Question:
Shalom,
That my “father” (doctor) relaced religion with science in the last 30 years I strongly suspect.
That had a strong impact on my jewish fate – including suppendous suffering.
(unfortunately the doctor is nozri)
Yeshivishkayt overcomes any science.
Do you have any suggestions for being baal teshuvah and escaping the struggle between relgion & science?
– maybe also for a “personal” relationship –
kol tuv.
Answer:
There is a relationship between religion and science, however most people confuse the two, and as you write, replace religion for science. The Jewish approach to this is that Hashem created the world, and He wants us to have free will to choose to do the mitzvos. He therefore created the world in a way that He Himself is hidden, and we have to notice his creation by looking at the world and realizing that this cannot be a simple occurrence or that “it just happened”. Part of the way that He hides Himself is that He did create the world with certain rules of how He wants the world to run, such as the Law of Gravity, and the Laws of Physics, etc. This gives an outer appearance as if the world “is running on its own” Science makes the mistake and therefore they fail to see the creator. Science is capable of answering questions about the world of how things work, what science cannot answer is why it works this way. For example, why is there a pull forcing things to fall in the first place? Why do things fall down and not up, like fire which rises up? How did this law get to be this way, and why isn’t it differently than the present setup? This science cannot answer, however religion has a very good answer to this. The one who created it, decided that this is the way He wants it to be.
By thinking and reading about these ideas, it will help us strengthen our emuna, and this will hopefully help. As a side point there ae numerous books from Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt”l (in English and Hebrew) that might help you in this area.
Best wishes
