Dec 16, 2007 12:12 AM
_
All things must pass
All things must pass away
All things must pass
None of life's strings can last
So, I must be on my way
And face another day
GH
Dec 14, 2007 7:10 AM
My skepticism reaches its logical conclusion_
Well, I guess this was bound to happen. Maybe I've known it for some time, but just didn't want to admit it, not to myself, or to my readers. But as this blog draws to an extremely imminent close, I think it's only fair to come clean, so I'll just come right out and say it.
I'm skeptical of myself.
And well I should be. What do I know about anything? Not a lot. I may have hundreds of Amazon books, but how many did I actually read? Not many. And even the ones I read I didn't really absorb.
I don't know Tenach, I don't know Gemarah, I don't know Science, I don't know Philosophy , Medieval, Greek, Jewish or PostModern. I don't know History. I don't really know anything at all. I have some good analytical and writing skills, but I have no knowledge, and recently a poor memory (possibly related to Thyroid issues).
UPDATE: Actually, I just remembered, I've always had a poor memory. I mean I must have, because I don't actually remember anything I ever learned in High School, Yeshivah or College. Except maybe something about glacial erosion. I think.
Am I qualified to make pronouncements on anything? Not really. RJM is correct on that, I am not in any way qualified to make any judgment on anything.
And of course I am biased. How could I not be? I'm biased every which way. I want OJ to be true, I want my submission to the skeptics to be validated, I want to win debates so that I'm a winner, I want to lose debates so that my blog is interesting.
At any one moment I'm full of 100 biases going every which way. Do they cancel each other out? Maybe, maybe not.
And how can I trust my ability to analyze anything anyway? My brain trusts itself to evaluate itself? That's completely circular. And I can't draw comfort from my supporters who think like me, because I can't ignore my detractors who don't.
For all the same reasons why I argued that other people have no credibility, I have even less.
And, being skeptical, I'm not even sure about that.
Oh well. It's been interesting. I hope nobody is in any way influenced by anything I ever said. Just ignore it all, and go read a book, written by someone who actually knows something, rather than a blog written by someone who doesn't.
And no, this post is not a pathetic appeal for hundreds of 'we love you XGH, don't go' comments.
I'm really closing down. Seriously.
So long, and thanks for all the comments.
Dec 14, 2007 12:08 AM
Gaining visibility in its eighth year, Yeshiva Chovevei Torah presents challenge to centrist and right-wing elements of Orthodoxy.
by Steve Lipman
In a small classroom across Broadway from Columbia University, Moshe is having a meltdown one recent afternoon.
Moshe, in his late 20s, is reluctantly unburdening with his rabbi about his drinking problem. Depressed, almost suicidal, unhappy with his family life, Moshe talks in shrugs and sullen grunts. The rabbi, leaning forward in his chair, listens sympathetically. After a while, he convinces Moshe to make an appointment the next day with a mental health professional. "It’s not going to help,’ Moshe declares. "Rabbi, life’s not getting any better."
Moshe and the rabbi grow silent. And a group of young men sitting around a large table in the classroom break into applause.
Like the other men in the room, Moshe (not his real name) and the rabbi (not a real rabbi, yet) are rabbinical students, taking part in a pastoral counseling class at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. To learn pastoral skills, students assume the roles, assigned at random, of rabbi and congregant.
The role-playing, say the founders of the eight-year-old, Modern Orthodox school that is housed in the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, is one of many distinctive marks of an institution that combines the standard curriculum of a yeshiva with such innovations as leadership retreats and psychiatrist-directed process groups and fund-raising training.
Chovevei Torah (Hebrew for lovers of Torah), the first major Modern Orthodox rabbinical training center established in this country since Yeshiva University more than a century ago, is the creation of Rabbi Avi Weiss, spiritual leader of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, better known in many circles for his liberal brand of Orthodoxy and his decades of political activism on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Israel and other causes.
The yeshiva has grown from its original nine semicha students to 45 today, while drawing criticism in some parts of the Orthodox world. Rabbi Weiss’ vision of an "Open Orthodox Judaism" — open taking a capital O to brand it as a movement, like Modern or Centrist Orthodox Judaism — that grants respect to feminism and other branches of the religion has earned the opposition, often clandestinely, of other organizations.
YCT rabbis in some cities report opposition when they try to join local rabbinical boards. The yeshiva withdrew its application for its ordainees to join the Rabbinical Council of America, the central rabbinical group of the Modern Orthodox movement, when it became apparent that the application would be denied. And the National Council of Young Israel recently ruled that any candidates to head its 150 congregations had to submit to a screening by a National Council-appointed committee; the decision was seen as an attempt to keep Chovevei Torah rabbis out of Young Israel synagogues.
Young Israel’s action is the latest implicit recognition of the growing viability and visibility of Chovevei Torah. Many view the creation of Chovevei Torah as an implicit critique of Yeshiva University’s perceived shift rightward, an attempt to produce pulpit rabbis able to relate to and lead Orthodox congregants firmly entrenched in American society.
The opposition, says Howard Jonas, a Riverdale businessman and philanthropist who is a major financial supporter of YCT, is "a nuisance," not a hindrance. "It’s an unsuccessful campaign. We have more people applying [for enrollment] than we can accept. We have more jobs [open to Chovevei graduates] than we have graduates."
Rabbi Weiss agrees. "I really don’t take note" of the opposition, he says. "It has virtually no impact on us."
YCT enrollment this year is 45, mostly clean-shaven men in their 20s who favor large, colorful knitted kipot. The school has emerged as a leading producer of Modern Orthodox rabbis for pulpits, teaching positions in day schools and Hillel leadership posts on college campuses, providing competition not only for men ordained by YU, but by haredi rabbis who had taken many of those jobs in recent decades.
"We are about recruitment, education and placement," says Rabbi Weiss, who was ordained by Yeshiva University in 1968 and taught at YU’s Stern College for Women for decades. "The mission of the yeshiva is to produce leaders."
The rabbi stresses that YCT is a rabbinical school, not a theological seminary. Its emphasis is not Torah lishma, learning Torah for its own sake, but an education centered on the needs of a community rabbi. The men ordained by Chovevei Torah are expected to serve in pulpits or classrooms, not, as is the case at many other yeshivot, to become lawyers or accountants with an extensive Talmudic background.
A constant presence at the yeshiva, usually dressed in a cardigan sweater and no tie, Rabbi Weiss is available to confer with students. But he has delegated day-to-day operations to Rabbi Dov Linzer, whom Rabbi Weiss recruited a decade ago from the kollel (an advanced learning program) in Boca Raton, Fla., and to other advisory committee members and teachers, including Rabbi Saul Berman, founder and head of the now-defunct Edah, an organization associated with the liberal stream of Orthodox Judaism.
Together, the faculty designed the yeshiva "from scratch," Rabbi Weiss says, just as psychiatrist Michelle Friedman designed the pastoral counseling program.
"I’m not the yeshiva," Rabbi Weiss cautions.
"There is a tendency to identify a yeshiva with its founders," says Rabbi Tsvi Blanchard, a CLAL staff member who teaches Jewish philosophy and spirituality at YCT. "The yeshiva is much bigger than any one person. The guys are not Avi Weiss clones.
"I had the same concerns when I came here five years ago," Rabbi Blanchard says. Like him, many of the rabbis teaching at YCT come from haredi educational backgrounds.
Rabbi Weiss, says third-year student Devin Villarrea, "explicitly made a conscious effort to keep his politics out of the yeshiva."
All the students know Rabbi Weiss’ activist background, but activism is not part of the official or unofficial curriculum, students say. "No one yet has taught me how to chain myself to a door," says Seth Winberg, a first-year student, an allusion to Rabbi Weiss’s many protests at places like the United Nations or the convent at Auschwitz.
Rabbi Linzer, who was recently promoted from the school’s rosh yeshiva to dean, notes that "from the outset we recognized that a central role of a rabbi today is the pastoral role. We have heard rabbis in the field say to us, ‘I never got the training you guys are offering.’"
