[Avodah] Evolution, Hashgachah and Tehillah

[Lisa Liel]

On 9/21/2011 9:02 AM, Micha Berger wrote:
> I got permission to share this Google+ discussion with the chevrah for a
> broader discussion. Please chime in...
>    
Hashem says that if we walk with Him b'keri, He will return keri to us.  
What I understand that to mean is that if we treat the world as though 
it's all happenstance (random), Hashem will withdraw His hashgacha and 
allow the normal course of events to have their way with us.

I've also heard, regarding the express "ein mazal l'Yisrael", that much 
of the world *does* operate randomly (based on the starting values 
defined by Hashem), and that "mazal", or chance, is how the world 
works.  But that we are exempt from that because of Hashem's hashgacha 
pratit.  It's the same issue as keri.

Think of Hashem as a trick pool shooter, kaveyachol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfd0GqjWD-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9aHgsblaoQ

These are examples of how a mere human can do something relatively small 
that has amazingly complex and intentional results.  So imagine how much 
of the world Hashem determined from the get-go even without applying 
constant hashgacha to all the world.  I think this is a little like the 
old question of free will vs predestination.  Hashem could have designed 
the set of genes in Adam to contain all of the genetic variations we see 
in humans today.  Particularly when He also designed the rest of the 
world to be able to give those genes little zetzes with radiation every 
now and then.  From our point of view, it's random.  And since we can't 
quantify Hashem, it's proper to treat it as random in the context of the 
sciences of biology and evolution.  But look at those trick pool shots.  
Some of them look like someone just hit a ball a billion times and only 
kept the film of the times when balls went into the pockets as a 
result.  In other words, it can almost be seen as random as well.  
Except that we can see the pool shooter and what he does, and we can see 
how He set the shot up and got it started.  So we don't conclude that 
it's random.  The nimshal in our case is that while we can't see Hashem 
and what He does and how He set everything up, we as Jews know that He did.

One final note about evolution.  Even if it can be determined that some 
species evolved from other species, there is no scientific basis for the 
idea that *all* species evolved from other species.  That's a fallacy.  
Extrapolating evolution back to a single point origin is equally 
fallacious.  If you eliminate Hashem as a possibility, it may seem to be 
the only reasonable conclusion, but since you can no more disprove 
Hashem's existence than you can prove it, universal evolution and single 
point origin evolution are not actually science, but mere conjecture.

Lisa