We could
look at the creation of the universe as a whole, and also at the
creation of its parts. The speed at which changes occur could be
different in different parts of the universe. This allows us to
interpret some parts of the universe as stable, relative to changes in
other parts of the universe that are happening more quickly.
From this point of view, the changes in the
inorganic, organic, and social systems are deeply distinguished. For us,
the physical world, and especially the macro world, is the most
unchangeable field, and the social field the most dynamic, while the
biological fields lie between these two fields. Allow me to stress that
creation is going in all parts of the universe. The continual
development of the physical universe is perhaps best emphasized by the
famous physicist Richard Feynman. In his book (1965) he says,
The Universe is expanding with time and
that means that the gravitational constant is changing with time, and
although that is a possibility, there is no evidence to indicate that it
is a fact. (p. 30).
In fact, the Big Bang theory, on the macro level,
and different concepts of changes, on the micro level, are working to
confirm the creative nature of the inorganic matter of the universe.
The concept that minerals undergo development – and
even transformation into life – has been worked on by a group of
scholars from Jerusalem University.
A metamorphic rock
Fully-realized, this concept could serve as an
example of the evolution of the inorganic world. Isaac Lapidus (5736),
one the members of the group, described the concept in the following
way:
The earth surface (an also the planets, meteorites, the
cosmic dust, etc,) are combined from strata that include different
minerals. Even the simplest among them contain in structure many
elements – silicon, oxygen, aluminum, magnesium, iron, and so on. The
most widespread croup of minerals is aluminosilicates that contain
magnesium, iron, water, and such. This kind of additions is usually
presented in the mineral’s structures as ions, i.e., as charged
particles. In these complex natural like polymeric compounds the
consequence of structural ions is also possible to consider as a text
and search by different analytical methods that nearest and remote order
in the real structure of the minerals. At the present day a large set of
scientific materials is collected in this field. It was quite natural to
raise a question concerning the mineral’s cod and the author of this
article did it on the end of the seventies. It is evident that in the
beginning of the formation of live on the planet existed a certain
succession that protracted from processes of earth’s formation, that
shaped its geochemical image with a certain structure of minerals (and
their real structure!), till the simplest living beings that formed the
initial biosphere. In the formation of primitive living beings some
minerals could usefully play the role of concentrators of amino acids.
As early as in the end of 60-ies the scholars came to a conclusion that
for different reasons the best candidates for this role are stratiform
aluminosilicates – clayey minerals. The elaboration of their structure
and qualities have shown that different on the their structure clay’s
minerals enough easy absorb different substances originally changing at
the same time the internal structure and gaining new qualities. Beside
this it was recognized that clays really could concentrate different
kind of organic compounds, and in particular amino acids, and after a
complicated process to catalyze on its surface the formation of
proteins-ferments. (p.6)[5]
The creative nature of the organic world has already
been well described by Henri Bergson (1944). The creative nature of the
social world is self-evident.
If we consider the universe to be a creative entity
in itself, then the creation of the universe is a continuous process.
The so-called Gaia hypothesis offered by James Lovelock (2000) is
one manifestation of this global vision of a creative universe that
involves performance and interaction in the inorganic and organic
worlds.
Meanwhile, the global process of the creation of the
universe as it appears in the Torah could be artificially divided into
two processes based upon the performance of this creative process during
the formation of basic structures, including human beings, and the
performance of this creative process after the appearance of human
beings. Both of these processes are presented in the Torah. Before the
analysis of each of these processes, I would like to make some general
comments concerning the two versions of the creation of the world.
TWO VERSIONS OF THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE
IN THE TORAH
Soon I will make some general comments about the two
versions of the creation of the universe that are presented in Chapter 1
and Chapter 2 of Genesis but first I will make some notes
concerning the first three verses of Chapter 2 of Genesis:
And the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished
his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all
his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and
hallowed it; because that in it He rested from all his work which God in
creating and made.
There is a widespread view that these first three
verses of the Chapter 2 actually belong at the end of Chapter 1. Nathan
Aviezer (1990) makes the following comments:
Since the Sabbath marks the completion of
the biblical account of the creation, one would expect these verses to
be placed in the end of the first chapter. The interesting explanation
is that these three verses were placed at the end of the first
chapter—exactly where they belong—in the Jewish division of the Book of
Genesis into chapters (see, for example, the Koren edition). The
Catholic Vulgate, however, placed these three verses in the second
chapter, and the chapter division of the Bible as found in the Vulgate
has long been in virtually universal use; it is found in almost all
present-day Hebrew texts and, of course, in English translations of the
Bible, both Jewish and Christian.
