – but not all – mammals.52 Pretty dreadful. But the surviving small mammals eventually begin to fill the now vacant niches in the environment, and give rise to a variety of wonderful mammals, and ultimately to ourselves. Good (or with reference to ourselves, potential good) has come from the ravages of mass extinction. Noah’s flood is the biblical paradigm of mass extinction: The Flood continued forty days on the earth, and the waters increased … and all flesh that stirred on earth perished – birds, cattle, beasts, and all the things that swarmed on the earth, and

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all mankind. All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died. All existence on earth was blotted out – man, cattle, creeping things, and birds of the sky, they were blotted out from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.53 Noah, ‘a righteous man, blameless in his age’,54 and his family, survived, while corrupt humanity was destroyed. In evolutionary terms, Noah’s ark enabled a selection process in which the criterion for survival was righteousness. Just as small mammals survived and flourished after the destruction caused by the Yucatan asteroid, so Noah, the quintessential righteous man, along with his family, survived and flourished after the flood. The fact that the corrupt perished while only righteous Noah and his family survived might teach that even mass extinctions are part of a good world, required in order to bring about a world populated by righteous humanity. What of the obvious discrepancies in the sequence of creation as recounted in Genesis and as currently understood by evolutionary theory? For example, land plants that reproduce by seed are called into being on the third day, before the sun is created on the following day. How could photosynthesis take place without the sun? Similarly, in the Genesis text, land-based life began on the third day, while life in water didn’t begin until the fifth day. Evolution tells us the opposite – that life almost certainly began in water and only thereafter migrated to land. The shimmering songbird outside my window overlooking the Mediterranean coast, as well as all other wonderful modern birds, descends from small land-based dinosaurs that were equipped with proto-feathers (Chapter 4). First came land-based dinosaurs, then birds. Genesis, however, tells us that birds came first, created on the fifth day, and land animals followed on the next day. Heavenly bodies too are out of sequence. According to Genesis, earth came into being first, then vegetation, and only in third place came the heavenly bodies, including the sun, on the fourth day. Yet cosmology tells us that planets, including earth, first formed about the sun, and only after that did life develop on earth. The sequence, according to evolution, is sun and earth, then life. The sequence, according to Genesis, is earth, then life (vegetation), and finally sun. Genesis has lowered the sun’s ranking from first to third place. How can we account for these discrepancies in sequence?

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The simplest solution is provided by Rashi, according to whom ‘the opening verse of Genesis does not come to teach the order of creation … it does not teach the order of what came earlier and what came later at all’.55 Indeed, Rashi tells us that ‘there is no earlier or later in the Torah’.56 Problems with sequence might be explained, therefore, by simply extending this principle to the whole of the Genesis creation epic. I do not however find this solution terribly satisfying, and will suggest others.57 Early civilizations regarded celestial objects as deities. Thus Egyptians worshipped the sun God and Mesopotamians the moon. This reverence was so widespread that the Talmud referred to non-Jews as akum (acronym for ovdei kokhavim u’mazalot), or ‘worshippers of stars and planets’. Traces of this special status of sun and moon linger in Jewish prayer. The first blessing before the Sh’ma (‘Hear, O Israel’) in Jewish morning prayer is addressed to all of creation (‘who creates all’), but only the great luminaries are mentioned by name: ‘Blessed are You, Lord, who forms the radiant lights.’58 The creation hymn on Sabbath morning is addressed to the Lord of all creation, but only the sun, moon and stars are specifically mentioned.59 To this day, traditional Judaism retains its lunar calendar and celebrates the New Moon. Sun, moon and stars have always been so impressive, so magnificent, that ancient Israel had to be expressly warned against their worship: ‘When you look up to the sky and behold the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole heavenly host, you must not be lured into bowing down to them or serving them.’60 And Ezekiel fumed at sun worship that had crept into the Holy Temple itself: ‘Then He brought me into the inner court of the House of the Lord, and there, at the entrance to the Temple of the LORD, between the portico and the altar, were about 25 men, their backs to the Temple of the LORD and their faces to the east; they were bowing low to the sun in the east.’61 This suggests that the demotion of the celestial bodies to day four of creation in Genesis may have been deliberate, and done in order to decrease the chance that humanity would worship what they could see in the heavens, rather than an invisible Creator.62 This same reasoning may explain why the great sea monsters (taninim ha g’dolim) are the only species other than humans to merit separate mention in Genesis 1. These fearsome creatures might have become objects of worship were it not for their specific mention as created by the one abstract God.63 Why does Genesis tell us that life began on land rather than in water? Perhaps the answer is, as scientist/Biblical scholar Leonard Kass points out, that

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in Biblical thought – and in the thinking of other cultures as well – plants are not really alive in the decisive sense: they do not move, they are not animated, they are not lively. The word for life (chai) is cognate with the word for animals (chaya) … Therefore, vegetation on day three doesn’t count as real life. In the thinking of those who received the Genesis account, true life – active, moving life – doesn’t begin until day five with ‘Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.64 The Biblical sequence would then agree with biological understanding in which real life begins in water (on day five) and thereafter moves to land (day six). What of the imprecision in Genesis’ creation account? God said: Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures [sheretz nefesh hayya], and birds that fly above the earth, across the expanse of the sky! God created the great sea monsters [tanninim], and all the living creatures of every kind that creep which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was good.65 What does sheretz nefesh hayya – the ‘swarms of living creatures’ that the waters bring forth – actually mean? Does it refer to plankton, algae, molluscs, sponges, starfish, cephalopods (octopus), fish, reptiles (turtles, sea snakes), or mammals (seals, whales)? Some of them, all of them, or some other aquatic creatures? What precisely is Genesis telling us here? Do the forms of life described in Genesis 1 refer to present populations or to their evolutionary ancestors? Whales, for instance, owe their evolutionary origins to land-based mammals (related to hippopotamus), hence their rudimentary hind limbs and their ‘fossil’ genes for smell. Were whales created in the ancient body shape that was theirs when they walked on land, or as we see them now, gracefully and smoothly adapted to the sea? The same sort of question applies to the creation of all living things in Genesis. The answer is that how we define sheretz nefesh hayya – ‘swarms of living creatures’ – does not really matter in the Genesis scheme of things. And it does not really matter whether the great sea monsters, cattle, creeping things, wild beasts, fish and birds formed as we know them now, or as they were in the past. These concerns become meaningless in the worldview of Genesis 1. What does matter in

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Genesis – and it is of overwhelming importance – is that all of nature comes about by divine intent, expresses divine order, and is suffused with goodness. What of Genesis’ omissions? Truly major events are omitted from the account of creation in Genesis, not just obscure details. The most crucial event in the history of life, for instance, is that it began at all, that molecules began to replicate and that the grand saga of life took off (Chapter 3). Yet Genesis’ account of this momentous event is limited to this succinct statement on day three: ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation; seed-bearing plants.’66 We are told nothing about life’s development up to that point, there is no mention of initial replicating molecules; nothing about nucleated cells with incorporated chloroplasts enabling photosynthesis; no mosses or ferns which do not produce seeds. Bacteria, the most abundant and most ancient life form, are entirely missing from Genesis, along with anything that would require a microscope to be seen. Missing too, and this is important, is evolution’s concept that all life stems from a common ancestor. Since such a statement would have strengthened Genesis’ emphasis on order and unity, there was every reason to include it, from a religious point of view. Would it have been so difficult for the Bible’s recipients to understand that all of life is related, not just that all humanity is descended from Adam? Or that the vegetation of day three had been preceded by an immensely long and complex evolutionary development? Well, yes it would. Genesis was given to ordinary, flesh-and-blood human beings who looked at their world with different eyes from ours. Its message had to be ahead of its time in order to make a difference, but not so far ahead as to be incomprehensible. The objective was to prepare this people to accept moral instruction. The creation drama of Genesis served to prepare the way to accept moral instruction, for only if God was powerful enough to create the universe, would it make sense to follow His instructions about conduct. That is one reason for this omission. Another is that a creation narrative based on evolution would have required the substitution of lengthy, frequently obscure, and never up-to-date cosmogony and evolutionary science for the pithy, awe-inspiring, never out-of-date opening paragraphs of Genesis. An evolutionary narrative would have been incomprehensible to those to whom it was addressed. Genesis’ omissions were appropriate for its audience and its task.67 What could satisfy common sense more than the division of the world according to Genesis’ opening sentence: ‘When God began

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to create heaven and earth’?68 But is this common-sense approach outmoded? We might with some justification divide creation nowadays into matter and energy, or space and time, or matter and anti-matter, or any number of dualities other than heaven and earth. In fact, the heaven–earth duality may be outmoded for it equates the uncountable numbers of heavenly bodies in the cosmos (heaven) with our single, lonely, and relatively tiny planet earth. The two are not commensurate. Earth is an inconsequential bit of matter in comparison with all that is in heaven; it is a part of the cosmos rather than distinct from it. And since star stuff and earth stuff are largely the same, what difference is there between heaven and earth? But there is a sense in which earth is very much on an equal par with heaven. For earth is the home of humanity, the only creatures (that we know of) who can appreciate and value the cosmos. We might say, therefore, that the immense numbers of galaxies with their innumerable suns have their meaning only by dint of we earthly creatures. Perhaps this is how we should interpret Genesis’ opening: God created the heavens, the grand cosmos, and the earth, the abode of the only creatures who can appreciate the cosmos. Earth is every bit as important as heaven precisely because we are on earth. By dividing the world into heaven and earth Genesis hints that, from the beginning, its primary concern is not cosmogony but how we earthbound humans fit into the world. With this we conclude our effort to resolve discrepancies between Genesis 1 and evolution, and turn to the pleasant task of describing their shared messages.

Notes   1. The demarcation between chapters 1 and 2 was established in the early Middle Ages. It assigns the six days of creation to chapter 1, and the seventh paragraph concerning Shabbat to chapter 2. The first creation account begins with Genesis 1:1, and ends with Genesis 2:4a; the second account follows, beginning with Genesis 2:4b. Since Genesis’ initial seven paragraphs are a unit, I will refer to them as Genesis 1. E.A. Speiser, Genesis, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1964), pp.18–20.   2. See discussion of ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ in S. J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999), pp.68– 89.   3. Y. Liebowitz, Al Parshat Hashavua [Hebrew] (published privately in Israel, 2003, by the Liebowitz family), pp. 6–19.   4. N. Aviezer, In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 1990) and Fossils and Faith (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2001); G.L. Schroeder, 1990, Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science

Resolving Conflicts  117 and the Bible (New York: Bantam, 1990), G.L. Schroeder, The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom (New York: Free Press, 1997) and G.L. Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001).   5. Y. Blinder (ed.), The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary (Brooklyn: NY, Mesorah 2004), on Genesis 1:14, p.55; see also Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi), The Torah with Rashi’s Commentary, Sefer Bereishis, trans. Y. Herczeg (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 1995), on Genesis 1:4, p.5.   6. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.132.   7. Isaiah 60:19–20.   8. G. Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1941), pp.265–8.   9. Zohar, The Book of Enlightenment, ed. D. Matt (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1953), p.52. 10. Chapter 2, above. 11. Genesis 1:2. 12. J. Repecheck, Copernicus’ Secret (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). 13. Aviezer, In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science, pp.19–27; Genesis 1:6. 14. Genesis 1:7. 15. I concur with the discussion of these issues in S. Cherry, ‘Crisis Management via Biblical Interpretation: Fundamentalism, Modern Orthodoxy, and Genesis’, in Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism, ed. G. Cantor and M. Swetlitz (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp.166–87. 16. These terms are found in Genesis 1:2. See Gersonides, Wars of the Lord, trans. S. Feldman (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1984–1999), 6:2: I–8. Ibn Ezra and Moses Maimonides (Rambam) likewise followed the Aristotelian tradition of their day in listing these four elements as the building blocks of the world. N. Samuelson, Judaism and the Doctrine of Creation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) pp.93, 140–1. 17. H.W. Janson, History of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1986), pp.17, 685. 18. Genesis 2:3. 19. M. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), p.11. 20. Written by the sixteenth-century kabbalist, Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz of Safed. 21. Similarly, the Midrash asks ‘Why [does the text say] ‘And God completed (va’ye’khal) on the seventh day the work that he had done’ (Gen 2:2), when the world was actually completed on the sixth day? Geniva [a third-century rabbi] said ‘It is as though a king had made a bridal canopy and beautifully adorned it. But what was lacking? The bride (kallah) to enter it. Similarly, what did the world lack? Shabbat.’ W. Shuchat, The Creation According to the Midrash Rabba (Jerusalem and New York: Devora Publishing, 2002), 10:9, p.424. 22. N. Glatzer (ed.), Franz Rosenzweig, His Life and Thought (New York: Schocken, 1961), p.316. 23. Genesis 3:16. 24. K. Rosenberg, ‘The Evolution of Modern Human Childbirth’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 35 (1992), pp.89–124; J. Ackerman, ‘The Downside of Upright’, National Geographic (July 2006), pp.126–45; K. Wong, ‘Why Humans Give Birth to Helpless Babies’, Scientific American (28 August 2012). 25. Gould, Rocks of Ages, p.5.

118  Accord Between Evolutionary Science and Genesis 26. N. Tyson and D. Goldsmith, Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, Part IV (New York: W.W. Norton, 2004). 27. Ibid., pp.9–10. 28. R. Dawkins, The Ancestor’s Tale. A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 2004); B.K. Hall and B. Hallgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2008), chs 4 to 8, 14 to 20; D. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005), p.vii. 29. N. Slifkin, The Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology and Evolution (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen Books and Zoo Torah, 2006), Ch.13 and p.186. 30. Koren Siddur, p.xxviii. 31. M. Livio, ‘Why Math Works’, Scientific American (August 2011), pp.61–3. 32. Nichomachus, Introduction to Arithmetic, trans. M.L. D’Ooge (London: Macmillan, 1926), vol.1, p.6. 33. J.D. Barrow, The Constants of Nature (New York: Pantheon, 2002). 34. Genesis 2:1. 35. Genesis 8:22. 36. Koren Siddur, p.94. 37. For a concise summary of punctuated equilibrium, N. Eldredge, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism (New York: W.H. Freeman, 2000), p.49. 38. Adapted from L. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp.31–5. Kass in turn credits L. Strauss, ‘On the Interpretation of Genesis’, L’Homme XXI, 1 (January/March 1981), pp.5– 20. A different idealized classification of Genesis’ creation is presented in Koren Siddur, p.xxix. 39. Genesis 1:20. 40. A.C. Kinsey, W.G. Pomeroy and C.C. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders, 1948), p.20. 41. D. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 1998, 3rd edn), p.92. 42. Genesis 1:31. 43. A.J. Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), pp.372–3. 44. Not that evil escaped notice. The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary, Note 282, p.82 on Genesis 1:31, and discussion in Chapter 9 below. 45. Isaiah 45:7. 46. Koren Siddur, p.90. 47. Deuteronomy 11:13–17. 48. Genesis 18:25. 49. D.M. Raup and J.J. Sepkoski, ‘Mass Extinctions in the Marine Fossil Record’, Science, 215 (1982), pp.1501–3. 50. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, p.714. 51. S.J. Gould, ‘The Paradox of the First Tier: An Agenda for Paleobiology’, Paleobiology, 11 (2005), pp.2–12; Futuyma, Evolution, p.151; R.K. Bambach, et al., ‘Anatomical and Ecological Constraints on Phanerozoic Animal Diversity in the Marine Realm’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99 (2002), pp.6854–9. 52. P. Ward, Future Evolution: An Illuminated History of Life to Come (New York: Times Books, 2001), pp.26–8. 53. Genesis 7:1–23.

Resolving Conflicts  119 54. Genesis 6:9. 55. Rashi, The Torah with Rashi’s Commentary, p.3 on Genesis 1:1. 56. Ramban rejects Rashi’s approach and asks, ‘Why should we turn upside down the words of the Living God?’, in Y. Blinder (ed.) The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 2004), on Leviticus 8:2. 57. Much of this section is indebted to L. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, pp.40–3. 58. Koren Siddur, p.94. 59. Ibid., p.460. 60. Deuteronomy 4:19, also 17:2–5. 61. Ezekiel 8:16. 62. This explanation goes back at least 2000 years to Philo of Alexandria. Three Jewish Philosophers, Philo: Selections, H. Lewy (ed.), Saadya Gaon: Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, A. Altmann (ed.); Jehuda Halevi, Kuzari, I. Heinemann (ed.) (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), pp.52–3. 63. Hints of this battle against taninim are found elsewhere in the Bible: ‘It was You who drove back the sea with Your might; who smashed the heads of the monsters (taninim) in the waters; it was You who crushed the heads of Leviathan’ (Psalms 74:13–14); ‘It was you [the Lord] that hacked Rahab in pieces, that pierced the Dragon (tannin).’ Isaiah 51:9. The great sea creatures were so awesome and so dreaded that the Torah needed to be very clear that they were not divine and that they too had been created by God. 64. Genesis 1:20. L. Kass, Personal communication, 30 July 2009. 65. Day 5, Genesis 1:20–1. 66. Genesis 1:11. 67. Contrast Genesis 1 with Gould’s grand opus, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002). Gould’s tome takes 1,400 pages to explain biological evolution, without saying a word about the evolution of the cosmos. 68. Genesis 1:1.

8

Examples of Accord between Evolutionary Science and Genesis

D

iscrepancies between Genesis and evolution attract lots of attention, while areas of agreement are seldom emphasized. Let us redress the imbalance. We have already discussed agreement on a universe created in time (Chapter 2). This chapter presents several other areas in which evolutionary science and Genesis accord with one another. Order/Unity

Genesis 1 emphasizes the world’s order and unity imposed on an initial disunity of ‘welter and waste’.1 I will first present unity and order in Genesis, and then the same themes in cosmology and evolution. The first six days of creation fall into two groups of three days each. During the first three days, God creates and separates domains. In the second group of three days God populates these domains with their appropriate objects or forms of life.2 This symmetry signifies divine order. Further, the creation story in Genesis is structured about the number seven. Its seventh and final paragraph includes three parallel phrases, each composed of seven Hebrew words: God had finished, on the seventh day, his work that he had made, [seven Hebrew words] and then he ceased, on the seventh day, from all his work that he had made. [Seven Hebrew words]. God gave the seventh day his blessing, and he hallowed it [seven Hebrew words].3 The same paragraph begins with five Hebrew words and concludes with nine, so that the total number of Hebrew words in this paragraph adds up to thirty-five (or five times seven). God’s name Elokim is mentioned

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thirty-five times (five times seven) in the first seven paragraphs of Genesis. The word ‘earth’ occurs twenty-one times (three times seven); the expression ‘that it was good’ (once as ‘very good’), seven times. The first verse of Genesis contains seven words, while verse two contains fourteen words (two times seven). Seven, as we said above, symbolizes God’s holiness and the unity and order of His world.4 More evidence of order can be found in ‘the grand choreography of resonant parallel utterances of the cosmogony’5 in Genesis 1. Each day of creation begins with ‘Let’ something come into existence and ends with ‘And it was evening and it was morning, day ...’. Each ‘Let’ is followed by ‘and it was so’. Each day is declared to be ‘good’, and the final day of creation, ‘very good’. The first of Genesis’ initial seven paragraphs contains the words bara elokim, while the seventh contains the same words, thereby forming a structure that enfolds the days of creation. The words themselves betoken order. The opening sentence sets the tone: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ These words still give me goose bumps, as they did in third grade. A single all-powerful God, not to be questioned, spoke – and the world came into being. What had been tohu va vohu, ‘welter and waste’,6 was no more and was replaced by imperturbable and serene creation. From chaos came cosmos; from disorder, order; from randomness, unity. Furthermore, God’s name YHVH, used for the first time in the second creation account,7 symbolized unity in the Jewish mystical tradition. God was the ‘unity of all being, the One that underlies all the infinitely varied and changing faces of reality’.8 By observing the commandments, Jews could restore this unity. According to the mystics, for example, we lay tefillin on the arm and head ‘for the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Divine Presence, in reverence and love, to unify the name Yod-He with VavHe in perfect unity in the name of all Israel’.9 Yod-He (YH), the first two letters of the Divine Name, symbolize the attribute of judgment; the second two letters, Vav-He (VH) symbolize the attribute of mercy. Together, the four letters, YH and VH, blend both attributes, so that the act of putting on tefillin unifies God’s judgment with His mercy thereby restoring the shattered unity of creation.10 Order and Unity in Genesis and later Judaism are Matched by that in Evolutionary Science Science, too, makes order from disorder. The ancients’ arbitrary theory of the four elements, earth, air, fire and water, was hopelessly inadequate

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compared to Mendeleyev’s tidy arrangement of the elements, now explained by quantum physics. What a mass of confusion were the movements of the heavenly bodies until systematized by Newton’s equations. What a conglomeration of disparate organisms was the living world until Darwin demonstrated that all are kin – descended with modification from a common ancestor. ‘The three-letter words of the genetic code’ therefore, ‘are the same in every creature. CGA means arginine, GCG means alanine – in bats, beetles, beech trees, and bacteria … all life is one.’11 We find order from disorder – as in Genesis. Scientific disciplines share a fundamental unity, and as knowledge grows, the boundaries between previously distinct scientific disciplines disappear.12 There is no separate physics for astronomy, geology and chemistry; no separate genetics for biology, anthropology or psychology. There are no separate rules for how evolution proceeds in animals, plants or fungi. Whether one studies barnacles, bromeliads or behavioural traits, the evolution of life follows the same rules. Discoveries in each separate discipline of science complement and reinforce one another. This search for unity characterizes science. Science therefore unites ‘the heavens, the earth and all their host’.13 Everything that lives consists of atoms derived from the original cosmic explosion. Exploded stars furnish iron that carries oxygen to the cells of earth’s creatures, as well as nitrogen and carbon that compose life’s molecules. Existence, therefore, is a unity of the living and non-living. Genesis tells us that Adam, the prototypical human being, comes from and returns to adamah, earth. But science adds an additional level to this unity – it joins together heavenly stars, earthly atoms and life in one whole. Adam, we realize now, is part and parcel not only of adamah, but also of shamayim, the heavens, precisely because ‘we are made of star stuff ’.14 All humanity is a single species. All seven billion members of Homo sapiens derive from the same small founder group. We are all one biological species, free to interbreed; regional genetic variation in human populations does not rise to the level of distinct species.15 This finding of evolutionary science matches up nicely with what we are told in Genesis: that Adam and Eve are the prototypes of all humanity – black, red, white or yellow. And it coincides with the Talmud’s observation, that because we are all descendants of one couple, no group can claim higher status.16 In all these ways, the Judaic emphasis on unity is affirmed by evolutionary science.