During a pre-Chanukah inspirational speech in the YCT beit midrash last week, Rabbi Weiss urged his students to strongly consider working outside of the Greater New York area after ordination. "There is a community that exists outside the tri-state area," he said. "We’ve got to create a culture of going out of town. We have a responsibility to these communities." Think Peace Corps, Rabbi Weiss said.
The students, sitting in front of laptop computers, listened respectfully. If they are like past ordainees of the school, most will end up out of town; according to a map produced by Chovevei Torah, its rabbis have found positions in congregations across the U.S. and Canada, many in prominent synagogues.
The beit midrash, a large hall on the sixth floor of the Kraft Center, looks like any other yeshiva study hall, lined with bookcases that bulge with the Talmud and the Code of Jewish Law. The learning schedule also is standard – morning to night classes in Gemara and Jewish law, and chavruta sessions with learning partners.
That, in addition to the mandatory pastoral counseling and social action classes designed to help produce rabbis who can handle the demands of 21st century congregations.
"This is an Orthodox institution," Rabbi Weiss says.
"This," says Rabbi Blanchard, "is a classic semicha program. It’s definitely not an easy semicha. It’s not graduating half-baked kiruv (outreach) rabbis. We would not have credibility [in the wider Orthodox world] if we did not offer the same semicha program,"
Critics of Chovevei Torah, who tend to critique the school’s level of Jewish learning or its commitment to halachic standards, do not "have a clue what is going on internally at YCT," says an observer who is familiar with it and Yeshiva University. He asked that his name not be used.
The liberal reputation of Rabbi Weiss and of Rabbi Linzer, particularly in their willingness to engage with non-Orthodox denominations, "led to the sense that they are crossing the line," that Chovevei Torah offers an education that is not consistent with normative Orthodox Judaism, the observer says. "Some of this is perception rather than reality. It’s not [about] what’s going on in the beit midrash."
Has the success of Chovevei Torah had any effect on Yeshiva University, pushing its policies to the left?
"I don’t see it – in the same way that YU has not changed in response to Lander, which in on the right," the observer says. He is talking about the Lander College for Men, a seven-year-old Orthodox institution in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, that combines a college education with a yeshiva program.
For most congregations around the country in the market for an Orthodox rabbi, the friction between Chovevei Torah and other Modern Orthodox institutions is strictly a New York City affair.
"In the end, they always hire the best candidate," Jonas says.
Roberta Goodman, former president of Congregation Sherith Israel in Nashville, says her synagogue received pressure – she is reluctant to give details – not to hire Rabbi Saul Strosberg, who was ordained by Chovevei Torah, for a pulpit opening two years ago. The rabbi says he also was urged, "based on the fact that I went to Chovevei," to withdraw his application.
He did not withdraw. He was hired. "We determined that we needed to hire the person who was going to meet the needs of our community," Goodman says. "Hands down, it was Rabbi Saul. It was the best decision we ever made. He is warm. He is able to relate to everyone. The community loves him," she said, calling him "the living embodiment of Ahavat Yisrael [love of one’s fellow Jews]."
Rabbi Michael Broyde, a prominent pulpit rabbi in Atlanta and a dayan, or decisor, on the RCA’s Beth Din of America, wrote a public letter several years ago questioning Chovevei Torah’s "inter-denominational interactions within Judaism," as well as its "interfaith cooperation" and views on working with gays and lesbians.
He declined to be interviewed for this article. But a year and a half ago, when Rabbi Broyde, a founder of Atlanta’s Torah Mitzion Kollel, needed to hire a rosh kollel to lead the institution, his choice was Rabbi Zev Farber, who was ordained by Chovevei Torah.
[Note: YCT is probably too fundamentalist for me, but it's nice to see them challenging the status quo.]
Dec 14, 2007 12:08 AM
RJM beats me on a technicality_
My debate with RJM ended with RJM claiming that I'm not qualified to be the judge of whether TMS is the most plausible explanation of Ancient Near East (ANE) history or not, since I'm no expert on ANE history, whereas he is.
I countered that there are plenty of scholars who are expert in ANE history, and they disagree with him too, but he countered that if I really understood the debate that they have, I would see that they are not rational.
This is a very typical RJM response: You're not an expert, you haven't studied X (where X could variously be Medieval Philosophy, Islam, ANE History, or more likely R Chait's weekly Torah Sheet) and therefore you're not qualified to offer an opinion.
Now, being honest, I have to admit that I am indeed no expert on ANE history. And since RJM claims that he is, and I can't go Ad Hominem, I have to concede.
No fair, but that's life.
Dec 13, 2007 8:40 PM
The Fundamentals of -insert label here- Judaism_
Darn it! I still don't have a good label.
Anyway, whatever we are called, here are our fundamental values.
We believe that there is a 'Divine' purpose to existence
- We cannot treat life as 'hefker', we cannot be hedonistic nihilists
- We are obligated to make the most out of our lives, and to make the world a better place
We believe that the values and practices of Modern Orthodox Judaism are 'Divinely Inspired'
- The 'Torah' that we have received has proven itself to be an excellent lifestyle for thousands of years
- We have faith in the Sages of old and (MO) Rabbis of today that they can guide us successfully though life
We believe that the traditional Jewish system of Halachah is worthwhile for numerous reasons
- Creates good people, strong families, and moral communities
- Keeps the Jewish people intact, and therefore keeps the Jewish message (Life has purpose and meaning) intact
We believe that as with any legal system, a balance must be struck between tradition and innovation
- Too much adherence to tradition will result in stagnation, and potentially dangerous or unethical or simply untrue beliefs
- Too much innovation will reduce the religion to mere whim of the moment, and it will lose it's authority
We believe that the progressive Modern Orthodox approach to Halachah provides the best balance
- MO are invested in both the tradition, but also in modernity. This dual investment ensures that a good balance is achieved.
Dec 13, 2007 12:18 PM
I'm very conflicted as to the extent I should try to persuade people that fundamentalism is untrue. On the one hand, I believe it isn't true. On the other hand, why try and persuade people?
On another thread, angry ex BTs and Kiruv Pros are debating Kiruv. It's true that some Kiruv workers and organizations are irresponsible, unscrupulous and even dangerous. Clearly some BTs feel they were duped, or at the extreme end their lives were ruined. But I believe the majority of professional Kiruv Workers are indeed responsible. It's not in their interest to 'con' people into Orthodoxy.
When it comes to Kiruv, Caveat Emptor. We live in a market driven society, it's entirely legitimate for anyone to market anything. Just do your research before buying!
However KAN argues that religion is as life altering as medicine, and therefore should be subject to the same rules as drug advertising. When drugs are marketed, by law the advertiser MUST mention all the negative side effects and similar downsides. This is obviously not the case for example with Vehicle advertising. GM are not required to say that SAABs are totally unreliable for example.
So should religion be similar to medicine, or similar to cars? Seriously, I'm not sure.
However I am sure that the basic concept of Kiruv is legitimate. You market your goods or lifestyle, and as long as you follow fair advertising standards, it is the responsibility of the buyer to do his research. The vendor cannot be blamed for buyers remorse.
This being the case, it is entirely legitimate for any organization to offer Kiruv. This includes of course the Maskilim, or Kofrim. So if someone is genuinely convinced of his Kefirah, Kefirah Kiruv is just as moral as regular Kiruv.
Aish Hamiskilim anyone?
Dec 13, 2007 12:18 PM
Very Important Post on the Credibility of Religion_
A lot of people seem to totally misunderstand the issue of credibility. I have had a three day argument with 'Trapper Joe', running about 700 (yes! Seven Hundred) comments. And now this morning I see someone way more intelligent also not getting it.
Listen up guys this is important.
Let's compare Science to Religion. Obviously we are somewhat comparing apples to oranges, because Science and Religion fulfil two very different roles in life. But I'm not trying to compare them in toto. Rather, I want to compare the methodology and reliability of the various facts that are claimed by each to be true. Also, please bear in mind that I am NOT talking about conflicts or contradictions between Science and Religion. Not at all. I am simply going to contrast and compare these two endeavors in their approach to gaining knowledge, and see what conclusions are to be drawn. Also, by religious knowledge or beliefs, I am referring to Spiritual / Theological or beliefs of a similar nature. Social / practical beliefs, for example be nice to people, are not included, since such beliefs are not specifically religious, but rather most societies, even secular ones, come to similar conclusions.
