Sermon by Rabbi Denise L. Eger, October 4, 2005

The Creation of the world and Intelligent Design
Today on Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the creation of our world. According to Jewish tradition today is 5766 years since God created the world. The Rabbi’s teach us that Rosh Hashanah is Hayom Harat Olam -- that today is the birthday of the world. R. David Abudraham (14th century Spain), drawing on Job 3:2, sees Rosh Hashanah as being identical to the day of its birth. Other places in the Talmud state that the first of Tishrei—which is today, Rosh Hashanah—the thought of the world came into the mind of God.

In either case, whether creation was actually begun on Rosh Hashanah with the creation of light or was conceived on Rosh Hashanah and begun at a later time, we Jews as a matter of religious faith and principal believe that God created the universe—and each time we say a bracha, a blessing—Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam—Praised are You Adonai, Source of the Universe—we assert God’s role in creation. Our prayers in the daily worship that we recited this morning—call God –Yotzer Or- The One who created Light. Woven throughout our belief system is the idea that God created our world, our reality, and we human beings were created by God to be partners in this venture together.
As we pray and sing together on this Rosh Hashanah morning we also encounter a teaching from the rabbis (Midrash Vayikra Rabba 29:1), that says—today is not the anniversary of the beginning of creation—rather Rosh Hashanah commemorates the creation of the Neshama, the soul of human life. This view states that we start counting our 5700-plus years from the creation of the soul of Adam, the primordial human being, which according to Genesis was created on the sixth day of creation.
So this day in our calendar according to some rabbinic interpretations is that Rosh Hashanah comes six days after the initial moment of creation—when God said, “Let there be light.” Rosh Hashanah in this view is the beginning of the creation of human history—rather than all creation. As it says in Rosh Hashanah 27a in the Talmud, the first day of Tishrei is “the beginning of your deeds.”
But our calendar says it is 5766 years since the beginning of creation. The rabbis came to that figure many centuries ago by counting up the generations and ages of the characters in the Bible. They didn’t know from Darwin, evolution or radioactive carbon dating.
The ages of the universe, our galaxy, the solar system, and Earth however, can be estimated using modern scientific methods. Over the past few decades, measurements (of the Hubble expansion) have led to the estimated ages for the universe of between 7 billion and 20 billion years, with the most recent and best measurements within the range of 10 billion to 15 billion years. According to the National Academy of Science the best estimates of Earth's age are obtained by calculating the time required for development lead isotopes in Earth's oldest lead ores. These estimates yield 4.54 billion years as the age of Earth and of meteorites, and hence of the solar system.
So we live on the one hand with the scientific and on the other hand with our faith system. Judaism has always been willing to assert that we don’t know the actually length of the day as described in the Genesis story—for we have other places in our Torah that tell us a single year is but a moment in the eye of God. Many Jewish scholars readily acknowledge that the first six "days" of creation are not necessarily 24-hour days ( 24-hour day would be certainly meaningless until the creation of the sun on the fourth "day" of the story). And so we Jews could understand the language of our Creation stories in Genesis are metaphor and myth rather than a literal reading of how exactly the world was made.
But today in America there is a movement afoot to redefine science and the origins of our world through a different lens. Perhaps you have heard of the debate surrounding the idea of intelligent design. Even President Bush has recently weighed in on the debate calling for the inclusion of Intelligent Design theory in the classroom.
Intelligent Design is a so-called scientific theory that tries to debunk evolution at every turn. Intelligent Design advocates not only push to have their purported theories published in respectable scientific journals, but have had some success in getting school boards to rewrite science curricula to include questions and doubts about evolution, scientific theories as well as the promotion of the concept of Intelligent Design.
What is the theory of Intelligent Design? It is nothing more than what we used to call creationism, dressed up in pseudo-scientific language. Based on the writings of Professors Michael Behe, an Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Lehigh University and William Dembski, associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University, Intelligent design or (ID) refers to their theory that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of life in all its diversity. Advocates of ID maintain that their theory is scientific and provides empirical proof for the existence of either God or superintelligent aliens. They believe that design is empirically detectable in nature and in living systems. And they have tried to create mathematical formulas to show their proofs. They claim that intelligent design should be taught in the science classroom because it is an alternative to the scientific theory of natural selection.
At every turn they undermine the notion of evolution and push the idea that even if you don’t buy the whole Intelligent Design theory that at least the controversy should be taught about. And they have been successful in their attempts to change the curriculum in several states, including Ohio and Georgia and at present the states Kansas, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Missouri are deciding whether or not to include intelligent design “theory” in their statewide science curriculum through committee and even court cases!
The idea that an organism's complexity is evidence for the existence of a cosmic designer was advanced centuries before Charles Darwin. Its best-known exponent was English theologian William Paley, creator of the famous watchmaker analogy. As the editors of Natural History magazine explain, “If we find a pocket watch in a field, as Paley wrote in 1802, we immediately infer that it was produced not by natural processes acting blindly but by a designing human intellect. Likewise, he reasoned, the natural world contains abundant evidence of a supernatural creator. The argument from design, as it is known, prevailed as an explanation of the natural world until the publication of the Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859. The weight of the evidence that Darwin had patiently gathered swiftly convinced scientists that evolution by natural selection better explained life's complexity and diversity. "I cannot possibly believe," wrote Darwin in 1868, "that a false theory would explain so many classes of facts."”
