University of Toronto, Y2K. I step up to the podium to face a large lecture hall packed with undergrads and a smattering of professors and graduate students. The course is NEW 305S, or in normal English, Faith and Science. Being an accredited course in the Faculty of Arts and Science, the students are poised to take notes. True, the course is an elective, but marks are marks and lectures are testable material.

Scanning the sea of serious demeanors, I opt to start with a joke. “When you’re in elementary school, the teacher walks in and says ‘Good morning class!’ and the children answer, ‘Good morning, teacher!’ In high school the teacher walks in and says ‘Good morning class,’ and the students reply ‘Morning! Who says it’s morning? 9 am is the middle of the night for me! And besides on the other side of the world it’s not morning for sure. And who says it’s good?’ But in university, when the professor walks in and says, ‘Good morning class,’ everybody writes down ‘Good morning class.’

The ice is broken, the snickers die down, and now it’s down to business. This is session 5 in a series of 13 weekly two-hour seminars. For me, this is fun, and I try to make it enjoyable for the one hundred students of every sociological origin and orientation you can imagine. Black, white, yellow, and brown. Christian, Muslim, Hindu, and Jew. Atheist, agnostic, fundamentalist, and traditionalist. Physicist, musician, historian, and biologist. The one thing they’ve got in common: Interest in exploring the interplay of science and faith.

In seminars 1 through 4, we’ve dealt with concepts of Creator in scientific literature, faith and reason, the powers and limitations of the scientific method, and the self and its brain. Today is my favorite: Concepts of Species Origin. I was raised as a Darwinist. Until the age of 26, I believed, nay knew, that you were either an evolutionist, an ignoramus or an idiot. There were no other options. Evolution wasn’t a theory. It was a proven, incontrovertible fact.

But then I started to learn, to explore, alternative concepts of species origin, and set out to evaluate their pro’s and con’s. The world turned out to be not so simple as I had thought. The believers in the tradition from Sinai were not all dummies and dependents seeking spiritual fixes for their existential maladies. And the high priests of the ivory tower were not all objective rationalists devoid of bias or immune to mob mentality.

After another 15 years of passionate probing the mysteries of nature through both scientific and faith-based modes of knowing, I had arrived at a vision and a mission. The vision was of an authentic, persistent synergy of science and faith. The mission was to empower a generation of college youth who, like me, had been unwittingly and illegitimately robbed of permission to believe.

So, after earning my doctorate in Applied Ecology, after achieving success in environmental impact assessment, and after making up for decades of missed Torah study, I decided to reestablish myself at the University of Toronto, teaching a course of my own design, Faith and Science. The course quickly took on an evolution of its own, rapidly morphing from an arcane seminar for professors and grad students to a full-blown, award-winning credit course packing the largest lecture hall in New College to its 100-seat capacity every Friday in the spring.

Seminar 5 was one of my favorites. Armed with literature citations of scholarly merit, especially peer-reviewed scientific literature, I set about establishing the virtual impossibility of the modern theory of evolution to explain the origin and development of the diversity of life on this planet. In short, Darwinism was dead. By the time my 40-minute barrage of facts and arguments was over, you would have to be a dolt not to doubt Darwin.

Unless of course you were Morley Steinberg[1]. The first to respond to my invitation for questions, Morley started with a barrage of his own. “Are you going to take this lying down? Look at this man. Doesn’t the skullcap and beard tell you anything? He’s got an agenda! He wants to convert you. If what he’s saying is true, why don’t we hear it from any of our other professors?”

Before I had a chance to breathe, several students turned on him. Kathy, a pretty blonde said, “What’s with you! Why so emotional. Did he say something wrong?”

Raj chimed in next, “Look, I was taught to believe in Darwin too. But science is open-minded. Do theories never change?”

Andre, with earrings on both sides and a very skinny tie piped up, “Are the professor’s arguments fallacious? Are the academic references non-existent? If you have a substantive counterclaim, make it. If not, can the polemic!”

Morley, bewildered, bounced his gaze from one to the other to the other of his respondents until, fully deflated, he sank back in a blue funk until class was over. Afterward, I came over to him and said, “You know, you made a number of interesting points. I’d like to hear you out. Can we set a time to discuss this in my office?”

When Morley arrived, I offered him a tea and chatted about his background.

“Are you Jewish, Morley?”

“Of course I’m Jewish. With a name like mine, what else would I be?”

“How about putting on tefillin?[2] It only takes a minute and it’s a very big mitzvah.”

“Fine.”

Happy to share the mitzvah with him, I brought out my own tefillin and started to help him put them on, thinking that he may not have done this since his bar mitzvah.

“Give me those. I can put them on myself,” he said.

In a jiffy, he recited the blessing unassisted, tied on the tefillin with obvious expertise, and started reciting the “Shma” prayer.

“Would you like a prayer book?”

“No, that’s okay, I’ll say it by heart.” And he did. All 248 words of it. As he removed the tefillin, we continued our conversation.

“Where did you go to school, Morley?”

“Associated Hebrew Day School”

“Really. Here in Toronto. Do you live with your parents?”

“No, I’m renting near campus.”

“I see. And are you on your own or do you share with friends.”

“One friend, actually.”

“And is that a guy or a girl?”

“It’s a girl.”

“And is she Jewish by any chance?”

“Well, no.”

At that, I decided to change the topic. No point in alienating the poor fellow any more than I had already. Besides, no doubt his soul was reawakened by the mitzvah we had just done, so best to give him some room to think about life.

But on my side, things suddenly started falling into place. Here’s an educated Jew that knows it’s forbidden to have intimate relations with a non-Jew. No doubt his parents weren’t thrilled with that! After all, one of the biggest reasons Jews send their kids to day schools is to help combat assimilation in the hopes they will marry Jewish.

Apparently, Morley’s assimilated lifestyle is best defended if your average ‘rational man’ wouldn’t accept the tenets of the faith. And one of those tenets is that the Torah is true. So if the Torah says all species were created within a week, under 6,000 years ago while science says no, then obviously the Torah is wrong. And if the Torah is wrong, then Darwin is right.

And if Darwin is right, then “she” is right too.

No wonder Darwin had to be right.

[1] name changed to protect identity

[2] Tefillin are phylacteries, ritual objects worn by Jewish men during morning prayers. They are small leather boxes bound with straps on the arm and head, containing scrolls with Torah passages.

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