RABBI YONASON GOLDSON
NATIONALLY SYNDICATED COLUMNIST, TEDX SPEAKER, PODCAST HOST, AND ETHICS NINJA
Yonason Goldson draws on 40 years of scholarship, applying ancient wisdom to meet the challenges of the modern world. He is a keynote speaker as well as an executive trainer and coach for Vistage Worldwide, Inc., working with leaders to create a culture of trust that earns loyalty, sparks initiative, and limits liability.
Rabbi Goldson's ethical insights have been cited in publications including Forbes, Time, Newsweek, Fox News, Fast Company, and The Washington Post. His weekly column is distributed by Creators Syndicate, and his TEDx Talk, "Hitchhiking, Fundamentalism, and the Art of Ethical Communication," has over 45,000 views.
Rabbi Goldson has published seven books, including, Dawn to Destiny: Exploring Jewish History and its Hidden Wisdom and Grappling with the Gray: An Ethical Handbook for Personal Success and Business Prosperity, which inspired his podcast of the same name. He is also a retired high school teacher, repentant hitchhiker, and Executive Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values, Missouri Chapter.
Not All Faith is Blind
RABBI YONASON GOLDSON
There are two kinds of faith.
The first is blind faith, with no basis in reason, like belief in leprechauns, Santa Claus, or the Great Pumpkin. The second is rational faith, like belief in a Creator.
Belief in a Creator first dispenses with any viable alternative. The Big Bang hypothesis ignores the laws of thermodynamics and entropy.(1) It also relies on a multitude of improbabilities that defy mind-bending odds,(2) as does evolution.(3)
Evolution itself ignores gaps in the fossil record.(4) And even if biological matter could rearrange itself into increasingly complex forms, information cannot(5) – the genetic coding that makes life possible simply could not have happened by random chance.
Indeed, the universe itself violates the laws of physics. “Dark energy” is what we call the acceleration of galaxies outward when they should be slowing or, at least, constant.(6) What is this force? Nobody knows.
Just as mysterious is “dark matter,” the invisible, mysterious substance that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, for which there is no explanation.(7)
Charles Darwin himself confessed multiple problems with his hypothesis, which remain almost entirely unanswered.(8) The statistical improbability of life emerging by chance has left scientists clinging to fantastical solutions(9) like multiverses(10) or galaxy seeding by aliens.(11)
Secular scientists believe they will one day answer these questions. But with each new discovery, our universe grows more mysterious. Why doesn’t that bother the secularists? Because they have faith. Blind faith.
In contrast, Creationism posits a Creator who transcends nature and is therefore not bound by its laws.(12) Such belief is suprarational: If the Creator is infinite, it is only reasonable to assume that His design surpasses human capacity for understanding.
But here is the most compelling evidence of all: The unique attribute of human nobility. Animals may sacrifice themselves for the survival of their young or the welfare of the collective, but only human beings are willing to act against their own self-interest for the sake of a value or an ideal.
Why do human beings possess a moral compass? Why do we struggle to discern good from evil? Why do we choose to do the right thing even at the cost of our own personal wellbeing?
Why did Socrates choose to drink poison to affirm his values when he could have recanted or gone into exile? Why did Martin Niemöller sacrifice his freedom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer sacrifice his life taking a stand against a Nazi regime that would never have taken notice of them? Why did Oskar Schindler spend his personal fortune saving Jewish strangers? Why did Mother Teresa devote her life to easing the plight of the sick and the poor?
What motivates us to create music, write literature, paint landscapes, give charity, and pursue justice? Why do we aspire to leave the world a better place than we found it?
I can’t imagine any more convincing proof for the spark of the divine placed within us by our Creator.
Footnotes:
1) “No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found – not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy (the “first law”), the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles.” E. H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason, "A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics," Physics Today (vol. 53, April 2000), p. 32.
2) https://thealvinreport.com/the-six-numbers-that-shape-the-universe/
3) The renowned British astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle estimated the odds of life emerging by random chance as 1 in 10 to the power of 40,000.. He compared the probability to rolling a 6 on one die 50,000 times in a row. In his 1983 book, The Intelligent Universe, he wrote: “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” See also:
https://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_scientificcaseagainstevolution/; https://answersresearchjournal.org/pasteur-creation-evolution-germs/
4) "Instead of filling in the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species.” Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins (New York, John Wiley, 1999), p. 89.
5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW9gcjpt89o, particularly at 36:30, although the entire podcast is worthwhile.
6) https://science.nasa.gov/dark-energy/
7) https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/dark-matter/en/
8) https://scienceandculture.com/2023/03/darwins-top-10-arguments-against-his-own-theory/
9) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/213770749_Cosmology_The_untestable_multiverse
10) The unprovable postulation of infinite universes, in which we are lucky enough to live in the one that beat the odds:
https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYC6UHKCDgK/
11) Which, of course, fails to address the problem it purports to solve: https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/humans-seeded-aliens-panspermia
12) “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Isaac Newton from the General Scholium of his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica.