Why I Believe In God

This new segment was inspired by a learning rebbi I had this past summer, Rabbi Hersh Kasierer, from Teferes Moshe, a yeshiva located in Queens. Every day in camp, he would begin our morning learning group with a reason why he believed in God, usually on an emotional level. In our new Science & Health section, The Academy News would like to give you a secular and more scientific approach to one of the biggest religious struggles of our times: why do we believe in God?
I believe there is no topic of greater relevance and importance to a Jew of any age, especially teens. This is also one that seems to fall through the cracks of our faulty yeshiva system. Rabbi Kasierer was the first rabbi I have encountered that was bold enough to face this touchy topic head on. After seeing Rabbi Schiller and Rabbi Bechhofer, make a joint effort to combat doubt against the divine over Thursday night mishmars throughout the year, I have mustered up the confidence to bring up a subject that I believe should be brought out into the open, at least to the general MTA student body.
I readily concede that God’s existence can not be proven. If it could, that in itself would craft a physical attribute to something of a purely spiritual nature. Like the exact placement of an atom at a given moment, god is impossible to accurately locate. Therefore, the first step that one must take to direct oneself on this long and crucial journey is not to strive to prove god, but to highlight the errors in other approaches to the human existence, namely alternate religions and evolution.
I would like to tackle evolution first, mainly because it is easily refuted systematically because it is of a scientific nature. To preface my argument against evolution, I would like to address one main concern of many. If I maintain that evolution is incredibly mistaken, how could a scientist like Charles Darwin convince prominent scientist from his time until this day of its validity? Why would it remain such a highly regarded explanation for how our planet has come to its advanced state?
In reality there are great scientists on both sides of this augment. There is a newly emerging scientific movement, consisting of world renowned scientists, named Intelligent Design that combats evolution on a purely secular basis. This new movement started at a conference held at Southern Methodist University, in March 1992. This movement was spearheaded by mission statements issued by three main proponents of this new movement, Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial, William Dembski’s The Design Inference, and Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box. They offer the following explanation as to why Darwin had reached such a misguided theory.
Although a great scientist can explain how nature works, there is a difference between explaining how nature works and explaining where it came from. Darwin’s theory of the origin of man was developed and commonly accepted before we even understood nature. We have now learned that life is built on molecules, and biochemistry has become the study of the very foundations of life. Darwin made an uneducated observation based on his expectation of everything to be of simple nature, but in reality it is very complex.
Darwin expected mechanisms of change and the subsequent developments by natural means to be uncomplicated life processes, and that the evolution that he hypothesized would came out from simple steps, leaving the mechanism of change unspecified, entirely by natural means. Modern science has proven it not to be so straightforward, however.
Darwin folly is that he only had the ability to observe the outer patterns, the whole animal or whole organ, and then imagined the steps of its origin; it is impossible to do so if you don’t understand its foundations, though. The entire body is built on molecules, not just on organs. “Thus the primary question is ‘what is the origin of this peculiar organism, the cell?’” as put by Mathias Schleiden, the scientist who discovered the plant cell.
As to why modern scientist would remain to adhere to an impossible theory is, as Rabbi Mendelson has explained, that this theory has created a way for people to relieve themselves of the burden of belief in God, such as the restrictions that comes with it, without feeling guilty. Now that the Darwin’s theory has become so ingrained in society that these scientists will defend their newly acquired freedoms at all costs, no matter how wrong the theory might be.
Lynn Margulis, the scientist who developed the theory of the origin of mitochondria and their doubled layered shell, said how Neo-Darwinism has become more of “a minor twentieth-century dogmatic religious sect,” then a group working upon scientific principals.
For instance, Richard Goldschmidt, a geneticist, in an apparently desperate attempt proposed the “hopeful monster” theory. This suggests that occasionally large changes might occur just by chance – perhaps a reptile laid an egg once, and from it hatched a bird.
In my refutation of Darwin, I would like to take the approach of Michael J. Behe, a professor of Biological Sciences at Lehigh University, which develops an effort to stress a problem with the theory, which Darwin himself admitted to, relying on the existence a certain scenario in nature.
Darwin himself explained that “if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Michael J. Behe, insists that modern biochemistry has supplied us with many complex organs. And in his book Darwin’s Black Box, although Darwin himself admits that only one would be necessary, Behe offers thirteen examples of these organs.
He describes these structures as “irreducibly complex.” Such would be “a system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of these parts causes the system to effectively cease function.” This would imply that this organism could not have been made in slow, simple steps that would have also aided the organism in question to continue to live through the process of natural selection.
One system Professor Behe discusses in his book is that of the human eye. Darwin himself knew its complexities, and tried to explain its origin in his chapter entitled “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication.” He did not specify the steps it would take, but he proposed that the eye originated from less complex eyes that began as simple light sensitive spots that took a leap up to our multifaceted eyes (which is comparable, as far as science goes, to a successful jump across the Grand Canyon).
“Darwin however merely adds complex systems to complex systems and calls that an explanation,” Michael Behe says. “This is comparable to answering the question of ‘How is a stereo made?’ with the words ‘By plugging a set of speakers into an amplifier, and adding a CD player, radio receiver and a tape deck.’”
Dr. Behe then explains the unseen biochemical steps that are involved in the basic, daily function of a fully operational eye that is too complex to explain in an article in a high school newspaper, even our lofty Academy News. This system requires many chemicals to stabilize the reaction ongoing within the optical system that can only be made through the reaction itself, an arrangement that certainly could not progress in successive steps, no difference how small these notches are. With our world currently being explained with increasing complexity, Darwin’s theory is growingly implausible.
Although this is not convincing truth of a creator, this allows us to take the vital first step in acknowledging that other explanations are surprisingly less feasible than a mystic being that is above the laws of nature.
Once you have reached the logical conclusion that there must be a creator, then one must choose which religion he believes is the truly divine one. Hopefully, in the continuation of this segment, I will prove that the only reasonable conclusion, from a secular approach, is Judaism.
This is a subject that none should shy from shedding light upon. This is a very important topic that can be handled plainly and effectively. We no longer need to debate on morals and use the bible as textual proof, but can now use the reason of science to make coherent and realistic stand points. I have quickly supplied one way to refute evolution but there are many others, many of which are easily understood. The strengthening of our belief system is so important because its ramifications will resound throughout every religious act any Jew commits from washing negel vaser in the morning to saying kriat shema at night.