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Species Diversity in Evolution as well as in Genesis

God said ‘Let the earth bring forth every kind (le’mi’nah) of living creature: cattle, creeping things, and wild beasts of every kind (le’mi’nah). And it was so. God made wild beasts of every kind (le’mi’nah) and cattle of every kind (le’mi’nah), and all kinds of creeping things of the earth (le’mi’nei’hu). And God saw that this was good.17 Genesis’ le’mi’nei’hu, what we nowadays might call reproductive fidelity, is an important part of Genesis’ ‘good’ world. Genesis 1 intimates that it is good that ‘kinds’ exist – even the 400,000 plus species of beetles. They are all parts of God’s intended world and not ours to destroy. Noah’s ark saved representative specimens of each and every species: the clean and the not-clean, the birds and every winged thing, and everything that creeps on the ground – not just those species useful to man. All varieties of life are components of Genesis’ good world. Similarly, in evolutionary science the assumption is that each species evolved to fill its particular niche. Each has its place in a world that can be rationally explained by aeons of variation, adaptation and natural selection. Each species, therefore, as in Genesis, is a precious legacy. All our efforts to save threatened species by placing animals in zoos, conserving rare plants in botanical gardens, storing endangered organisms in laboratory cultures, or deep-freezing embryos are futile. Only the natural world can do the job. ‘Each species occupies a precise niche, demanding a certain place, an exact microclimate, particular nutrients and temperature and humidity cycles by which the sequential phases of the life cycles are timed: the only way to save the creation with existing knowledge is to maintain it in natural ecosystems.’18 We can consider Eden to be the example of such a natural ecosystem. Adam and Eve were tenants, not owners of Eden. Their mission was ‘to work it and to watch it’19 on behalf of its true owner, the Creator. The Bible refers to Eden as a gan, which may mean ‘a protected space’, related to le’ha’gen, ‘to protect or safeguard’. Adam and Eve thus lived in Gan Eden, the protected space of Eden. Genesis may hint here that we, like Adam and Eve, are meant to preserve protected spaces for their true owner. The planet is not ours to destroy. Biblical law prohibits kilayim, the mixing of diverse species. The several prohibitions of kilayim forbid the juncture or admixture of heterogeneous plants within the same field, orchard or vineyard;

Examples of Accord  125

the hybridization or harnessing together of heterogeneous animals; and the combining of wool and flax (linen) in the same garment.20 Neither Bible nor later commentary provides a clear rationale for these prohibitions, but one of their practical effects is to inculcate the value of preserving differences between species.21 Biodiversity could then be considered a Biblical imperative as well as a priority of evolutionary biologists. Unique Persons

Genetics explains why human individuals vary. The genome of any one person is slightly different from that of every other. Approximately one in 1,000 nucleotide base pairs differs between one human being and another, and it is from this variation that nature selects the fittest for survival (see Chapter 3). Without genetic variation no species can adapt to changes in its environment – to altered temperature, nutrients, water supply, or new predators. The same principle applies to Judaism: ‘If a man strikes many coins from one mold’, said the sages long ago, ‘they all resemble one another, but the supreme king of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, fashioned every man in the stamp of the first man, and yet not one of them resembles his fellow. Therefore, every single person is obliged to say: “the world was created for my sake.”’22 Not content with simply observing human variation, the rabbis derived moral lessons from it. Each individual is so important that ‘he who saves one human being is as though he saved the whole world’,23 and each has a unique role so that ‘there is no person who does not have his hour’.24 Individual variation is important both for the evolutionary process and for Judaism. Notes   1. This is Robert Alter’s memorable translation of tohu va’vohu, Genesis 1:2. See R. Alter, Genesis (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996), p.3.   2. Adapted from L. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p.31–6.   3. Adapted from U. Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part One: From Adam to Noah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1964)   4. This theme persists in Jewish prayer and calendar. The three paragraphs of the Sh’ma (‘Hear, O Israel’) and its three surrounding blessings are followed by a seventh prayer (Amidah) that is the domain of the holy – corresponding to the seventh day of rest. On Shabbat and holy days, the Amidah consists of three opening and three closing paragraphs, plus a middle paragraph dedicated to the

126  Accord Between Evolutionary Science and Genesis ‘holiness of the day’, adding up to seven blessings in all. On weekday mornings, the blessing of creation is prefaced by six Halleluyah psalms (numbers 145 to 150), and on Friday evening, the psalm for the Shabbat is prefaced by a different series of six psalms. The Jewish calendar contains a holy seventh month in which the major Jewish festivals occur; a holy seventh year, in which the land returns to God and lies fallow; and a fiftieth Jubilee year that follows seven cycles of seven years. The theme of six culminating in seven is ubiquitous.   5. Alter, Genesis, p.7.   6. Alter, Genesis, p.3.   7. Genesis 2:4b.   8. A. Green, Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010), p.70.   9. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.14. 10. N. Schermann (trans), The Complete ArtScroll Siddur (New York: Mesorah, 1984), p.4. 11. M. Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in Twenty-Three Chapters (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), p.241. 12. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: A. Knopf, 1998), Ch.2. 13. The Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1980), Genesis 2:1. 14. C. Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1985). 15. D. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005), pp.21–2 and R.C. Lewontin, ‘The Apportionment of Human Diversity’, Evolutionary Biology (1972), pp.381–98. 16. TB Sanhedrin, 38a. 17. Genesis 1:24–5. 18. E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, p.296, and E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life (New York: Vintage, 2003), pp.119–20. 19. Genesis 2:15, in E. Fox (trans.), The Five Books of Moses (New York: Schocken, 1995), p.20. Similarly, ‘to work it and to guard it’, in Y.I.Z. Herczeg (ed.), The Torah: With Rashi’s Commentary (Brooklyn, NY: Mesora, 1995), p.26. 20. These rules are derived from Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9–11 and elaborated in the order Zeraim (Seeds), the section of the Mishna devoted to agricultural matters. 21. Ramban derives the importance of species preservation from the injunction to frighten away the mother bird when her chicks are taken. Y. Blinder (ed.), The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary (Brooklyn NY: Mesorah, 2004), Deuteronomy 22:6. 22. TB Sanhedrin, 37a, Soncino. 23. Ibid. 24. ‘[Ben Azzai] said: Despise no one and disdain nothing, for there is no one who does not have his hour and there is nothing that does not have its place.’ ‘Ethics of the Fathers’, Koren Siddur, p.660.

9

Evolution Informs Jewish Views on Suffering and Death

Suffering

Y

et there is a fly in the ointment I have prepared and it is called suffering. Is the agony and pain that multitudes of living creatures have endured throughout the billions of years of evolution worth the potential of righteous humanity? Is the end of the journey worth the trouble getting there? It was Darwin’s perplexity over this very issue that led him to reject a providential God. He noted that wasps lay their eggs in living caterpillars and that this paralyzed the caterpillar’s motor nerves. Since their sensory nerves are spared, the caterpillars still feel pain, yet cannot move away from the source of the pain. Alas, once the eggs hatch, the wasps proceed to consume their living caterpillar host. ‘I cannot persuade myself ’, wrote Darwin, ‘that a beneficent and omnipotent god would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae (wasps) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.’1 Caterpillars and mice and all that suffers in this world seem to be victims of whatever plan it is that leads to ourselves. ‘Through millions of years’, objects philosopher Philip Kitcher, billions of animals experience vast amounts of pain, supposedly so that, after an enormous number of extinctions of entire species, on the tip of one twig of the evolutionary tree, there may emerge a species with the special properties that make us able to worship the Creator … Our conception of a providential Creator must suppose that He has constructed a shaggy-dog story, a history of life that consists of a three-billion-year curtain raiser to the main event, in which millions of sentient beings suffer, often acutely,

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and that the suffering is not a by-product but constitutive of the script the Creator has chosen to write.2 In fact, he concludes, ‘When you consider the millions of years in which sentient creatures have suffered, the uncounted number of extended and agonizing deaths, it simply rings hollow to suppose that all this is needed so that, at the very tail end of history, our species can manifest the allegedly transcendent good of free and virtuous action.’3 It’s a powerful argument against a God who guides with a benevolent hand, but I cannot accept it. Remember that whatever animal suffering there is, is balanced by comfort and even joy. Recall the elaborate courtship dances of many bird species – this has got to be happiness. Bear cubs frolic, monkeys happily eat their bananas, cats bask in the sun and birds twitter at sunrise. Why emphasize animal suffering when comfort and happiness (or whatever the animal equivalent is) may be just as prevalent? Consider the glass half full rather than half empty. Why bemoan the sickness and suffering of old age, when youthful health and joy are just as much parts of life? Besides, maturity, I have come to realize, has its own joys. Why fret over extinction of species when one might instead delight in evolution’s creativity in generating novel species? Why bemoan the competition that leads to ‘nature, red in tooth and claw’, when with equal justification one might acknowledge cooperation between animals? Cooperation contributes so much to survival that instead of ‘survival of the fittest’, some prefer to call evolution ‘survival of the most cooperative’.4 True enough, natural selection is complex, cumbersome, and sometimes nasty, but it eventually succeeds. Life has progressed from simple bacterial forms to Homo sapiens, and has populated air, land and sea with innumerable kinds of creatures. Not a bad track record. And perhaps, for all we know, evolution, despite the suffering that accompanies it, is the only possible route to the desired outcome (Chapter 4). Ramban rearranged the words ‘very good’ (tov me’od) at the end of Genesis’s Sixth Day to me’odo tov, so that the sentence reads ‘And God saw all that He had made and, behold, in all its abundance it was good.’5 This implies that the bad in the world exists only when viewed in isolation. But when the ‘bad’ is considered in the context of all of nature’s abundance – that is, in the broad context of evolution – whatever ‘bad’ there is, is subsumed in the overall good world. As we noted above, the rabbis changed Isaiah’s ‘I make peace and create

Evolution Informs Jewish Views on Suffering and Death  129

evil’6 to ‘who creates all’ in the morning liturgy.7 They rejected the idea that evil and suffering are independent of and opposed to God’s providence. Rather, all finds its place in the overarching good world. It may help to know, too, that in a biological sense pain is good for you! Occasionally children are born with insensitivity to pain caused by a reduction in the number of pain-carrying fibres in peripheral nerves. You might think a pain-free life would be a blessing, but it is the opposite. These children have frequent injuries, mutilate themselves, and often develop skin and bone infections. They neglect their skin because they do not feel it. Why remove your fingers from the hot stove if it does not hurt? Without the warning that pain provides, they lead miserable lives.8 Pain evolved to keep us from damaging ourselves. When my knee hurts, I stop running. And the first question the doctor asks is ‘Where does it hurt?’, precisely because pain points to pathology. Pain is not the cruel whimsy of a malicious God, but a requirement for survival. Finally, even if you reject all these justifications, our inability to explain how suffering fits into a provident world is nothing new. It was a dilemma for Job over two millennia ago. His friends assumed that he suffered because he had done something wrong. Job rejected their glib answers and insisted emphatically that he was innocent of wrong. The Biblical tradition somehow accommodated Job’s attitude. It said, in effect, that creation is good even though suffering is a terrible price to pay for its processes and that not everything makes sense to us. ‘As the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways and My plans above your plans.’9 Suffering and even death are parts of this good world. Death

‘Who will live and who will die?’ we ask on the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement. ‘Who in his due time and who before?’10 From the perspective of biology, death is a programmed part of life. The foetal brain, for instance, generates about three times as many neurons as remain when we are born. The excess neurons that fail to connect properly with other neurons and those that do not receive appropriate sensory stimulation are pruned away. They die. ‘By the time I was born, more of me had died than survived’, said Thomas Lewis. ‘It was no wonder I cannot remember; during that time I went through brain after brain for nine months, finally contriving the one model that could be human, equipped for language.’11

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Programmed cell death such as this even has its own Greek name, ‘apoptosis’. It is because of apoptosis that leaves fall from trees and petals from flowers. Among the first things we do when admiring a newborn is to check out her fingers and toes – each so tiny, and shaped so carefully. We owe individual digits to apoptosis – fingers and toes would be webbed (syndactyly) if the cells that initially connect digits did not die in early foetal life. The ovary of a human female foetus at five months’ gestation contains some seven million germ cells. By birth, this has been whittled down to two million, and of those, just four hundred or so will be ovulated during any woman’s lifetime. ‘Most of the rest will be culled by apoptosis, which is ruthlessly eugenic, issuing strict orders to cells that are not perfect to commit suicide.’12 Just as cells are programmed to die, so are organisms as a whole – whether by oxidative damage, general wear and tear or genetically based aging programs. ‘The entire process unfolds as though part of a master plan, a grand strategy that oversees an organism’s development from early embryonic stages to the instant of mortality.’13 Each species has its own particular life span; when it comes to our own, the oftquoted Jewish saying, ‘May you live to 120’ seems to have it about right. Genetic evidence of a built-in clock that governs longevity is rapidly accumulating.14 We may soon be able to predict how long you or I will live by measuring the length of specialized pieces of DNA called telomeres. Telomeres are found at the ends of chromosomes and function rather like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces (they too have a special name – aglets – useful for Scrabble addicts). Telomeres protect the ends of chromosomes from processes that would otherwise wear them away. Researchers who measured telomere length early in life in a group of zebra finches found it to be strongly predictive of subsequent lifespan.15 Why should we be programmed to die? After all, cells in the germ line that are responsible for reproduction – eggs and sperm – maintain copies of themselves ad infinitum. Why cannot other types of cells keep reinventing themselves so that we live forever? One answer is that, ‘under the intense pressure of natural selection, species end up placing higher priority on investing in growth and reproduction – in the perpetuation of the species – than on building a body that might last forever’.16 Therefore, in evolution’s grand scheme the individual organism is expendable once past reproductive age. That is why we must die.

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Death in Biblical and Later Jewish Thought The Bible and subsequent Judaism are of two minds about death; one point of view is that death is punishment, the other that it is part of the natural order. After Adam disobeys God’s warning and eats of the tree of knowledge, God decrees: By the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat until you return to the ground – For from it you were taken. For [ki] dust you are, and to dust you shall return.17 Death here appears to be a punishment. This accords with the Talmudic saying, ‘There is no death without sin’ and with the assigning of sin to account for the deaths of Moses and Aaron.18 Despite this, however, another strain in Jewish tradition rejected death as punishment and, instead, like biology, laid stress on the inevitability of death. God’s statement to Adam cited above was interpreted to mean, ‘You must return to dust by your very nature.’19 The word ki (translated above as ‘for’) is instead taken to mean ‘inasmuch as’, so that the sentence reads: ‘ Inasmuch as you are dust, to dust you must return.’ In this reading, death is not a punishment. Rather, the sentence means that since man is created from the dust of the ground, it is natural that he must return to that state.20 Elsewhere God says, ‘My breath shall not abide in man forever, since he too is flesh; let the days allowed him be 120 years.’21 Ramban comments on this passage that, ‘Man, too, is flesh, just like all the flesh and blood beings that crawl upon the ground, among the birds, animals and beasts.’22 In other words, human beings live out their allotted lifespan and die in the same way as all other life. Ramban appears to consider death as the way human flesh and blood is constructed, rather than as punishment. Further support for this view of death comes from Ecclesiastes: A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven. A time for being born and a time for dying23 And the High Holy Day liturgy says explicitly, ‘Thou dost specify a life span for all of creation.’24 A prominent Jewish view, then, is that death is ‘a natural phenomenon that is part of the biological process’.25

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According to this reading, as in the examples cited above of order, species diversity and unique individuals, so now with respect to death, evolutionary science accords with the Biblical message. But we are not entirely done with death. Evolution also informs ancient questions about what happens after we die.

Sequelae of Death

Some passages in the Hebrew Bible hint at a belief in the afterlife, a return of the soul to God after death, a last judgement and a world to come. By the second century BCE, these ideas had been joined together so that Jews believed that after death they would be restored to life and would present themselves before God at a distant time – the end of days – to give account of their lives.26 The second blessing in the standing prayer (Amidah), referring to God’s power (Gevurah), dates from this period and blesses God who returns the dead to life.27 Somewhat later, Jewish sources tell us that human beings possess a soul that is separate from the physical body and never dies. Eventually these various doctrines were conflated so that at the end of time, God was expected to restore our immortal souls to our resurrected bodies.28 Evolution contributes to both these ideas. Resurrection We bless God (in the Amidah) for His ability to bring life to the dead. But how can inert remnants, decayed tissues, and destroyed enzyme systems be physically resurrected? A common answer has been to understand revival of life in a spiritual rather than in a physical sense, that what is revived is that which we represent, that for which we stand, rather than our physical selves. Instead of adding to this line of thought, let us look at a series of ways in which we might be able to entertain the idea of literal, physical resurrection. We are composed of constantly recirculating stardust. The Biblical ‘Dust thou art, to dust thou shalt return’ is literally true. For after we perish, the stardust of which we are composed, our atoms, once again become constituents of organic and inorganic matter. ‘Hydrogen inside us comes from the Big Bang. Other elements come from stars and supernovae and there they will return when the elements that compose us get spread around the universe by a future supernova.’29 We can each look forward, therefore, to a kind of atomic resurrection in which minute parts of us live forever.

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Another kind of physical resurrection is the transition from nonliving to living (Chapter 3). The ingredients that composed the initial chains of nucleotides that began life were inert, non-living. Life began when these inert chains self-replicated. The blessing over the resurrection of the dead (Gevurah) can be considered as praise to God for this momentous transition from non-living to living. And not only in the past. We praise Him for renewing life each day, from dead carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and phosphorous. Another possibility is to resurrect ourselves in the way Celia was resurrected. This is no longer sci-fi. Celia was the last of her species of goat unique to the Pyrenees in south-west Europe. But before she died, samples of her skin were stored. Embryos grown from these skin samples were implanted into domestic goats, and one of these embryos resulted in a newborn Pyrenean goat, although she lived for only a few minutes.30 So Celia lived on after death, however briefly. Perhaps one day we will be able to do the same with a bit of skin from grandpa. File away a fragment of him while he is still around and store it for later resurrection. Or, we might retrieve DNA from those long dead, and use it to resurrect whomever we want (the Jurassic Park option). Of course, in this scenario, we would be responsible for bringing the dead back to life, rather than any divinity. Even so, resurrection is resurrection, and God would deserve praise as responsible for the biological processes that make such resurrection possible. Then there’s the SSS – the Siberian salamander solution (Salamandrella keyserlingii) for reviving the dead. These little creatures, up to twelve centimetres in length, are known for surviving deep freezes down to -50ºF. One was found by a gold prospector in Siberia in a block of ice at a depth of nearly nine metres. On being thawed out by Russian biologists, the salamander is described as stirring, and then setting off for new adventures in the Arctic tundra. The biologists estimate that this modern-day Rip van Winkle had slept in the deep freeze for 90 years!31 Some scientists have contemplated doing the same thing with human beings via what is grandly termed ‘cryonics’. Entrepreneurs will gladly take your money to give you the privilege of this sort of resurrection.32 (Please do not mistake this for a recommendation!) In all of these ways, the concept of physical resurrection can be maintained and the literal-minded among us can recite the Gevurah prayer with conviction. Although perhaps we should keep in mind that if we were reassembled accurately, we would once again be vulnerable to the disease or infirmity that killed us in the first place!

