Evolution From Heavens Perspective

I’ve always found evolution interesting. You can look at a bonobo and recognize yourself in them. After watching them for a bit, you realize that all the qualities you think are “human” aren’t exclusive to humans at all.

I believe that Young-Earth creationism, or interpreting the Tanakh literally, has severely flawed our understanding of the universe and, therefore, Hashem. People see that the world was “made in 6 days” and take it at face value. The books are entirely built on stories and metaphors. It’s not an encyclopedia. Do you interpret Shakespeare as it is read today literally? The Kabbalah was banned for most people to study because you couldn’t interpret it literally; it was too nonsensical.

My siblings go to school, and they aren’t taught evolution. When I was in public school, the teacher had to preface that this was a “theory” because creationist parents would get angry. Theory has different meanings between the general public and science. Theory in science means something that is backed up by facts, laws, hypotheses, and even evidence. Einstein’s “theory” of relativity is proven. Darwin’s “theory” of evolution is also proven. Why has religion blinded us from scientific discovery?

I think a lot of this is due to the mistranslations in Latin and English in the Christian bible. Many things were changed to be more explicit because the Hebrew versions had more broad words. Take the story of Adam and Eve, for example. It is said in the Christian bible that first, there was a man, Adam. Hashem took Adam’s rib and made Eve. This makes Eve lesser and just a piece of a man. The original translation was utterly different. Adam was originally both a man and a woman. Hashem thought this wasn’t good enough, so he split Adam’s side. Not his rib, his better half. Then he told them they needed to get married so they could look into each other’s eyes as soulmates and as equals. There are no literals here. There is no explicit discussion, unlike the Christian version.

When Genesis mentions creation, it uses the Hebrew word for “day” (יוֹם). This could be interpreted as literally 24 hours, but “yom” has a different meaning, as in “era” or a long time. These are vastly different, and one can be put into science much better.

Correlation

If you look at the six days of creation, they mostly align with the Big Bang Theory and evolution. Here is my (extremely, very rough) correlation between the days of creation and these theories.

Day 1: Light

Think of what the Big Bang could look like. It’s impossible to imagine, but you can interpret it as a huge explosion of light and matter. Stars and suns needed to be made before planets.

Day 2: Sky & Water

After Earth started to form, volcanic gases began to expel water vapor, creating the atmosphere. Aligning with the creation of the sky being separated from the water.

Day 3: Dry Land & Vegetation

As the atmosphere formed, the Earth began to cool and became full of water. Land masses started to form and then a miracle happened. Small underwater volcanos created carbon-based dust with a unique property, mutation and replication. It began replicating and slowly mutating until it became an RNA-based single-celled organism. This eventually evolved very slowly into multi-cell organisms. These creatures were more similar to modern-day algae than animals. There was no oxygen yet (which every animal uses today to breathe), so they had to develop a unique ability. Photosynthesis. Would you not consider this vegetation?

Day 4: The Sun, Moon, and Stars

By this point, there was no ozone layer, meaning the sun was a laser that would kill anything above the deepest levels of the water. Once the vegetation grew more and the Earth cooled more, the ozone layer and atmosphere developed. The sky became blue, and night and day became more visible.

Day 5: Marine Life & Birds

The first animals were marine life. They were already in the ocean, so they evolved into fish. Fish are still the oldest animals in the world, with the modern shark evolving before trees existed.

After reptiles and amphibians, which could be interpreted as extensions of fish due to their aquatic behavior, came birds. They shared the same ability to lay eggs. Modern birds can be traced back to the reptilian dinosaurs, and dinosaurs had feathers. We can interpret day five as the age of the dinosaurs.

Day 6: Land Animals & Us

After the dinosaurs went extinct, mammals started to form. They were still semi-aquatic and often very small, which is how they survived the extinction. One of these mammals became rodent-like creatures that lived in the trees. This eventually advanced and got bigger with longer arms, longer fingers, and a more useful tail. It became similar to modern-day monkeys. It ultimately got bigger, lost its tail, and became an ape. This ape then split off many times into gibbons, then orangutans, then gorillas, then chimps (which later split off into bonobos), then humans. This was all in the span of about 65 million years.

What’s interesting is what came after chimps and humans split. Eventually came Australopithecus africanus. It is widely considered to be the first step into human evolution (but not quite human yet). It was still very chimp-like in behavior but more on the ground and probably walked bipedally. Homo Erectus was the first human species which was the first to develop more complex tools and discover fire. Here is where Hashem plays a big part in my thinking.

So much of evolution is based on changing environments. Apes had to go from jungles to savannahs, which is what made us. We couldn’t rely on the trees and had to start walking upright, creating painful childbirth but giving us an incredibly unique ability: endurance. We quickly became the top of the food chain because even if we were slower than a bison, we would catch up when they got tired. We could communicate very primitively and hunt as a team. Chimps are known to work as a team with leaders to hunt.

While all great apes can use tools like rocks and sticks to crack open nuts or eat termites in trees, humans had something unique: refining tools. For some reason, we had an inherent need for perfection and efficiency.

What truly changed us was the discovery of fire. It is unlikely we made it ourselves at first; we probably found a wildfire and saw meat cooking in the fire. After eating cooked meat for the first time, we knew it was better. Cooked meat is easier to eat and also has way more calories. Our brains instantly started getting bigger, and we gave birth sooner.

What’s interesting is that nine human species coexisted. They all went extinct, probably because we crossbred with them.

Human evolution only spans about 1-2 million years. Homo Erectus probably came within a few hundred thousand years of Australopithecus africanus. Compare that to the evolution between monkeys and apes, and it’s a blink of an eye. This is an immense speed of evolution based on environmental factors that Hashem decides.

Science Feeding Into Faith

Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon was a significant figure in not interpreting the Torah literally. He wrote extensively about this idea in his work, The Guide for the Perplexed. He believed that understanding science helps you understand Hashem and appreciate Him more, which I completely agree with.

When I first learned about LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), everything felt equal. You can look at a tree and see that we are equal in the span of creation. It has evolved just as long as I have and been on this Earth just as long as I have. We are both Hashem’s creations and help each other. This can give a much deeper appreciation for the world He created.

I’ll end this post with one of my favorite TV lines. In the show Genius, Einstein talks to an immigration officer and is trying to immigrate to America. Einstein mentions G-d for the first time, and the officer seems puzzled since he is a scientist. This is what Einstein said.

What I believe is the universe is so extraordinary, only G-d could have created it. My job is simply to figure out how he did it.