(p.125)[6]
Certainly, there are some arguments in favor of the
preservation of these three verses in Chapter 2, and one of the main
arguments is expressed by Daniel Fuller (1992):
Because it would seem, at first sight, that the high point of
creation conies with the creation of the first man and woman. God's
words "and it was very good" (1:31), when heretofore it was simply said,
"God saw that it was good," imply that some sort of climax has been
reached. (p.106)
The major parts of the second version of the
creation of the universe include a description of the creation of
different trees (Genesis 2:9), the creation of living beings (Genesis
2:19-20), the area for the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:8, 10-14), the
creation of man and woman (Genesis 2: 7, 21-25), and the prohibition not
to touch the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 2:16-17). In other words,
the major text of the second chapter could be treated as methods
of creation of “anatomical objects,” specifically Man and Woman,
and their relationships with each other and God.
I intentionally include in the 18 questions
the question “9) Why does the Torah contain two versions of the
creation of the Universe”? because I believe I have something to
contribute. There is a controversy over the interpretation of the
relations between Chapter 1 and the major parts of the Chapter 2. As
Leon Kass (2003) mentioned,
[W]e may be able to counteract two
opposing but equally misleading biases about this story: the prejudice
of some pious readers and the prejudice of many biblical scholars. The
pious readers, believing that the text cannot contain contradictions,
ignore the major disjunctions between the two creation stories; they
tend to treat the second story as the fuller, more detailed account of
the creation of man (and woman) that the first story simply reported. On
the other side, the scholars, though keenly aware of the differences in
the two stories, have little interest in relating their content and
meaning; practitioners of source criticism, they focus on the
differences to prove that the two accounts came from different
sources—the so-called P (Priestly) and J (Yahwistic) documents—that were
subsequently redacted or compiled. (p. 55)
[7]
I think that the major part of Chapter 2 is
primarily a modified remedy of old versions of the creation of
the universe. The collection of the myths of creation in different
cultures that has been prepared by Mircea Eliade (1974), along with
other sources, helps to confirm this hypothesis. One may see from the
set of myths in Eliade's collection that the majority of the myths
belonging to primitive cultures combine relatively poorly developed
successions of events with details concerning the involvement of
means that have been used by the creators. In contrast to this, the
first version of creation in Genesis presents a protracted,
well-organized succession of events and avoids any hints as to the means
of creation.
To show the similarities between the second version
of creation in Genesis and the myths of creation in primitive cultures,
I provide the following text from parts of the second chapter of
Genesis that deals with methods of creation and the myth of creation
in a primitive culture:
No shrub of the field was yet in the
earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for the Lord God had
not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till
the ground; but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the
whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed man of the dust of
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward, in
Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground
made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and
good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the
Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to
water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became four heads.
(Genesis 2:5-10)
And
the Lord God said:
It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a
help meet for him.’ (Genesis 2:18)
And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to
fall upon the man, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed
up the place with flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God
had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her unto the man.
(Genesis 2:21-22)
What follows is a text that describes the belief of
the Uitoto of Colombia, South America. It was taken by Mircea Eliade (1974)
from the book by Paul Rodin.
In the beginning there was nothing but mere appearance,
nothing really existed. It was a phantasm, an illusion that our father
touched; something mysterious it was that he grasped. Nothing existed.
Through the agency of a dream our father, He‑who‑is‑appearance‑only,
Nainema, pressed the phantasm to his breast and then was sunk in
thought. Not even a tree existed that might have supported this phantasm
and only through his breath did Nainema hold this illusion attached to
the thread of a dream. He tried to discover what was at the bottom of
it, but he found nothing. `I have attached that which was nonexistent,'
he said. There was nothing. Then our father tried again and investigated
the bottom of this something and his fingers sought the empty phantasm.