Inspiration
Interestingly, both Scientific Knowledge and Religious Knowledge can often start out the same way - as a spark of inspiration in someone's mind. How did Einstein suddenly figure out the theory of relativity? Something sparked in his brain. Similarly a Novi gets inspired. Of course we can debate where the inspiration comes from, but let's leave that aside for now.
Scientific Methodology
After the initial spark of inspiration, Science and Religion diverge quite rapidly, and quite significantly. If a Scientist presented a theory, based on nothing more than inspiration, it would get nowhere. We want to see his working. We want to see repeatable experiments. We want to make sure that other scientists in other parts of the world can produce the same results. We have peer reviewed journals. And this system works very well. Of course scientists are human, and occasionally someone publishes some wrong theories (by mistake or even deliberately), but these usually get discovered sooner or later.
Consensus
If you look at most aspects of life, you will find little consensus amongst humanity. How to live? Which political party to vote for? What's the best flavor of ice-cream? Sometimes it seems that nobody agrees on anything. Even with topics that have been debated for thousands of years, for example philosophy, there is often little agreement. Yet modern Science has only been going for about 200 years, and we have incredble global agreement on many, many parts of it. How did this happen? How come we don't have a Japanese Science, and an American Science? Isn't it incredible that the global community of Scientists pretty much agree on all the basics?
The answer of course is obvious.
Objective
Firstly, Science is about objective fact. It's not about emotional, personal things such as how to live, or what to value. This means that scientists can be objective, and not get emotionally invested. Of course scientists can still get emotionally invested in their pet theories, and this happens a lot, But over time, new scientists come on the scene, and eventually these biases can be overcome. Note: I am talking about pure Science here. When a Scientist oversteps the boundaries and starts making pronouncements about religion and God, then of course he can be very biased indeed.
Methodology
Secondly, the consensus in Science has arisen precisely because of the Methodology described above. Scientific journals and books precisely lay out the details for the theory, describe experiments which can be replicated, and the field is open to anyone to confirm that the theory is true.
Applied Science
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the entire world relies on applied science, in the realm of technology and medicine. Everyone of us literally trusts our lives to science. Science makes predictions which work in the real world. Science enables us to create drugs which really do cure people. Science enables us to create technologies which we see work with our own eyes. Nobody, not even the biggest fundamentalist, denies this.
An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine a world where Science is only pure, never applies. Even though the methodology would be as solid as it is in our world, would a Pure Science be seen as credible, without a working practical application? Tzarich Iyun.
However, in our world, the Scientific Methodology, combined with real world results have produced what most people regard as the most amazing human achievement ever.
Another thought experiment: Imagine if the world of Science was divided into warring groups of scientists. Imagine if each group had a theory which they proclaimed as true, but no side could prove their theory. Would any one side have credibility? Of course not, the matter would be up for debate. And there are certainly large parts of Science which are like this, for example String Theory. Nobody would claim that String theory has conclusively been proven true. It is speculative. I'm sure that the originators of String Theory are very passionate about it, but even they wouldn't claim it is within the realm of 'Proven Science'. And, if they did, they would probably be accused of being biased.
Now, let's compare this with religion
Religion
There are many hundreds of religions in the world. Many of them contain beliefs about God, gods or similar. Many of them have sacred texts and sacred teachings, either directly communicated by God or gods, or by prophets and Holy men. Unfortunately, a lot of these teachings or beliefs contradict each other, so they can't all be true.
Religious Methodology
There is no methodology as such in religion. Once a prophet (or set of people) claim to have a revelation about something, that becomes dogma. There is no experimentation, no peer review, no way of proving this to be true. No real world practical application. Rather each religion claims that through intuition, tradition, and authority of their particular religious figures, the knowledge is true. The problem though is that all the religions pretty much claim a similar set of reasons for why they are true, yet they mostly contradict each other. They can't all be true!
Consensus
There is almost no consensus in religion. The three major Western Faith do seem to superficially agree on God and the Bible, but when you dig a little deeper very significant divisions appear. Some Christian Sects accept the Old Testament as the literal word of God, other sects just regard it as sacred literature. Christianity itself mostly regards Jesus as the son of God, a belief which Jews find totally unacceptable. Islam believes that Moshe forged key parts of the Torah, and that Yishmael was by the Akeidah, not Yitzchak. Not only is there almost no consensus between all the various different religions, even within each religion you typically have a huge variety of sects, all of whom significantly disagree with each other as to the basic teachings.
Although religion has been ongoing for 3000 years, not only has little consensus been reached, if anything, it seems more and more religions get created with different beliefs. Mormonism and Scientology are both relatively recent. There is no global consensus, and no process for achieving consensus.
In the same way that Science is regarded as incredibly reliable, because of the consensus, reliable methodology and application in the real world; religion exhibits the exact opposite set of features: no consensus, no reliable methodology and no way to test out the beliefs in the real world.
In fact, attempts to prove religious beliefs, e.g. God or prayer, have always failed.
Separate Magistaria
Some readers will claim that this comparison is unfair. Of course Science is reliable, because Science deals with the physical world which is measurable. However religious beliefs concern the spiritual world, and the methods of science cannot be applies. It is unfair to expect that Scientific methodology could be applied to the spiritual world. However there are two responses to this, each response works independently.
Response 1
The very fact that Scientific methodology cannot be used for Spiritual questions is the issue. If spirituality cannot be seen or measured, then there's nothing we can know about it. This response assumes that Scientific methodology is the only methodology which is valid.
Response 2
However, we don't need to take such a hard line to refute this allegation. We can certainly accept that Science isn't all there is, and that human intuition, tradition, or any other method could potentially work to create reliable knowledge. The problem of course is that the religious methodology is entirely unreliable. Using religious methodology, we have hundreds of religions all claiming to be true, yet all contradicting each other. Sure, one might be true, but how could you possibly tell?!
Each religion has its devotees, who passionately confirm their own religion as the one true religion. But since religion is a way of life, it is impossible for these devotees to escape the charge of bias. Even worse, many religions actually make it a religious CRIME to question the religion, promising all sorts of awful punishments for those who dare to do so.
Can you imagine a world where questioning science meant getting a jail sentence?! It would be unthinkable. Yet this situation exists with religion. How can any passionate religious person possibly be non biased in such an environment?!
It should be clear that the key components that make Science credible: Reliable Methodology (experiments, peer review) , Objectivity (facts about the world), Real World Application (Technology, Medicine) are not only missing in Religion, in fact we have the exact opposite in religion: We have an Unreliable Methodology (tradition, religious authority), Subjectivity & Bias (passionate devotion to religion,laws against heresy) and no real world application of the beliefs themselves.
Some people might argue that there is real world application of religious beliefs. For example people feel very connected to God. Or people give charity. But these are actions and feelings, they say nothing about whether God actually exists, or whether the charity giver is actually going to Olam Habah.
In summary, it is clear that while science is a very credible, religion certainly is not. Does that mean that we should reject religion in total? Not necessarily. But certainly in any conflict between Science and religion, it's no contest. And, any religious person who accepts their own religious beliefs, but rejects various aspects of Science (which Scientists themselves regard as 'proven'), is clearly being ridiculous, accepting an unreliable methodology over a reliable one.
How reliable is Science? Well since almost everyone on the planet trusts their lives to it, I would have to say that (in general), the parts of Science which are accepted as proven are about as reliable as anything could possibly be in this world. Of course as our scientific knowledge deepens we will further refine and even alter various theories, but this is all part of the awesome methodology where change is possible and even encouraged (where proven).
How reliable is Religion? Well since almost everyone on the planet disagrees about it, I would have to say that in general it has absolutely no credibility at all. Does this mean that all religious beliefs are false? Not necessarily, but without any really good evidence or arguments there is no reason to assume that any of them are true.
