Why are there so few Jewish creationists?

Question

I see Christians and Muslims arguing for a fundamentalist, literalist, Young-Earth interpretation of Genesis all the time, yet I rarely see Jews making these same arguments, even though it's the Jewish sacred text that's the source for this Creation idea to begin with! Why is that?

Answer 1

well, there is a long tradition of sages claiming genesis is not a literal account of the creation of the world. this does not mean that all jews believe in evolution, etc. there are definitely many who believe in the creation story as being literal. but since judaism is action-based rather than faith-based, it doesn't matter if you believe it's literal or not - to put it simply nobody cares. i've talked to orthodox rabbis who even believed in creationism before and just said, "look, i think noah's ark and the tower of babel is all a bunch of hogwash." and their reaction is invariably, "that's fine, that's not important, it's good to question what you read. now tell me - what mitzvahs do you keep? do you keep the sabbath?" they brush off what you believe and focus immediately on what you do.

as well, we tend to focus a lot more on the meanings behind the stories. the statement that genesis wanted to make is that G-d created the world, and that he did it by willing it into being. the reason the statement was so important is because the people living at that time or before usually believed either that the universe had no beginning, it just always existed (this is what famous greek philosophers like aristotle said) or that the universe was created "sexually" - gods gave birth to it. genesis simply wanted to counter these kinds of opinions - they wanted to make it clear that yes, the universe DID have a beginning, and that it was created only because G-d commanded it into existence, not because of sexual activity between two gods (for example, in egyptian religion the world was created when the gods tefnut and shu mated and gave birth to the god of the earth and the goddess of the sky). so we jews look at the philosophy behind the story (what does it tell us about G-d? what does it tell us about people? etc) and consider that the most important element rather than strictly believing in it.

Answer 2

Because the Jewish sacred text actually supports Evolution. We understand the Creation story was a story, or if it wasn't, then it didn't happen as it says in the story. We don't take G-d over logic because to us, G-d won't ask us to per se. For instance, after G-d created light and heaven and earth and things, did He not create water, where scientists say all life originated from? This could have been created millions of years ago, and one "day" as G-d sees it is millions of years as we see it. Plants came before animals, out of the water, etc. etc. That is why most Jews are evolutionists or, like me, "in the middle" --> we believe in evolution but we also believe that G-d set the evolution process in motion.

Answer 3

Most strict Orthodox Jews are traditionally *not* creationists in the modern Christian simplistic six-day sense, though they certainly believe in God as creator. In fact, the notion of straightforward six-day creationism is pretty much foreign to Orthodox Judaism, though in very recent years some ultra-Orthodox have headed that way. Rashi, the great 11th Century Torah commentator said (in his commentary on Chapter 1 of Genesis): "But Scripture did not come to teach the sequence of the Creation, to say that these came first" In fact, he goes on to say that if you *do* believe the point of Genesis 1 is to teach the sequence of Creation, "you should be astounded at yourself", and further "Perforce, you must admit that Scripture did not teach us anything about the sequence of the earlier and the later [acts of creation]" Various calculations by midieval and ancient rabbis result in ages of the universe ranging to 16 billion years -- long before big bang theory and modern astronomy started zeroing in on that number.

Answer 4

the rabbis of the Talmud stated years and years ago (almost 2000 years ago) that the 6 days of creation were not to be taken literally. It is noted that the creation story seems to follow an evolutionary pattern. The Torah is taken as a spiritual book, not as a science textbook, in Judaism.

Answer 5

The Age of the Universe
http://aish.com/societywork/sciencenature/Age_of_the_Universe.asp

Answer 6

Depends on how you define a "creationist". But, yes, there are a few.

You might what to do a Google search for "Slifkin debate" and you may come up with some interesting takes.

Answer 7

There are many jewish creationists - among the ultra-orthodox jews in israel.

You see, it takes a community that's completely cut off from the rational world to foster this kind of nonsense - but in the U.S. you have almost whole *states* like that.

Answer 8

Maybe Jewish people have more urgent priorities than worrying about how the earth came to be.

I mean, come on, people. Yeah, it's interesting to speculate.....but who cares?!

Is the answer to "creation or evolution?" going to end wars and poverty or do anything else that needs to be done? We ought to be using our energy to answer practical questions.

Answer 9

Because Jews are smaert, they know that there would be no point in arguing over how we are made, but instead, they concnetrate on how they live. How we made has no realavance.

Answer 10

What to fight about you believe in the heavenly creator or not
you can not force or scare people into believe there a power beyond image you can tell them but to use those other means
are uncall for in my opinion