Thanks for including me in your virtual debate about Science and Torah. Your thread is about as long and rich in words as Jewish history is in years since Avraham Avinu, upwards of 3800, and I read it with interest.

Clearly you, like most of our brethren throughout the ages, are all intelligent, educated and thoughtful people. You raise dozens of points and counterpoints invoking references to many facts and opinions from a diversity of sciences and cultures as well as your own logical analyses.

Your discussion revolves around one central issue: that the believing Jew accepts as fact all kinds of miraculous and supernatural stories just because they are recorded in the Torah, yet categorically rejects any number of alternative histories or refutations no matter how rational, documented, or widely held they may be.

A Bas Chabad on Mivtzaim met a lawyer who promised he would keep kosher if she could prove to him that the soul exists. She asked me to help so I wrote him a letter (last week's column) to which he and many others replied. Here are some of the responses (minus the lawyer jokes).

Aryeh, That was an amazing quote from double-Nobel chemist, Ilya Prigogine, about the probability of life coming about by chance being zero. Did he mean it the way it sounds, or is there a but...? Moshe S.

No buts about it. And Prigogine is not alone in recognizing the existence biological life as a bona fide miracle. The amazing thing about him is that his fame was made in chaos theory and the self-organization of random chemical systems. One would think that such research would lead him to the opposite conclusion but as with many top scientists specifically, his 'sechel barie' (sound mind) led him to conclude that life by chance is impossible. AG

Hi Dr. Gotfryd,
I subscribe to your newsletter and enjoy it immensely.

Recently, I got into a discussion with a lawyer about the soul. (My bad). He says there is no such thing because there is no scientific evidence that there is one. I said that there is and asked if I forwarded it to him and he was satisfied, would he stop eating non-kosher food. He said yes.

Now, I'm searching the internet and I can't seem to find anything that is "scientific enough" to send to him. Could you possible point me in the right direction?

Thanks,
    Chaya G_____
    Brooklyn, NY

Dear Arnie,

Is it true that the Lubavitcher Rebbe insists that the six creation days must be literally that or else there would be no basis for our Shabbos observance? That seems like quite a stretch to me.

There are a great many Torah scholars who believe like the scientists that the world evolved over billions of years yet they still observe Shabbos strictly! Please clarify.

Meir E.
Queens, NY

Dear Dr. Gotfryd,

If you recall, I introduced myself to you some months ago as "an agnostic Darwinian who would like to believe but has trouble doing so." We left our correspondence with some of my doubts and questions.