I spoke to a group of students and Northwestern University as part of the Olami program. Olami is an orthodox Jewish outreach program for college students. The title, which really captures the message I wanted to convey, was: Leveraging my passion for physics and science as a route to Torah and Judaism. Not "the Torah doesn't contradict science", rather "if you really understand science, you will be led to the Torah."
Ok, that is much more than I really expected to accomplish in one hour. What I did tell them was that I didn't expect to change their minds in an hour. I also told them not to expect to change my mind. I have, after all, been studying this topic intensely for more than 30 years. What I wanted them to do, though, was to open their minds and start questioning what they know and how they know it. I think it was eye opening for them -- as woke young liberals -- to be told by an old orthodox Jew that that they needed to be more open. It was even more of a shock when they started to realize how many things they believe and take for granted that they have never questioned. I hope they were also a little shaken by how much of what they thought was "data" was really just blind faith.
There were two statements I made that elicited particularly strong push back. First, I said that I reached a crossroads in my life where I had to make a decision: Orthodox Judaism or Western Culture. One student pushed back and said, "but aren't there gray areas?" Second, I noted that Newtonian/Classical physics is not just inaccurate, it is wrong. On that a student asked, "Is classical physics really wrong? It's just not as good at modeling the whole universe. But is it really wrong?" I frankly was not as prepared for those questions as I should have been. To me they were obvious and needed no explanation. I answered. I think I answered well. Nonetheless, I think I could have given better answers.
Let's start with the second point. It is true that at the scale of things in which we deal: from fractions of millimeters to thousands of miles, from fractions of milligrams to thousands of tons, from fractions of a millisecond to dozens or hundreds of years -- in all those cases it is very difficult to measure any difference between classical physics and modern physics. However, outside those regions, classical physics fails very, very badly. At the atomic scale, classical physics predicts that all the matter that comprises our universe would collapse in on itself in about a millionth of a microsecond. It hasn't. That is spectacular failure number one. At cosmic scales, classical physics supports only a static, eternal, unchanging universe. No black holes. No big bang. The experimental evidence that the universe is finite in age, that light is bent by gravity, and that the universe is expanding is beyond question.
Regarding grey areas. This is a favorite straw man of mine. I used to say there really is no grey. Look at old black and white photos -- the illusion of grey shades is created by the density of black dots on a white background. That is basically true. It also, I think now, misses the point of their question.
I finally realized there are two kinds of grey. One is what I described above. If they were asking, "What do I do about lack of knowledge?" Then the answer I gave would help. In that case, you are dealing with making decisions when your knowledge is incomplete and/or uncertain. There are scads of strategies for dealing with that.
But they were asking a different question: What about times when it doesn't matter what I do or believe? Why take a stand? Let everyone believe what they want. Who cares?
That is such a dangerous fantasy. My grandfather in 1962 CE was dying from atherosclerosis. He was told that he could not survive another year in his current condition. He was offered a (then) brand new procedure, coronary artery bypass surgery. With that surgery, he would have many more years of healthy, high quality life. One concern: One out of two patients died within days from complications. Two choices: die within the year or flip a coin: heads, you live for many years; tails, you die. There is no gray area. The choices were mutually exclusive. He chose not to flip the coin and died in 1963.
Not everyone gets as clear choices and my grandfather, alav haShalom. We have to be fully aware, though, that our choices matter. Every decision we make sets the trajectory for the path that we will travel until the next choice, which may be years, days, or minutes later. I believe that my grandfather made that choice consciously; which I find comforting. Making reasoned choices is being alive. Living in the grey zone of "it doesn't matter" is just waiting to die.
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