He tied the emptiness to the dream‑thread and pressed the magical
glue‑substance upon it. Thus by means of his dream did he hold it like
the fluff of raw cotton. He seized the bottom of the phantasm and
stamped upon it repeatedly, allowing himself finally to rest upon the
earth of which he had dreamt. The earth‑phantasm was now his. Then he
spat out saliva repeatedly so that the forests might arise. He lay upon
the earth and set the covering of heaven above it. He drew from the
earth the blue and white heavens and placed them above. (Eliade, p.85)
Another example that is relevant to the subject
under discussion is taken from the book by Nahum Sarna (1966):
Now if we note that the word here translated "dust" is
used quite often in biblical Hebrew as a synonym for clay, we
may recognize at once a theme frequently encountered in Scripture. Here,
again, we are confronted with a familiar motif, the shaping of man out
of clay. In Enuma Elish man is created from the blood of the
rebellious Kingu. But in the Epic of Gilgamesh of which we shall
learn more in the next chapter, the goddess Aruru "washed her hands,
nipped off clay" and fashioned it into Enkidu. An Old Babylonian myth,
paralleled in an Assyrian version, explicitly describes the creation of
the first men from clay. That this motif is of very great antiquity may
be shown by its presence in a Sumerian composition of the third
millennium B.C.E. Conforming to the same conceptual pattern are the
Egyptian paintings which depict the god Khnum sitting upon his throne
before a potter's wheel busily fashioning men. (p. 14)
There is a second relevant example from the book by
Nahum Sarna (p.6). Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, created Man upon
the request of other gods that they be relieved of menial labor. In the
second version of creation in Genesis Adam, the first man, also does
menial labor, but for God.
Certainly, in spite of the similarities between the
second biblical version of creation and the myths of primitive cultures,
the biblical version has some essential peculiarities. The biblical
vision is unique and original in comparison to other religions in
surrounding countries.[8]
These peculiarities have been analyzed in several books, in particular
in the book by Nahum Sarna (pp.14-16). Here I will quote one of these
peculiarities:
The biblical Creation account is non-political and
non-cultic. This playing of the cosmological theme in a relatively minor
key in biblical literature points up other basic distinctions between
Genesis and Enuma Elish. The former has no political role. It
contains no allusion to the people of Israel, Jerusalem or the Temple.
It does not seek to validate national ideals or institutions. Moreover,
it fulfills no cultic function. The inextricable tie between myth and
ritual, the mimetic enactment of the cosmogony in the form of ritual
drama, which is an essential characteristic of the pagan religions,
finds no counterpart in the Israelite cult. In this respect too, the
Genesis story represents a complete break with Near Eastern tradition. (Sarna,
p.9)
Below I will discuss the creation of the world on
the basis of the first Chapter of Genesis.
TWO APPROCHES TO THE EVOLVING UNIVERSE
There are two major approaches to the development of
the world. One of them could be called naturalist (evolutionist).
It is expressed in particular by Darwinists and atheistic cosmologists,
and it is the scholarly approach. The other approach to the development
of the world could be called creationism. Moreland & Reynolds
(1999) distinguish three major branches of creationism: young
earth creationism, progressive creationism (old earth
creationism) and the fully gifted creation (theistic
evolution.)
The first two branches of creationism are
distinguished by the length of the duration of time in which the world
was created, namely – fairly recently, as in biblical times, measured in
several thousands years, and over a long period of time, measured even
in billions of years. Theistic evolution is distinguished by its
focus on God’s intervention in the process of the development of the
world. In turn, as Howard Van Till mentions (in Moreland &
Reynolds, 1999), theistic evolution characterizes
God's involvement in the process of creation as happening either via
miraculous intervention or
God’s giving of being to a creation that is
richly gifted with all of the capabilities to organize and transform
itself into new forms necessary to make possible the continuous
evolutionary development envisioned by the majority of natural
scientists today (p.162).[9]
The
major limitation of the first two versions of creationism is the dogma
of fixity and the complete constancy of species mentioned in the Torah.[10]
But as I will soon show, some biblical scholars, e.g., Leon Kass,
challenged this dogma. Moreover, the term creationism is
sometimes defined not as the time of the creation of the world, but as
the creation only of human beings by God,[11]
the creation of the universe by God from nothing,[12]
etc.
For me, creationism, even in its multitude of
different interpretations, has an invariant, and that is God’s presence
in the creative process. I will assume that the term creationism is
associated with the idea of creation as an evolving process.
I will also use the concept of young
earth creationism, because it is associated with the version of
creation expressed in the Torah and because it allows me to speculate
about some essential methods of creation.
