Parsha Bereshit: Resolving the Dichotomy Between Science and Religion

July 21, 1925.  William Jennings Bryant and Clarence Darrow finish duking it out in court.  John T. Raulston ruled that John Scopes had violated Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited school teachers to deny the Biblical account of creation.  Although Scopes ultimately got off on a technicality, this case became the genesis for the dichotomy of science and religion in American politics.  

It’s not just a matter of the increased number of Supreme Court cases regarding religion and politics that came subsequently.  It's a matter of divisive polemics.  On the one end, you have scientists who think religious people are ignoramuses obsessed with denialism and cognitive dissonance.  The other end consists of the Religious Right, who would have you believe that anyone who professes evolution as fact is a hell-bound heathen.  

What ever happened to the middle?  Is there a middle?  And if so, can one still be a "good Jew" while adhering to scientific data and standards?   

The short answer is that the line of questioning is faulty.  It presents a false dilemma in which either one has to choose between science and religion.  This is an assumption that many Americans make because that is what the cultural landscape of America has been for almost a century.  

There are so many Jewish Nobel Prize winners, 27 for chemistry, 46 for physics, 53 for medicine, you would hardly think Judaism has an aversion to the sciences, and that would be correct.  What’s more is that this is not a modern Jewish phenomenon.  For centuries, Jewish thought has viewed science and religion as two opposite poles, but rather as a duality.  

First, I would like to point out some general points regarding Judaism and science:

1. Science explains the “how,” religion the “why.”  Each field has its function in life.  The Torah does not explain phenomena such as mitosis or gravity, just as science does not explain purpose, meaning, or how we should conduct our lives like the Torah does.
2. In the introduction of his philosophical magnum opus, Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides states that one needs to understand the natural sciences and mathematics to understand the Torah.   He goes even as far to say that an individual that has studied these fields is to be even more revered than a man steeped in Talmud.   
3. Judaism has a blessing for when you meet a Torah scholar, as well as when you meet a secular scholar of comparable knowledge in his respective field (e.g., a scientist).
4. Later in the Guide for the Perplexed (II, xxv), Maimonides says that when a verse’s plain meaning is impossible (such as that of the corporeality of G-d or that the world was created in six literal days), we must read the verse figuratively.

How can we apply these general concepts to the Creation account in the Torah?

1. Again, Maimonides tells us that if something cannot be accepted with its plain meaning, we must read the verse or passage allegorically.  That means that we can read the passage of “the world was created in six days” not in six literal days.  After all, the sun was not created until Day Four.  Who knows how long the first three days really were?    
2. The first point can be countered by the fact that a vast majority of classical rabbis believed that the six days were literally six 24-hour periods.  How do we get around that?  In his book “The Science of G-d,” Gerald Schroeder uses the theory of relativity to explain how six days of creation are equivalent to the fifteen billion years of scientific evolution. 
3. Science and religion tell us the same story.  They are just giving two different narratives.  Narrative #1: The universe was in a very hot, dense state, and eventually expanded rapidly.  The expansion caused the universe to cool, and it still is in a presently expanding state.  Narrative #2: After having created the universe in Genesis 1:1, G-d said "let there be light, and there was."  Both explanations entail a sudden burst of light, and both explanations conclude that the universe indeed had a beginning.  Both narratives are in concert with reality.  (In a sense, it should be easier to accept the Torah’s account because we now know that there was a beginning to the universe.  Up until the Big Bang Theory, it was widely accepted in the scientific community that the universe is “eternally old.”)  
4. Torah does not provide with the scientific details as to how creation happened. To paraphrase R. Samson Hirsch, it would not matter if evolution were accepted as valid scientific truth because it does not negate the Creation account.  All understanding how we came into being would merely give us a reason to be even more reverent towards Hashem because we better understand His works.  

Torah does not negate science, and science does not negate Torah.  Science explains how the universe functions.  Torah gives use meaning and purpose in a monotheistic context.  Rather than have the two at odds with one another, what should be done is use both Jewish texts and scientific texts to better ascertain the truth.