As Rabbi Nancy Meyers writes, “This same theory of design by an intelligent being was at the heart of the famous Scopes trial in 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee. It was at this trial where the Bible was pitted against science. A biology teacher, John Scopes, was on trial for illegally teaching the theory of evolution. On the 7th day of the court case, defense attorney Clarence Darrow called William Jennings Bryan to the witness stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan, a three times Democratic presidential candidate was the prosecuting attorney. Darrow grilled Bryan about stories in the Bible such as a whale swallowing Jonah, Joshua making the sun stand still, Noah and the great flood, and the creation according to Genesis. Bryan initially argued that, "everything in the Bible should be accepted as it is given there," but finally conceded that the words of the Bible should not always be taken literally. In response to Darrow's relentless questions as to whether the six days of creation, as described in Genesis, were twenty-four hour days, Bryan conceded, "My impression is that they were periods."”
This famous trial helped to put an end to using the Bible in place of accepted scientific ideas or so we thought. But again it rears its head in a different form. Today the Intelligent Design movement continues to grow. Funded by the Discovery Institute, whose money primarily comes from right wing fundamentalist circles, intelligent design proponents strike out on many levels. More sophisticated than the creationist of old they use modern techniques including public relations campaigns to advance their cause. And when they can’t use science to actually prove their theories, they try to use process to at least get a hearing of their gospel.
The problem we Jews should have with intelligent design is not that we reject a notion of the Creator or God as designer indeed this is our belief that we celebrate today but we should reject Intelligent Design Theory because this idea is being taught first as science and secondarily in the public school classroom.
The theory of Intelligent Design is not a scientific theory. Dembski and Behe and others can dress it up all they want with complex language and quasi-mathematical equations—but at the end of the day they are engaging in theology not science. Their argument of irreducible complexity basically states that life and the origins of life are just too complex for us to understand. Like generations of philosophers and theologians before them they cannot prove the existence of God nor can they prove evolution wrong. For the idea of God is about faith. And being the one the screams the loudest at a public hearing, workshops and school board committee meetings just doesn’t make it so. When President Bush signed “The No Child Left Behind Act” which was his Education Reform Bill, it mandated States and local school board revamp much of their learning goals and curriculum. This has given the ID advocates their foot in the door to demand changes in the science standards. They have utilized this process to attack the teaching of evolution in a forceful way and demand that Intelligent Design theory be elevated along side Darwin as science.
But their demands do not a scientific theory make. Intelligent design cannot scientifically be proven and thus I believe they have no place in the science classrooms of our children.
Secondarily as Jews we should be concerned because any time theology enters into the public sector we have to ask whose theology will be taught? Will it be Jewish? Or will it be someone else’s? Our public schools must maintain a clear separation of church and state. This principle embedded in our Constitution has been our Jewish community’s most important gift in America and has helped our people thrive. We have not had to contend with a state religion and we shouldn’t have to in the science classroom either. If intelligent design makes it way into our children’s classrooms as a “scientific theory” it will amount to our teachers being asked to teach theology. Let’s not go down the path of deciding whose theology our schools will advance. You can be sure it won’t be the Jewish one.
The truth is that since the Supreme Court of the United States in 1987 struck down a Louisiana law that mandated teaching 'creation science' in schools because the premise of the research was based on biblical texts, the Christian fundamentalists have been seeking a way to regroup. As intelligent design does not draw directly from biblical sources, Christian fundamentalist groups have seized on it as a possible way to force creationism back into the classroom.
Why is this important you ask? Isn’t this just another small fringe group of fundamentalists attacking the mainstream? While the Intelligent Design movement is small—it is very well funded. Even though nine out of ten scientists when polled reject intelligent design theory as science, ID proponents are waging battle on university campuses, and in the classrooms of our children. Will our children grow up being able to distinguish fact from fiction? Will they be able to recognize science from theology? Will they be able to judge for themselves? And will your tax dollars be used to promote a religious theology masquerading as science?
The minds of our children are at stake. And ultimately the future and direction of our country. Will we be a nation who is grounded in learning and opportunity that teaches critical thinking? Or will we be a society that simply believes literally in everything we read—with no nuance and no metaphor and no symbolic language—just as the fundamentalist read their bible. Children learn what we teach them. And then children grow up and become adults. So even if you don’t have children—this movement ought to give you pause for concern.
It certainly gives me pause.
Even today on Rosh Hashanah as we celebrate the creation of the world—we celebrate our faith and our beliefs. But we don’t try to masquerade those beliefs and that faith as science. I do believe with all my heart that God created the universe. I also understand the process of evolution and have learned and seen how science has proven it’s more than just a theory or educated guess. And I am confident that our rendering of the Bible and science on the origins of our world are not in conflict. We read our Torah with many layers. We peel away each slice, each thin layer to reveal deeper and deeper meaning.
We shall teach this approach to our children but we shall teach them this not in the halls of their science class as scientific inquiry but here in the context of our synagogue. We would not foster our religion upon others; they should not foster theirs upon us.
But most importantly as we celebrate this Rosh Hashanah, the birthday of the world, we do so with the knowledge that as we read Torah—we read it not literally, but with an eye to its humor, its pathos, its metaphor and symbol, and its weaving of myth and history to explain the origins of life and human beings and most importantly we view the Bible and our Torah as our collective experience of the Divine in our world.
That is what we celebrate together. That is our belief. Let us share that belief with our children in our homes and in synagogue. For they will learn what we teach them.
Ken Yehi Ratzon.