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Soul

What happens to the concept of a soul in the world of evolutionary science?33 Dostoevsky’s Mitya Karamazov was in anguish over the threat to ‘soul’ from the science of his day: Imagine: inside in the nerves, in the head – that is, these nerves are there in the brain … (damn them!) there are sort of little tails, the little tails of those nerves, and as soon as they begin quivering … that is, you see, I look at something with my eyes and then they begin quivering, those little tails … and when they quiver, then an image appears … it doesn’t appear at once, but an instant, a second, passes … and then something like a moment appears; that is, not a moment – devil take the moment! – but an image; that is, an object, or an action, damn it! That’s why I see and then think, because of those tails, not at all because I’ve got a soul, and that I am sort of image and likeness. All that is nonsense! Rakitin explained it all to me yesterday, brother, and it simply bowled me over. It’s magnificent, Alyosha, this science! A new man’s arising – that I understand … And yet I am sorry to lose God.34 To understand the origins of Mitya’s anguish, we need to go back to the discoveries of the English physician, Thomas Willis, who published his epochal Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves in 1664. This work correlated his patients’ neurological maladies with the abnormalities found in their brains on post-mortem examination. Willis was the first to establish links between thinking, memory and personality – the sum total of which had been referred to as ‘soul’ by the Greeks – and the mechanical processes of our brain. As Carl Zimmer nicely puts it, with this discovery Willis had turned soul into flesh.35 Today, physicians do not have to wait until their patients die to see what is wrong with their brains. Every time we image the brain – whether by CT (computerized tomogram); MRI (magnetic resonance imaging); PET (positron emission tomography), or any other scanning process – we are in a sense continuing what Willis did: correlating changes in brain function with changes in its anatomy and physiology. As these observations become more sophisticated, it is increasingly obvious that language, reasoning, consciousness, perhaps even our moral sense – a good portion of what we think of when we say ‘soul’ – result from the mechanical workings of our brain, the extraordinary

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product of billions of years of nervous system evolution (Chapter 10). This makes a tremendous difference in how we understand ourselves. After Copernicus’ On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres was published in 1543, it had been hard enough for the western world to adjust to the reality that earth was not the centre of anything. Copernicus, it appeared, had displaced humanity from the centre, the zone of the sacred.36 But Copernicus’ findings were just a taste of what was to come, a century later, from Willis’ brain dissections. For Willis exposed the terrible truth that what we had referred to as our sacred soul was grounded in physical brain. To give up the idea that our earth is central in the universe was one thing, but to lose one’s soul was to lose something even more precious.37 Biblical man had been unaware of the brain’s contribution to human personality. The Biblical view was that man understood with his ear, experienced passion with his heart, and contained his innermost secrets in his stomach or in k’la’yot v’lev, kidneys and heart. Little progress in understanding what the brain did had been made by the time of Galen (born 130 AD) who maintained that four humours – phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile – were responsible for pleasure, passions and rational thought. Not until Willis’ correlation of behaviour with brain dissection in the seventeenth century did humanity become aware of what the brain was for. We have since discovered that we make sense of speech and all sound via the auditory cortex, the ear is just a point of entry. We experience passions via the brain’s limbic system, neither the heart nor bile has anything to do with it. Our innermost secrets and our sense of the past are buried in the folds of hippocampal memory, stomachs and kidneys are irrelevant.38 Instead of the four humours, the evolved neuronal networks in our cerebral cortex are the true basis of thought, language and memory. The brain’s neuronal interconnections account for just about all that makes us human, all that had previously been labelled as ‘soul’.39 But not quite all. Dostoyevsky’s Mitya, along with the rest of us who want to retain soul, can rest easy. The concept of soul remains relevant. To understand ‘soul’ we need to disentangle the notion from the Biblical Hebrew word neshama, which – though translated as ‘soul’ – retains a connection with the verb li’n’shom, to breathe. And we also need to disentangle the English ‘soul’ from anything that the brain does, from anything that an MRI scanner might reveal. Rather, as I see it, the English term ‘soul’ is an abstraction that stands for the idea that I am a sacred being in relation to my Maker, endowed with dignity.40 As ancient Jewish texts put it, ‘The soul is a divine “deposit”

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(piqqadon) given over to its human guardian for a time, but never actually the human’s possession.’41 What is given over to us as our soul is our potential for righteous behaviour, a potential bestowed on each of us by, of all things, evolution, for we are not merely a bundle of interconnected neurons that has achieved consciousness. We are members of an intended species in whom simple replicating chains of atoms have evolved over billions of years into intelligent creatures capable of altering our own future and that of our planet. This role calls on the best and the finest within us. This is our soul. Mitya Karamazov need not have worried. His brain may work by ‘little tails’, but as an intended partner with the Divine, capable of affecting the future of creation, he retains his soul. And so do we. Immortality

How does evolution affect Jewish views on immortality? Those of us blessed with children tend to speculate about who takes after whom in the family (my mother was an expert at this). Half of my child’s genome comes from me; one fourth of my grandchild’s genome is mine, and so on. Even those of us without issue will pass on genes via collateral descent, that is, from relatives who descend from a common ancestor through a different line. These relatives will pass on some of my genes, even if I do not. The genes are the immortals, or rather, they are defined as genetic entities which come close to deserving the title. We, the individual survival machines in the world, can expect to live a few more decades. But the genes in the world have a life expectancy which must be measured not in decades but in thousands and millions of years.42 Whether it be by direct or collateral descent, we have genes from our ancestors that go all the way back to ancient life billions of years ago. We, or our collateral relatives, will pass on certain of these rearranged genes into the future as part of the tree of DNA. In this genetic sense we are each immortal. On the other hand, once you consider it a while, the idea that you or I will live on as the individuals we are now, however enticing, does not work. Physical immortality is a non-starter. Consider what would happen were we to live forever, and new offspring continue to be born. Then – once the world contains as many human beings as it can sustain

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– any new individuals will require the death of someone who already exists. A blood bath is likely to result, a struggle for survival requiring existing members of our species to die to make room for newcomers.43 Be careful what you wish for. Another consideration: would we continue to age as our years on earth dragged on? If so, the majority of us would eventually become frail and sick. And if we did not age, but continued to stay alive, at what age would we plateau? A world of children would be unmanageable; a world of teenagers – God help us; a world of the middle-aged, quite dull. To live forever might be a depressing prospect, and it is biologically impossible, as we have discussed (Chapter 8.) To be sure, even though to live forever may be a biological impossibility, this has not stopped human beings in all generations from wishing for eternal life. Genesis deals with this in marvellous fashion. Tempted by the snake, Eve and Adam eat of the Tree of Knowledge with resulting complications. But they never eat of the Tree of Life.44 God declares, ‘What if he should stretch out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever! So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden.’45 We can eat of the Tree of Knowledge and know good from bad, but we will never be able to eat of the Tree of Life so as to live forever. Not only is immortality forbidden by God, it is incompatible with evolution. In all the above ways, evolution, the Bible and Judaism are in accord. We turn now to a final series of questions. How did human beings evolve (Chapter 10)? Is human moral behaviour an evolved trait and, if so, why do we need Torah’s teachings (Chapter 11)? Does the evolved human brain allow us free moral choice (Chapter 12)? Notes   1. F. Darwin and A.C. Seward (eds) More Letters of Charles Darwin (London: John Murray, 1903).   2. P. Kitcher, Living with Darwin: Evolution, Design and the Future of Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp.123–4.   3. Ibid., p.127.   4. D. Peterson, Moral Lives of Animals (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011), Ch.10; C.J. Torney, A. Berdahl and I.D. Couzin, ‘Signaling and the Evolution of Cooperative Foraging in Dynamic Environments’, PLoS Computational Biology 7, 9 (2011), e1002194.   5. Y. Blinder (ed.), The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary (Brooklyn: NY, Mesorah 2004), note 282, p.82 on Genesis 1:31.   6. Isaiah 45:7.   7. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.88.

138  Accord Between Evolutionary Science and Genesis   8. J. Aicardi, Diseases of the Nervous System in Childhood (London: MacKeith, 1992), pp.1121–6.   9. Isaiah 55:9 in The Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1980), p.520. 10. The Koren Rosh HaShana Mahzor (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 2013, 2nd edn), p.568. 11. T. Lewis, The Fragile Species (New York: Macmillan, 1992), p.18. 12. M. Ridley, Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in Twenty-Three Chapters (New York: Harper Collins, 2000), p.241. 13 S. Nuland, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (New York: Vintage, 1995), p.83. 14. S.F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), p.575. 15. A.M. Olovnikov, ‘Telomeres, Telomerase and Aging: Origin of the Theory’, Experimental Gerontology, 31 (1996), pp.443–8; B. Heidinger, N. Metcalfe, W. Boner, K. Griffiths, P. Monaghan, et al., ‘Telomere Length in Early Life Predicts Lifespan’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (9 January 2012). 16. T.B. Kirkwood, ‘Why Can’t We Live Forever’, Scientific American (September 2010), pp.29–39. M.B. Bonsall, ‘Longevity and Ageing: Appraising the Evolutionary Consequences of Growing Old’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, B, Biological Science, 361, 1465 (29 January 2006), pp.119–35. 17. Genesis 3:19. 18. TB: Shabbat, 55a, 55b. 19. Ramban, Commentary on the Torah, Genesis 2:17, p.108. 20. Death is common to human beings and animals, writes Ibn Ezra, ‘Like the death of one is the death of the other.’ He adds that this fact has been proven by one of the Greek physicians, possibly referring to Galen. Ramban, Commentary on the Torah, p.108, note 109. Similarly, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (the Netziv) interprets this verse to mean that ‘Death is natural because you are dust.’ Haemek Davar, referenced in Y. Kil, (ed.), Da’at Mikra on Sefer Bereishit (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1997), vol.1, daf peh vav [Hebrew]. 21. Genesis 6:3. 22. The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary, Genesis, p.165. 23. Ecclesiastes 3:1. 24. P. Birnbaum (trans), High Holyday Prayer Book (New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1951), p.361, additional prayer (mussaf). 25. J.B. Soloveitchik, The Emergence of Ethical Man (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav, 2005), p.12. 26. N. Gilman, The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997). The complex development of these doctrines in medieval and modern Jewish philosophy is fascinating but not directly relevant to our subject. 27. I. Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, A Comprehensive History, trans. R. Scheindlin (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society, 1993), pp.39–40. 28. Gilman, The Death of Death, Ch.10. 29. N. Shubin, The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People (New York: Random House, 2013), p.32. 30. C. Zimmer, ‘Bringing Them Back to Life’, National Geographic (May 2013), pp.28–41. You can see what Celia would have looked like by inspecting the mounted Pyrenean goat on display at the Grande Galérie de L’Evolution in Paris. 31. E. Potapov, ‘Survival in a Frozen World’, New Scientist, 139 (11 September 1993).

Evolution Informs Jewish Views on Suffering and Death  139 32. The ‘cryonics’ enthusiasts contemplate placing persons who cannot be treated with current medical procedures, and who have been declared legally dead, into lowtemperature storage. The hope is that technological progress will eventually make it possible to bring them back to life. J. Lemler, S.B. Harris, C. Platt and T. Huffman, ‘The Arrest of Biological Time as a Bridge to Engineered Negligible Senescence’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1019 (2004), pp.559–63. 33. The term ‘soul’ as used here refers to the spiritual or immaterial part of the human being. I will not attempt to define it further, or relate it to the Biblical terms neshamah and nefesh, whose meanings are difficult to pin down. The BrownDriver-Briggs Hebrew–English lexicon, for instance, gives ten meanings for the term nefesh, not including post-Biblical meanings! F. Brown, S. Driver and C. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2001). 34. F. Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. C.B. Garnett (New York: Modern Library, 1948), p.624. 35. C. Zimmer, Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain and How It Changed the World (New York: Free Press, 2004). 36. J. Repechek, Copernicus’ Secret (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007); D.B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), p.43. 37. David Shatz attempts to preserve a religious message in this materialist position. D. Shatz, ‘Judaism, Free Will, and the Genetic and Neuroscientific Revolutions’, in Y. Berger and D. Shatz (eds), Judaism, Science, and Moral Responsibility (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), pp.61–5. 38. Even though rational thought has nothing to do with kidneys or any organs other than brain, our emotions certainly are intertwined with other bodily organs. ‘Gut feeling’ is not just a saying. Emotions, triggered by the need to fight, flee or reproduce, cause the gut to churn, breath to pant, skin to sweat and become pale, and most obviously, the heart to pound and race – all in the service of survival and reproduction. It is obvious, therefore, why the heart was reputed to be a source of emotion. 39. F. Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994). 40. L. Kass, ‘Defending Human Dignity’, Commentary (December 2007), pp.53–6. 41. J. Kugel, The Great Poems of the Bible (New York: Free Press, 1999). 42. R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p.36. 43. This struggle for survival was first pointed out by Thomas Malthus in writings that paved the way for the ideas of Charles Darwin. J. Diamond, The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), p.122ff. 44. Jewish sources did not necessarily regard the Tree of Life as representing immortality. Rav Saadia Gaon referred to this tree as etz marpeh, or Tree of Healing, rather than meaning that one who ate from it would live forever. And le’olam (Genesis 3:22) may mean ‘for a long time’ rather than ‘forever’. Y. Kil (ed.), Da’at Mikra, Sefer Bereishit, on Genesis 2:9 (Jerusalem, Mossad Harav Kook, 1997), daf nun gimel [Hebrew]. 45. Genesis 3:22–3.

Part III Human Evolution and Moral Behaviour

10

How Human Beings Evolved

I

t is time to continue the story of evolution, cut short in Chapter 3, by describing how human beings came about. This merits a separate chapter because many people become nervous when the question of our own evolution is raised. Evolution is an acceptable idea when it applies to other species, but leave us out of it – as if we were somehow different, or special.1 Well, we are special, and it is evolution that has made us so. Evidence for Human Evolution

Beginnings are fascinating, and our own perhaps most of all. It has been 150 years since Darwin predicted that, as a result of his theory of natural selection, ‘light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’.2 And so it has turned out. Like it or not, we began as kin to earlier primates. Fossil Evidence The story of human evolution is favoured with such an abundance of fossil evidence that it is frequently hard to see the forest for the trees. Rather than a lack of evidence, it sometimes seems as if there is too much, a profusion of ancient primate skulls and skeletons vying for our attention, each with its own impossible-to-pronounce name and its own claim to glory as our direct ancestor.3 Simply put, what fossils tell us is that our extended primate family including monkeys, apes and ourselves descended from a group of otherwise insignificant mammals that had survived the destruction of the dinosaurs some 65 million years ago. New-world monkeys branched off from this group of mammals some 40 million years ago (mya); old world monkeys separated some 25 mya; gibbons at 18 mya and orang-utans at 14 mya. Human beings are estimated to have last shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5.6 to 8.3 mya. Forget the idea that there must be some sort of intermediate between chimps and ourselves;

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rather, chimps became modified from this last common ancestor in their unique way, and so did we. Intermediate species that lie between ourselves and this last common ancestor include Ardipithecus ramidus (Ardi means ground, pithecus means ape-like, and ramid means root) who lived about 4.4 mya; ‘Lucy’ (Australopithecus afarensis, southern ape from the Afar region of Africa), who emerged on the scene about a million years later (3.2 mya), and Australopithecus sediba, whose remains are being excavated near Johannesburg, South Africa.4 Examples of our own genus, no longer named pithecus or ape-like, but now homo or man-like, turn up for the first time some 1.8 mya. Compared to their forebears, these people, Homo erectus or ‘upright man’, had large brains, reduced teeth and jaws, and made extensive use of tools. All of these earlier ape-like, and later man-like family members of ours have died out. Only we remain, the sole survivors in our genus.5 Anatomically modern humans, indistinguishable from ourselves, came along about 200,000 years ago. Our genus, Homo, is characterized by larger skulls (our brain capacity is some three times that of our Australopithecine ancestors); by the skeletal changes that accompany upright posture and bipedal gait, and by evidence of ability to make tools. Homo neanderthalis (so named because specimens were first found in the Neander Valley in Germany) and Homo sapiens (ourselves) have been classed as two separate species, last sharing a common ancestor in Africa about 400,000 years ago. Our Neanderthal cousins migrated out of Africa, adapted to their new colder European climate, and eventually, for unknown reasons, died out some 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. They were not apes but rather a different kind of human, with stockier build and prominent brow ridges compared to ourselves, but our brains were about the same size. They, too, made sophisticated stone tools and at least occasionally buried their dead. In all, they may have been very much like ourselves, so much so that it may be best not to consider Neanderthals as extinct, but rather as surviving genetically in us. In fact, recent DNA analysis of Neanderthal remains indicates low but significant levels of interbreeding between the two species. Some of the trysts may have taken place in caves in the Carmel Mountains of Israel, just a ten-minute drive from our home!6 To summarize, numerous fossils mainly from Africa have documented the step-wise descent (or ascent) of our species from the last common ancestor that we share with chimpanzees. Molecular genetics now reinforces this fossil record.

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Genetic Evidence for the Evolution of Homo Sapiens We can now clarify the relationships among primates by precise measurements of their genetic sequences and no longer need rely exclusively on skeletal remains, external appearance, or cranial capacity.7 To cite just one example, the DNA segment that makes a (non-functional) so-called pseudo-gene for haemoglobin is quite similar in ourselves, chimps and other primates. In fact, when this gene is compared in humans and chimps, less than 2 per cent of the nucleotide base-pairs differ. An evolutionary tree that compares the DNA nucleotides of this pseudo-gene in different primate species shows that human beings and chimpanzees are each other’s closest relatives, and that the group including orang-utan, gibbon and gorilla, are less closely related to us.8 These two independent ways of establishing relationships – body shape (fossils) and genetic sequence – agree with, and thereby confirm one another. Genetic mutations that interfere with normal brain maturation provide another source of information about how humans evolved. (I cared for tragically impaired children with these kinds of mutations in my paediatric neurology practice; they have something to teach us all.) Children with primary microcephaly have small brains and have serious intellectual disabilities. This type of microcephaly is caused by a mutation in the Aspm gene that is essential for cell division.9 As adults, their brains weigh about a third the weight of a normal human adult brain, or about as much as the brain of our very early hominoid precursors of 2 to 2.5 million years ago. When the Aspm gene fails to function properly, the ability of neurons to divide comes to a halt, and the brain ceases to grow. Reasoning backwards, it may have been the activation of this gene in our remote ancestors that led to increased neuronal cell division and brain growth in the line leading to humans. In fact, retention of foetal neural stem cell division rates for a year or so after birth may be one of the critical steps on the way to our becoming human.10 Some children with severe inherited developmental language difficulty are unable to make certain high-speed facial movements needed for normal human speech, even though they possess the cognitive ability to process language.11 Those affected have mutations in a gene called FOXP2. The mutated FOXP2 in the brains of children who cannot speak may resemble the FOXP2 of pre-humans who had not yet evolved speech. Again reasoning backwards, it may have been the mutation that gave rise to FOXP2 in our ancestors that triggered their ability to speak.12

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Children born with a severe disorder of brain formation called lissencephaly, or ‘smooth brain’, have impaired intellectual development, suffer from seizures, and tend not to survive.13 Their brains show arrest of normal neuronal migration, and consequently the cortex of their brain looks like that of an intra-uterine foetus at week thirteen. This disorder has been traced to a stretch of 118 nucleotide bases in the human genome known as human accelerated region 1 (HAR1), a region that is also present in chickens and chimps. Whereas this region remained almost identical (only two base changes) in the 300 million years since chicken and chimp lineages diverged, it has undergone rapid change in the relatively short time (6 million years) since humans and chimps diverged from their last common ancestor. This suggests that changes in this particular region of the genome played a significant role in bringing about the massive increase in cerebral cortex that characterizes the human brain.14 Genetic clues such as these that begin to account for human brain development have all been discovered in the past few years. More can be expected in the future.15 But there is another source of evidence for human evolution that does not depend on finding fossils in Africa or on sophisticated genetic technology. It is as close as the baby’s bedroom. Evidence for Human Evolution from the Development of the Child’s Brain We can gain a general idea of how human brains evolved by paying attention to brain growth in the human foetus and child. When I was a first-year medical student, the brain’s anatomy just did not make sense. Why did temporal and fronto-parietal cortex surround underlying insular cortex? Why was there a multiple-level sensory and motor system? Why, as an instance of this, did the lateral geniculate body alongside the mid-brain receive an early stage of visual input, while the occipital cortex processed higher-level vision in the cerebral hemispheres? It took me a long time to appreciate that the progressive stages of foetal and infant brain growth – and the baby’s resulting increased visual responsiveness, language and motor skills – re-enact in many instances the evolution of our species. As each human foetus and infant grows, earlier brain structures, inherited from our mammalian ancestors, become overlain with exuberant expansion of new brain. It is this improvised system of step-by-step growth that accounts for much of the complexity of adult neuroanatomy. The dramatic burgeoning of cerebral cortex after birth accounts for most of the increased size

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of the human brain when compared with that of earlier primates. This growth is truly amazing. During the first six months after birth, the human visual cortex has been estimated to form 100,000 new synapses per second, and at maturity each human brain harbours some 100 trillion synaptic connections.16 It is this new cortex, massively developed in Homo sapiens, that is the last part of the brain to develop in each infant and child, just as it was the last addition to the human brain as our species evolved. It is what makes us human. The newborn’s brain is soft, and its surface relatively smooth, in part because the axons extending from its nerve cells are not yet completely insulated with myelin coverings. Some neurons have not yet reached their final destinations, and none has gained its full complement of interconnections. As the days go by in the nursery and playroom, the brain’s neurons differentiate and are pruned, axons myelinate and neurons increasingly interconnect. This goes hand in hand with – and enables – the fine and gross motor skills, language and complex thought of the maturing child. We do not walk until the cortico-spinal tract is ready for us to walk; we do not speak until areas related to speech in the neocortex have prepared the way; we do not remember until the hippocampus matures. Transient motor reflexes present in human newborns are other reminders of our primate origin. These reflexes are present at birth, but gradually disappear as the neocortex matures. They include grasp, root, suck and Moro reflexes. In the root reflex the normal infant turns her/his head and makes sucking movements in response to gentle touch at the side of her/his mouth or cheek. This helps a breast-fed human or other primate infant find the mother’s nipple. In the grasp reflex the infant will immediately grasp whatever is put into its palm or the sole of its foot. This is similar to the grasp reflex of other infant primates by means of which the infant holds on to her/his mother as she/he is carried about. In the Moro reflex, a startled infant spreads its arms wide, as though seeking support. When an infant of one of our primate ancestors lost its balance, this reflex might have helped it to embrace its mother and thereby regain its hold on her body.17 In human infants these neonatal reflexes serve as vivid reminders of our primate origins. To be sure, human brain evolution does not just add layers of brain tissue on to brains of earlier species. Our brains have changed, not simply grown larger. Olfactory bulbs have shrivelled compared with those of earlier mammals as we need olfaction – our sense of smell – much less than they did. Our cortical areas associated with movement

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and with initial reception of visual impulses are relatively small, while those areas that process complex visual information have expanded. And as you might imagine, human cortical areas involved with speech are much enlarged when compared with earlier primates.18 In many respects, however, brain ontogeny (the development of the foetal and infant brain) recapitulates human phylogeny (the evolutionary history of our species).19 To sum up, evidence from the fossil record, genetics and child brain development all bear witness to human evolution. We, like all other forms of life, have evolved from earlier forms. And yet we also know that our species is unlike all others. What makes us special? The answers will enable us to relate human evolution to religion in general and to Judaism in particular. Unique Aspects of Human Evolution

The Plastic Brain The pre-eminent difference between humans and other species – our vaunted intellectual capacity – is predicated on prolonged post-natal brain maturation. How does human brain tissue come to design an iPod, compose a string quartet, consider our place in the world or speak multiple languages? We can do all these things because the infant brain retains the rate of growth it had in utero for months after birth, thereby effectively extending the human gestation period from 9 months to 21 months, and more. In fact, the forebrain does not complete its myelination until the late teenage years and early twenties. This delay in completion has presumably evolved because it permits a degree of flexibility as the teenager begins to leave a safe home and enters the adult world.20 Prolonged post-natal brain maturation does not occur passively, but in relationship with its surrounding environment. Infant brains are not passive bystanders manipulated by genetic instructions. Rather, the interaction of babies with their environment literally shapes their growing brain. The brain, in a way of speaking, is therefore a ‘plastic’ organ – in the sense of alterable – especially so in the first years of life.21 Environmental input so alters the brain that its synapses, the connections between its neurons, are reorganized; unused synapses are pruned away, and useful ones are strengthened. Nature (genetic endowment) thereby interacts with nurture (environmental input) so that the neuronal architecture of each human brain is unique.22 An environment that fails to adequately stimulate the brain during critical

