Sources of Wisdom: The Role of Truth in Science and Judaism

Geoff Mitelman: So there’s a perception in our society right now, when it comes to science and religion, that there are two sides. And there’s a belief that if you buy anything in either of those columns, you’ve got to buy everything in that column. And the goal is to demonize the other side, as opposed to trying to actually have conversations here.

Robert Scheinberg: There are people who would start with the assumption that only religion could be correct, and maybe there are scientific truths that coincidentally come to the same conclusion as religion. But ultimately, religion is our arbiter of what’s real. And there are others who would say that religion represents pre-modern efforts to get to the same point, but we’re going to use science as our yardstick for figuring out what is actually true.

Alan Leshner: And they focus on very different issues – which is not always obvious, it seems, to scientists or religious people. They seem to believe they have a truth that defines everything. But I think there are different ways to look at the world and different issues.

Geoff Mitelman: How do we have these conversations where we can talk across differences, where we can recognize that this is a false dichotomy? There is a sense where there’s value in multiple different sources of truth, multiple sources of wisdom.

Annie Tucker: I think that both scientists and people of faith understand that big questions can’t be answered alone, and that our answers become deeper and richer and wiser when we’re talking to others – to like-minded people.

Mitchell Berkowitz: That ability to sort of hold multiple truths at the same time – I think that’s a very Jewish concept, but I also think it’s a very scientific concept, because science is always evolving. Like, we recognize that the world in which we live is one that evolves and changes. We don’t reconfigure Judaism to fit the world, but Judaism is very much aware of, and I think encourages us to think about our practice and think about our beliefs as the world around us evolves with it – that those things should always be sort of in concert, and not in competition.

Geoff Mitelman: There’s wisdom from a variety of different sources. These are all different ways of approaching these kinds of questions.

Annie Tucker: Both disciplines sort of share a sense that anything that can help shed light on truth should be brought to bear.

Geoff Mitelman:  The same way as trying to understand “What does it mean to be human?” You ask a physicist, you ask a neuroscientist, you ask an anthropologist, you’re going to get different answers here, because they’re approaching it in different kinds of ways. Both science, and I think Judaism and religion, at its best, gives us a provisional truth, a provisional answer to live in for right now.

Michael Fel: There’s a story in the Bible where there’s a talking donkey. And you have some rabbis who say, “Yeah, this donkey was created during the first days of creation. It’s a sort of, like, outside-of-the-bounds-of-nature donkey that actually spoke.” And you have another rabbi who says, “No, no, no, it was just a dream.” Like, donkeys don’t talk.

And so you now have two well-known, well-respected rabbis, one saying, “Yes, it was a talking donkey,” and one saying, “It was not.” They both exist in our tradition, and they’re both grounded, and they’re not minority opinions. And we have to learn to live with both of them. And what greater gift to give to people than the ability to feel comfortable with nuance, and the ability to hold multiple truths at the same time?

Science will give you a very precise measurement of how a certain action will lead to an at least stochastically describable set of outcomes. Or to work backwards and say, “this outcome, this phenomenon that exists in the world, has these origins, or can be influenced by its environment, in this or that way.” It can describe with tremendous precision, certainty and nuance those processes, but it does not ultimately tell you what is a preferred course for you to take as a human being, as somebody who is not indifferent to the different ramifications of reality A versus reality B – of outcome A to one’s actions versus outcome B.

Indeed, we’ve seen, in some horrific instances, science being applied to bring about indefensible outcomes, morally – and yet, from a scientific vantage point, the process progressed just the way that it was intended. So you can’t look to science for that type of reasoning. It’s not what science is meant to do.

Rather, if I determine what my moral end goals are – the type of person that I want to be, the type of community I want to belong to – I can turn to science to help me better understand what path, what course of action, what set of tools is most likely to enable me to get there.

I think human beings, by nature, are questioners. I think that’s, in a way, what makes life worth living – is to confront those great questions. So even though there’s the practical side of science, where, you know, you cure cancer and all that, you do also look at the great things beyond.

And you know, in faith, in religion, there’s kind of the children’s religion – the kind of things that kids learn through their bar mitzvah or something like that. And then there are the more existential questions that are the real purpose of the quest.

You know, there are times, even when you’re studying some pretty academic texts – in the Talmud is a good example – there will be things where it just grabs your attention. There are just things thrown in that direct you towards the more expansive, spiritual side of faith. So that’s one thing – the sense of awe.

But also, there is that kind of discipline that you have to be aware of and actually apply in both arenas – where, you know, Jewish study, you have to kind of do it every day, and a lot of stuff you don’t understand. And there are always paradoxes that you will never come to see.

And it’s just like that in science, where there are things that – almost every scientific endeavor, there are theories and counter-theories. Just like Judaism questions and goes back and forth,  so does science. In fact, that’s the thing that drives science. Disagreement drives science.

In fact, in Judaism – you know, in the Talmud – the rabbis always disagree. There’s hardly anything, any issues, where rabbis come to agree. And it’s like that in science. You have competing theories, pushing the endeavor forward, and then finally coming to the “truth.” And I put “truth” in quotes, because science really is no truth. There’s just what you know at the moment.

And I’d say in Judaism, although it does talk about truth – there’s a lot of emmet and emunah, faith and truth – it’s not really tangible. It’s something that it’s always changing and progressing and people are discussing it.