Smug creationists hold up signs mocking science.

[Gothmog]

76. Most Jews do not read the Torah as being the literal word of G-d

There are some Orthodox Rabbis who believe that the earth is 6000 years old but most Jewish scholars and the Reform branch take a different view of the Torah and science. Here is a good example how Judaism views science and the Torah. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-geoffrey-a-mitelman/why-can-judaism-embrace-s_b_880003.html

I recently had a conversation with a neuroscientist, who also happened to be a self-described atheist. He knew I was a rabbi and so, in the middle of the conversation, he very tentatively asked me, "So ... do you believe in evolution?" I think what he was really asking was, "Can you be a religious person who believes in science?" And my answer to that question is, "Of course."

While some people think of science and religion as being inherently in conflict, I think it's because they tend to define "religion" as "blind acceptance and complete certainty about silly, superstitious fantasies." Quite honestly, if that's what religion really was, I wouldn't be religious!....

Instead, when Jews read the Bible today through a rabbinic worldview, we are trying to answer two separate questions: First, what did the text mean in its time, and second, how can we create interpretations that will give us lessons for our time?

Indeed, the Bible shouldn't be taken simply literally today because circumstances, societies, norms and knowledge have all changed.

A great example of that comes from how the rabbis interpret the verse "an eye for an eye." While that is what the Bible says, to the rabbis, that's not what the verse means. Instead, the rabbis argue, "an eye for an eye" actually means financial compensation, and they go on for multiple pages in the Talmud trying to explain their reasoning. They don't read that verse on its simple, literal level, but through the lenses of fairness, of common sense, of other verses in the Torah and of the best legal knowledge they had at that time.

So now we can also see why in Judaism the beginning of Genesis is not in conflict with the big bang theory or natural selection. On the one hand, for its time, the Bible provided an origin story that was a story that worked then, but now, science provides a much better explanation for how we got here.

But the Bible isn't meant to be taken only literally -- it's designed to be a source of study and exploration for the questions of our time. The point of the Creation story is really to challenge us with questions like, "How should we treat people if everyone is created in the image of God? What are our responsibilities to this world if God has called it 'good'?"

In Judaism, there's no concept of "God says it, I believe it, that settles it." Instead, Judaism pushes us to embrace the text for what it was back then, and to create new ways of reading the text for what it can be now.

As to the debate with the young earth people, I feel that it is important to make this debate not about religion vs. science but about how science and religion can co-exist. Ken Ham wants to make this debate about the concept that science must be wrong if there is only conflict with religion and that view explains why so many people are willing to reject science.