It is a common view that creationistic and
evolutionist approaches are opposites and that creationism cannot be
proven scientifically.[13]
However, along with their marked differences, these two approaches do
have some common features.[14]
Both of them assume that the Universe evolved in a protracted multistage
process. Whereas the Torah assumes a discrete process, that is, the
creation of the world in several days, evolutionists usually assume a
continuous process. However, even evolutionists assume discreteness,
like N. Elridge and Steven Gould (1972) do in their concept of
punctuated equilibrium. Some may argue that the hidden assumption in
punctuated equilibrium is that changes are continuous, because major
changes occur via the accumulation of minor changes.
Envisioning creation as a discrete process with
sudden changes is closer to the structure of creation as it is presented
in the Torah. Even if the Torah assumes that each stage lasted only one
day, it does not discredit the multistage discrete process of creation.
Moreover, some Talmudic scholars, both ancient and contemporary,
recognize a day as a phase (period) in the creation of the universe. A
good description of this problem could be found by the reader in the
book by Nathan Aviezer (1990).[15]
Before I start to analyze the commonalities between
the approaches of evolutionists and creationists to the development of
the universe, I want to make a digression into these two approaches.
This digression concerns the differences between
the mode of representation of a
process and the “mechanisms” behind this process.
There is widespread confusion about the mode
of a system’s presentation (which is a mathematical model in its most
rigorous shape) and the mechanisms involved in its performance. The
history of science is full of confusions like this one, which have often
been accompanied by severe struggles. I will now bring out a few
examples to clarify this statement.
The following situation occurred in the eighteenth
century in physics after the appearance of the extremal principle that
was offered by Pierre Maupertuis (1698-1759).
This situation was very well described in a book by
Lev Polak (1960). The proponents of equilibrium models, models which
were previously offered by Isaac Newton (1643-1727), thought they were
describing a world of cause and effect with no God. The advocates of the
extremal principle insisted that God had created a complete world,
corresponding to a particular optimality criterion: that of the least
action.
If one takes into account that, in those times,
there was no separation of church and state in Europe, this kind of
ideological interpretation of the world was not considered to be an
innocuous one for scientists who were atheists. It took a long time
before Leonard Euler (1707-1783) understood the connection between these
two approaches to the study of the physical world. When he explained
them as mathematically different modes of presentation of the same
problem, the conflict subsided. The separation of church and state had
ultimately translated the discussion about the multitude of modes for
representing the physical world to the realm of scientific thought.
However, even to this day, some professors in
Catholic universities maintain a heightened interest in extremal
principles of mechanics.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has exhibited an
interest in the application of this principle to other fields and to the
representation of economic systems. Evidence of this interest is a
two-volume set devoted to a scientific conference on economic problems
that was held in Rome from December 7th to the 13th, 1963 by the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Study Week…, 1965). An array of the most
visible economists from various countries participated in this
conference, and all of them were involved in the problem of state
control of the economy in one way or another. Even the Holy Father
himself appeared before the gathering and presented a speech.
The mode of representation of an economic system
also interacts with ideology. The influence of ideology on the mode of
representation of an economic system is felt first and foremost in the
defense or repudiation of centralized control. The ideological dilemma
is whether to have a free market or state control over the economy. When
they represent their system in strict terms, proponents of centralized
control prefer a global optimization model, while market
advocates prefer local models (e.g., so-called Pareto optimality
model) where many participants, using prices, exchange between them the
products of their activities in a way that maximize the utility function
of each participant under some general constraints (e.g.,
inadmissibility of augmenting an individual utility function by lowering
the utility function of even one other participant.)
The development in the 1960s of mathematical
economics in the Soviet Union proceeded principally upon the basis of
global optimization models. These models were perceived by the powers
that be as being appropriate for a planned socialist economy and as
corresponding to a Marxist‑Leninist worldview. Because Western
economics for a long time had predominantly used local optimization
models, Soviet ideologists were convinced that these models were
appropriate for a market economy and were a product of bourgeois
ideology.
It has been proven by Gerard Debreu that, under very
reasonable conditions, a Pareto optimality model could be converted to a
global optimization problem, but this conversion is irrelevant to the
mechanism of performance of an economic system. Paul Samuelson, a Nobel
Price economist, has interpreted the market mechanism as an optimizer of
the economy as a whole (Samuelson, 2001).
In light of the aforementioned cases in physics and
economics, I can conclude that the role of ideology in forming
representations of a system is quite conflicted. On the one hand,
ideology is the breeding ground for various kinds of heuristic notions
that aid in forming a variety of different modes of representation.
Ideology allows the scholar to concentrate on a particular approach and
sufficiently penetrate the essence of a given mode of representation.