In another thread, RJM says that if only I would know Ancient Near East (ANE) history, I would see that Divine Revelation is the most reasonable explanation of how the Torah came to be. Of course there are plenty of ANE scholars in academia, far more knowledgeable than RJM who know ANE history very very well, and yet think that human origins is the most reasonable explanation for the Torah. Perhaps these Scholars are Reform Jews, or secular, in which case maybe they are biased. perhaps, But this only goes to show that everyone here is incredibly biased, and no one has any credibility.
More likely, it is RJM who is biased, since he is religiously compelled to affirm a Divine Torah. Maybe you could argue that the Secular Scholars are equally religiously (or anti religiously) compelled to deny a Divine Torah.
Either way, at the end of the day, nobody has any credibility here. Without a Scientific (or any) reliable methodology, without the ability to be Objective, and without a real world way of testing these beliefs, we are simply left in the dark.
Dec 12, 2007 9:26 PM
I need a label for my new sect of Judaism. I have been discussing this for 2 years. It's time to commit already! Here are some options:
Modern Orthodox (might not be accurate enough)
LW MO (too much of a mouthful)
Traditional (not frum enough)
Observant (maybe)
Jewish (not descriptive enough)
Halachic, Hilchati (sounds too legal)
Reconstructionist Orthodox (might confuse people)
Post Modern Orthodox (too cutesy)
Any other suggestions? We need to lock this down. And I need a name for my new blog. If they can be one and the same name (or related in some way) that would be great.
Dec 12, 2007 9:26 PM
More Bad Arguments for Religion: RJM_
In a previous post, I wrote how all the believers were convincingly thrashed when it came to arguments about religion. But RJM claims he wasn't beaten. But he was, both on the phone, here and on Orthoprax. But we can summarize the main arguments again.
NOTE: I am not talking about First Cause arguments and Medieval or Greek philosophy. RJM is quite a philosophy expert and that's very nice. However medieval philosophy doesn't have much to do with the truth of Orthodox Judaism. What I am talking about here is RJM's Kuzari style argument for why Torah must be from Heaven.
The debate goes something like this:
RJM
It is extremely unlikely that the Torah would have been accepted as Divine by thousands of ancient Israelites if it wasn't true. And it is equally unlikely that it evolved from a small legend into a big one. The most reasonable conclusion is that it's Divine, as described in the Torah itself.
XGH
Of course it's more likely to have developed and evolved by human hands. Saying God wrote it is a fantastic claim, and one that needs plenty of evidence. We have many similar stories of ancient texts being claimed as Divine, yet in all cases we believe they were really man made (the Koran for example). Most likely the Torah is man made too, unless you have good evidence to the contrary. The most likely scenario is that there was some original event, e.g. a volcano (or whatever), and the legends developed from there. The ancient Israelites had many stories, legends and myths (just like all other ancient peoples), and these gradually coalesced into the Torah. Almost every single Bible expert and religious historian (non biased) in the world holds this to be the case. The only people who don't believe this are the people who are religiously forbidden to hold this. Canyou imagine a more extreme version of bias?!
RJM
Firstly, claiming a God written text is not a fantastic claim. It is a perfectly reasonable claim. Secondly, the Torah story is unique, and unlike all the other stories (mass revelation). No way could a mass revelation claim have been accepted as true, unless it really happened. Thirdly, the Torah contains many difficult laws, which would not have been accepted had they not been from God.
XGH
Firstly, this is ludicrous. Are you seriously claiming that a Divinely Written Book is no more amazing than a Human Written Book?
Secondly, the more unique the story of the Torah is, the more your argument completely fails. If the story is totally unique, then we have no data and no experience as to whether such a story is reasonably true or not.
For example, if revelation stories happened frequently, and 9 out of 10 times turned out to be true, then RJM could claim that a revelation is a likely true story. Conversely, if revelation stories happened frequently, and 9 out of 10 times turned out to be false, then I could claim it's most likely false.
However RJM claims that the Torah's mass revelation story is unique, and such a story would have to be true. But how can he know this? If OJ is false, then such a unique story is in fact false. And since the story is so unique, there is simply no data to go on. Are mass revelation stories typically true? Could a mass revelation story simply evolve? We have no idea and no data! It's a singularity, and so the default position is to make the simpler claim, that the book is man made, and the religion evolved, like all other religions and all other supposedly Divine Texts.
And of course this isn't even getting into the fact that there are contradictions, errors, different styles and untrue events in the Torah. yes, you can provide kvetches for all those, but at the end of the day, which is more likely: This fantastic tale is true, despite no evidence, or this is yet another false religious claim, just like a thousand others.
Thirdly, many religions contain difficult laws. Many ancient religions required human sacrifice. If anything, ancient Judaism might have been EASIER than the Canaanite religions. There were no Rabbinic Humras, and you didn't have to sacrifice your children to the Gods. And, even if it was difficult, so what? The Moslems keep many difficult laws, does that prove the Koran is min hashamyim? They were convinced to keep the laws because of the benefits that accrued, as we say in shema every day.
RJM himself agreed to me that religion has a serious credibility problem (His words, not mine), so if he wants to claim that Judaism is the one true religion, he needs to provide some very good reasons why. So far I haven't heard him give any, but I'm more than willing for him to try.
In fact, I'm literally begging him to try.
NOTE: I hope my readers appreciate that I have a lot of respect for RJM, which is PRECISELY why I am challenging him to a debate. I wouldn't bother with someone like TrapperJoe or Daganev for example, it would be a worthless waste of time. But RJM is indeed about the most knowledgeable, well thought out, intelligent and educated debater out there (on the believer side). And I'm not just saying that to butter him up!
Dec 12, 2007 12:28 AM
[NOTE: This post is talking about Orthodox Judaism as currently defined. It is not talking about the existence of God, or other streams of Judaism, or even other conceptions of 'Orthodoxy' which might be feasible.]
Since this blog is about to imminently close down, I think it's a good time for a recap. We have spent three years debating religion from every conceivable angle, with many, many different people, skeptics and believers alike.
Who won?
It's not even a kashye. It wasn't even close. Sorry, but I think this is beyond debate. The skeptics thrashed the believers to smithereens, time and time and time again. And I know, because I was one of the believers who got well and truly thrashed.
Does this prove that OJ is necessarily false? Not necessarily, but it really doesn't look very good. And that's an understatement. Could this be because the skeptics are a self selecting set of people, who naturally are way more intelligent, whereas the believers tend to be the less smart ones, so naturally they lost the debates? Of course, but 'hoh gufoh'.
Some people will no doubt argue that I'm biased. But I started out on the believers side, and I am still admitting defeat! No doubt some people will argue that because I lost, I switched sides, but a better debater than me would have won. Well, a better debater is yet to appear. If there is one, let him show his face. I didn't win the debates, and neither did anyone else, except perhaps in some very tiny inconsequential battle on a side issue.
This doesn't mean that the skeptics are right about everything. On the contrary, I think they are very wrong about quite a few important things, such as the value of religion. But when it comes to the credibility of fundamentalist religion (as currently understood by the majority of OJ), they trashed it quite decisively.
I can say quite confidently, that given our current knowledge, fundamentalist religion does not look true, and all the so called 'proofs' don't work.
Could things change?
Certainly. But I can say quite confidently, that given our current knowledge, it really doesn't appear that fundamentalist religion will ever look true.
Now, even given the fact it doesn't look very true, could faith in it be justified for some external reason?
Well, this depends on what you think about unjustified faith. This is not an epistemological question. It's an 'ought to' question. A behavioral question. A pragmatic question. Should one hold unjustified beliefs or not?
I think the answer is it depends. A blanket 'ban' on all unjustified beliefs would seem to be too extreme. On the other hand, you really shouldn't go around believing in any old nonsense.
The truth is that all humans feel this instinctively, and it's very rare to find someone who genuinely believes in something whilst simultaneously knowing the belief is entirely unjustified. Almost everyone tries to justify their beliefs, usually with arguments about tradition and such. The only problem is that the arguments are very poor, and don't really work. If the believers fully analyzed their arguments honestly, they would see that.
Is it wrong to justify unjustified beliefs by appealing to bad arguments? Again, this is another 'ought to' argument, and the answer is it depends.
