How fascinating — the underreported revelation of modern evolutionary, genetic, and DNA science — that physical, material causes are not enough to explain the history of life’s evolution and development — was understood by the rabbis more than a millennium ago. Rabbi Bahya ibn Paquda in Duties of the Heart:

A person who does not understand the affairs of the world thinks that it is the new, created cause that effects change in things and their transformation from one state to another. Actually, [that] cause is too weak and insignificant to bring about the change or transformation of the essence of things….[This] applies to the the generation of a human being and of other living creatures from a drop of semen, or the growth of a large fish from a tiny fish egg” (Gate of Trust in God, Chapter 3:3).