Two centuries before, Maupertuis's religious ideas inspired him to
formulate the extremal principle in mechanics. Profound faith in an
ideology of centrally-planned economics helped Kantorovich develop the
concept of optimal planning while he was an active Communist Youngster
League member in the late 1930s, a concept for which he won the Nobel
Prize in 1975.[16]
On the other hand, ideology can also act as blinders
on the eyes of a researcher. Instead of seeing the commonality between
various modes of representation and combining them in order to deepen
his understanding of his chosen approach, the ideological dedication of
a scholar can push him to resist certain concepts. The ideological
struggle that results is probably not the best crucible for scientific
progress.
When scientists are
able to understand various modes of representation and see where they
should be utilized, there is less ideological stratification and
infighting between them, but infighting does not occur simply because
certain people want to install their mode of representation as the only
one. In fact, a more complicated struggle is fought over the
proportion of different modes that should be used. Once new modes
appear, there is a drive to limit the number of methods that continue to
be used. In this instance, those scientists who are adherents of a
particular mode of representation have to agree to a redistribution of
resources over all sectors and even to a reduction of the resources that
are allocated to develop their themes.
Returning to our main discussion, the development of
the world is distinguished by two different modes of representation:
evolutionist and creationist. Certainly, even the abovementioned
relations between the two modes of presentation of a system are
accepted, this does not eliminate an ideological tension between the two
versions of development of the universe, but it may assuage them. The
message of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
concerning the relationship between Revelation and theories of
evolution (1997d),[17]
even though it concerns only life and not the whole process of
creation of the world, can help to reduce the tensions between the
Darwinians and those who believe in God’s creation, at least for the
members of one of the greatest branches of Christianity, the Catholic
Church. Pope John Paul II strongly emphasizes in his presentation the
necessity for the Church to be acquainted with scientific progress,
especially in fields concerning the origin of life and its evolution. He
mentions that Pope Pius XII in his Encyclical Humani generis
(1950) had already stated,
[T]here was no opposition between
evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation on
condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points.
Today, almost half a century after the publication of the Encyclical,
new knowledge has led us to realize that the theory of evolution is no
longer a mere hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has
been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of
discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither
sought nor fabricated, of the results of works that was conducted
independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this
theory.
So, an analysis of the process of the development of
the world by a creator could be treated simply as a mode of
representation of that process. Such an approach allows for the
interpretation of the evolutionary process as having been accomplished
using the methods of creation of a rational creator. Furthermore, this
approach allows one to see the stages of the creation of the universe as
they are represented in the Torah in a new light: as predispositions for
development. I will discuss this in detail later.
WHO IS GOD?
The question is "Who is God“? and the answer to this
question has an enormous number of versions.[18]
As Neil Gillman (2000) mentioned,
To
answer the question "Who is God“? is to study the twists and turns of
the complex metaphorical system that Jews have used to try to make sense
of the world and their lives, as this system winds its way through the
generations. (p.16)
For me the general approach to God by Mordecai
Kaplan (1962) is convincing:
It is sufficient that God should mean to us the sum of
the animating, organizing forces and relationships, which are forever
making a cosmos out of chaos. This is what we understand by God as the
creative life of the universe. (p.76)
My more detailed presentation of God is to great
extent similar to the characteristics of God set forth in Process
Theology.[19]
I have also added something new to these
characteristics, as was mentioned in the Introduction. Anyway,
one definite conclusion that we can reach from reading the Torah is that
the universe aspires toward development, not idleness, nor even
maintaining the status quo. The idea that the universe is evolving
immediately brings us to thoughts about what forces drive the
evolvement. All religions, in one way or another, treat God or gods as
these driving forces. Pantheism is a very interesting version of these
forces, because it allows for the existence of internal mechanisms of
change in each object.[20]
God, as the creator of the world and as a participant in the workings of
the life on earth, is the leitmotiv of the Torah.
God as the Creator
V. Ulea devoted many pages in her fairytale story
(2003) to the characteristic of a creator versus a wizard.
