Posts Tagged ‘science’
Happy Big Bang Day
1. It is very exciting that scientists have managed today to begin a challenging and long-awaited experiment into the nature of matter. Here are a few random thoughts generated in my mind by this morning’s launch of the protons.
2. First, it is worth saying again that there is no conflict between religious belief and scientific experiment. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The psalmist urges us to consider the magnitude and wonder of God’s work of creation, something that we can do more and more effectively the more science reveals to us about it. The Chofetz Chayim explains that the more we appreciate the nature of the creation, the more we can perceive the magnitude of its intended purpose. The founder of our religion, Abraham, came to his revolutionary belief in a single God by examining the nature of the universe, albeit that he had only his own senses to use to conduct the examination.
3. Secondly, there appears to be a possibility that when this morning’s experiment is continued to the collision phase the resultant explosion will destroy the world. Mildly troubling, but much less so to a religious person than to a secular scientist. The rabbis advise us to live each day and each moment as if it were our last – because it always may be. Easier said than done, of course: but at any rate the addition of one more possible reason why my life may end at any moment adds little or nothing to the importance of aiming to be ready at all times to give an account of my life.
4. Thirdly, the experiment demonstrates both the futility and the value of science. Scientists hoping to be given the meaning of life by colliding a couple of protons are likely to be disappointed: nothing that science has yet achieved (evolutionary theories included) has been successful in discovering, nor is there reason to expect that it will be successful about discovering, anything about the “why” of the world as distinct from the “how”. A search for the “why” by flailing about in the universe perpetrating random acts of molecular violence is likely to be futile. But application of increased knowledge of the “how” (evolutionary theories included) to advance our understanding of how we can develop and improve the world, in a partnership with God, to the welfare and benefit of everyone in it, is always of the utmost value from a religious perspective.
Bris Miloh: the painful truth
- Parashas Vayeiro opens with Avrohom Ovinu recovering from his bris miloh at a place belonging to Mamrei. The rabbis want to know why Mamrei deserves this express and apparently unnecessary mention in the Torah. Rashi answers from Bereishis Rabboh that “Mamrei gave Avrohom advice about the bris miloh and therefore Hashem revealed himself to Avrohom on Mamrei’s property”.
- So what advice did Mamrei gave Avrohom that merited such a reward? The Midrash Tanchumo records that Avrohom had three friends whom he consulted about bris miloh. The first friend warned him that it would weaken him to such an extent that he would be vulnerable to reprisals from allies of the kings whom he had recently conquered. The second warned him that the loss of blood would be fatal. The third, Mamrei, expressed surprise that Avrohom should ask for advice and suggested that someone who had already experienced miracles, including being saved from being thrown into a furnace, should have sufficient confidence in Divine protection simply to fulfil the direct command of Hashem.
- So Mamrei’s advice consisted in refusing to give advice!
- Bris Miloh is a surgical procedure. So it can be tempting to think that medical science will have advice to offer about it. But, then as now, the most frequent form of advice will be simply “don’t do it”; and if the medical community are treated by us as having a special standing in relation to bris miloh, they will not hesitate to take reasonable advantage of that to expound upon the physical or psychological harm that their scientific knowledge leads them to expect to result from it.
- Mamrei’s message to Avrohom Ovinu was to disclaim on the part of the scientific community any right to advise about the methodology or effects of bris miloh, any more than in relation to any of the other mitzvos which we have in direct command from Hashem.
- I have occasionally heard arguments, on the radio or elsewhere, between rabbis and doctors about bris miloh. The doctors have won every time. While the rabbis assert repeatedly that bris miloh causes no significant pain and does no lasting harm, the doctors not only deny it but adduce evidence (as to the quality of which I am ignorant) of occasional physical harm; and they regularly assert the possibility of long-term trauma.
- Bris miloh is not something we would ever have invented for ourselves: it is counter-intuitive for us, not only as Jews commanded to love others but even simply as sensitive human beings. But the Ksav Sofer on Devorim 22:6 (discussing the connection made by Devorim Rabboh 6:1 between bris miloh and kan tzipor) explains that the essence of performing bris miloh is that a person should feel the apparent cruelty of harming his defenceless child, and should nevertheless perform the bris in recognition that human understanding of cruelty or kindness is imperfect, and fades into irrelevance when faced with a clear and direct Divine command. So we conquer our instincts and perform bris miloh with the same obedience (although not necessarily unquestioning obedience) to the tradition handed down from Abraham Ovinu to the present day as that which underpins our entire commitment to Torah.
- Anyone who performs bris miloh cheerfully and asserts that it causes no significant pain, not only misses this message but contradicts the ruling of the rabbis that at the seudas mitzvah for a bris miloh we omit in birchas hamozon the celebratory introduction that we include at a sheva brochos, on account of our consciousness of and sensitivity for the baby’s suffering.
- Much of what we do as Jews must seem extraordinary to others, and bris miloh must seem not just extraordinary but barbaric. If we meet charges of barbaric cruelty with scientific argument or merely with unfounded protestations, we cannot expect other than the most hostile and contemptuous opposition. If we admit the apparent cruelty but present our commitment to this practice as based on devotion to, and trust in, a revealed Divine tradition transmitted to us throughout the generations, we can at least hope that our honesty will be regarded with an uncomprehending respect.
Nobel games and noble aspirations
- Professor Robert Aumann deserves warm congratulations from the world-wide Jewish community, not least for the wonderful kiddush hashem created by the international media coverage of his smile beaming out from under his kippah.
- That apart, like other practical social sciences applied games theory clearly has enormous benefits for society in all kinds of ways.
- Also like other sciences, it is important to understand its limitations, which Professor Aumann clearly does. In particular, asked about the application of games theory to the Israel-Palestine conflict, he is reported as having said “It’s been going on for more than 80 years and … it’s going to go on for at least another 80. I don’t see any end to it.”
- Without knowing the precise context of the question to which these remarks responded, it is impossible to be sure exactly what Professor Aumann meant. But knowing him to be a Torah Jew we can be sure what he did not mean: he may have meant that his particular science has nothing to offer for the acceleration of the resolution of conflict in Israel, but he certainly did not mean that there is therefore no hope for peace.
- Professor Aumann himself has witnessed miracles: a miraculous escape from the inferno and a miraculous rebuilding, in other lands in general and in Israel in particular, of so much of what was lost. Therefore he is better-placed than many to know that the cry of the believing Jew through the ages when confronted with the limits of science and human endeavour is not the cry of despair but the cry of hope beyond reason but within faith.
- Standing at the brink of the sea with the Egyptian armies massing behind them, Moses turns to the Jewish people and says not “my political, diplomatic and military strategies have reached the end of their potential and we may as well give up” but rather “my political, diplomatic and military strategies have come to the limit of their potential and we can therefore, all human effort having been expended and failed, confidently expect immediate divine intervention” (see Shemos 14:13-14).
- We are all deeply indebted to Professor Aumann and all other scientists, social and other, for their discoveries that enable us to work faster and more effectively towards the goal of a perfect world under the Kingship of God. But we never forget that the human effort can only succeed in accordance with the God’s blessings, and that ultimate success, personally, communally and universally, owes more to faith in God’s mercies and kindness than to our own efforts. And so the more impossible the task that we confront seems, the more confidently we trust in God to achieve it for us once we have deserved it.
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