Is there anything left to debate here? Not on this issue. But I think that there's still plenty to discuss with respect to non fundamentalist halachic religion, and science vs. religion, faith vs. reason as a whole, especially in the realm of 'ought to'. Plus, there is some interesting PostModern stuff which we never really got into.
This will all have to wait for another blog.
Dec 12, 2007 12:28 AM
More bad arguments for religion_
In the last couple of days some really bad arguments for religion have surfaced yet again. These are the same tired old arguments we went over in 2005. Let’s do some quick chazarah though.
1. The argument from love
The argument from love comes in a few different flavors, but it generally goes something like this: "Can you prove you love your wife? No! So why do I need to prove that God exists?"
2. The argument from faith
This one goes like this: "Everyone believes everything on faith. You skeptics believe in Science, I believe in Chazal. There’s no difference!"
Both these arguments fail miserably. In fact they don't even start.
1. Argument from Love
This fails for a few reasons, depending on the intent of the argument. What does it mean to prove your love? It could mean (a) prove that your love is justified, or (b) prove that you are actually in love, or (c) prove the person you love actually exists.
Let’s consider (a) prove that your love is justified. Well, obviously ‘justified’ love is entirely subjective, and depends what you are looking for. But let’s say you had a well defined list of what you are looking for, for example a caring, intelligent RW MO woman who you find attractive and are compatible with, and you find someone with all those attributes, then it seems reasonable to assume that your love is justified. Of course even the best marriages can falter due to strains and stresses, so to assume that just because you found the woman of your dreams it means you are set for life is foolish. Marriage requires constant work. What any of this has to do with whether God exists is a mystery to me.
Now let’s consider (b) prove that you are in love. Well, it’s impossible to really know what another person is thinking or feeling. A really good actor can always pretend. The news is full of con artists who can fake anything. But assuming an honest person, who is in touch with their emotions, love should be reasonably simple to figure out. You feel a sense of elation when the person is around, you miss them terribly when they are gone, you admire and respect them etc etc. If you feel all those things, then you’re in love. If not, then probably not. Again, I don’t see what any of this has to do with God.
Perhaps the argument means that just like people feel intensely in love even though there’s no way of scientifically measuring that, yet we accept their love feeling, likewise if people believe in intensely in God then we should accept their belief feeling. And of course I do. In exactly the same way I accept that someone who honestly claims to be feeling intensely in love, is in fact feeling intensely in love, likewise someone who claims to be feeling (or thinking) a passionate belief in (or connection to) God, is presumably feeling (or thinking) a passionate belief in (or connection to) God. Of course that says nothing about God, it just tells us that the person believes in God, or feels close to God, or loves God. But then we knew that already! Does being love with something in any way prove that the “something” must exist? Hardly. You could be in love with an imaginary thing.
Imagine if you claimed to love your wife, but were in fact single, and no wife could be found. Would your love prove that your wife exists?! Hardly, but it might prove you are delusional.
2. Argument from faith
This one fails because all faith should be justified, where possible. There must be some reason why you have the faith. Otherwise anyone could just have faith in anything and it would be nuts. Of course all religious people do indeed attempt to justify their faith, usually with an argument about an ancient heritage or unbroken tradition or some such. The only problem is that this justification is pretty poor, since many religions claim the same justification, and many of them contradict each other, so clearly this justification is simply not reliable.
On the other hand, people have faith in Science for good reasons – it works, everyone agrees to it (at least to the proven parts), and there is a good system in place for gaining agreement, for reviewing people’s work, for gaining more knowledge etc etc. Contrast this with religion where the system quite literally stinks (as far as gaining knowledge goes). The beliefs are set in stone, and if you consider other possibilities you are damned to hell. Hardly a fair system conducive to gaining true knowledge!
Believers sometimes argue that we unfairly privilege science over religion. Or they claim that it’s unfair to judge religious beliefs by scientific standards. Or else they claim that there are other methods to knowledge besides science and that it’s unfair to insist that everything must be scientific.
I say, fine! I’m ok with any system of knowledge you want to propose. Tarrot cards, spiritual knowledge, divination, whatever the heck you like! As long as it works reliably, I have no problem with it. The reason I trust Science is not because I intrinsically trust Science and reject everything else , but rather because it works reliably. If it didn’t work reliably, I wouldn’t trust it! And neither would anyone else.
If the science world was full of warring factions of scientists, each of them claiming to have the one true science, and none of it worked reliably (at least as far as we could tell), then nobody would trust science either!
All this is poshut. And is at a level of sophistication (or rather un-sophistication) way, way below where I would like to be. And the people arguing this stuff are supposedly mature adults! Sad, very sad. There probably are some interesting things to debate on this topic, but these are not it.
I think the best that can be said here is that humans have a complex range of emotions, and one of them is spirituality. In the same way we celebrate our love, we should also celebrate our spirituality. Since most people do have a strong feeling that there is “something” out there, it seems legitimate to go with this feeling. I don’t see any valid reason to declare such a feeling to be ‘forbidden’. But I would certainly caution against taking things too far.
Dec 11, 2007 5:18 PM
New!: The argument from stupidity_
[UPDATE: Turns out that TrapperJoe is 'Yus', some jerk who used to hang out at DBs blog. He wasn't really interested in making any real arguments, just jerking people around. I haven't actually ever seen a skeptic do that, it always seems to be some moronic believer who plays that game. But of course not all religious people are jerks, and not all skeptics are not jerks., just when it comes to debating on the blogs, the religious side always seems to field more jerks. Being charitable, perhaps this is because the smart ones are all learning, or doing something more productive. And by definition, the skeptics tend to be the smarter ones. So it makes sense actually, and should not be seen as reflection on religion as a whole.]
I thought I'd seen all the bad arguments for religion, but this one takes the cake. Trapper Joe is proposing the following argument (I'm paraphrasing):
'It's true that religion rests on unprovable or seemingly untrue faith. However many people have faith in all sorts of unproven or untrue things, e.g. certain aspects of Origin Sciences, or unwarranted faith in Professors or other academics, so my faith is legitimate!
Or, to put it more cynically, as anony writes, 'other (stupid) people have absolute faith in unproven or seemingly incorrect things, so why shouldn't I?' I guess it kinda works. Maybe Trapper Joe should write a kiruv book - 'Permission to be stupid'.
But is there anything actually wrong with TrapperJoe's argument? Well, I think his argument actually does work, but I would have put it differently. I would say that believing in fantasy, especially religious fantasy, is part of the human condition. Possibly the human race will evolve beyond that one day in the future, but for right now, the alternatives are far from being proven, and could even turn out to be worse.
I think the focus needs to be on refining people's religious fantasies, and ensuring that they don't cause any undue harm, rather than trying to make people give up their fantasy.
Dec 11, 2007 5:18 PM
Do Kiruv Workers Target Rich Jews?_
I just noticed this comment over on Hirhurim:
But there are far too many kiruv workers indisputably more interested in wealthy non-frum Jews than they are in their less wealthy brethren. It's the dirty little secret of kiruv.
I have to strenuously disagree with this comment. It's hardly a dirty little secret, it's way out in the open! I receive a glossy Kiruv Magazine every quarter, which is put out by a group of Kiruv 'Community' Kollels. Who is often on the front cover, or all over the photo pages? Not some local poor shmo, but rather the richest Jewish guy in town (he may even be the richest guy in town, period. He even has a street named after him). Him, his family, his friends etc have all been 'targeted' by the local Kiruv groups, no question. A few years ago a Hollywood media mogul moved to town, and the kiruv workers were all over the guy. But to be fair, they do spend much (most?) of their energy on regular people too. After all they do need to fill their quotas. It's just that the regular people aren't going to make huge donations, and maybe don't look as photogenic. Also if you snag a rich and/or famous guy, that's great PR.
On that same Hirhurim Thread, 'Chakira' (a.k.a. Josh Harrison) writes:
Kiruv as a combination of slick packaging, oversimplified rhetoric and reheated conservative family values blended together in a hypercapitalist economy can never be the Judaism we aspire to.