She distinguishes them from the point of view of the duration of the
process of the development of an object: The creator does it in a
prolonged way, while a wizard does it instantly. Her analysis is so
original that I decided to provide in endnotes the a long excerpt from
her story, and I do hope that it will reward the reader.[21]
The distinction between a creator and a wizard from the point of view of
the instancy of creation offered by V. Ulea brings an interesting hint
to the answer to one of the questions formulated in the set of 17
questions: “Why didn't God create the universe instantly, why does
it take Him six days”? As soon as we deal with a creative process
fulfilled by a creator it has to be prolonged, by definition, it could
not be done instantly.[22]
Allow me to provide a short quotation from a booklet
by Griffin & Deegan (1987) that raises a similar question, but with the
usage of the words all at once.
[I]f God is all-wise and all-powered, God would have been
able to create the world in its present form all at once, just as the
creationist says. Why would God take fifteen or twenty billion years to
do what could have been done in a week? Theists generally suppose that
human beings are the only species with any real value, and that the rest
of the universe was created as a stage for the divine‑human drama. Why
would God take so long to get to the main act? Even theists who are not
so anthropocentric assume that a world with human and other complex
forms of life contains much more value than a world with no life, or
only simple forms of life. If God is interested in promoting value, why
did God take so long to bring forth the more complex forms of life,
instead of creating them at the beginning? The facts suggest that the
force that created our world was not all‑wise, in fact that it is not
wise at all, but an unconscious, blind force which works by random trial
and error in accordance with the basic laws of the universe. (pp.
13-14)
The simplistic answer to the question under
discussion is the following: God did not create the world instantly
because he was either not almighty enough or not wise enough, and as a
result, he did it randomly by trial and error. Such an answer reflects
the common dichotomy that is present in methods of creation based on
extremes: either they are fully complete
and consistent, or they are random. It seems to me that there
is a whole spectrum of methods
between these two extremes. One of them
is the creation of predispositions as stages with certain evaluations
and directions for development; this will be discussed
later. In the part "Let there be!" of Nahum Sarna's book (1966),
he also expresses the idea that God is not magic:
It has been maintained that this notion of the creative
power of the word is known to us from elsewhere in the ancient Near
East. But the similarity is wholly superficial, for wherever it is found
it has a magical content. The pronouncement of the right word, like the
performance of the right magical actions, is able to, or rather,
inevitably must, actualize the potentialities which are inherent in the
inert matter. In other words, it implies a mystic bond uniting matter to
its manipulator. Worlds apart is the Genesis concept of creation by
divine fiat. Notice how the Bible passes over in absolute silence the
nature of the matter—if any—upon which the divine word acted creatively.
Its presence or absence is of no importance, for there is no tie between
it and God. "Let there be!" or, as the Psalmist echoed it, "He spoke and
it was so," refers not to the utterance of the magic word, but to the
expression of the omnipotent, sovereign, unchallengeable will of the
absolute, transcendent God to whom all nature is completely subservient.
Such a concept of God and of the process of creation added a new
dimension to human thought and marked a new stage in the history of
religion. It emancipated the mind from the limitations of mythopoetic
thinking, and it liberated religion from the baneful influence of magic.
(p.12)
God as an Evolving Entity
The widespread opinion concerning the major
attributes of God assumes that God is omnipotent, omniscient,
and omnipresent. I share the major idea of Process Theology that
God is an evolving entity. Upon the metaphysical principle of an
incomplete and inconsistent universe there is an
ongoing process of development during which God continues to evolve
on the basis of experience of running the world.[23]
This approach does not exclude the possibility of a locally
perfect world, i.e. the possibility of there being completeness and
consistency in some parts of the world and the possibility of God being
an absolute for a while. So, I acknowledge the value of the opposite
metaphysical concept that holds that the world created by God is
complete. Specifically, I have in mind the form of this concept that
Gottfried Leibnitz once proposed. Any scholar who works within the
metaphysical framework that the universe is complete strives to reveal
the perfection that is suggested by his hypothesis. This concept has led
a number of scientists, those who are also theologians, to develop
rather creative physical theories. As I have previously mentioned, a
case in point is the mechanics of the motion of the planets that was
worked out by the great French scientist Pierre Maupertuis. He held that
the celestial world created by God is perfect, and he assumed that God
as an absolute was guided by the criterion of optimality based on the
principle of least action. Subsequent mathematical development of this
“theophysical” optimization concept have had a profound impact upon the
discovery of the extremal principle of variational mechanics (see K.
Polak, 1951). Still, I will assume for the sake of this discussion that
the basic metaphysic guiding the authors of the Torah is rooted in the
concept of the ongoing creation of an incomplete world by an evolving
creator.
