{"id":175,"date":"2009-07-22T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-22T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/francis-collins-mangles-maimonides-following-leon-wieseltier.html"},"modified":"2009-07-22T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-22T08:30:00","slug":"francis-collins-mangles-maimonides-following-leon-wieseltier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/francis-collins-mangles-maimonides-following-leon-wieseltier.html","title":{"rendered":"Francis Collins Mangles Maimonides — Following Leon Wieseltier?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I complained a couple of days ago about people who misrepresent Maimonides<\/a> as a proto-Darwinist, then cited a newish biography by Joel Kraemer<\/a> on the subject as solid evidence that Maimonides would be an intelligent-design advocate and that the issue was for him the most important of philosophical and scientific questions<\/i>, reader Anderson complained in turn that I was attacking a straw man:<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

You should be able to link to several examples of people making this or a very similar argument. You shouldn’t have to create a straw-man version of it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n
Your wish, Anderson, is my command. Just yesterday a colleague sent me this from Obama’s favorite pro-choice Evangelical Christian, Francis Collins<\/a>, speaking at a Pew Forum conference<\/a>:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n

Basically, if you look at Judaism and Islam, you will find a range of views about origin. Certainly in Judaism, conservative and reform Jews are generally accepting of evolution, and a lot of Orthodox Jews are as well. Maimonides is often cited here as a reason to assume that if you have a conflict between science and the Torah, there’s been an error and a misinterpretation, not that science is evil.<\/b><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/div>\n
There you have it. According to Maimonides, our understanding of Torah must yield before anything scientists happen to say at a given moment.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
I believe this egregious misunderstanding, resulting from a sloppy reading of a chapter in the Guide of the Perplexed<\/i> (2:25), was either originated or decisively advanced several years ago by Leon Wieseltier in <\/a>The New Republic<\/a>.<\/i><\/div>\n

<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I complained a couple of days ago about people who misrepresent Maimonides as a proto-Darwinist, then cited a newish biography by Joel Kraemer on the subject as solid evidence that Maimonides would be an intelligent-design advocate and that the issue was for him the most important of philosophical and scientific questions, reader Anderson complained…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":72,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\nFrancis Collins Mangles Maimonides - Following Leon Wieseltier? - Kingdom of Priests<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/kingdomofpriests\/2009\/07\/francis-collins-mangles-maimonides-following-leon-wieseltier.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Francis Collins Mangles Maimonides - Following Leon Wieseltier? 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