But slick packaging, oversimplified rhetoric and reheated conservative family values is pretty much what modern day Orthodox Judaism is, at least for the masses. Why should kiruv sell something it isn't? And what's so bad about conservative family values anyway? It's just a lifestyle choice.
Chakira continues:
It is heartening to see that all sectors of the Jewish community, from the Badatz to the Blogosphere, have finally realized that there is something about kiruv that just doesnt convert.
Feh, this isn't true. Just because a few BT's turned bAd doesn't mean the entire community have had it with kiruv. Kiruv is a money making machine, putting Jews in touch with their heritage, and opening up the community to some much needed infusion of culture (and a few crazies). And, many BT's seem to be happy at the end of the day. Would they have been happier had they not become BT? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to say. I mix a lot with non religious couples and there seems to be a much higher incidence of marital infidelity and divorce in that segment of the community.
As long as the Kiruv workers don't *deliberately* mislead people with blatant lies (that they know are lies) I say Caveat Emptor. Any non religious Jew who decides to turn Orthodox has only himself to blame (or thank, as the case may be). We live in a capitalist, consumerist culture. If there wasn't a market for it, Kiruv wouldn't exist. Kiruv is entirely legit.
In fact, I myself intend to start a Kiruv Organization. I will be mekarev people to my way of thinking (LW MO without unbelievable ikkarim). I think I will start by targeting some local rich Jews who are unhappy being Conservative. Or Orthodox.
Dec 11, 2007 1:43 AM
There was once a society of frogs that lived at the bottom of a deep, dark well, from which nothing whatsoever could be seen of the world outside. They were ruled over by a great Boss Frog, a fearful bully who claimed, on rather dubious grounds, to own the well and all that creeped or crawled therein. The Boss Frog never did a lick of work to feed or keep himself, but lived off the labors of the several bottom-dog frogs with whom he shared the well. They, wretched creatures, spent all the hours of their lightless days and a good many more of their lightless nights drudging about in the damp and slime to find the tiny grubs and mites on which the Boss Frog fattened.
Now, occasionally an eccentric skylark would flutter down into the well (for God only knows what reason) and would sing to the frogs of all the marvelous things it had seen in its journeyings in the great world outside: of the sun and the moon and the stars, of the sky-climbing mountains and fruitful valleys and the vast stormy seas, and of what it was like to adventure the boundless space above them.
Whenever the skylark came visiting, the Boss Frog would instruct the bottom-dog frogs to attend closely to all the bird had to tell. "For he is telling you," the Boss Frog would explain, "of the happy land wither all good frogs go for their reward when they finish this life of trials." Secretly, however, the Boss Frog (who was half deaf anyway and never very sure of what the lark was saying) thought this strange bird was quite mad.
Perhaps the bottom-dog frogs had once been deceived by what the Boss Frog told them. But with time they had grown cynical about such fairy tales as skylarks had to tell, and had reached the conclusion also that the lark was more than a little mad.
Moreover, they had been convinced by certain free-thinking frogs among them (though who can say where these free—thinkers come from?) that this bird was being used by the Boss Frog to comfort and district them with tales of pie in the sky which you get when you die. "And that's a lie!’ the bottom-dog frogs bitterly croaked.
But there was among the bottom-dog frogs a philosopher frog who had invented a new and quite interesting idea about the skylark. "What the lark says is not exactly a lie," the philosopher frog suggested. "Nor is it madness. What the lark is really telling us about in its own queer way is the beautiful place we might make of this unhappy well of ours if only we set our minds to it. When the lark sings of sun and moon, it means the wonderful new forms of illumination we might introduce to dispel the darkness we live in. When it sings of the wide and windy skies, it means the healthful ventilation we should be enjoying instead of the dank and fetid airs we have grown accustomed to. When it sings of growing giddy with its dizzy swooping through the heavens, it means the delights of the liberated senses we should all know if we were not forced to waste ourselves in oppressive drudgery. Most important, when it sings of soaring wild and unfettered among the stars, it means the freedom we shall all have when the chains of the Boss frog are removed from our backs forever. So you see: the bird is not to be scorned. Rather, it should be appreciated and praised for bestowing on us an inspiration that emancipates us from despair.
Thanks to the philosopher frog, the bottom-dog frogs came to have a new and affectionate view of the skylark. In fact, when the revolution finally came (for revolutions always do come), the bottom-dog frogs even inscribed the image of the skylark on the banners and, marched to the barricades doing the best they could in their croaking way to imitate the bird’s lyrical tunes. Following the Boss Frogs overthrow, the once dark, dank well was magnificently illuminated and ventilated and made a much more comfortable place to live. In addition, the frogs experienced a new and gratifying leisure with many attendant delights of the senses - even as the philosopher frog had foretold.
But still the eccentric skylark would come visiting with tales of the sun and the moon and the stars, of mountains and valleys and seas, and of grand winged adventure it had known.
‘Perhaps,’ conjectured the philosopher frog, "this bird is mad, after all. Surely we have no further need of these cryptic songs. And in any case, it is very tiresome to have to listen to fantasies when the fantasies have lost their social relevance."
So one day the frogs contrived to capture the lark. And upon so doing, they stuffed it and put it in their newly built civic (admission-free) museum ….. in a place of honor.
[And the nimshal is like this. The boss frog represents the Rabbis who inspire their followers with Olam Habah but doesn't really believe it. The free thinking frogs are the skeptics. The philosopher frog is me. The lark is evanstonJew. No wait, the lark is me, the BossFrog is HolyHyrax and the Well is Jerusalem. Or maybe the lark is Louis Jacobs and the dog frogs are Reconstructionists. Something like that I'm sure]
Dec 10, 2007 9:14 PM
Help! The End of This blog is Very Nigh (Kinda)_
Folks, as promised, this blog is coming to an end. Unfortunately it seems that every time I end a blog, just beforehand, I get a bunch of new and awesome commenters and the debates turn up to fever pitch. Arama and EvanstonJew are going at it gangbusters debating interpellation with the Big Other (no, I have no clue either).
Meanwhile anony and Trapper Joe are debating whether Chazal or Scientists have more credibility. (But what about the FSM? Does he have no credibility at all?!)
Plus of course we have awesome comments from Kendra and the usual crew.
So what to do?
It would be criminal to deprive all these people of a forum, no to mention the many hundreds (thousands?) of lurkers, and I don't really see any other blog which is serious about discussing hashkafah issues. There are some good skeptical blogs, but they are more focused on destroying rather than building. DovBear is always good, but his site is more about politics and social issues, rather than hard core hashkafah. Hirhurim has the occasional good post, but since Gil wishes the whole world would be RW MO, his even handedness is a bit suspect. Plus he censors comments, and thought that Reshimu would be the next big thing. (Whatever happened to Reshimu?)
So, clearly, I need to carry on this venue somehow. But new responsibilities both at work and at home mean I no longer have the time to dedicate to this. My idea is therefore to have a group blog, with multiple contributors, though I fear the 'magic' will be lost if I do this. Also, I would like my new blog to be non anonymous, at least for me.
Any suggestions welcome.
Dec 8, 2007 9:29 PM
How bad does the National Council of Young Israel suck?_
This month's YU magazine has a pretty damning article on the NCYI. Basically, NCYI member shuls are fed up with the NCYI for the following reasons:
NCYI's overall move to the 'right'
New legislation saying that NCYI must approve shul Rabbis (aimed at YCT)
Ban against women and converts being shul presidents (repugnant says one pres)
Ban against women's tefilah groups and even women's megilah lainings
They offer nothing of value to their members
They exist to expand their own power and prestige
They 'lock in' member shuls by threatening to take hold of all their assets if they leave
I belong to a NCYI shul, and I can validate that my shul has most of the above issues with NCYI. In fact, at repeated conversations over multiple Shabbatim, everyone I spoke to agreed we should leave NCYI. Also I read the NCYI Viewpoint magazine every issue, it's always the same junk – endless pictures of Lerner or Moztofsky meeting with some notable or another. A complete waste of time.
