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ABSTRACT
I outline a Jewish response to theological problems emerging from Darwinian biology and contemporary cosmology. This response is rooted in an argument from genre, regarding the relationship between divine revelation and fiction. I then bring this Jewish response into conversation with Shoaib Ahmed Malik’s Islam and Evolution.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Shoaib Ahmed Malik, Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).
2 Gregory Currie, The Nature of Fiction (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 46.
3 David Davies, “Fictive utterance and the fictionality of narratives and works,” British Journal of Aesthetics 55 (2015), 39–55.
4 Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Camrbidge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
5 Allan Hazlett and Christy Mag Uidhir, “Unrealistic Fictions,” American Philosophical Quarterly 48:1 (2001), 33–46.
6 Tamar Szabó Gendler, “The Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance,” The Journal of Philosophy 97:2 (2000), 55–81.
7 David Lewis, “Truth in Fiction,” American Philosophical Quarterly 15:1 (1978): 37–46.
8 For an interesting discussion of this topic, see Stefan Goltzberg, “Is the Bible Fiction?” Faith and Philosophy 21:3 (2014), 325–336.
9 Jon E. Lendon, “Historians without History: Against Roman Historiography,” in Cambridge Companion to the Roman Historians, ed. Andrew Feldherr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). I owe this reference to Joshua Berman, Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith (Jersualem: Maggid Books, 2020).
10 Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith, 23.
11 Ibid., 25.
12 Ein Aya, Shabbat, chapter 2, s.v. kol ha-omer Reuven chata, as translated in Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith, 42.
13 Ani Maamin: Biblical Criticism, Historical Truth, and the Thirteen Principles of Faith, 42.
14 Ibid., 40.
15 Samuel Lebens, A Guide for the Jewish Undecided: A Philosopher Makes the Case for Orthodox Judaism (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2002), 230.
16 Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible; Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Jerusalem: Maggid Books and The Orthodox Union, 2009), 16.
17 Ibid. I highly recommend readers consult Rabbi Sacks’s own response to evolution in The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning (New York: Schocken, 2012), 209–232, 351–370.
18 Menachem Mendel Schneerson, “A Letter on Science and Religion,” in Challenge: Torah Views on Science and its Problems, eds. A. Carmell and C. Domb (New York: The Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists in conjunction with Feldheim Publishers, 2000), 142–149.
19 Hud Hudson, The Fall and Hypertime (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
20 Samuel Lebens, and Tyron Goldschmidt, “The Promise of a New Past,” Philosophers’ Imprint 17:18 (2017): 1–25; Samuel Lebens, The Principles of Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
21 I attribute this procedure to Saadya Gaon because of the various sources of mistake he thinks our empirical speculations are prone to, which he lists in The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Samuel Rosenblatt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
22 The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 267.
23 Moses Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2000), II.25.
24 Moses Nachmanides, The Torah: With Ramban’s Commentary Translated, Annotated, and Ellucidated, trans. Y. Blinder (New York: Mesorah Publications, 2004), 9.
25 Samson R. Hirsch, Collected Writings of R. S. R. Hirsch, Vol. VII (New York: Philip Feldheim, 1996), 263.
26 Abraham I. Kook, Letters of Rav Kook [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mossad Ha-Rav Kook, 1967), as translated by Shai Cherry, “Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 3 (2003) 247–290.
27 Jennie Rothenberg, “The Heresy of Nosson Slifkin,” Moment Magazine, October 2005, 37–72.
28 Seymour Feldman, “The Theory of Eternal Creation in Hasdai Crescas and Some of His Predecessors,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1980), 289–320.
29 “The Heresy of Nosson Slifkin,” 40.
30 Ibid., 45.
31 Ibid., 58.
32 Ibid.
33 Joseph B. Soloveitchik, The Lonely Man of Faith (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc, 1997), 7; The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning, 209–232, 351–370.
34 Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm, 298.
35 Osman Bakar, “The Nature and Extent of Criticism of Evolutionary Theory,” in Critique of Evolutionary Theory: A Collection of Essays, ed. Osman Bakar (Kuala Lumpur: The Islamic Academy of Science and Nurin Enterprise, 1984), 123–152; Seyyed Hossein Nasr, “On the Question of Biological Origins,” Islam and Science 4:2 (2006), 181–197.
36 Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm, 123–124.
37 Ibid., 119.
38 Muhammad Shahabuddin Nadvi, Evolution or Creation? (Bangalore: Furqania Academy Trust, 1998), 24.
39 Alvin Plantinga, Where the conflict really lies: science, religion, and naturalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
40 But see Tyron Goldschmidt and Samuel Lebens, “Judaism and Providence,” in Abrahamic Reflections on Randomness and Providence, eds. Kelly Clark and Jeffrey Koperski (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 147–169; and The Principles of Judaism.
41 Islam and Evolution: Al-Ghazālī and the Modern Evolutionary Paradigm, 117.
42 Ibid., 286.
43 Ibid., 127.
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Notes on contributors
Samuel Lebens
Samuel Lebens is a professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. He works on the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of fiction, metaphysics, and epistemology. Among his recent books are The Principles of Judaism (Oxford University Press 2020) and Philosophy of Religion: The Basics (Routledge 2022).