Sunday, April 05, 2009

A survey of Modern Orthodox beliefs about age of the earth

I am not going to get a large enough sample here, but based on a conversation I recently had with Rafi G. of Life In Israel. I would like to get a rough idea of the popularity of the idea, in Modern Orthodox circles, of the age of the earth. Less than 6000? Billions? Both? How does this contradict sefer Bereishit, or does this not contradict?

6 comments:

BrooklynWolf said...

My answers were disagree, agree, agree, disagree.

But that's only if you hold that B'raishis must be read literally - a belief that I do not hold.

IOW, I'm not ready to toss out B'raishis. But I do believe that it cannot be read literally.

The Wolf

Josh M. said...

DADA (although my recollection had been that it was more than several billion). I don't believe that HaShem intended sefer Bereishis to have a meaning that had any intersection with the age of the universe question.

Jeremy said...

the word "contradicts" doesn't suffice for what most MO will hold about this question. as mentioned above- does this mean contradicts the literal story presented there?

joshwaxman said...

good point. to clarify, by contradict, I mean "appears to contradict" such that there is something to grapple with. I would imagine that one could strongly agree with the last two questions. as the question is already out there, i guess people will answer as they answer, and I will have to interpret based on how people answer the combination...

Rafi G. said...

I did not fillin the form because i Do not have a specific belief.
Is the world 6000 years old or 20 billion years? I have no idea. I think it could go either way. And it does not matter to me which is correct. I know that there are ways to explain all the questions about creation according to both opinions and they are both acceptable to me.
I am not intellectual enough to care about the details and nuances between them.

Baruch said...

DADA as well.

to clarify, by contradict, I mean "appears to contradict" such that there is something to grapple with
Oh, didn't see this until after I took the poll.

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