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periods, such as happened some years ago in Romanian orphanages, impairs the development of crucial brain structures including amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate, and orbital cortex.23 On the other hand, intensive training – as has been shown in performing music, reading, typing and juggling – increases the size of the engaged area of the brain.24 The right pre-central motor cortex, for example, that accounts for movements of the left hand, increases in size in string players.25 As we shall now see, human culture is founded on this plasticity. Plastic Human Brain and Human Culture Human brain evolution has forged a balance between various adaptive needs. On the one hand, a developing child in every culture requires specific complex skills in order to survive. On the other hand, these skills cannot be hard-wired into us when we are born, since that would make it impossible to adapt to differing environments. The child’s brain, for example, must be flexible enough so that they can develop the requisite skills for survival, whether born into a New Guinea hut, an Eskimo igloo, the Australian outback, or a Silicon Valley high-rise. This is why no particular adaptation can be ‘hard-wired’ into our brains by our genes. The ability to speak Inuit would not be of much use if we were born in New Guinea; the knack of throwing a boomerang would not help us to succeed in computer science. What evolution has done, therefore, is to hard-wire broad, generalizable abilities (the ability to speak any of a multitude of languages, the ability to make multiple kinds of fine-motor movements) while remaining flexible enough so that specific cultures can fill in the details (French, Japanese or Inuit; sewing, typing or making boomerangs). Broad, multi-purpose capabilities are inherited via our genome, while particular skills necessary in each culture are dependent on a flexible, plastic brain. On the one hand, the infant brain is programmed; on the other, it is a blank slate. Both statements are true. Thanks to brain plasticity, each human generation does not have to start over from scratch to develop its culture – to invent the required tools, to devise numerical and written systems, to learn how to obtain food and shelter, to learn how to get along with one another. The child can absorb its particular culture – which may have taken untold generations to develop – during the few years of extensive brain growth after birth. The Biblical instruction to ‘teach them [the commandments] diligently to your children and speak of them; when you sit in your home, when you walk on the way, when you lie down and when you

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rise up’,26 works because the child’s brain remains plastic and therefore teachable. Brain plasticity is what makes possible cultural transmission. This excursus into paediatric neurology sets the stage for us to discuss the evolution of moral behaviour in the next chapter. Before that, however, I will relate what we have learned about human evolution to the creation narrative in Genesis. First Humans – in Evolution and in Genesis

In 1868, a Monsieur Magnon discovered ancient human bones in a hole on his property in the Dordogne region of France. Since ‘Cro’ meant ‘hole’ in the local French dialect, the bones were called Cro-Magnon, meaning ‘from Mr Magnon’s hole’. Until recently, the first individuals thought to be like us, both anatomically and in their symbolic thought and skills, were these Cro-Magnons. About 40,000 years ago, in what has been called the ‘Great Leap Forward’, these hominids shared food at campsites, used fire imaginatively, carefully pursued their prey, made fine stone tools, used bone and antler to craft utensils and delicate needles, and fished with barbed harpoons. Perhaps the most telling indication that they were like us is the subtlety and feeling displayed in their cave paintings in southern France and Basque Spain. Caves in these regions are lined with multi-coloured paintings, primarily of large animals, done in masterful fashion and occasionally accompanied by geometric signs and human stick figures.27 Cognition like ours, however, may go back even further; and the beginnings of Homo sapiens may reach back 200,000 years. Human remains found at the southern tip of South Africa are said to date back some 164,000 years, and suggest that these individuals had knowledge of the phases of the moon, technical skill to make rock more useful by heating it, and artistic and aesthetic abilities as shown by the use of red ochre and decorative seashells.28 Even older is a tiny object, just a few centimetres high, found in the Golan Heights in Israel, that is reputed to be a female figurine dating back 230,000 years.29 More discoveries will tell us with greater certainty whether the first individuals very like ourselves date back 40,000 years, 200,000 years, or even more.30 One thing we do not know much about, and never will, is ancient man’s speech. We learn about ancient humans from artefacts they leave behind but speech vanishes, never to be heard again. Endocasts of fossil brains are not much help when it comes to deciding whether the brains they contained could support speech. In fact, even if we had an actual well-preserved brain from a past ancestor, rather than a cast of

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the inside of a fossil skull, we still could not infer very much about the individual’s ability to speak.31 This is because there is nothing about the number or density of neurons we might find in such a brain that would tell us what these neurons actually did. This means that we are forced to base conjecture about speech in our earliest ancestors on a few meagre clues. First, early humans had the same language-associated skeletal anatomy as modern individuals, including a hyoid bone. Second, the human FOXP2 speech-associated gene became fixed in the Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalis lineages by 260,000 years ago.32 This might mean that speech was then possible, although not necessarily present. It is from these scant indications, and from knowing that early humans had other cognitive skills (they made tools, cave drawings and adorned themselves) that most investigators conclude that the earliest representatives of our species could speak, and not just grunt. .

Scientific Knowledge about the First Humans Compared with Biblical Adam

Because Adam understands God’s verbal command to ‘be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it’,33 we can infer that he had receptive speech. Adam’s first act is to give names: ‘whatever the man called each living creature, that would be its name. And the man gave names to all the cattle and to the birds of the sky and to all the wild beasts’.34 Eve also speaks: ‘We may eat of the fruit of the other trees of the garden.’35 We conclude therefore that Adam and Eve were capable of fluent expressive speech, in accord with the anthropologists who conclude that the first evolved humans spoke as we do. But while scientific disciplines (linguistics, anthropology, genetics) have devoted immense efforts to understand when, why and how humans developed speech and language, Genesis’ concerns lie elsewhere. When Genesis tells us that man named each living creature, it hints that man gives each creature not only its name but also its place and significance. That is, Genesis assumes human speech and goes on from there. Its concern is with humanity’s relationship with the rest of the created world – on what humans do with their capacity for speech. This is what matters in later Judaism as well. Thus, the daily standing prayer (Amidah) begins ‘Oh Lord, open my lips, so that my mouth may declare Your praise’36 and ends with ‘My God, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from deceitful speech.’37 What matters to Genesis and later Judaism is not how language develops but how

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it is used. The changes in brain wiring or anatomy that enable speech and that so concern the anthropologists and linguists are not Genesis’ concern because, as we have said before, the Bible is religious rather than scientific teaching. After eating fruit from the forbidden tree, ‘the eyes of them both [Adam and Eve] were opened and they perceived that they were naked; and they sewed together fig leaves and made themselves loincloths’.38 This passage fits with what we know of early human psychological development in two ways. First, Genesis’ first couple became aware of themselves – ‘their eyes were opened’ – just as the Cro-Magnon humans who decorated caves in France and Spain with outlines of their own hands were self-aware. The red ochre pigments used by even earlier humans on the South African coast may indicate that self-awareness was present at the very inception of humanity. Their eyes too ‘were opened’. Second, the first couple sewed together fig leaves to cover their nudity, apparently because they were ashamed. Anthropologists tell us that humans cover their genitalia in all hunter-gatherer societies, tribes and civilizations – even in warm climates where clothing is not needed for warmth.39 Since covering up is a universal human trait it is likely to be an evolved tendency. The early human is self-aware both in Genesis and as described by human evolution. Adam faces death when he is warned by God that, ‘as for the tree of knowledge of good and bad, you must not eat of it; for as soon as you eat of it you shall die’.40 Adam weighs his options and death comes into the world. Ian Tattersall tells us that at an ancient burial site at Sungir, Russia, dated to 28,000 years ago, ‘each of the deceased was dressed in clothing onto which more than 3,000 ivory beads had been sewn; and experiments have shown that each bead had taken an hour to make. They also wore carved pendants, bracelets and shell necklaces … It is here that we have the most ancient incontrovertible evidence for the existence of religious experience.’41 The oldest known symbolic burial is at Shkul cave in Israel dating back to about 115,000 years ago. An early modern man was interred there clasping the lower jaw of a massive wild boar.42 The lesson, once again, is that Adam, the Bible’s prototypical human being, is similar to the earliest humans as described by anthropologists – both confront the significance of death. Anthropologists have found widespread evidence of violence in our human past, widespread cannibalism and skulls crushed by weapons that can only have been fashioned by other human beings.43 Many who study the disappearance of the Neanderthals have concluded that

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our ancestors, early Homo sapiens, exterminated them. Sadly, but in like manner, murder marks the rivalry of Cain and Abel, the first children born into the world: ‘Cain set upon his brother Abel and killed him.’44 In sum, findings from anthropology and from Genesis provide a matching picture of early humanity’s language, self-awareness, shame, consciousness of death and violent behaviour. WHAT IS MAN?

Genesis adds something missing from the evolutionary account. Genesis tells us that ‘God created man in His image’45 – hence human gravitas and dignity. Evolution, however, does not see humanity as in God’s image. The conventional view of evolution has been that we are no more or less than the end product of a series of contingent processes and therefore possessed of no more gravitas or dignity than adheres to bacteria or bromelia, barn owls or bumblebees. All that separates me from my closest animal relative, the chimpanzee, are genetic switches in my embryo. Contrast this with Genesis in which human dignity comes about by conceiving each of us as intended creatures with purpose. In this Biblically modified view of evolution, the altered genetic switches in our embryos create a singularity, the only species able and expected to strive for righteousness (see Chapter 6). But even if you don’t accept this Biblically modified reading of evolution, however, there is another answer that evolution makes to the psalmist’s question, ‘What is man?’46 Evolution’s answer is that we are intimately related to the rest of creation. Our bodies are fleeting congeries of atoms formed in the stars, temporary integrations whose atoms recycle endlessly. Our enzyme systems, cellular processes and DNA, our skin and bones, are all related to similar systems in other forms of life. That is why findings from research on mice can be used to treat humans; why the study of bacteria teaches us about mitochondrial disease in children; and why insights into human cognition come from studying the behaviour of other primates. ‘What is man?’ The answer from evolution is that humankind, for all the intelligence provided by our enlarged cerebral cortex, remains an integral part of the cosmos and of all life. Evolution teaches that all life is one family, and that all existence is one set of physical laws and constants. This sounds familiar because it has been stated long ago: ‘The Lord our God; the Lord is one.’47 The Hebrew word translated ‘Lord’ is YHVH which can be understood as ‘existence’ – that is, existence is one. In this sense, evolution is as Jewish a concept as could be!

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The study of evolution leads to the conclusion that Homo sapiens is at one with all of life and all of existence. Genesis and later Judaism emphasize that human beings are the capstone of creation, even its purpose, meant to pursue righteousness. Both are correct.

Notes   1. Islamic thinking, for instance, has great difficulty accepting human evolution. Naguib Mahfouz, one of the first significant novelists writing in Arabic, and winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature, criticized such attitudes through the character of Ahmad Abd’ al-Jawad, who reproves his youngest son, Kamal, for promoting Dar winism in a literary journal. ‘If man’s origin was an ape or any other animal, Adam was not the father of mankind. This is nothing but blatant atheism. It’s an outrageous attack on the exalted status of God … You can rely on a fact that is beyond doubt: God created Adam from dust, and Adam is the father of mankind.’ Quoted in Uriya Shavit, ‘Islamotopia: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Idea of Democracy’, Azure, 46 (Autumn 2011), p.52. A contemporary Islamic scholar states, ‘As for the claim that man has evolved from a non-human species, this is unbelief (kufr), no matter if we ascribe the process to Allah or to “nature”, because it negates the truth of Adam’s special creation that Allah has revealed in the Qur’an. Man is of special origin.’ In Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, ‘Islam and Evolution: a letter to Suleman Ali’ (1996), http:// www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/evolve.htm.   2. C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (New York: Gramercy, 1979 [London: John Murray, 1859]), p.458.   3. J.M. Allman, Evolving Brains, Scientific American Library (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1999); J.S. Allen, The Lives of the Brain: Human Evolution and the Organ of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009); B.K. Hall and B. Halgrimsson, Strickberger’s Evolution (Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett, 2008), p.532; J. Shreeve, ‘The Evolutionary Road’, National Geographic (August 2010), pp.35–67. A few words on names may be helpful in what follows. The biological system of classification is based on that of the Swedish naturalist, Carolus Linnaeus. It assigns each species a two-part Latinized name such as Canus lupus for the grey wolf; Canus is the genus that includes both wolves and dogs, and lupus is the species. In the same way, Australopithecus afarensis refers to the southern ape: the genus name Australo means southern, pithecus means ape-like, and afarensis is the species name, in this case indicating from the Afar region of Africa. Species that are closest to us are grouped together in the genus Homo. We label ourselves Homo, man-like, and sapiens, wise.   4. L.R. Berger et al., ‘Australopithecus sediba; A New Species of Homo-like Australopith from South Africa’, Science (9 April 2010), pp.195–204; K. Wong, ‘First of Our Kind’, Scientific American (April 2012), pp.21–9.   5. Since the late nineteenth century, researchers have known that two species of Homo, H. Neanderthal and H. Sapiens coexisted during the later part of the last ice age. In 2003, bones of a dwarfed third species, Homo floresiensis, were discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia: P. Brown, T. Sutikna, M.J. Morwood, R.P. Soejono, Jatmiko, E. Wayhu Saptomo and Rokus Awe Due, ‘A New Small-bodied Hominin from the Late Pleistocene of Flores, Indonesia’,

How Human Beings Evolved  155 Nature (27 October 2004), pp.1055–61. Two molar teeth and DNA from part of a finger bone that were found in Denisova cave in Siberia suggests a fourth close human relative, also extinct: J. Krause, Q. Fu, J.M. Good, B. Viola, M. Shunkov, A. Derevianko and S. Paabo, ‘The Complete Mitochondrial DNA Genome of an Unknown Hominin from Southern Siberia’, Nature (8 April 2010), pp.894–7. See also J. Shreeve, ‘The Case of the Missing Ancestor’, National Geographic (July 2013), pp.90–101; C. Stringer, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth (New York: Times Books, 2012). Five skulls assigned to our genus Homo and dated to 1.8 mya have been discovered in Dmanisi, Georgia. Despite their wide variation in shape the authors classify all these skulls as examples of Homo erectus. They postulate further that fossil skulls from Africa currently classified as Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis are not separate species but belong instead to the evolving lineage of Homo erectus (D. Lordkipanidze, M.S. Ponce de Leon, A. Margvelashvili, Y. Rak, G.P. Rightmire, et al., ‘A Complete Skull from Dmanisi, Georgia, and the Evolutionary Biology of Early Homo’, Science [18 October 2013], pp.326–31).   6. K. Wong, ‘Twilight of the Neanderthals’, Scientific American (August 2009), pp.34–9; R.E. Green, J. Krause, A. Briggs, T. Maricic, U. Stenzel, et al., ‘A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome’, Science, 328, 5979 (7 May 2010), pp.710–22; M. Shermer, ‘Our Neandertal Brethren’, Scientific American (August 2010), p.22; E. Kolbert, ‘Sleeping with the Enemy: What Happened Between the Neandertals and Us’, New Yorker Magazine (15 August 2011).   7. S.B. Carrol, ‘Genetics and the Making of Homo sapiens’, Nature, 422 (April 2003), pp.849–57.   8. D. Futuyma, Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005) pp.28–30.   9. C.G. Woods, J. Bond and W. Enard, ‘Autosomal Recessive Primary Microcephaly (MCPH): A Review of Clinical, Molecular, and Evolutionary Findings’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 76, 5 (May 2005), pp.717–28. 10. K.S. Pollard, ‘What Makes Us Human?’, Scientific American (May 2009), pp.32–7; S.F. Gilbert, Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000), p.394; D.R. Kornack and P. Rakic, ‘Changes in Cell-cycle Kinetics During the Development and Evolution of Primate Neocortex’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 95 (1998), pp.1242–6. 11. E. Spiteri, G. Knopka, G. Coppola, et al., ‘Identification of the Transcriptional Targets of FOXP2, a Gene Linked to Speech and Language in Developing Human Brain’, American Journal of Human Genetics, 81, 6 (December 2007), pp.1144– 57. 12. W. Enard, S. Gehre, K. Hammerschmidt, et al., ‘A Humanized Version of F0XP2 Affects Cortico-Basal Ganglia Circuits in Mice’, Cell, 137, 5 (29 May 2009), pp.961–71. 13. J. Aicardi, Diseases of the Nervous System in Childhood (London: MacKeith, 1992), pp.151–3. 14. Pollard, ‘What Makes Us Human’, pp.32–7. See also, The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, ‘Initial Sequence of the Chimpanzee Genome and Comparison with the Human Genome’, Nature, 437 (1 September 2005), pp.69– 87. 15. D.H. Geschwind and G. Konopka, ‘Neuroscience: Genes and Human Brain Evolution’, Nature, 486 (28 June 2012), pp.481–2. An additional mechanism to account for human brain evolution is gene duplication. One such duplication may have given rise to a gene that contributed to larger and more adaptable brains.

156  Human Evolution and Moral Behaviour 16. P. Huttenlocher, Neural Plasticity: The Effects of Environment on the Development of the Cerebral Cortex (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), p.47. 17. J. Volpe, Neurology of the Newborn (Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders, 2001), p.115. 18. Allen, The Lives of the Brain, Ch.4. 19. S.J. Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977). 20. D. Dobbs, ‘Teenage Brains’, National Geographic, 220, 4 (October 2001), pp.55– 9; R.D. Fields, ‘Myelination: An Overlooked Mechanism of Synaptic Plasticity’, Neuroscientist, 11, 6 (December 2005). 21. M.V. Johnston, ‘Brain Plasticity in Paediatric Neurology’, European Journal of Paediatric Neurology, 7 (2003), pp.105–13. 22. E.B. Keverne and J.P. Curley, ‘Epigenetics, Brain Evolution and Behaviour’, Frontiers of Neuroendocrinology (2008), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ pubmed/18439660. 23. H.T. Chugani, ‘Fine-tuning the Baby Brain’ (1 July 2004), The Dana Foundation, on-line publication. 24. Allen, Lives of the Brain, p.120ff. 25. T. Elbert, C. Pantev, C. Weinbruch and B. Rockstroh, ‘Increased Cortical Representation of the Fingers of the Left Hand in String Players’, Science, 270 (1995), pp.305–7. 26. Deuteronomy 6:7. 27. I. Tattersall, Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness (New York: Harcourt, 1998); K. Wong, ‘The Making of the Modern Mind’, Scientific American (June 2005). Beautiful photographs of these paintings can be found in A. Leroi-Gourhan, Treasures of Prehistoric Art (New York: Harry Abrams, 1967). 28. J. Schwarz, ‘Earliest Evidence for Modern Human Behavior Found in South African Cave’, Science (17 October 2007); C. Marean, ‘When the Sea Saved Humanity’, Scientific American (August 2010), pp.40–7; C. Henshilwood, F. d’Erico, et al., ‘Middle Stone Age Shell Beads from South Africa’, Science, 304 (2004), p.404. 29. G. Goren-Inbar and S. Peltz, ‘Additional Remarks on the Berekhat Ram Figure’, Rock Art Research, 12 (1995), pp.1131–2. 30. Stringer, Lone Survivors, p.206, for evidence for dating first humans to about 200,000 years ago. 31. Allen, The Lives of the Brain, p.254. 32. Krause et al., ‘The Derived FOXP2 Variant of Modern Humans Was Shared with Neanderthals’. 33. Genesis 1:28. 34. Genesis 2:19–20. 35. Genesis 3:2. 36. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.108. 37. Koren Siddur, p.134. 38. Genesis 3:7. 39. S. Pinker, Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002), Appendix, p.439. 40. Genesis 2:17 41. Tattersall, Becoming Human, p.11. See also W. van Huyssteen, ‘Human Origins and Religious Awareness: In Search of Human Uniqueness’, Studia Theologica, 59, 2 (December 2005), pp.104–28.

How Human Beings Evolved  157 42. Stringer, Lone Survivors, p.130. 43. T. White, ‘Once Were Cannibals’, Scientific American (August 2001), pp.58–65. 44. Genesis 4:8. 45. Genesis 1:27. 46. Psalms 8:5. 47. Deut. 6:4 in The Jerusalem Bible (Jerusalem: Koren Publishers, 1980), p.218.

11

The Evolution of Moral Behaviour Natural Innate Morality in Judaism

H

uman moral behaviour, heretofore the exclusive province of religion, is now informed by insights from human evolution. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein points out the inability of the Jewish legal system to cover all moral bases. ‘If we mean that everything can be looked up, every moral dilemma resolved by reference to code or canon, the notion is both palpably naïve and patently false … Who has not found that the fulfillment of explicit halakhic duty could fall well short of exhausting clearly felt moral responsibility?’1 Somehow, in many situations, we feel the right thing to do in our kishkes (guts). We intuit how we should behave, even if the situation is not covered by Jewish law. Abraham’s innate sense of justice impelled him to ask: ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?’2 His question presupposes the existence of a moral standard that precedes Sinai and to which he can appeal. How else could he know that God should be just? Job somehow knows that the world should be just and that he should not be made to suffer without due cause. This awareness, foreign to the preaching of his visitors, is based on his gut feeling that the world should be fair. Whence this innate feeling? Two textual sources provide clues. The Midrash tells us ‘Derech eretz (civility) preceded Torah.’3 In context, this refers to chronological priority.4 In human history, innate moral behaviour preceded Jewish law, not the other way around. Secondly, according to Rav Saadia Gaon, humanity would have eventually discovered the bulk of the revealed Torah by the use of reason – given sufficient time, ability and interest.5 Why then was it necessary for the Torah to be revealed? Saadia answers that without revelation, humanity would have been without proper behavioural guidelines for a considerable time, and that many of us would never have

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established these guidelines for ourselves because of inability, doubts and confusion.6 In similar fashion, Immanuel Kant concluded his Critique of Practical Reason (1788) with these words: ‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’7 The questions asked by Abraham and Job and the comments found in Midrash, Saadia and Kant all assume innate morality. In Chapter 2 we discussed how Kant’s starry sky evolved. Now we will turn to the moral law within. Natural Morality Originates in Human Evolution

Much of our behaviour, not just our physical traits, is under genetic control. It’s obvious that teeth erupt according to a precise timetable – permanent upper central incisors appear at age 7 to 8 years, lateral incisors at 8 to 9 years, canines at 11 to 12 years, first premolars at 10 to 11 years, and third molars – presumptuously called ‘wisdom teeth’ – at 17 to 21 years. Nothing that we do brings this sequence about, it is programmed for us by our genes. Similarly, the infant’s motor sequence of sitting, standing, walking and fine-motor skills unfolds at predictable times. Also under genetic control are the child’s developing visual-perceptual-motor abilities. My wife, a clinical psychologist, can unerringly tell a child’s age within a few months if I show her a picture of a person that the child has drawn. This ability to draw a person, like ‘learning’ to walk, is heavily based on brain maturation rather than what the child has been taught. Many cognitive psychologists take this several steps further and propose that just as genetics controls the timing of tooth eruption, motor skills or the ability to draw a person, so the progressive stages in reasoning, language acquisition and even moral behaviour are based on genetically controlled neural networks.8 Similarly, what we call good or evil behaviour is strongly influenced by the quotient of empathy with which we are endowed genetically. Specific heritable genes have been identified that affect known brain areas and that interact with early environmental input to determine how much empathy you or I will have. In consequence, Simon BaronCohen proposes doing away with the term ‘evil’ as it is applied to persons and replacing it with those who suffer ‘empathy erosion’. In his view ‘people said to be evil or cruel are simply at one extreme of the empathy spectrum’.9 Evil death-camp sadists become ‘empathetically

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challenged’, while others of us gifted with an abundance of empathy become psychotherapists or Raoul Wallenberg.10 The choice, according to this scenario, is made for us by our genes. Stages of Moral Development in Children If there is an evolved genetic basis for moral behaviour, we would expect it to unfold in successive stages that are similar from one individual to another and from one society to another. Cognitive psychologists claim to have found such stages. In Kohlberg’s scheme, the earliest stage of moral behaviour in the young child focuses on the direct personal consequences of an action.11 An action is perceived as morally wrong because the perpetrator is punished: ‘The last time I did that, I got spanked, so I will not do it again.’ The next stage is driven by self-interest. This is the ‘What’s in it for me?’ position, in which correct behaviour is defined by whatever is in the individual’s best interest. As a result, concern for others is not based on loyalty or intrinsic respect, but rather on ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.’ A further stage is driven by interpersonal accord and conformity. Individuals try to be a ‘good boy’ or ‘good girl’ to live up to social expectations. The morality of an action is judged by its consequences in personal relationships. ‘I want to be liked and thought well of. Apparently, not being naughty makes people like me.’ Still further along is a stage driven by authority and social order. Individuals obey laws, dictums and social conventions because of their importance in maintaining a functioning society. As you might expect, not everyone agrees on what constitutes a given stage in moral development. Carol Gilligan, for instance, took issue with Kohlberg’s analysis, and emphasized women’s greater concern about interpersonal relationships.12 The precise ways in which these stages are delineated, however, are not my concern here. My point is rather that successive and predictable stages of moral growth apparently do exist, analogous to teeth eruption, and consistent with the idea that moral behaviour is an evolved human trait programmed by genes.13 Apparently Moral, Altruistic and Empathetic Behaviours in the ‘Lower’ Animals14 If moral behaviour has anything to do with evolution, its rudiments should be found in lower animals – and they are. After Herbert Spencer coined the phrase ‘survival of the fittest’ in the mid-nineteenth century, evolution became identified with ruthless

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competition. He might, however, with equal justification have described evolution as ‘survival of the most cooperative’, for cooperation is likely to contribute as much to survival as does competition. Examples of cooperation are found in many species. African wild dogs hunt in packs, with each member playing its role in methodical, coordinated attacks. The increased chances of a successful hunt when the pack cooperates makes up for the smaller share of meat that each hunter eventually will receive. Cooperation helps survival.15 In many species of birds and in several mammals and fishes, the young are reared not only by their parents but also by other caregivers. Young, unmated male pied kingfishers, for instance, help raise the young of other unrelated birds in what is called ‘cooperative breeding’.16 As is well known, social insects (wasps, bees, ants) have evolved a cooperative society in which sterile workers (females) rear the offspring of others who reproduce. Impalas groom one another in reciprocal fashion. One animal turns to another and delivers six to twelve parasite-removing tongue licks and tooth-scrapes to the chosen partner’s head or neck. The other impala reciprocates, and so it goes for six to twelve bouts per session. I lick you and you lick me. Somehow, these impalas keep score of how many licks each has provided the other, since cheating impalas would undermine the whole system.17 Many species help, give care, or provide relief to distressed or endangered individuals of their group other than their own progeny. For instance, in what appears to be behaviour akin to human empathy, groups of whales and dolphins occasionally beach themselves, apparently because of their reluctance to abandon a distressed member of their group.18 Ground squirrels in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Northern California who are under regular attack from weasels, badgers, coyotes and winged predators, avoid danger by hiding or escaping down into their burrows. Their chances of survival increase when one squirrel (usually female) gives an alarm call. Alas, the squirrel that raises the alarm takes a significant risk and is several times more likely to be stalked or chased by the predator. The evolution of such self-sacrifice in squirrels apparently stems from benefit to the group as a whole.19 Is this an example of animal altruism? Chimpanzees at the Yerkes Primate Research Center in Atlanta were presented with two different coloured tokens. One was a ‘selfish’ token that resulted in reward only for the acting chimp, and the other

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a ‘pro-social’ token that rewarded both the acting chimp and a partner. Seven chimps showed a significant bias for the pro-social option. If they were motivated only by their own selfish interests, why did these seven chimps choose a token that rewarded others?20 These examples of animal behaviour appear to be closely related to human altruism or empathy, and are consistent with a biological basis for both.21 Why should Animal Pro-social Behaviour and Human Altruism have Evolved? On the face of it, the existence of altruism would seem to run counter to the logic of evolution. After all, altruistic behaviour means that I have less and the other individual has more, and so I have less chance to survive. Therefore, whatever genetic basis there is for altruism or for cooperative behaviour should gradually give way to genes for selfishness. So why does altruism and cooperative behaviour persist? One reason is called direct reciprocity. That is, in the vampire bat example just cited, when the day comes that the generous, sharing bat finds itself in need of food, the bat it helped earlier is likely to return the favour. Another way in which cooperation may have evolved is called group selection. Humans have always lived in groups that compete with one another for territory and goods. Groups whose individuals work together cooperatively and sacrifice for the common good will be favoured in competition with groups whose individuals are selfish. Put another way, those groups with more individuals possessing genes for cooperative behaviour will out-compete groups whose individuals lack such genes. At the level of the group, nature selects for cooperative and altruistic behaviours. Therefore, these ‘good’ behaviours persist. On the other hand, selfishness, cowardice and unethical competitiveness – the human traits we call ‘bad’ – are thought to stem from selection within the group. The most selfish individuals inside the group tend to have more of what it takes to survive – better nutrition, better housing – and over generations will tend to pass on more of their genes than those who are less selfish. Hence, at the level of the individual, selection favours selfish behaviour. Taken far enough, however, extreme selfishness would lead to dissolution of the group. The genes that contribute to group success – those associated with altruism and cooperation – are in opposition to the genes that make for

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individual success, those associated with selfishness. Because nature selects at both the group and the individual level, we are endowed with both kinds of genes, and these remain in tension with each other. This dual endowment gives us the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances. When the group as a whole is challenged we depend on cooperative and altruistic genes. On the other hand, when I as an individual am challenged, I will be wise to look out for myself alone.22 De Waal has concluded from animal studies that much of human moral behaviour – not only altruism, but empathy, cooperation, and a sense of fairness – stems from these evolved traits.23 The thrust of all this is that, at least according to the biologists and evolutionary psychologists, there is no necessity to learn altruistic and ethical behaviour from divine teachings. It is instinctive. The Emotions that Underlie much of Behaviour have Evolved An amoeba shows a kind of primeval fear – when it is touched, it withdraws. Fast-forward a few billion years to our human ancestors in the African savannah. Without fear, they would not have backed away from the precipice ahead or fled from the lion’s roar. Fear is necessary for survival. So is aggression; without it, hunters will not chase wild beasts for supper and there is no one to fight off other predating groups. And obviously the emotions tied to the sexual urge are needed for survival – without it, the story of life is over. The newborn screams when she is hungry because of a reflex response initiated by her hypothalamus. If infants had to be taught to signal their need for food, few would survive. My point is that emotions of fear, aggression, hunger and attraction to the opposite sex were preserved and elaborated in evolution because they were needed for survival and reproduction. Being so basic, these emotions are deeply wired into ancient parts of our brains and do not need to be taught. To the extent (and it is a major contribution) that moral behaviours are based on emotion, to that extent they have evolved. Do not think that emotions are of no consequence in moral decisionmaking; that such decisions are made in the cool, deliberative parts of our frontal lobes where emotion is denied access. It appears that emotions contribute heavily to so-called rational choice. Neurologist Antonio Damasio has found that emotions play crucial roles in how we decide between various logical options.24 What we might think of as rational ethical choices are strongly influenced by wired-in emotions that have evolved from antecedent species.

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Moral Choice has a Physical Basis in the Human Brain If the tendency to moral behaviour is an evolved trait, then the wiring for it should reside somewhere in our brain. So where is it? The relation of brain to behaviour is vividly demonstrated by a display in the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School. Therein lies the skull of Phineas Gage, an upstanding mid-nineteenth century New Hampshire railroad worker – that is, until his skull and brain were pierced by a long tamping iron (also on display) driven into his head by an explosion.25 Gage somehow survived the event, but his personality was forever altered. His friends said, ‘Gage was no longer Gage.’ He became impulsive, lacked normal inhibitions, swore, was sexually inappropriate and engaged in immoral behaviour. Later reconstruction of this accident localized the area of Gage’s brain damage to the medial and orbital regions of the left prefrontal cortex: damage to this area of the brain was responsible for Gage’s altered behaviour.26 Thanks to neuroimaging studies, we no longer have to depend on dramatic neurological lesions, such as Gage’s, to learn about brain function. Positron emission tomography, functional magnetic resonance imaging and other procedures, now can localize reasoning, language and even ethical decision-making to precise areas of the brain. Obviously, when it touches these weighty topics, neuroscience intrudes into religion’s space. For this reason S.J. Gould’s attempt to assign completely separate realms to science and religion frequently fails. His ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ do in fact ‘overlap’.27 I will describe one proposed model of the neurological basis of moral decisions with a vignette. Sofia (my granddaughter) sees that Zach (her younger brother) has fallen and hurt himself, and hears him bawling. Multiple parts of her brain are aroused. Visual input is routed to the area around her superior temporal sulcus and to her ‘mirror’ neurons, both involved in social cues.28 Input from these areas links via multiple interconnections to the ancient limbic system (hypothalamus, cingulate gyrus, and other regions) in which the states of anxiety and attachment are located. Limbic activation eventuates in a feeling of compassion and this input is in turn routed to the more recently evolved pre-frontal cortex. There it is evaluated in the context of the entire situation, including past experience of similar events, what we may have learned about how we should respond, as well as the anticipated consequences of any response. Sofia’s pre-frontal cortex then makes the final decision – to comfort Zach or not. A listing of the brain structures29 involved in her decision would include: the pre-frontal cortex, which integrates sensory input and contextualizes this in a given

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situation, places items in sequence and is involved in decision-making and in thinking about the future. The superior temporal sulcus, which evaluates the perception of social cues such as facial expression, gaze, body posture and gestures. Finally, the limbic system, hypothalamus and brainstem, which add what are called ‘central motive states’ such as sexual arousal, social attachment, hunger and aggression.30 Although these details of neurological wiring may or may not standup to future study, what will endure is the conclusion that moral decisions do not come out of the air.31 They are not ethereal. They are based on wired-in neurological systems that evolved from earlier species. The Universality of Moral Behaviour The final source of evidence that we will cite for the evolution of moral behaviour is that many moral behaviours and attitudes are shared by all societies. These include distinguishing right from wrong and bad from good, the presence of empathy and the concept of fairness. All cultures sanction crimes, proscribe some forms of violence, and redress wrongs. The fact that these behaviours and attitudes are universal, found in all human beings and across all cultural divisions, is consistent with their being components of an evolved, species-wide neural program, rather than being learned behaviour specific to a particular culture.32 When evidence from all these sources is combined, moral behaviour is found to have a biological, evolved basis. If so, why do we need religious teaching? Biological Explanations for Moral Behaviour Threaten the ‘Transcendental’ Account33

The transcendental view is that the chain of causation runs downward from on high; transcendental is defined as extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience. In Judaism, this takes the form of halakha revealed by God to Moses at Sinai. Moral imperatives from on high are elaborated through laws and inculcated via education, and the individual then chooses whether to obey the command from above, or not. By contrast, the empirical claim, defined as relying on or derived from observation or experiment, denies the transcendental origin of moral imperatives, and maintains that the chain of causation begins from below, with evolved human instincts. Moral behaviour, as it were, bubbles up from human biology. Even though evolved instincts may eventually become sacralized by society (and their origins ascribed

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to God), and even though they are considered to be divine law, the actual basis for moral behaviour is, in the empirical view, based on instinct and practical experience. ‘Ethical precepts are very unlikely to be ethereal messages awaiting revelation, or independent truths vibrating in a nonmaterial dimension of mind. They are more likely to be products of the brain and culture.’34 The problem that this poses for religiously mandated ethical behaviour is that transcendentally based moral codes such as Torah are rendered redundant. E.O. Wilson maintains that The individual … is predisposed biologically to make certain choices. By cultural evolution some of the choices are hardened into precepts, then laws, and if the predisposition or coercion is strong enough, a belief in the command of God or the natural order of the universe. The general empiricist principle takes this form: strong innate feeling and historical experience cause certain actions to be preferred; we have experienced them, and weighed their consequences, and agree to conform to codes that express them.35 In this empirical view, God becomes a figurehead. He and His Biblical teaching are trotted out periodically to keep those who believe in such things in line, but for the rest of us, He and His teachings are an irrelevant relic. I disagree; empiricist codes based on evolved morality are unlikely to replace transcendental codes. This is why. Can Evolved Morality Replace the Bible as a Source of Moral Guidance? The answer is ‘No’, for several reasons. Evolved tendencies that influence us toward one or another ethical behaviour can only give us general guidelines. They cannot serve as a basis for particular moral decisions in the here and now. Will science ‘produce a set of absolute rules, applicable for all times in all places? No. Will it provide an algorithm for solving specific moral questions, such as whether stem-cell research is morally acceptable? No. Will it constitute an unquestioned authority of what is right? Not this either.’36 Evolution provides only a ‘neural platform’, to use Churchland’s term, not a precise handbook, and cannot answer the vast majority of moral questions.37 Secondly, evolution is a frail reed on which to depend for moral guidance because it does not limit itself to passing on tendencies toward moral behaviour – it passes on immoral tendencies as well. Included

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in animal behaviour, for example, are what in human society would be termed murder, rape, cannibalism, infanticide, theft, deception, torture, genocide and pure selfishness. ‘Ground squirrels routinely eat baby ground squirrels; mallard drakes routinely drown ducks during gang rape; parasitic wasps routinely eat their victims alive from the inside; chimpanzees – our nearest relatives – routinely pursue gang warfare.’38 What bubbles up from below includes some things we’d rather stay down there! Yes, it appears to be likely that evolution passed at least some aspects of our moral behaviour down to us from the ‘lower’ animals that preceded us. But evolution passed on these dreadful tendencies too. Since we have innate natural immorality, as well as natural morality, we cannot rely on evolved tendencies for any kind of moral compass. Evolutionary science can only explain where our moral tendencies come from, not how to behave. Evolutionary science sheds light on why we behave the way we do, but it cannot tell us how we should behave. Just because we have innate tendencies to behave one way or another does not mean that is how we ought to behave. For that we need transcendental guidelines, such as mitzvot, Biblical commandments, that give us concrete instruction in how to behave. Empathy, for instance, may stem from human evolution, but it is Biblical and later rabbinic tradition that tells us how to implement empathy in our daily lives. The Bible instructs us to send away the mother bird before taking its chicks, and to provide the day-worker with a cloak to sleep in. The Talmud teaches ‘These are the things whose fruits we eat in this world but whose full reward awaits us in the World to Come: honouring parents; acts of kindness … hospitality to strangers; visiting the sick; helping the needy bride; attending to the dead … and bringing peace between people.’39 The moral life is in the details. And it is the details that rabbinic tradition has elaborated for millennia. In the Bible, acting in an empathic or altruistic manner is not simply useful, as it would be in a secular society. Rather, lack of altruism is a violation of biblical law. ‘Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among they people; neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor.’40 This was taken to mean that ‘If you see a person drowning in the river, or robbers coming after him, or a wild animal attacking him, you are obligated to save him.’41 It is not merely a useful, socially helpful thing do to. We are obligated to intervene. Similarly in Proverbs: ‘If you showed yourself slack in time of trouble, wanting in power, if you refrained from rescuing those taken

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off to death, those condemned to slaughter – if you say, “We knew nothing of it”, surely He who fathoms hearts will discern [the truth].’42 Passively standing-by is a sin. Evolution may explain how it is that we have altruistic and empathic traits, but the Bible expects and even demands that we act accordingly. The virtue that lies within us frequently needs religion’s impetus to be actualized. How to Behave in Unspecified Situations

Judaism’s rules of conduct as elaborated in Bible and Talmud cover a great deal of human behaviour but cannot possibly cover all situations. How are we to act when there are no applicable rules? Ramban tells us, He [God] says that with respect to what He has not commanded, you should likewise take heed to do the good and the right in His eyes, for He loves the good and the right. And this is a great matter. For it is impossible to mention in the Torah all of a person’s actions toward his neighbors and acquaintances, all of his commercial activity, and all social and political institutions.43 Elsewhere, Ramban explains that the Torah needed to tell us ‘Ye shall be holy’44 because otherwise it remained possible ‘for a lustful sybarite to observe them [the laws of the Torah] to the letter and yet remain a “scoundrel with Torah license”’.45 The Torah deals with this kind of scoundrel, according to Ramban, by admonishing all of us to do ‘the right and the good’. But this merely avoids the real issue. In unspecified situations, and this includes much of daily behaviour, how do we know what conduct merits being called ‘the right and the good’? As we have said, we cannot learn proper conduct from evolution alone since we have evolved what we term ‘immoral’ as well as moral tendencies. Evolution can only explain, it cannot prescribe. It is not at all clear, therefore, how to deduce how we ‘ought’ to behave from what ‘is’ in evolution. But we might learn how to behave in unspecified situations by combining evolution with Jewish tradition. Evolution tells us that selfish behaviours will always be with us because they make for survival – piglets will always push one another aside to suckle at their sow’s teats. But the studies of animal behaviour noted above (in African wild dogs, kingfishers, impalas, whales, vampire bats and ground squirrels) show that individuals in many species, including our

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own, are programmed to cooperate as well as to be selfish. I cannot fight off the wolves or the enemy tribe alone, but if all of us cooperate, we can do it. Victory in team sports goes to those that work together. ‘Come, let us build us a city’, said those who built the Tower of Babel.46 We can do it together. Jewish teaching strengthens our evolved tendencies towards empathy and cooperation, and away from their opposites. The Talmud tells us ‘we coerce over a trait of Sodom’.47 A ‘trait of Sodom’, explains Lichtenstein, refers ‘to an inordinate privatism that leaves one preoccupied with personal concerns to the neglect of the concerns of others; a degree of selfishness so intense that it denies the others at no gain to oneself ’.48 It is an over-insistence that ‘mine is mine and yours is yours’.49 We compel the individual against such selfishness and try to eradicate it. Of course, selfishness is too deeply ingrained in our biology for us ever to succeed entirely in its removal. But by emphasizing that we must strive to do ‘the right and the good’, the Bible puts the weight of its authority on one evolved tendency over another, on cooperation over selfishness. The ‘right and the good’ actions that the Bible expects us to choose in unspecified situations are evolved traits that make for cooperation. But do we, in fact, have the freedom to choose between selfishness and cooperation? Notes   1. A. Lichtenstein, ‘Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?’, in M. Kelner (ed.), Contemporary Jewish Ethics (New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1978), p.107.   2. Genesis 18:25.   3. Midrash Rabba, 9:3, Parshat Tzav.   4. Lichtenstein, ‘Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?’, p.103.   5. Saadia’s comment would apply to Biblical laws discoverable by reason (mishpatim) – such as do not steal; but not to Biblical laws whose reasons were obscure (hukkim) – such as the ceremony involving the red cow.   6. Saadia Gaon, ‘Book of Doctrines and Beliefs’, in A. Altmann (ed.), Three Jewish Philosophers (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), p.45.   7. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason, trans. T.K. Abbott, http:// www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/kant/critique-practical-reason.pdf.   8. J.H. Barko, L. Cosmides and J. Tooby, The Adapted Mind, Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); S. Pinker, Blank Slate. The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002); P. Churchland, Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002); E. Jablonka and M.J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions

The Evolution of Moral Behaviour   171 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), p.215; J. Kagan and N.C. Snidman, The Long Shadow of Temperament (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). For an opposing view, see D.J. Buller, ‘Four Fallacies of Pop Evolutionary Psychology’, Scientific American (January 2009), pp.60–7.   9 S. Baron-Cohen, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (New York: Basic Books, 2011), p.15. 10. Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat in Nazi-occupied Hungary who led efforts to save the lives of nearly 100,000 Jews. 11. L. Kohlberg, C. Levine and A. Hewer, Moral Stages: A Current Formulation and a Response to Critics (New York: Karger, 1983). Paul Bloom, Professor of Developmental Psychology at Yale, qualifies Kohlberg’s scheme. In his view, Kohlberg underestimated the moral sophistication of children and overestimated the moral sophistication of adults. But this doesn’t alter the idea of stages in moral development. Adult morality is clearly more influenced by rational deliberation than is the morality of babies or young children. P. Bloom, Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (New York: Crown Publishers, 2013), p.100. 12. C. Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 13. According to some authors, even the development of faith is based on brain maturation: J.W. Fowler, Stages of Faith (San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row, 1981). 14. Empathy is ‘the capacity to (a) be affected by and share the emotional state of another, (b) assess the reasons for the other’s state, and (c) identify with the other, adopting his or her perspective. This definition extends beyond what exists in many animals, but the term ‘empathy’… applies even if only criterion (a) is met.’ In F.B.M. de Waal, ‘Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism: The Evolution of Empathy’, Annual Review of Psychology, 59 (2008), pp.279–300. Altruism, as defined in Webster’s Dictionary, is: 1. unselfish regard or devotion to the welfare of others; 2. behaviour by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species. 15. D. Peterson, Moral Lives of Animals (New York: Bloomsbury, 2001), Ch.10. 16. D. Futuyma, Evolution, (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005), pp.339–42. 17. Peterson, Moral Lives of Animals, Ch.10. 18. F.B.M. de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 19. Peterson, Moral Lives of Animals, Ch.10. 20. V. Hornera, J. Cartera, M. Suchaka and F.B.M. de Waal, ‘Spontaneous Prosocial Choice by Chimpanzees’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, USA, 108, 33 (16 August 2011), pp.13847–51; E.M. Johnson, ‘I’ve Got Your Back’, Scientific American (October 2011), p.1. 21. Some question whether ‘pure’ altruism exists at all. They claim that all behaviour is self-interest, the gene’s way of surviving. 22. This account of the relationship of altruism, cooperation and selfishness to group and individual selection is based on E.O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012). For additional references on altruism, J. Neusner and A.T. Avery-Peck, ‘Altruism in Classical Judaism’, in Altruism in World Religions, ed. J. Neusner and B. Chilton (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), pp.31–53; E. Sober and D.S. Wilson, Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behaviour (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); S. Okasha, ‘Biological Altruism’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of

172  Human Evolution and Moral Behaviour Philosophy, ed. E.N. Zalta (Winter 2009); O. Harman, The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness (New York: W.W. Norton, 2010). Martin Nowak describes other reasons for the evolution of cooperative behaviour. One is, that ‘in a population with patches of cooperators, these helpful individuals can form clusters that can then grow and thus prevail in competition with defectors.’ Another reason is referred to as kin selection, in which ‘Individuals make sacrifices for their relatives because those relatives share their genes.’ And, finally, another ‘mechanism that fosters the emergence of cooperation is called indirect reciprocity’ in which ‘one individual decides to aid another based on the needy individual’s reputation.’ M.A. Nowak, ‘Why We Help’, Scientific American (July 2011), pp.20–5. 23. de Waal, Good Natured, Ch.1. 24. A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Penguin, 1994), Ch.8, ‘The Somatic-marker Hypothesis’. 25. H. Damasio, T. Grabowski, R. Frank, A.M. Galaburda and A.R. Damasio, ‘The Return of Phineas Gage: Clues About the Brain from the Skull of a Famous Patient’, Science, 264, 5162 (1994), pp.1102–5. 26. Ironically, the biblical Phineas, after whom Gage was named, also acted impulsively when he speared a fornicating couple in the Tent of Meeting (Numbers 25:7–8). 27. S.J. Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999). 28. Neuronal recordings in monkeys, backed up by neuroimaging studies in humans, have shown that so-called ‘mirror’ neurons show the same level of activity when an individual carries out an action as when he watches someone else carry out the same action. ‘When we watch movie stars kiss on screen, some of the cells firing in our brains are the same ones that fire when we kiss our lovers. And when we see someone else suffering or experiencing pain, mirror neurons help us to read her or his facial expression and make us viscerally feel the suffering or pain of the other person. Those movements … are the foundation of empathy.’ M. Iacobini, ‘Mental Mirrors’, Natural History Magazine (May 2008), pp.34–9. 29. These structures are beautifully illustrated and explained in J. Nolte, The Human Brain: An Introduction to its Functional Anatomy (Oxford: Mosby, 2008, 6th edn). 30. J. Moll, R. Zahn, R. de Oliveira-Souza, F. Krueger and J. Grafman, ‘The Neural Basis of Human Moral Cognition’, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 6 (October 2005), pp.799–809. 31. For fascinating detail and beautiful illustrations, Nolte, The Human Brain, Ch.17. 32. Donald E. Brown, ‘List of Human Universals’, appendix in Pinker, The Blank Slate, pp.435–9. 33. E.O. Wilson, ‘Biological Basis of Morality’, Atlantic Monthly (April 1998), Part I. 34. Ibid., Wilson, Part II. 35. E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: A. Knopf, 1998), pp.250–1. 36. P. Churchland, Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), Ch.4. 37. P. Churchland, response to Adina Roskies’ review of Brain-Wise, Nature, 472 (2011). 38. M. Ridley, The Origins of Virtue (New York: Penguin, 1996), p.215. 39. TB Shabbat 127a. 40. Leviticus 19:16. Translation from I.H. Hertz (ed.), Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Soncino, 1966, 2nd edn), p.501.

The Evolution of Moral Behaviour   173 41. Sifra on Leviticus 19:16, in M. Bulah, Da’at Mikra, Sefer Va’yikra (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1992), daf samech vav [Hebrew]. See also TB Sanhedrin, 63a. 42. Proverbs 24:10–12. 43. Ramban on Deuteronomy 6:18 in Y. Blinder (ed.), The Torah with Ramban’s Commentary (Brooklyn: NY, Mesorah 2004). See also Da’at Mikra on this passage, Sefer Dvarim, in E. Mirsky (ed.) (Jerusalem, Mossad Harav Kook, 2001), daf kuf-yud-het [Hebrew]. 44. Leviticus 19:2. 45. Lichtenstein, ‘Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?’, p. 108. 46. Genesis 11:4. 47. TB Ketubot, 103a. 48. Lichtenstein, ‘Does Jewish Tradition Recognize an Ethic Independent of Halakha?’, pp. 112–13. 49. TB Avot, 5:10.

12

The Evolved Brain and Judaism’s Free Will

Free Will in Judaism

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ontrol over our impulses is applauded in Proverbs, ‘Better … to have self-control than to conquer a city’1 and in Ethics of the Fathers, ‘Who is strong? One who masters his evil impulse.’2 But it was realized long ago that we do not have complete control over our impulses. The Talmud, for instance, balanced free choice with the determinism that arises from being born under the sign of Mars, associated with bloody violence: ‘He who is born under Mars will be a shedder of blood. Rav Ashi observed: “Either a surgeon, a thief [who sheds blood], a ritual slaughterer, or a circumciser.”’3 The passage indicates that the tendency to aggression is determined, but the way it is actualized is not. Moses Maimonides (Rambam) endorsed free will as the basis for reward and punishment: ‘The power [reshut] to perform one among a number of alternative actions is given to every human. If he wills to turn himself to a good path and be righteous, the power is his; and if he wills to turn himself to a bad way and be evil, the power is his.’4 Elsewhere he explains that ‘No compulsion is exerted upon man, and no external influence is brought to bear that would constrain him to be either virtuous or vicious.’5 On the other hand, Rambam was well aware that there were inborn differences between people that influenced their decisions: It is impossible for man to be born endowed by nature from his very birth with either virtue or vice, just as it is impossible that he should be born skilled by nature in any particular art … It is possible, however, that through natural causes he may from birth

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be so constituted as to have a predilection for a particular virtue or vice, so that he will more readily practice it than any other.6 [Emphasis mine] In modern terms, Rambam tells us here that human beings have a genetic predisposition towards certain behaviours rather than others. The degree to which our actions are constrained was elaborated more recently by Rav Eliyahu Dessler (1892–1953), who maintained that the vast majority of a person’s actions are determined by environment or by his or her already shaped character, where the character is shaped by previous choices. A person retains only a nekudat ha’be’hi’rah, a tiny province of free will, at which moral struggle takes place.7 I need to point out, however, that our choices are shaped not only by the environment and previous choices that Dessler mentions, but also by genetic predispositions, as implied in the above quote from Rambam. This further restricts Dessler’s already tiny province of free will and strengthens Rabbi Shalom Carmy’s observation that the retention of only a tiny province of free will implies that ‘to the extent that one’s options are constrained by factors prior to his own agency, he is not responsible for his choices’.8 This, of course, is the nub of the problem. How much responsibility do any of us have for our actions if they are substantially determined for us? Contemporary Rabbi Basil Herring supplies a nuanced answer. He concludes that, despite the near-universal affirmation of broadly free will in rabbinic thought, ‘the rabbinic tradition also recognized certain limits and constraints on human behaviour that, while not ultimately removing freedom of choice and its consequences, greatly complicate and diminish human freedom’. The rabbis, in their wisdom, assigned a measured diminution of culpability for such ‘choice diminished behaviour’.9 We are only culpable to the extent of our free choice. How does this Jewish approach comport with the neuroscience of free choice? Free CHOICE in Neuroscience

Our brain is comparable to a computing machine based on firing of cells called neurons. We have learned a lot about neurons since they were described by Ramón y Cajal over a century ago. Each is an electro-chemical device that receives input at its dendrites from other neurons. This results either in decreased or increased voltage inside the receiving neuron’s cell body. The voltage change depends on which

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way sodium and potassium move across the neuronal cell membrane. When the threshold level of -40 microvolts inside the cell is surpassed, the neuron sends an electro-chemical signal (called an action potential) along the length of a process (axon) that exits from it. This, in turn, activates membrane channels at locations called synapses that allow the release of chemical packets (neurotransmitters) such as norepinephrine, acetylcholine, serotonin or dopamine. These chemicals act on the next neuron’s dendrites to cause it to fire or not. All brain activity is ultimately based on this electro-chemical mechanism. Our cerebral cortex (cortex is the part on the outside of the brain) is a dense forest of neurons whose interconnections are staggering. Thirty thousand neurons and 100 million synapses make their home in each cubic millimetre of cortex the size of a pinhead. We do not yet know how these large populations of neurons work together; in fact, it is the major unsolved problem in neuroscience, and worthy of the billions of dollars being spent to answer it. In a manner yet to be determined, populations of neurons form so-called ‘modules’ that enable our brain to make sense of what we see, hear or touch; to speak and read and think mathematically; to feel fear, anger, joy and despair; to remember and plan. There is undoubtedly a module for decisionmaking as well. Decision-making What can be said at this preliminary stage about how our brain decides, and whether its choice is free or determined? One special part of our cerebral cortex, the frontal lobes, appears to be the site of decisionmaking. It was damage to this part of the brain that caused Phineas Gage’s altered personality (Chapter 10). The frontal lobes constitute a unique ‘executive’ centre in the frontal area of our brain. This is where inputs from multiple populations of neurons are brought together and considered: vision, hearing, touch, memory, emotion, what we have been taught, and what we have experienced. The frontal lobe then plans, thinks ahead, and mulls over possible courses of action. It is a triumph of evolution.10 It is the last part of our brain to completely mature (not until our mid-twenties) and usually the earliest to deteriorate with advancing age. It is easily thrown out of joint when we are hungry, tired, under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or stressed out with fear or anger.11 It appears that since the frontal lobes have so recently evolved they are prone to malfunction. And when our newer frontal lobes fail to work properly, our brain falls back on less deliberative, phylogenetically

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older systems, thereby allowing our emotional responses to reign unchecked.12 Admittedly, however, locating decision-making to the frontal lobes does not solve the question of whether or not we have free will. For if the various inputs to the frontal lobes are determined by past experience, emotions, genetic endowment, and so on, is there any freedom left to the frontal lobe to make its choices? Perhaps some, perhaps none. This approach, therefore, does not lead to a clear answer and we turn to a different explanation of how our brain decides. Another way of looking at decision-making is that it does not reside in any one area of the brain, but rather that decisions ‘emerge’ when the brain as a whole overpowers its component entities (the neurons). The neurologist Michael Gazzaniga concludes in his survey of the neuroscience of free will that there is no single locus in the brain that controls everything else, no one place where ‘will’ resides, no ghost in the machine.13 Rather, that which is responsible is ‘distributed’ in the brain. Our ‘essence’ consists of ‘the protocols, the rules, the algorithms, the software … It’s difficult for us because it doesn’t reside in some box somewhere, indeed it would be a design flaw if it did because that box would be a single point of failure.’14 Analogies may make this explanation clearer. Temperature emerges from the activity of large numbers of particles but cannot be predicted from the behaviour of a single particle. Traffic flow emerges from the activity of large numbers of automobiles, but cannot be predicted from an analysis of how each automobile works. Similarly, it is thought, we cannot predict brain function – including the making of decisions, from the activities of individual neurons. Further, emerging mental states are selected by the surrounding milieu. ‘What is going on is the match between ever present multiple mental states and the impinging contextual forces within which it functions. Our interpreter [the story-telling function of the left brain – JYR] then claims we freely made a choice.’15 But, as best as I understand, there is no way to know whether this match is truly free or whether our confabulating left brain is just telling us that it is free.16 So this explanation also cannot tell us whether our choices are truly free. Do quantal considerations help us? A quantum is the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction. Its future position and velocity is inherently unpredictable. This unpredictability led some prominent physicists to conclude that the world is inherently undetermined, thus leaving the door open for free choice. The objection to this, however, is that quantum indeterminacy does not affect outcome in the brain’s macroscopic world. Quantum fluctuations

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in physical states (for example, in the position of synaptic vesicles in the presynaptic nerve fibre) that occur at a microscopic level are averaged out at the macroscopic level of large populations of neurons. For this reason, few physicists today still defend the view that quantum considerations are related to the phenomenon of free will.17 Are other findings from neuroscience more helpful? Subjects with EEG scalp electrodes in place looked at a time indicator and were asked to press a button at a time of their own choosing. The subjects were asked to record when they made the decision to do so. The EEG’s recorded a build-up of ‘readiness potentials’ as much as two seconds before the subjects reported their conscious decision to move.18 These findings are interpreted by some neuroscientists as showing that our brain makes decisions for us and that we do not have free choice. But, as Gazzaniga observes, ‘What difference does it make if brain activity goes on before we are consciously aware of something?’19 Why should these findings be unexpected? Does it not stand to reason that our brain is active before consciousness bubbles to the surface? These findings, therefore, do not negate free will. Other recent observations, however, do bear out Judaism’s assumption of free will. Scalp EEG readings were obtained from volunteers engaged in a task requiring them to press a button when they felt like it, but able to veto their decision at the last moment. The investigators discovered a specific brain area that became active during intentional inhibition of an action – the left dorsal frontomedial cortex. They concluded that the human brain ‘includes a control structure for self-initiated inhibition or withholding of intended actions’.20 Simply put, the fact that we can selfinitiate behaviour of this sort means that we have free will. Finally, and perhaps conclusively, ten normal male human volunteers, in their twenties and thirties, were presented with erotic pictures while their brain activation was measured. As expected, viewing the pictures was associated with brain activation in limbic areas known to be associated with emotion. When the subjects attempted to inhibit their sexual arousal, other areas of the brain (right superior frontal gyrus and right anterior cingulate gyrus) were activated. The authors conclude ‘that humans have the capacity to influence the electrochemical dynamics of their brains by voluntarily changing the nature of the mind processes unfolding in the psychological space’.21 These men were able to voluntarily turn off their sexual arousal by overriding input from their ancient limbic systems and switching to more recently evolved prefrontal regions. Their ability to do so

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validates rabbinic free will.22 This conclusion is delightfully expressed in the words of the great Yiddish writer I.B. Singer with which I close: Since Roise Genendel, daughter of the Bialer Rebbe, had left Itche Nokhum, he had discovered that a man can curb every desire. There is something in the heart that lusts, but one can thumb his nose at it. It wants to think carnal thoughts, but one compels it to pore over the Holy Book. It tempts one into longings and imaginings, but just to thwart it one recites the Psalms. In the morning it wants to sleep till nine, but one awakens it at daybreak. What this enemy within hates most of all is a cold ritual bath. But there is a little spot in the brain that has the final word, and when it commands the feet to go, they go, be the water as cold as ice. In time opposing this lusting creature becomes a habit. One bends it, gags it, or else one lets it babble on without answering.23

Notes   1. Proverbs 16:32.   2. J. Sacks (ed.), Koren Siddur (Jerusalem: Koren, 2009), p.660.   3. TB Shabbat, 156a.   4. Mishneh Torah: The Laws of Repentance (New York and Jerusalem: Moznaim, 1990), Ch.5:1, p.115.   5. I. Twersky (ed.), A Maimonides Reader (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House, 1972), ‘Eight Chapters’, p.380.   6. Ibid., p.379. Emphasis mine.   7. Quoted in D. Shatz, ‘Judaism, Free Will, and the Genetic and Neuroscientific Revolutions’, in Y. Berger and D. Shatz (eds), Judaism, Science, and Moral Responsibility (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), p.74. See also E.E. Dessler, Michtav MeEliyahu (B’nai Brak: Sifriyatei Gittler), V. 1.   8. S. Carmy, ‘On the Moral Imagination of Free Will’, in Shatz and Berger, Judaism, Science and Moral Responsibility, pp.126–7.   9. B. Herring, ‘Choice Diminished Behaviour and Religious-Communal Policy, in Shatz and Berger, Judaism, Science and Moral Responsibility, p.159. 10. A. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Penguin, 1994). 11. G.M. Kluge, The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008) p.143. 12. The frontal lobes are likely to have undergone functional reorganization in the higher primates in the last few millions of years of evolution: J.S. Allen, The Lives of the Brain: Human Evolution and the Organ of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), Ch.4. 13. M.S. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain (New York: Ecco Harper-Collins, 2011).

The Evolved Brain and Judaism’s Free Will  181 14. Ibid., p.218. Here Gazzaniga quotes John Doyle, Professor of Electrical and Bioengineering at Cal Tech. 15. Ibid., p.141. 16. Gazzaniga’s non-localized ‘emergent’ system for decision-making is apparently at odds with Damasio’s placement of decision-making in the frontal lobe. These matters are under active investigation. 17. H. Sompolinsky, ‘A Scientific Perspective on Human Choice’, in Shatz and Berger, Judaism, Science and Moral Responsibility, pp.13–44. 18. B. Libet, ‘The Timing of Mental Events: Libet’s Experimental Findings and Their Implications’, Consciousness and Cognition, 11, 2 (June 2002), pp.291–9, discussion 304–33. 19. Gazzaniga, Who’s in Charge?, p.141. 20. M. Brass and P. Haggard, ‘To Do or Not to Do: The Neural Signature of Selfcontrol’, Journal of Neuroscience, 27, 34 (22 August 2007), pp.9141–5; M. Shermer, ‘Free Won’t’, Scientific American (August 2012), p.73. 21. M. Beauregard, J. Lévesque and P. Bourgouin, ‘Neural Correlates of Conscious Self-regulation of Emotion’, Journal of Neuroscience, 21 (2001), pp.6993–7000. 22. Wilson agrees and concludes that, despite constraining factors, ‘In organismic time and space, in every operational sense that applies to the knowable self, the mind does have free will.’ E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Knopf, 1998), p.120. 23. I.B. Singer, ‘The Fast’, in Short Friday (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1961, pp.109–10.

Epilogue God Cares How We Behave

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his book’s main point – that God intends the evolutionary process – may seem to have wrung out what is personal from Him, leaving behind only a dry, austere abstraction called ‘intent’. Not necessarily. For if the goal of God’s intent is to evolve a world in which we are to strive for righteousness, then ‘God is in need of man for the attainment of his ends’.1 Since it is up to us to actualize His intent, He is ‘in search of man’.2 He hopes that we will use evolved love of kindness to overcome evolved selfishness so as to establish a world of justice and righteousness.3 Look where we have come from, look at our future. Look back to our origins as self-replicating molecules and at our slow step-by-step progress thereafter towards neurological grandeur. Look forward to a world of immense possibility in which we can help shape evolution’s future, thus extending divine intent. We are free to choose whether and how to take up this role. That which intends – the divine – cares about our choice. He cares whether and how we will fulfil our mission as stewards of a fragile planet; whether we do so as tzaddikim – righteous individuals in righteous societies – or not. In His concern, He is not an impersonal It who intends, but rather a Thou who cares and expects each of us to ask ourselves, ‘Am I fulfilling the role for which God evolved me?’4 Notes 1. A.J. Heschel, 1951, Man Is Not Alone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), p.241. 2. Ibid., p.136. 3. The Psalmist pronounces judgement against those who ‘judge perversely, showing favor to the wicked.’ Those who do so ‘neither know nor understand, they go about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth totter’ (Psalm 82: 2 and 5;

184  Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish View JPS p.1206). The very foundations of the created world will totter if injustice and wickedness prevail. God does not merely create the world, He cares what becomes of it. 4. Martin Buber, I and Thou (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970).

The Answers First Question: How can God be considered to have created the world when, according to evolution, everything just happened? The answer is that evolution did not just happen. The predictability and progress of evolution mark it as intended (Chapters 1 to 6). Second Question: How can we believe in the truth of Genesis when it conflicts with the facts of evolution? The answer is that Genesis is a religious text, a source of purpose, meaning and values, rather than a scientific text. Evolution’s facts deepen our appreciation of Judaism’s truths – as in issues related to suffering and death (Chapters 7 to 9). Third Question: How does human evolution relate to human moral behaviour? The answer is that even though we evolved, as have all other species, we are nevertheless intended and unique; even though evolution explains much of our moral behaviour, divine law remains necessary; and even though our brain function is heavily determined we retain free will (Chapters 10 to 12).

Glossary

Terms Related to Judaism

Amidah – central prayer in each of Judaism’s three daily services, recited silently and standing. Bereshit – the opening word of Genesis. Commonly, although not precisely, translated as ‘In the beginning’. Gaon – head of Babylonian Jewish seminary. Gersonides – Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344), known as Ralbag; Talmudist, mathematician, astronomer; born in France. Halakhah – the collective body of Jewish religious law; the legal side of Judaism, concerned with the rules and regulations by which the Jew ‘walks’ through life. The code of conduct of rabbinic Judaism. Hazzan – cantor. Hutzpadik – impertinent. Ibn Ezra, Avraham (1089–1167) – philosopher, astronomer, poet, born in Spain. Intent – (as used in this book) general goals in the natural world; synonymous with purpose and will. Kabbalah – the Jewish mystical tradition. Literally ‘that which has been received’. Kittel – white robe worn during solemn ritual occasions. Mehitza – the partition between the sections for men and women in the synagogue. Midrash – rabbinic interpretation of the Bible based on oral tradition.