I went to the NCYI site to see which services they offer, because I personally haven't seen anything useful from them. According to their site:
“Did you know that the Department of Synagogue Services of the National Council of Young Israel can be a tremendous resource to your synagogue? Here are some of the types of programs and services available to our Young Israel branches:”
Sounds great! So what is the list?
Branch Consultations
The Suggestion Box
NCYI Program Bank
Synagogue Lay Leadership Day
Sisterhood Services Day
Shabbat Shalom Yerushalayim
So let's go through these one by one and see if there's anything useful in there.
Branch Consultations
Broken link, nothing there.
The Suggestion Box
This is a series of short articles about how to do fund raising. Ssince all the articles are freely available on the web to anyone, I don't see how joining the NCYI is much of a benefit here.
Program Bank
'This one looks useful – a catalog of programming options, but the list is pathetic, e.g. a Barbeque-a-thon. Wow! I could never have thought of that on my own. Another example – 'Rubber Duck Races to pay synagogue bills'. Wow, I really would never have thought of that. And then there's the Pre-Pesach Stress Buster Program, where they suggest that the shul sends women to a spa for a few hours.
Why not give the women of the community some time off to escape and recharge by arranging for a few hours in a spa? Schedule an evening close to Pesach that your synagogue can take over a spa for women only: offer an evening of total relaxation. In addition, have a speaker discuss reducing stress during stressful times.
Yes, it really is that stupid.
Any synagogue worth it's salt can figure out programming ideas, surely. At least ideas of this pathetic caliber. And what kind of programming materials will the NCYI send out for the stress buster program?! I'm friendly with our programming director, maybe I should ask her to ask NCYI about this.
Synagogue Lay Leadership Day
Broken link. Sounds boring anyway.
Sisterhood Services Day
Ditto
Shabbat Shalom Yerushalayim
This is a special weekend around Yom Yerushalayim to impress on people the importance of Yerushalayim. I've never seen this, though my shul does it's own Yom Yerushalayim thing. Anyway, the web site says:
“By targeting every Orthodox synagogue in America, "Shabbat Shalom Yerushalayim" brings together Jews from across the United States through local synagogue programming.”
So if they target every OJ shul in the US, how is this a benefit of belonging to NCYI?
And that's it.
Based on their web site and my own experience, I have to agree with the YU article. The NCYI provides nothing for it's members except for the name. And going forward, that name might just be an embarrassment.
Dec 8, 2007 9:29 PM
Interview with a highly educated Conservative Jew turned Orthodox!_
As promised, I interviewed a highly intelligent, highly educated formerly Conservative (non committed) now Orthodox Jew, about how he made his decision to become Orthodox. I now retract my previous claims on this subject.
However he did say something which resonated somewhat with something else I read today, from Eugene Borowitz. It's rather old fashioned and discredited to believe in a kind of universal rationality or point of view. Everyone is inherently subjective and particularistic, there's no getting away from that. Also, all decisions are made from a combination of intellectual reasons, subjective reasons, and emotions. There's no getting away from that either.
Dec 7, 2007 10:10 PM
Off The Derech: Kids vs. Adults_
I see that there is a constant confusion when discussing Off The Derech (OTD) about kids and adults. I have been guilty of this myself. So let's clear things up.
To be clear, we need to divide the world into more than just two simplistic categories; kids and adults. Instead we'll divide the world into five simplistic categories:
Young kids: 5-13
Older Kids: 13-18
Young adults: 18-20 something, possibly even into early thirties depending on level of maturity
Mature adults: 30+
Old people: 60+
1. Young Kids
YK's hardly ever go off the derech. I just can't imagine it. They are too young, too sheltered, too much under Mom & Dad's control. Very occasionally you might find a young kid with some serious issues, but that is very rare and not really relevant to our discussion.
2. Older Kids
There is definitely a phenomenon of OKs going OTD. Most of these are probably going OTD because of emotional issues, not intellectual issues. Why is this? I think the answer is obvious. OJ OKs have been heavily brainwashed (educated) from birth. They have (ideally) been sheltered from all bad influences, and exist within an OJ context. To have intellectual doubts and convictions strong enough to go OTD at this age, if otherwise happy and well adjusted, is very rare (though it does happen). Instead, most OTD OKs are kids with emotional issues who are 'acting out' in many ways - drugs, crime etc. Going OTD is just another great way to rebel and cause trouble. Plus, you get to fulfil more of your taavos.
3. Young Adults
In this category I think you will find a mix. There will be some people going OTD because they are trying to justify their taavos. However there are definitely people in this category who have intellectually and honestly investigated things and are going off for intellectual reasons.
4. Mature Adults
I would argue that most people in this category are going OTD for intellectual reasons. They are not messed up or into taavos, rather they have escaped their childhood brainwashing and can make an objective decision. Also, the more life experience they have they more they realize what's what.
5. Old People
If someone reaches older age, and then goes OTD, this is a bit strange. Most likely it is because of some life event which turned them off, rather than a sudden revelation of the truth. Do older people even go OTD?
Dec 7, 2007 10:10 PM
Why do people go on or off the derech?_
I think this statement from Steve Brizel wins the prize:
'Many who leave Torah observance have unresolved issues that prevent them from living with doubts.'
'Unresolved issues that prevent them from living with doubts? What the heck is that supposed to mean?!
Anyway, I've actually become more laid back about fundamentalists. Why? Well, I know people who are extremely well educated, who grew up Conservative, and decided to become Orthodox. What are you going to say to such a person? You're delusional? You're brainwashed? Your'e indoctrinated? You're biased? None of these arguments work against a highly intelligent and highly educated person who grew up Conservative or Secular and then decided on the basis of intellectual reasons alone to become frum. And, these people know all about the Documentary Hypothesis too.
And, to argue that they only became frum because of emotional reasons would be hypocritical, since we reject that argument about people who go OTD.
So what are you going to say? People make all sorts of decisions in their lives for all sorts of reasons. People are complex and life is too. I don't think you can narrow the cause behind religious decisions down to a few simple reasons.
Dec 7, 2007 9:57 AM
R Micha Berger on going Off the Derech_
RMB writes:
"The difference between willing to live with a question, looking for an answer, and deciding the question disproves the whole, is almost always emotional state. "
There's definitely a lot of truth to that. In general, when something is proven false, wrong or whatever, normal people accept the proof. But when it's their own religion that is disproven, the stakes are obviously way too high for most people to acknowledge it. They have way too much emotional attachment to their religion, they have family and communal commitments, they have a lifetime of religious, spiritual, cultural, intellectual and financial investment. Can you imagine not being in an emotional state in such a situation?!
So of course, rather than just go with the evidence, they will prefer to 'live with the question'. Conversely, the people who go with the proof and decide to leave their religion are generally less emotional and more detached, and more able to objectively decide upon the truth, and make their decisions accordingly.
'Which group is 'better', you're thinking?(or at least I'm thinking) Yeah, I guess that's a dumb question, since 'better' is subjective.
Dec 5, 2007 3:21 PM
The Works/Doesn't Work Theory of Truth_
Have you ever heard of the hurray/boo theory of morality? It has a real philosophical name too, but I can't quite recall it this minute. The theory is that when people express ideas that certain things are moral (or immoral), all they are really doing is expressing a like/dislike opinion, i.e. I like this, I dislike that, but there is no real intellectual content in their opinions.
Of course, from a skeptical point of view, this is entirely correct. Since there is no objective morality, and since people are just conditioned by millions of years of evolution (and more immediate nature and nurture) to like or dislike certain behaviors, any statement about morality is inevitably a subjective value statement. The fact that Scientific studies of many people from different cultures shows similar moral intuition only proves that these people have mostly had a similar evolutionary path. Since most of us these days are homo sapiens, this shouldn't be much of a surprise.
Likewise, there is the works/doesn't work theory of truth.
In reality, nobody cares about the 'truth' per se, except for some fundamentalist skeptics. And even they don't really care about the truth. Rather they have a particular axe to grind and the 'truth' serves their purpose. If it didn't, they would discard it too, like the rest of humanity.
We are only conditioned through evolution to like the truth of our physical reality, because physical reality is important when being chased by a sabre toothed tiger. But in other areas of life, fantasy is way more important, for example with existential questions. This is clearly the case, since almost everyone (except for mental patients), is very concerned with accurately assessing the truth of their immediate physical surroundings, but yet 4 billion people believe in religion.
