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Critique of Intelligent Design

Evolution vs. Creationism

The Art of ID Stuntmen

Faith vs Reason

Anthropic Principle

Autopsy of the Bible code

Science and Religion

Historical Notes


Serious Notions with a Smile


Letter Serial Correlation

Mark Perakh's Web Site


[Write a Reply] [Letters Index]

Title Author Date
Naftali Zeligman and Yaron Yadan Asper, Yisrael Jan 01, 2006
Naftali Zeligman appears to be identical with Yaron Yadan the maker and author for the Daat Emet site. Yaron Yadan writes on Daat Emet "Never is life spontaneously created from inanimate materials." Scientists though say that the conditions for the origin of a species requires life from nonlife. Questions of ultimate origins he claims are meaningless. They are not meaningless to scientists.

Daat Emet also rejects creation from nothing not from anything in physics but out of his own outdated view of science. Creation from nothing is nowadays believed in thanks to Einstein and is challenged only by those who wish to reconcile it with Quantum Mechanics in a way that would eliminate Creation from nothing. Their efforts have not amounted to Orthodox science as it has come to nowhere except to help towards a grander picture of some future theory to come. More properly speaking since time and space came into being through the universe and would die with the death of the universe the universe has a first moment but no moment before. By definition there was nothing happening before the Big Bang because there was no time and so no before to be had.

Daat Emet writes Parthenogenesis is sexual reproduction, but that "the female provides the impregnating material to the egg she produces." Parthenogenesis is not sexual reproduction. On the contrary Parthenogenesis is defined as reproduction from an unfertilized egg. Fertilized eggs by definition are eggs that have been fertilized through sexual reproduction. Sexual reproduction by definition involves male and female reproductive contributions whether from two beings or plants etc. or even one.

Naftali Zeligman (pen name for Yaron Yadan??) wrote in Talk Reason before his supposed incarnation as a Chareidi struggling to maintain his faith in the face of arguments to the contrary and waiting in vain for his helpless Rabbi to say anything. The guy's a faker. He wrote against Orthodoxy at the time and yet his article is reproduced on Yaron Yadan's Daat Emet's site described on it http://www.daatemet.co.il/en_index.html as

"New on the Site:

Letter to My Rabbi
A letter from a Charedi intellectual
who lives between two worlds: reason and faith."

Yisrael Asper
Related Articles: Letter to My Rabbi

Title Author Date
Naftali Zeligman and Yaron Yadan Zeligman, Naftali Jan 02, 2006
Dear Mr. Asper--

Although I am acquainted with Yaron Yadan and have accepted his arguments on some issues, I am not he, and my "Letter" reflects my own
point of view. In any event, I was pleased to find my essay featured on the Daat Emet website (a couple of years after its initial posting on
Now to the points you raised.
1. It is certainly wrong to say that "the conditions for the origin of a species requires life from nonlife," when it comes even to the simplest single-cell organisms, let alone multicellular ones like lice. Obviously, to
account for the origin of life in materialistic terms -- which science is all about -- one has to assume that some kind of entity able of reproduction did develop out of non-living matter. What the first entity of this kind
was and how it did develop, is not yet entirely clear (at least as far as I understand), but many advances in this field of research have already been made (see, on the TalkReason site, a discussion by Ephraim Rubin, chapter "Endeavor to Deceive"). In any event, creation is, in scientific terms, a bad hypothesis -- or actually, a non-hypothesis -- because it cannot be tested.
2. Of course, strictly speaking, arthenogenesis is not sexual reproduction. But neither is it the birth of a living organism from sweat,
dust, or other inanimate matter, as stipulated by the Rishonim (whom I mention in my "Letter").
3. It is certainly wrong to claim hat "Creation from nothing is nowadays believed in thanks to Einstein." Those who believe in "creation from
nothing" out of religious considerations obviously owe nothing to Einstein, and to those pursuing a scientific line of reasoning, "creation" is a non-category, because it involves an entity outside the natural world (a creator). If you meant the Big Bang theory (to which Einstein had no direct
relation), then I should note that this theory in no way requires postulating "creation from nothing." See Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (or, for that matter, a summary of Hawking's view by Ephraim Rubin, chapter "The Big Puff").


Related Articles: Letter to My Rabbi