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Mitzvah – one of the 613 commandments of the Torah. Neshama – soul. Derived from the word for breath. Netziv – acronym for Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin (1817–93), dean of the famed Volozhin Yeshiva (seminary) in Belarus. R. – abbreviation for Rabbi. Rambam (Maimonides) – acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, born Cordova, Spain 1135, died Fostat, Egypt, 1204. Renowned post-Talmudic authority on Judaism; author of the master code of Jewish law (Mishneh Torah) and philosophic handbook to Judaism, Guide for the Perplexed; physician to the Caliph of Egypt. Ramban (Nachmanides) – acronym for Rabbi Moshe ben Nahman (1194–1270). Born in Spain. Noted for Talmudic and Bible commentaries. Rashi – acronym for Rabbi Sh’lomoYitzhaki (1040–1105). Born in France. Outstanding Jewish Bible commentator. Sa’adia – (880–942) born in Egypt. One of the last of the Geonim, the heads of the Babylonian academies in the early medieval period. Wrote the accepted Arabic translation of the Hebrew Bible as well as an early philosophical classic, Emmunot ve-Deot (Beliefs and Opinions). Sh’ma – first word of ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One’ which expresses the monotheistic essence of Judaism. Shul – synagogue. Sforno – (1475–1550), born in Italy. Bible commentator, Talmudist and physician. Tallit – Ritual garment, like a shawl, whose fringes are to remind the wearer of the Biblical commandments. Talmud – the systematic amplification and analysis of passages of the Bible. Two Talmuds exist, produced by two different groups of Jewish scholars: the Babylonian Talmud (completed c. CE 600) and the Palestinian Talmud (completed c. CE 400). Tanach – acronym for Torah (five books of Moses), Nevi’im (prophets) and K’tuvim (writings). T’fillin – Black leather straps and boxes containing key Biblical passages; worn on the forehead and arm during weekday morning prayer.

Glossary  189

Tzaddik – righteous person. Plural: Tzaddikim. Torah – The first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Yehudah Halevi – (1080–1142), born in Spain. Poet, philosopher and physician. Author of philosophic classic, the Kuzari. Terms Related to Evolution

Archaea – Single-celled prokaryotes genetically distinct from bacteria, often thriving in extreme conditions. Black hole – A region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can escape. Chloroplasts – areas in the cells of green plants that use pigments, called chlorophyll and carotenoids, to convert light energy to chemical energy. Constraints – (as used in this book) limiting factors that circumscribe evolution’s course. Contingency – a non-predictable occurrence that differs from chance because it is explainable in retrospect from prior conditions. Convergence – evolution of similar features independently in different evolutionary lineages. Convergent features are not produced by a genotype inherited from a common ancestor. Dendrite – a short branched extension of a nerve cell, along which impulses received from other cells at synapses are transmitted to the cell body. Design and Creationism – (as used in this book) both of these terms mean that every detail of every organism has been deliberately designed by a creator who has created all organisms miraculously by direct intervention. Diploidy – having a pair of each chromosome, so that the basic chromosome number is doubled. Epigenetics – the study of external modifications to DNA that turn genes ‘on’ or ‘off ’, but do not change the DNA sequence. Eukaryote – a single-celled or multicellular organism whose cells contain a distinct membrane-bound nucleus in which the genetic material is organized.

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Evolution – change in the properties of groups of organisms over the course of generations. Such groups undergo descent with modification. Gastrulation – a complex and coordinated series of cellular movements during embryonic development that usually result in the formation of the three primary germ layers. Gene – a hereditary unit consisting of a sequence of DNA that occupies a specific location on a chromosome and determines a particular characteristic in an organism. Genetic recombination – a process by which a molecule of nucleic acid is broken and then joined to a different one. This results in the exchange of DNA sequences between DNA molecules. Isomers – compounds having the same molecular formula but different arrangements of atoms in the molecule. Levo isomers are lefthanded, while dextro isomers are right-handed, and are mirror images of each other. Lateral gene transfer – a process in which an organism incorporates genetic material from another organism without being the offspring of that organism. Lateral geniculate body – a neural structure that serves as a processing station on the way from the retina to the occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex. Limbic System – a group of interconnected deep brain structures, common to all mammals, involving basic emotions (fear, pleasure, anger) and drives (hunger, sex). Meiosis – a form of nuclear division that occurs during the formation of sperm and eggs. Mendeleyev – (1834–1907) Russian chemist and inventor. Credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of the elements. Mitochondria – structures responsible for energy production in cells and that contain genetic material. Molluscan torsion – the twisting that occurs in snails and kindred organisms in which the mantle bearing the gills rotates from facing posteriorly to facing anteriorly.

Glossary  191

Multiverse – the idea of multiple parallel universes. Mutation – a heritable alteration in genetic material, most commonly an error of replication during cell division. Example: the altered haemoglobin molecule responsible for sickle cell anemia. Most mutations are unfavorable. Myelination – the formation of a white fatty sheath around the axon of neurons. This enables nerve impulses to travel faster. Natural selection – the process by which individuals of lesser fitness are removed from the population in successive generations. Notochord – a flexible rod-like structure that forms the main support of the body in the lowest chordates, such as the lancelet (a small elongated marine animal that resembles a fish, but lacks jaws); a primitive backbone. Nucleotides – the basic structural unit of nucleic acids such as DNA. Nucleotides are divided into purines and pyrimidines based on the structure of the nitrogenous base. In DNA, the purine bases include adenine and guanine while the pyrimidine bases are thymine and cytosine. Ontogeny – the origin and the development of an organism; for example, from the fertilized egg to the mature form. Organelle – organized or specialized structure within a living cell. Phylum – a group of organisms with a certain degree of morphological or developmental similarity; also, a group of organisms with a certain degree of evolutionary relatedness (the phylogenetic definition). Phylogeny – the evolutionary history of a group of organisms, including the theoretical reconstruction of a common ancestor. Progress – movement from the simple to the more complex in the history of life. Prokaryote – a single-celled organism lacking a true nucleus whose DNA is not organized into chromosomes. Quark – a hypothetical subatomic particle assumed to be a fundamental constituent of matter. Symbiosis – the relationship between two different species of organisms that are interdependent; each gains benefits from the other.

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Species – a biological species is a sexually interbreeding group of individuals normally separated from other species by the absence of genetic exchange, that is, by reproductive isolation. An evolutionary species is a lineage evolving separately from others. Tectonic plates – the sub-layers of the earth’s crust that move, float and sometimes fracture and whose interaction is thought to cause continental drift, earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and oceanic trenches. Transposons – small, mobile DNA sequences that can replicate and insert copies at random sites within chromosomes.

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Recommended Reading

Related to Judaism Berger, Y. and Shatz, D. (eds), Judaism, Science and Moral Responsibility (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). Cantor, G. and Swetlitz, M. (eds), Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Fox, M., Interpreting Maimonides: Studies in Methodology, Metaphysics and Moral Philosophy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995). Kass, L., The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003), especially Part One.

Related to Evolution Bloom, P., Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil (New York: Crown Publishers, 2013), Chap. 11. Futuyma, D., Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2005). Gilbert, S.F., Developmental Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000). Grauer, D. and Li, W., Fundamentals of Molecular Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2000). ‘Introduction to Human Evolution: The Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program’. humanorigins.si.edu, re: Chap. 10. Pinker, S., The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002). ‘Understanding Evolution’, sponsored by University of California Museum of Paleontology. evolution.berkeley.edu. General source for biological evolution. Current articles in Scientific American, National Geographic and Natural History magazines.

Index Please note that page numbers relating to Notes will have the letter ‘n’ following the page number. Aaron, 96 Abraham (Biblical), 109, 159 Abudarham, D., 91n acetylcholine, 177 acetylene, 25 Adam (Biblical figure), 87, 123, 124, 137, 153–4; compared with scientific knowledge, 151–3 adaptation, 40–2 adenine (A), 25 aesthetic beauty, as world’s purpose, 84, 87 afterlife, 132; see also soul Aicardi, J., 138n, 155n Akiva ben Joseph, Rabbi (c.50–135 ce), 3, 4, 28, 46n Aklabetz, Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi, 117n albatross, 56 alleles (alternative forms of a gene), 38 Allen, J.S., 180n Allman, J.M., 154n alpha value, 16, 19 Alter, Robert, 125n Altmann, A., 92n altruism: human, reason for evolution, 163–4; in ‘lower’ animals, 161–3 Amazonian rain forest, monkey species, 32 Ambjorn, J., 62n Amichai, Yehudah, 10 Amidah (daily standing prayer), 151, 187 amino acids, 24, 25, 35, 36; isomers, 26, 67, 190; linked, 50; see also proteins ammonia, 25 amoebae, 27 amphibians, 30 amygdala, brain, 149 Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves (Willis), 134 angiosperms, 28 animals: ‘lower’, apparently moral, altruistic and empathetic behaviours in, 161–3; pro-social behaviour, 163–4

Antarctica, 32 anterior cingulate, 149 anthropic principle, 18 anthropologists, 30, 152 aortic arch, 66 ape species, 23–4, 30, 36, 45n, 145, 163 apoptosis (programmed cell death), 130 aqueduct of Sylvius, 74 archaea (single-celled organisms), 23, 44n, 189 Arches National Park, Utah, 76, 77 Ardipithecus ramidus (last common ancestor), 144 Aristotle, 11, 12, 99 Ariza, L.M., 45n arthropods, 49 Ashi, Rav, 175 astronomy, 11, 15; see also cosmic evolution astrophysics, and cosmic evolution, 9–11, 96; Jewish perspective compared, 14–16 atoms, 9, 10, 12, 20n, 50 Australia, 32, 33, 71 Aviezer, N., 116–17n axons, 177 Babylonian Talmud (TB), xi bacteria, 23, 27, 33, 35, 115 Ben Barakh’el HaBuzi, Elihu, 47 Barbour, I., 79n Barko, J.H., 170n barnacles, 37, 38 Baron-Cohen, Simon, 160, 171n Barrow, John D., 20n, 21n, 104, 118n Beauregard, M., 181n beauty, aesthetic, 84, 87 beetle species, 66, 71 beginning of life: predictability, 59–60; see also creation, conflict as to origination Behe, Michael, 69 bereishit (‘in the beginning’), 12, 187

210  Index Berg, H., 63n Berger, L.R., 154n Bezalel (craftsman of tabernacle), 85 Bible, Hebrew, xi, 15, 108–9; death in Biblical thought, 131–2; whether evolved morality can replace, 167–9; and Hellenism, x; initial paragraphs, 95, 114, 115–16, 116n, 122; origin of creation conflict, 5–7; Patristic interpretation tradition, xiin; see also Genesis/Genesis’ creation account ‘Big Bang’, 10, 14 Bininda-Emonds, O.R.P., 79n biogenetic law, 45n birds, 31, 33, 41, 42, 52, 56, 112, 162 Birnbaum, P., 138n black hole, 17, 189 blastocysts (spheres), 60 blastula (sphere), 28 Blinder, Y., 117n, 137n Bloch, C., 20n body shapes, 60 bones, ancient human, 150 borei olam (creator of world), 105 brain: blood vessels at base, in stroke victims, 73–4; cerebral cortex, 146–7; development, 65, 66, 146–8; disorders, xv, 145–6; and free will, in Judaism, 175–80; frontal lobes, 177–8, 180n; hemispheres, 146; human culture and plastic brain, 149–50; imaging of, 134, 164; left brain, 178; limbic system, 135, 166, 190; moral choice, physical basis in, 165–6; in neonates, 147; orbital cortex, 149; plastic, 148–50; pre-frontal cortex, 164–5; prefrontal lobe damage, 78, 164; self-organization, 52; and soul, 134–5; visual cortex/visual-association cortex, 76, 147; see also neurons, brain brain stem, 166 Brass, M., 181n The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 134, 135, 136, 139n Brown, Donald E., 172n Buber, Martin, 85, 91n Buchsbaum, R., 43n, 62n Burgess Shale, Yoho National Park, 30, 55, 60 Cain and Abel, 153 Cajal, R., 176 Calaprice, Alice, 44n calendar, Jewish, 125n, 126n Camazine, S., 62n Cambrian ‘explosion’, 60, 103 Candide (Voltaire), 58, 63n canine family, 37–8, 162 Cantor, G., xiin

carbon, 10, 16, 24, 50 carbon dioxide, 25 Carmel, A., xiin Carmy, S., 176, 180n Carroll, S.B., 45n, 79n, 155n Cassuto, U., 125n Catholic Church, xiin celestial objects, worship of, 113 cells: division, 39; endocrine, 52; neuroblasts, 74; non-nucleated to nucleated, 27; programmed death, 130; single to many, 27–8; stem cells, 52 Cenozoic (new life) era, 79n central motive states, 166 cerebral cortex, 146–7 Chadwick, D.H., 44n Cherry, S., 117n children: brain development, 65, 66, 146–8; moral development stages, 161 chimpanzees, 36, 45n, 143–4, 163, 168 chloroplasts, 27, 28, 189 chordates, 23, 50 chromosomes, 38, 57 Chugani, H.T., 156n Churchland, P., 167, 172n Clark, R., 45n Clayton, N.S., 63n codons (triplets of nucleotide bases), 25, 26 coincidences, cosmic, 16–19 comets, 67, 68; Yucatan comet, 69, 70–1 common origin for life/common descent, 26, 27, 31, 32, 115 communicating arteries, base of brain, 73, 74 complex bodies, 28–9 conflict as to origin of creation, 3–7; integration, 7; Mehitza, 6–7; Rabbi Akiva’s tallit vs. self-assembly debate, 4–5, 28; ‘separate worlds’ approach, 6–7, 84; traditional Biblical and Jewish responses, 5–7 constraints, 47–51, 55, 189; genetic, 49–50; mathematical, 48, 53, 61; mechanical, 48–9; physical-chemical, 50–1 contingency, 58–9, 189; contingent events, 66–7; evidence of contingent world, 67–70; and predictability, 59–61 convergences, 53–5, 189 Conway Morris, S., 63n, 64n, 79n cooperative behaviour, 163 Copernicus, 4, 75; On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, 98, 135 cosmic evolution, 9–19; astronomy, 11, 15; astrophysics explaining, 9–11, 14–16, 96; cosmic coincidences, as intended, 16–19; creation from nothing, 13–14, 99; creation in time, 11–13, 99; differing perspectives of astrophysics and Judaism, 14–16; and Judaism, 9–16; yearly transit

Index  211 of earth around sun, 4, 14–15; see also creation, conflict as to origination cosmic teleology, 5 cosmogony, modern, 13, 14, 21n cosmology, 21n covering up, 152 creatio ex nihilo, 96 creation: conflict as to origin see conflict as to origin of creation; in Genesis see Genesis/ Genesis’ creation account; and intention, 14; purpose, inability of humanity to know, 4–5, 88–90; see also days of creation creationism, 69–70, 189 Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction, 79 Crick, Francis, 24–5, 139n Critique of Practical Reason (Kant), 160, 170n Cro-Magnon (bones), 150, 152 crows, 53–4, 61 cryonics, 133, 139n Curley, J.P., 46n, 156n cyanide, 25 Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae capable of photosynthesis), 24 cytochrome C, 35–6 cytosine (C), 25 Daeschler, E.B., 45n Damasio, Antonio, 81n, 164, 172n, 180n Darwin, Charles, ix, 4, 30, 31, 37, 47, 63n, 76, 127, 143; Descent of Man, 79n; Origin of Species, 43, 57, 154n Darwin, F., 137n Dawkins, Richard, 20n, 21n, 44n, 57, 63n, 81n, 89, 102, 118n; Selfish Gene, 92n, 139n Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), 129 days of creation, 97–8, 101, 102, 121, 128; exploring, 103–16; reasons for six days, 104–16 de Waal, F., 164, 171n, 172n death, 129–32; in Biblical and later Jewish thought, 131–2; dust, returning to, 10, 29, 131; resurrection, 132–3; see also immortality; soul decision-making, 177–80, 181n DeMarse, T.B., 62n DeNault, L.K., 171n dendrites, 177, 189 dental evidence, 53, 72 Descent of Man (Darwin), 79n design theory: broadly intended world, under ‘loose rein’, 70–7, 81n; defined, 189; evolved world, designed in detail by God, 70; purposeful design, 3, 17; tightly designed world, 68–70, 74–9 Dessler, Rav Eliyahu, 176

Deuteronomy, 110, 118n dextro isomers, amino acids, 26, 67 Diamond, J., 63n, 79n dinosaurs, 30, 42, 56; extinction, 66, 67, 68; protofeathers on limbs of, 58, 59 diploidy, 189 direct reciprocity, 163 divine light, 97 DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), 24, 26, 35, 39, 40, 72; death and immortality, 133, 136; human evolution, evidence, 144, 145; see also genetics; RNA (ribonucleic acid) Dobbs, D., 156n Dobzhansky, Theodosius, 75 dodo bird, 56 dog family, 37–8, 162 dolphins, 54, 61 Domb, C., xiin Doolittle, W.F., 43n dopamine, 177 Dostoevsky, F., 134, 135, 136, 139n double helix model (Watson and Crick), 24–5, 39 Drosophila (fruit-fly), 36, 37, 50 Dunn, Rob, 28, 44n dust, returning to, 10, 29, 131 earth: crust, of early earth, 59; formation, 11; and heaven, 116; solid, 32; surface, 71; yearly transit around sun, 4, 14–15 Ecclesiastes, 88, 138n echolocation, 53, 55 Eden, Garden of, 26, 76, 124, 137 EEG scalp electrodes, 179 Egypt, Alexandrian, x Einstein, Albert, 18–19, 26, 44n, 98 Eiraku, M., 62n Eisenstein, J.D., 7n Elbogen, I., 138n Eldredge, N., 106, 118n Eleazar, Rabbi, 87 electromagnetism, 9, 10, 78 electrons, 12, 20n, 50 Eliade, M., 21n, 117n Ellis, G.F.R., 21n embryogenesis, 45n embryology evidence, 29, 33–5 Emery, N.J., 63n emotions, 78, 139n, 164 empathy, 160–1, 168; in ‘lower’ animals, 161–3 empty space, 13, 14 Enard, W., 155n endocrine cells, 52 ‘Enigma’ code, 62n epigenesis, 40 epigenetics, 75, 98, 189 epilepsy, xv

212  Index Escherichia coli (E. coli), 33 Eubacteria, 102 eukaryotes, 23, 27, 56, 102, 189 Eve (Biblical figure), 123, 124, 137 events: contingent, 66–7; predictable, 67 everyday life, miracle of, 26 evidence: child’s brain, development, 146–8; of contingent world, 67–70; embryology, 29, 33–5; first humans, 150–1; fossil, 29–31, 35, 72, 102, 103, 143–4, 150; genetic, 35–6, 145–6; life, evolution of, 29–37; morphology (external shape), 31–2; for predictability and progress, 47– 61; of purposeful design, 3, 17; scientific knowledge compared with Biblical Adam, 151–3; vestigial structures, 72–3; see also design theory; science evolution: cosmic see cosmic evolution; defined, 190; of life see life, evolution of; and moral behaviour, 157–73; human, 143–54; observation of, 33–7; progress, argument against, 55–6; questions and answers, xii, 183–4; resolving differences with Genesis, 101–3; species diversity in, 124–5; theistic, 70; see also creation; Genesis/Genesis’ creation account; natural selection evolutionary science: accord with Genesis, 121–6; order/unity in Genesis/Judaism matched by, 122–3 external shape evidence (morphology), 31–2 eye, human, 5 ‘eyeless gene’, 36, 37, 50 Ezekiel, 113 Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 13, 187 faith, development of, 171n fats, 29 fatty acids, self-organizing, 26 fauna and flora, 30 fear, 68 Feingold, M., xvi Feinstein, Rabbi Moshe, 6, 8n Feit, C., 7n, 8n Feldman, S., 117n final ends (teleology), 5, 78–9, 88 first humans: evidence, 30; in evolution and Genesis, 150–1; scientific knowledge compared with Biblical Adam, 151–3; see also human beings fish, schools of, 51–2 flounder larvae, 73 Forgacs, G., 44n, 64n fossil evidence, 29–31, 35, 72, 102, 103, 143–4, 150 Fowler, J.W., 171n FOXP2 gene, 145, 151 fractal order, 48

free will: decision-making, 177–80; and evolved brain, 175–80; in Judaism, 175–6; in neuroscience, 176–80; reward and punishment, 175 Freeland, S., 64n Frimpter, G.W., xvi frontal lobes, brain, 177–8, 180n; see also pre-frontal cortex; pre-frontal lobe damage fronto-parietal cortex, 146 fruit-fly, 36, 37, 50 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 164 fungi, 23 Futuyma, D.J., 43n, 45n, 46n, 62n, 63n, 102, 118n, 126n, 155n, 171n Gage, Phineas, 164, 172n, 177 Galapagos Islands, birds on, 31, 33, 41, 42 galaxies, 10, 11, 50, 102; Milky Way, 17, 75 gamma rays, 12 Gaon, Saadia, 90n, 92n, 139n, 159–60, 170n gastrulation, 190 Gaudi, Antoni, 48 Gazzaniga, M.S., 178, 179, 181n Gellis, S., xvi Genendel, Roise, 180 Genesis/Genesis’ creation account, 7, 11, 12, 62n, 95–116; accord with evolutionary science, 121–6; connection with religion and not science, 96–101; creation account, 87, 100–1; discrepancies in sequence, 112–16; evolution account, 26–7; idealized categories, 106–7; initial paragraphs, 95, 114, 115–16, 116n, 122; literal meaning, 68; as masterpiece, 100; not qualifying as scientific text, 96–9; order/unity in, 121–3; purpose, 107; resolving differences with evolution, 101–3; scientific apologetics, 98; species diversity in, 124–5; time in, 103–4; see also Bible, Hebrew; creation; God genetic recombination, 190 genetics: constraints, 49–50; definition of ‘gene’, 190; embryology evidence, 34; evidence, 35–6, 145–6; fossil genes, 72; genetic code, 26, 61; genetic drift, 41; inanimate genes, 62n; lateral gene transfer, 75, 190; mutations see mutations; recombination, 75; regulatory genes, 36–8, 39 genome, 35, 39, 46n; ‘hotspots’ on, 79n; human evolution, 146, 149 genotypes, 38, 40 geographical evidence, 32–3 Gerland, B., 43n Gersonides (Levi ben Gershon, Ralbag), 12, 20n, 117n, 187