God As a Complex Entity That Combines Rational
Thinking With Feelings
One can learn from the article “Anthropomorphism” in
the Jewish Encyclopedia that there have been many discussions
throughout the history of Judaism about the anthropomorphic features
that are inherent in God, particularly God’s feelings. Some Jewish
authorities accept the idea that God experiences emotions like Man does;
others reject it. I will leave out the analysis of these discussions and
concentrate only on my opinion of this problem. It is based on my paper
that was written in collaboration with Dan Giacomo and Mona Weissmark
(1986). I understand feelings as a general systems phenomenon that can,
in the broad sense, be associated with a self-acting object.
Feelings are values, i.e., attractors.
(A. Katsenelinboigen, 1974) Their function is to drive an object
a certain distance in a certain way. They are located in the
informational counter of an object.
The following features could characterize the
specifics of these attractors:
They are a condensed expression of the value of the
characteristics of an object, i.e., they have a specific orientation to
external and internal actions and objects. They are individual, i.e.,
they belong to a given object. They are fixed, or at least change very
slowly, because they are adjusted to a certain environment (external and
internal). They are located in specialized cells of an object. They are
meant to be used mainly for individual, separate events.
The structure of feelings is represented by
biological drives, vibrations, and emotions that are correspondingly
related to the value of the basic needs of an object, to the
order of its internal structure, and to relations with other
objects. The term vibrations that is used in this case is a
generalization of the term pain, and I explain in the following
endnote the meaning of this generalization.[24]
The substrate of feelings can be very different in
different kinds of objects. Feelings could be based on living cells in
living systems; they could be inorganic cells in artificial objects like
computers; or they could have an unknown substance in God. Such features
of feelings allow an object to make decisions comparatively faster than
so-called rational decisions that require the involvement and
coordination of many events. At the same time, these same features limit
the effectiveness of feelings when the environment is undergoing rapid
change, because in this case, rational thinking develops new values that
are appropriate for the changed environment, or when necessary, rational
thinking corrects the values that are spontaneously formed by feelings.
So, in order to make effective decisions, a complex
self-acting object makes an amalgamation of feelings and rational
thinking.
In accordance with the Torah, God does not
explicitly express his feelings in the process of creating the world.
The evaluations of everyday results using the term "good" can be treated
as an implicit combination of rational thoughts and feelings. During the
process of the performance of the world, God does not make decisions
based only on pure rational evaluations; God also makes decisions based
on different feelings, for example smell, which is analogous to
biological drives, and anger, which is analogous to emotions.
God as an Asexual Entity
Rabbi Neil Gillman in his book (2000) devoted a
whole section to the discussion concerning the gender of God (pp.83-86.)
The well-accepted theological opinion concerning the gender of God
literary follows the text of the Torah, i.e., God is of the masculine
gender. The Process Theology assumes:
the positive aspects of these "masculine"
attributes can be retained, without their destructive implications, if
they are incorporated into a revolutionized concept of God into which
the stereotypically feminine traits are integrated. For, in the
integrate result, the former traits are changed qualitatively.
(Cobb&Griffin, 1976, pp. 61-62)
[25]
This understanding of the gender of God has gained
currency due to the feminist movement. There is a huge literature
devoted to this subject. Of special note is the book by Judith Plascow
(1990.)
It seems to me however that arguing about the
gender God is pointless. As I pointed out in my book (1997b), the
evolutionary process as a process in which increasing complexity of
living beings takes place, is accompanied by an increasing complexity of
methods of reproduction. The simple living beings have only somatic
cells multiplied by fragmentation. A great step in evolution happened
with the appearance of living beings that contain a specialized
reproductive cell – a spore. The next great step in evolution was
accompanied by the division of the reproductive cell on two sexes – eggs
and sperm with corresponding different functions. Meanwhile both kind of
reproductive cells have been in one body where self-fertilization
occurred. This type of living beings is a full hermaphrodite (e.g., an
African Snail.)
Further appear specialized body holders, male and
female, that correspondingly involve eggs and sperms along with other
features that accompany a reproductive process.[26]
The psychological differences in males and females are correlated with
their roles in the process of reproduction in a broad sense of this
word, including participation in the upbringing of the newborn.
So, the emergence of genders is a result of
increased sophistication of reproductive methods. If God is not a
reproducible entity and multiplication is foreign to God, any kinds of
terms that relate to gender are not applicable to God.
Now we are prepared to discuss in more detail the
ways of creation and development of the universe and their
representation in the Torah.
