[Avodah] critique of schroeder

[Chanoch (Ken) Bloom]

Great. One guy who knows much more Torah than science critiquing another
guy who knows much more science than Torah. I'm just looking through the
first critique (pp 3--15), and Bogacz can do a great job of mustering
Torah sources (as if to say Schroeder shouldn't rely on Rashi as the
last word because he's just summarizing on a level most people can
understand and that can fit on the bottom third of a page of Chumash),
but then (p12) when he begins critiquing the science involved, he starts
his critique by quoting Newsweek. He couldn't go search out the actual
scientific papers, read them, and consult bioligists to determine whether
this is surprising in the least, instead of quoting a Newsweek reporter
who is very likely to have misunderstood the science? (I don't know
the credentials of the Technology Review reporter.) While he does bring
discussion of epigentics in the end (which explains that environmental
factors control the expression of certain genes, but don't directly
control their mutations), it points to the pitfalls of using phenotypes
(the way in which genes are expressed) to assess the truth of evolution,
and to the pitfalls of caricaturing modern science in terms of Darwin
(1809-1882), Lamarck (1744-1829), or Mendel (1822-1884) alone.

-Ken