Index  213 Geschwind, D.H., 155n Gevurah prayer (resurrection), 132, 133 Gibson, D.G., 43n Gilbert, S.F., 44n, 46n, 62n, 138n gill arches, 34, 73 Gilligan, Carol, 161, 171n Gillman, N., 91n, 138n Glatzer, N., 117n Gleick, J., 62n God: acting in spontaneous fashion, 13; evolved world designed in detail by, 70; mutations guided by, 74–9; name of, 121–2, 153; providential, 127, 129 Golan Heights, Israel, 150 Goldsmith, D., 20n, 21n, 102, 118n Gondwana, 32 good and evil, 108, 160 Gordis, Daniel, xiin Goren-Inbar, G., 156n Gould, S.J., 8n, 45n, 54, 56, 59, 62n, 63n, 64n, 106, 118n, 119n, 156n, 164; ‘nonoverlapping magisteria’, 5, 101, 116n, 165 Grant, Peter and Rosemary, 33 grasp reflex, 147 Grauer, D., 43n, 44n, 79n gravity, 9, 10, 11, 68; gravitational constant, 16–17, 19 ‘Great Leap Forward’, 150 Great Rift Valley, 67, 68 Greek–Roman civilization, 107 Green, A., 90n, 126n Greene, Brian, 20n, 78, 81n guanine (G), 25 Guide for the Perplexed (Rambam), x, 7n, 45n, 89, 90n, 91n gut feeling, 139n Habakkuk, 21n Haggard, P., 181n Halakhah (Jewish religious law), 187 Halevi, Yehudah, 12, 189 Halkin, H., 21n Hall, B.K., 20n, 44n, 45n, 79n, 102, 154n Hallgrimsson, B., 20n, 44n, 45n, 79n, 102, 154n Harris, S.B., 139n Haught, J., 84, 90n Hawking, S., 20n, 22n hawks, 56 Hazen, R.M., 43n heaven, 98, 116 heavenly bodies, movements, 4 Hebrew Bible see Bible, Hebrew helium, 20n Hellenism, x Herczeg, Y.I.Z., 20n heredity, 24–5

heresy, 6 Herring, Basil, 176, 180n Heschel, Abram Joshua, 107, 118n hippocampus, brain, 149 HMS Beagle, Darwin’s round-the-world trip on (1832), 31 hokhma (wisdom), 85 homing pigeons, 56, 57 hominids, 150 Homo erectus, 144 Homo neanderthalis, 144, 151 Homo sapiens, 103, 123, 128, 144, 147, 150, 151, 153; and Biblical Adam, 153–4; design theory, 67, 68, 69, 70; genetic evidence for evolution of, 145–6; predictability and progress, 55, 59; see also early humans; human beings Horgan, J., 64n Hornera, V., 171n Hox genes, 49 Huffman, T., 139n human accelerated region 1 (HAR1), 146 human beings: first humans see first humans; purpose of creation, inability to know, 4–5, 88–90; righteous, 86–8, 183; uniqueness of, 125, 148–50 humours, 99 Hurst, L., 64n Huttenlocher, P., 156n hydrocarbon, 44n hydrocephalus (enlarged fluid chambers within brain), 74 hydrogen, 20n, 24, 25 hypothalamus, 166 immortality, 136–7, 139n impalas, 162 impulses, control over, 175, 176 India, 32 inevitability, 17, 18, 64n ‘inferior’ species, extinction, 56 inflation (in cosmic evolution), 10 insular cortex, 146 integration, 7 intelligence: high, 53–4, 55, 61, 65, 71, 79n; intelligent design, 69 intended world: broadly intended, under ‘loose rein’, 70–7, 81n; cosmic evolution, 19; in Jewish thought, 83–92; under loose rein, possible objections to, 75–7; as not wishful thinking, 77–9; Rambam, 85–6, 88–9, 91–2n intent: cosmic coincidences, as intended, 16–19; and cosmic evolution, 14; denial, 83–4; differing approaches to, 83–4; implying Intender, 84–5, 183; intended world see intended world; Jewish thought, intended world in; and

214  Index predictability, 65–7; and will, 86; see also free will invertebrates, marine, 30 Isaiah, 4, 128–9, 138n Islamic thinking, 154n isolation and species formation, 42–3 isomers of amino acids, levo and dextro, 26, 67, 190 Israel, W., 22n James, T., 46n Janson, H.W., 117n Jantsch, E., 63n Jenkins, A., 20n Jenkins, F.A., 45n Jewish Publication Society (JPS), xi Jewish thought, intended world in, 83–92; intent, implying Intender, 84–5; purpose of creation, inability of humanity to know, 4–5, 88–90; righteous humanity, 86–8, 183 Job, Book of, 47, 62n, 83, 88, 129 Johnson, G., 43n Johnston, M.V., 156n Jonas, H., 81n Judaism: and cosmic evolution see Judaism and cosmic evolution; death in later Jewish thought, 131–2; free will in, 175–6; and intended world see Jewish thought, intended world in; natural innate morality in, 159–60; order/ unity in, 121–3; rules of conduct, 169; traditional, 43, 84, 86; see also Bible, Hebrew; creation; Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism); Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) Judaism and cosmic evolution, 9–16; astrophysics compared, 14–16 Jupiter, 11 justice, 159 Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), 90n, 97, 187 kadosh (holy), 84 Kant, Immanuel, 160, 170n Kaplan, M., 90n Kass, L., 113–14, 125n, 139n Kauffman, S., 43n, 62n, 64n, 90n Keverne, E.B., 46n, 156n kidney development, 34 kilayim (mixing of diverse species), 124 kingfishers, 162 Kinsey, Alfred, 106, 118n Kirkwood, T.B., 138n Kitcher, Philip, 127–8, 137n Kitzmilleer (Tammy) et al. v. Dover Area (Pennsylvania School District) lawsuit, evolution teaching, 69 Kluge, G.M., 180n Kohlberg, Lawrence, 161, 171n

Konopka, G., 155n Kook, Rav, 5, 7n Koren Siddur (Sacks), 7n, 22n, 44n, 90n, 117n, 118n, 119n, 126n, 137n, 156n, 180n Krauss, Lawrence, 14, 20n, 21n Kugel, J., 139n La Brea tar pits, Los Angeles, 30 lambda (cosmological constant), 17 lancelets (small semi-transparent animals), 50 language, 42, 66, 145, 151–2 Large Hadron Collider, near Lake Geneva, 9 lateral gene transfer, 75, 190 lateral geniculate body, 190 Lazcano, A., 43n Leakey, R., 79n left brain, 178 Lemler, J., 139n Lenski, Richard, 33, 45n Leval, S., 8n Leviticus, 172n levo isomers, amino acids, 26, 67 Lewin, R., 79n Lewis, Thomas, 129, 138n Lewontin, R.C., 56, 63n, 81n Li, W., 43n, 44n, 79n Lichtenstein, A., 170n, 173n Liebowitz, Yeshayahu, 96, 116n life, evolution of, 23–46; all living creatures as one family, 36–7; complex bodies, 28–9; embryology evidence, 33–5; epigenesis, 40; evidence, 29–37; external shape evidence, 31–2; fossil evidence, 29–31, 102, 103, 143–4, 150; genetic evidence, 35–6; geographical evidence, 32–3; isolation and formation of species, 42–3; major transitions, 24–9; mechanisms, 37–43; natural selection and adaptation, 40–2; non-living to living matter, 24–7; non-nucleated cells to nucleated cells, 27; observation of evolution, 33–7; one cell to many cells, 27–8; pollination, 28; regulatory genes, 36–8, 39; variation in populations, 37–40 light, 12, 15, 16, 83, 143; creation and evolution, 95, 96, 97, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108; intended world, 83, 86, 87; original, 97; ultraviolet, 26, 64n; waves of, 11 limbic system, 135, 166, 190 Linnaeus, Carolus, 154n Lisi, A.G., 20n lissencephaly (smooth brain), 146 Livio, M., 62n, 118n longevity, 130 ‘loose rein’, broadly intended world under, 70–4, 81n; possible objections to, 75–7 Luciolo, S., 44n

Index  215 luck, as to existence, 17–18 lunar phases, moon, 15 lungs, predictability, 61 Lurianic Kabbalah, 90n, 97 Madagascar, 32 Mahfouz, Naguib, 154n Maimonides, Moses see Rambam (Moses Maimonides) Malay Archipelago, Southeast Asia, 32 mammals, 32, 34, 56, 59, 68, 103 Margulis, L., 44n Marino, I., 63n marsupials, 33 master-genes, 38 mathematical constraints, 48, 53, 61 Mather, J., 63n Maxwell, James Clerk, 78 Mayan coast, Mexico, 66, 67 Mayr, Ernst, 8n, 44n, 45n, 56, 63n, 78, 81n, 92n McDonald Observatory, West Texas, 11 McFarlane, D.A., 171n mechanical constraints, 48–9 mehitza (separation), 6–7, 84 Mehlman, M.J., 79n meiosis, 190 Melville, Herman, 30 Mesopotamia (Ancient), 104 Mesozoic (middle life) era, of dinosaurs, 79n metaverse, 18 meteorites, 24 methane, 25 Methuselah, 105 methyl groups, 40 microwaves, 12 Midrash, 19, 87, 117n, 159, 187 Milky Way galaxy, 75; black hole at centre, 17, 189 Miller, Stanley, 25, 43n, 64n miracles, 26 mirror neurons, 172n miscarriage, spontaneous, 74 Mitchell, S., 20n mitochondria, 27, 190 Mlodinow, L., 20n mockingbird, South American, 31, 42 molecules, self-replicating, 24 Moll, J., 172n molluscan torsion, 190 monkeys, neuronal recordings, 172n moon, origin, 15 morality: and astronomy, 15; Bible, whether can replace, 167–9; emotions underlying moral behaviour, evolution, 164; evolution and moral behaviour, 157–73; Judaism, natural innate morality in, 159–60; ‘lower’ animals, apparently

moral, altruistic and empathetic behaviours in, 161–3; moral choice, physical basis in human brain, 165–6; moral development stages, in children, 161; natural, originating in human evolution, 160–6; ‘transcendental’ account, biological explanations for moral behaviour threatening, 166–9; universality of behaviour, 166; unspecified situations, recommended behaviour, 169–70 morning prayer, Jewish liturgy, 4, 84, 108, 113 Moro reflex, 147 Morowitz, H.J., 44n morphology (external shape), 31–2 motor reflexes, 147 multicellular organisms, 23, 28, 52 multiverse, 18, 22n, 99, 191 mutations, 36, 39, 72, 80–1n, 145; defined, 191; guided by God, 74–9 myelination, 191 Nahmanides (Ramban), 13, 86, 96, 169, 173n natural disasters, 108, 109–10 natural selection, 4, 40–2, 74, 79, 81n, 191; predictability and progress, 56, 60, 61; see also Darwin, Charles; survival of the fittest principle naturalism, vs. science, 79 nature, purpose of, 4–5, 84, 87; see also purpose Neanderthals, 56 neocortex, 147 neonates, head size, 48–9 neshama (soul), 135; see also soul networks, neural, 53 neural platform, 167 neuroblasts, 74 neurons, brain, 148, 165, 172n; and free will, 176, 177, 178 neuroscience, free will in, 176–80 neurotransmitters, 177 Neusner, J., 91n New Guinea, 71 New Year, Jewish, 14–15, 16, 129 Newman, S., 44n, 64n Newton, Isaac, 4, 16 Nicomachus of Gerasa (c. 100 ce), 104, 118n nitrogen, 24 Noah’s flood, 15, 105, 108–9, 111–12 norepinephrine, 177 nothingness, creation from, 13–14, 99 notochords, 50, 191 nuclear forces, 10, 16 nucleotides/nucleic acid and bases, 24, 25, 35, 39, 44n, 191; pyrimidine, 26, 51, 64n Numbers, R.I., xiin, 79n

216  Index octopuses, 54, 61 old age, 128 Old Testament see Bible; Genesis Olduvai Gorge, East Africa, 30 olfactory bulbs, 147 Olovnikov, A.M., 138n omega (cosmic number), 17 On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (Copernicus), 98, 135 ontogeny (individual development), 35, 148, 191 orbital cortex, brain, 149 order/unity in Genesis/Judaism, 121–3; matched by evolutionary science, 122–3 organelles, 191 Orientation of Bony Trabeculae, The (Thompson), 49 Origin of Species (Darwin), 43, 57, 154n oxygen, 10, 16, 24, 61 pain, 129 parasites, 55 Pascal, Blaise, 68, 79n Patristic interpretation tradition, xiin pattern-recognition neuronal networks, 76 Pax 6 (mutant gene), 36, 37, 50 Peacocke, Arthur, 84, 90n Peltz, S., 156n pelvis, maternal, 48–9 peptides, 50 Perez, G., 20n Peter and the Wolf (Prokofiev), 55 Peterson, D., 137n, 171n phenotype, 38 phi (golden ratio), 48 Philo (first Jewish philosopher), x, 119n phosphorous, 24 photons, 12 phylogeny (ancestral development), 35, 42, 45n, 148 phylum, 191 physical-chemical constraints, 50–1 physics, laws of, 29 pigeons, 56, 57 Pinker, S., 156n placement genes, 49 Planck’s constant, 16 Plantinga, Alvin, 18, 21n, 79, 81n plants, 23, 27, 28 plate tectonics, 71, 192 Platt, C., 139n Pollard, K.S., 155n pollination, 28 polypeptide chains, 52 Pontifical Gregorian Institute, Rome, xiin populations, variation in, 37–40 positron emission tomography (PET), 164 Potapov, E., 138n

Power, M.W., 43n pre-central motor cortex, brain, 149 predictability, 47–55; beginning of life, 59–60; body shapes, 60; constraints, 47–51, 55; and contingency, 59–61; convergences, 53–5; events, 67; genetic code, 61; high intelligence, 61; and intention, 65–7; lungs, 61; selforganization, 51–3, 55, 60 pre-frontal cortex, 164–5 pre-frontal lobe damage, 78, 164 presynaptic nerve fibre, 179 primates, 23–4, 56, 67, 69, 71, 147 progress: affirmation of, 56–9; argument against, in evolution, 55–6; defined, 191; efficiency and adaptedness criteria, 56; and intention, 65–7 prokaryotes, 27, 56, 191 Prokofiev, Sergei, 55 pro-social behaviour, in animals, 163–4 proteins, 25, 52; see also amino acids Protestantism, Conservative, xiin protofeathers, dinosaurs, 58, 59 protons, 10, 12, 20n, 50 Proverbs, 51, 88, 168–9, 173n, 175 proximate cause, 5 Pseudomonas aeruginosa, 33 punctuated equilibria, 106, 118n purines, 25, 50 purpose: evidence of purposeful design, 3; Genesis, 107; inability of humanity to know, 4–5, 88–90; of nature, 4–5, 84, 87 pyrimidine nucleotide bases, 26, 50, 64n pyrimidines, 25 Quammen, D., 45n quantum fluctuations, 17, 73, 178–9 quantum mechanics/theory, 10, 14, 50 quark, 191 Quigg, C., 20n rainbow, 15–16 Rambam (Moses Maimonides), x, xi, 3, 4, 7, 126n, 131; and cosmic evolution, 12; and evolution of life, 33, 45n; and free will, 175, 176; Guide for the Perplexed, x, 7n, 45n, 89, 90n, 91n; intended world, 85–6, 88–9, 91–2n Ramban (Nahmanides), 13, 86, 96, 169, 173n randomness, 17, 18, 67 Rashi (Rav Shlomo Yitzhaki), 12, 87, 91n, 113, 119n ratchet idea, progress, 57 Ratliff, E., 46n Raup, D.M., 118n reaction-diffusion model, 48

Index  217 readiness potentials, 179 recession, of distant objects, 11 ‘red shift’, 11, 12 Rees, M., 21n reflexes, motor, 147 regulatory genes, 36–8, 39 relativity theory, 78 Repecheck, J., 117n replicating molecules, 28 reptiles, 30 resurrection, 132–3 Ricardo, A., 43n Ridley, M., 126n, 138n, 172n righteous humanity, 86–8, 183 RNA (ribonucleic acid), 25; see also DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid); genetics rocks, old, 29–31 root reflex, 147 Rosenberg, K., 117n Rosenzweig, Franz, 101 Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year), 14–15, 16, 129 Ruse, M.M., 81n Rutman, J., xvi Sabbath, 100, 101 Sacks, Jonathan, 104; Koren Siddur, 7n, 22n, 44n, 90n, 117n, 118n, 119n, 126n, 137n, 156n, 180n Sagan, C., 126n Sagan, D., 44n salvation, 97 Samuelson, N., 20n, 21n sandstone formations, pattern recognition, 76, 77 satellites, 75 Scharf, C., 21n Schermann, N., 126n Schneerson, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, 6 Scholem, G., 117n Schroeder, G., 75, 79n Schwarz, J., 156n science: defined, 7; early humans, 151–3; evolutionary see evolutionary science; and Genesis’ creation account, 96–101; vs. naturalism, 79; neuroscience, free will in, 176–80; order given by, 10; separation from religion, 5; truths of, 99; unity of, 123; see also evidence scientism (naturalism), 83 sea monsters, 113, 114 sectarianism, 6 secular society, 168 seeds, 28 Seeskin, K., 20n, 21n Segal, S., xvi self-assembly of natural world, 3–5, 52 self-interest, 161, 171n

Selfish Gene (Dawkins), 92n, 139n selfishness, 163, 170 self-organization, 51–3, 55, 60 self-replication, 24 ‘separate worlds’ approach, 6–7, 84 Sephardi rabbis/philosophers, 12–13 Sepkoski, J.J., 118n Sequoia’s bulk, 55 serotonin, 177 Seward, A.C., 137n Sforno, Obadiah ben Jacob (Obadja), 13 Shapiro, R., 43n Shatz, David, 139n, 180n sheretz nefesh hayya (swarms of living creatures), 114 Shubin, Neil, 35, 45n, 138n Shuchat, W., 21n, 91n sickness, 128 Sierra Nevada Mountains, ground squirrels in, 162 bar Simon, Rabbi Yehuda, 19 Simpson, G.G., 44n sin, freedom from, 15 Singer, I.B., 180, 181n six days of creation see days of creation skull bones, 40 Slifkin, Natan, xi, xiin, 103, 118n slime mould (social amoeba), 27 slugs, 27 smell, 72 Smith, J.M., 43n snakes, 40–1 Sodom, destruction of, 109, 110 solar system, 98 Soloveitchik, Rabbi J.B., 7n Sompolinsky, H., 181n Sonic-hedgehog protein, 50 soul, 134–6, 139n South America, birds in, 31 space, 9–10; empty, 13, 14 species: defined, 192; diversity, in evolution and Genesis, 124–5; extinction of, 73, 110–11; formation, 32, 42–3; humanity as single species, 123 spectral analyses, 11 Spencer, Herbert, 161–2 Spiteri, E., 155n squirrels, 162 SSS (Siberian salamander solution), 133 stars, 9, 10, 11, 16, 123 stem cells, 52 ‘stop’ codons, 25 Stringer, C., 45n stroke, deaths from, 73–4 suffering, 108, 127–9 Suga, H., 62n sun: intended world, 75; worship of, 113; yearly transit of earth around, 4, 14–15

218  Index survival of the fittest principle, xv, 161–2; see also natural selection Sutherland, J.D., 43n Swetlitz, M., xiin symbiosis, 75, 191 synapses, brain, 148 synaptic vesicles, 179 Szathmary, E., 43n Szostak, J.W., 43n Talmud, 131, 168, 170, 175 Tanach (Torah, Prophets and Writings), xi Tattersall, Ian, 152, 156n tectonic plates, 67, 71, 192 teeth, 53, 72, 155n teleology, 5, 78–9, 88, 89 telescopes, 11, 75 temporal cortex, 146 thanksgiving prayer, 26 theistic evolution, 70 Theory of Everything (T.O.E.), 18–19 thermonuclear fusion, 10 Thompson, D.W., 23, 43n, 49, 62n thymine (T), 25 time, creation in, 11–13, 99; Genesis account, 103–16 tohu (unformed), 13 Torah, xi, 6, 99, 105, 113, 159, 167, 169, 189 trabeculae, bony, 48, 49 trace metals, 24 traditionalists, x transposons, 75, 192 Tree of Knowledge, 137, 152 truth, 78, 99 tsimtsum (retreat), 90n Turing, Alan, 48, 53, 62n Turner, M.S., 20n Twersky, I., 180n Tyson, N., 20n, 21n, 102, 118n tzaddikim (righteous human beings), 86, 89, 90, 183 ultraviolet light, 26, 64n uniqueness, of human beings, 125; in evolution, 148–50 Urey, Harold, 25, 43n

Venter, Craig, 24, 39 vertebrates, 23, 50, 56, 59 vestigial structures, as evidence, 72–3 visual cortex/visual-association cortex, 76, 147 ‘vital principle’, 24 Volpe, J.J., 79n, 156n Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 58, 63n Wallace, Alfred Russell/‘Wallace’s line’, 32 Wallenberg, Raoul, 161, 171n Ward, P., 118n Warren Anatomical Museum, Harvard Medical School, 164 water, 24, 25, 44n Watson, James, 24–5, 39, 46n wavelength, 12 waxing and waning, moon, 15 Weatherall, J.O., 20n Weinberg, S., 20n whales, 30, 72 wilderness tabernacle (mishkan), 85 Williams, Miller, 75 Willis, Thomas, 134, 135 Wilson, E.O., 21n, 56–7, 63n, 81n, 126n, 167, 171n, 172n wings, 53 wisdom, 85, 88, 102 wisdom teeth, 72 Wohler, Friedrich, 24 Wong, K., 45n, 155n world: contingent, evidence of, 67–70; intended see intended world; ‘separate worlds’ approach, 6–7; tightly designed, 68–70, 74–9 World to Come, 168 worms, 33 X-rays, 12 Yerkes Primate Research Center, Atlanta, 163 Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), 129 Yucatan comet, 69, 70–1, 111 Zimmer, Carl, 43n, 44n, 63n, 134, 138n, 139n