Q:
Did Hashem use evolution to create the world?
A:
Let me explain something. In the olden days there used to be the Rube Goldberg comics. Ever heard of Rube Goldberg comics? They used to make a comic picture of a man who wanted to take a drink of water. So he had all kinds of wheels and cogs that turned machinery and finally the machinery turned other machinery and then there was a dummy, a robot with a glass in his hand, a glass of water. And so someone was sitting and he pressed a button and the machinery started working, moving these wheels, moving those wheels, moving these wheels, and finally the wheels turning caused the robot to pour the water into your mouth.
So the question is why waste all that effort, all that machinery? Take the water and pour it into your mouth yourself. Why do you need a Rube Goldberg contraption to make water come into your mouth?
So you need evolution to create something? Even if evolution is capable of creating anything wonderful — which it isn’t at all — why should you imagine such a crazy thing. Hakadosh Baruch Hu said “Yehi” and that’s what happened. “Let it be!” It all started out from the beginning exactly the way it says in the Torah instead of that great lie that things happen so purposefully by accident.
Could an apple be the result of evolution? Do you know the apple is a package of luscious food and it’s mixed better than any chef can mix. It’s a starch with some little acids in it and sugar in it, exactly the right amount; it tastes good. And then it’s wrapped in a beautiful wrapper. With its wrapper it can stand many days on the table. Once you take the wrapper off it rots immediately.
Inside when you finish eating the apple there is a coupon inside that entitles you to another package, the seeds. Spit out the seeds and an apple tree will grow out. And the apple seeds have only about a couple of million little bits of information on the DNA helix that tells the apple seed how to produce an apple tree. So all that is the result of accident? You have to be in a lunatic asylum to think that.
And therefore anybody with common sense immediately sees an apple is an evidence that bereishis bara Elokim. You see the wisdom of it demonstrates that it was made by plan and purpose.
And therefore Hakadosh Baruch Hu at the beginning said “Yehi” and the entire world came into being, finished and ready for use.
(November 1993)