When we say something is 'true', what we are really saying is it 'works'. And this is even true with respect to physical reality. How do we know Science is true? Of course we don't, as Einstein pointed out. Rather we have faith in Science because it works.
I used to argue that Truth is the only value. Then I matured and argued that Truth is but one of many competing values. Now I realize that Truth isn't really much of a value at all, and people only go on about it because it 'works'.
And 'aint that the truth. (Not that I care so much about the truth, but this idea works, so it's true enough.)
[By the way, this is exactly why I put 'Physical Reality' as Layer 1 of my Seven Layers of Fantasy rather than as level 0, or off the chart completely. I'm surprised nobody noticed that.]
Dec 5, 2007 3:21 PM
A Rabbi Experiments with Scientific Studies: Guest post by Rabbi Uren Reich_
[File Under: "What if...?!']
'All systems have basic premises which cannot be proven, Science too. Mine are the ikkarim'
For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American Chareidi community. But I'm a mere Rabbi: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of Cosmology and Gosse Theory, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy.
So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American convention of Chareidi Rabbis -- whose rabbinical collective includes such luminaries as Rabbi Mattisyahu Solomon and Rabbi Reuven Feinstein -- allow me to give a speech liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded frum and (b) it flattered the Rabbis' ideological preconceptions?
The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Interested readers can find my speech, `The Gemara is metziyus: It's also emes veyatziv.' in the Spring/Summer 1995 Agudah Convention.
What's going on here? Could the Rabbis really not have realized that my speech was written as a parody?
In the first paragraph I deride the dogma imposed by the long post-Enlightenment hegemony over the Chareidi intellectual outlook'':
…If the Gemara tells us a metziyus, it’s emes veyatziv. There’s nothing to think about. Anything we see with our eyes is less of a reality than something we see in the Gemara. That’s the emunah that a yid has to have.
Is it now dogma in Chareidi Studies that there exists no possibility of Chazal being wrong? Or that there exists an external world but science obtains no knowledge of it?
In the second paragraph I declare, without the slightest evidence or argument, that Chazal don't have to be reconciled with Science:
Unfortunately, I don’t know where or why this is, but recently there’s been a spate of all kinds of publications – I don’t know where they’ve come from – questioning things that have been mekubel midor dor, that every child learns, together with his mother’s milk, al titosh Toras imecha, we learn that every word of Torah is emes, every word of Chazal hakedoshim is emes. We’re coming to hear new kinds of concepts, that we have to figure out a way to make Torah compatible with modern day science – it’s an emunah mezuyefes! There’s a tremendous emunah that these people have for scientists in the outside world – everything they say is kodesh kadoshim! And then we have to figure out according to what they say, how to fit in the Gemara with this newfangled discoveries that the scientists have taught us?!
Throughout the speech, I employ religious and philosophical concepts in ways that few Theologians or Philosophers could possibly take seriously.
These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened sixty-five million years ago – ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks’ time! “Possibly, probably, it could be, maybe” – ain itam hadavar, they don’t know. They know everything that happened 65 million years ago, but from their madda, and their wissenschaft, we have to be mispoel?!
In sum, I intentionally wrote the speech so that any competent Theologian or Philosopher would realize that it is a spoof. Evidently the Rabbis of the Agudah felt comfortable listening to a speech on Science and Torah without bothering to consult anyone knowledgeable in the subject.
[XGH: OK, that's about enough of that! You can read the rest of Sokal's article here. And needless to say, Rav Uren Reich wasn't joking].
Dec 5, 2007 1:32 PM
Is Reality Really Real: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutic of Modern Orthodoxy_
The Radical PoMo crowd points out that Science has a problem. The Scientists claim that their Science accurately reflects Reality. But what is Reality? Reality is ultimately only a concept in our brains. So to say that your concept of Reality is accurate, since it matches Reality, is really only to say that your concept of Reality matches your concept of Reality. So really it's not saying very much at all.
I wrote the last paragraph early this morning, and then I found the exact same thought online in this article:
"`The pysical world is real.' ...[That] statement appears to me, however, to be, in itself, meaningless, as if one said: `The physical world is cock-a-doodle-do.' It appears to me that the `real' is an intrinsically empty, meaningless category (pigeon hole)..."
This is not from Derrida or Kuhn, and not even from Bohr or Heisenberg. The words belong to Albert Einstein -- a staunch believer in observer-independent reality. Similar statements appear many times in Einstein's published and unpublished writings. The idea of a physical theory as a mirror of reality was completely foreign to Einstein:
"[The physicist] will never be able to compare this picture with the real mechanism, and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison."
While Einstein's belief in an objecitve reality is similar to that of Weinberg and Sokal, his arguments for his conception of reality are not. In fact, Einstein was no "naive realist," despite such caricaturing of his stand by the Copenhagen orthodoxy. He ridiculed the "correspondence" view of reality that many scientists accept uncritically. Einstein fully realized that the world is not presented to us twice -- first as it is, and second, as it is theoretically described -- so we can compare our theoretical "copy" with the "real thing". The world is given to us only once -- through our best scientific theories. So Einstein deemed it necessary to ground this concept of objective reality in the invariant characteristics of our best scientific theories.
Ironically, I used to argue that Science is better than Religion simply because Science has a an external physical reality to compare itself against, whereas Religion doesn't, since Religion's external (internal?) spiritual reality can't be seen or measured. But according to the above, this kind of argument is wrong. Rather I should have said that Science is better than religion because Science works, whereas we have no idea whether religion works until (if and when) we get to Heaven.
Some people would argue that Religion 'works' in this life too, and of course it does to a large extent. In fact, this is a key part of my argument for ikkarimless halachic Judaism (also called Reconstructionist Chareidi, Post Modern Orthodoxy and derided by critics as 'Orthopraxy').
Ultimately therefore, this provides a good argument for the Post Modernish Halachic Judaism which I have been pushing - Don't obsesively focus too much on truth and falsity, what's more important is what works and what doesn't.
Dec 5, 2007 1:32 PM
Google my space linked in face book why don't you_
[rant]
Is it just me or is anyone else sick of this whole internet thing? I keep getting requests to go onto FaceBook. Also people keep linking to me on LinkedIn. I think the whole concept is a little silly, not to mention creepy. Why would I want all my personal life displayed for everyone to see? It's not like I have anything to hide, except maybe some (now) embarassing posts about a certain PDA manufacturer from the mid 90s. But still. It's already bad enough that the employees at Google know everything there is to know about me. I need to add fuel to the fire? And all these people adding in 10 connections a day at LinkedIn. I am now LinkedIn to 400,000+ other people with 3 degrees of seperation. At this rate, I'll be linked to the entire planet by next month, Kevin Bacon too. And so will everyone else, so what will be the point? Anyone following the Hartlepool Reggie Perrin story? John Darwin is declared dead 5 years ago, after his battered Canoe is found washed up on the coast in the North of England. Then last weekend, he walks into a Police Station in London claiming amnesia. The fishy thing is that his wife moved suddenly to Panama six weeks ago. Then today a photo of him and his wife surfaces which shows them together in Panama last year! And where was this photo? Hiding in someones house? No, in plain view on a web site for a company called MovingtoPamana! I wouldn't be surprised if John D has a FaceBook profile too. And he's probably linked to me with 3 degrees of seperation on LinkedIn. I sometimes miss the good old days when only a select few had emails and posted on listserv newsgroups. How long till Yeshiva Rebbes start using the Internet to scare kids at Yomim Noroim time? Shamayim being one gigantic Google which knows everything about you, and can regurgitate every little thing you ever did or said, good or bad, as evidence for or against you on Yom Hadin. But everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame. With six billion people on the planet, we all need to feel special. And what better way to feel special than to be a part of an exclusive group who can control world events by speaking lashan horoh. Just by being OJ you are LinkedIn in a very special way to the One Being That Really Matters. It doesn't get any better than that. Says my 12th grade Rebbe in his mySpace profile.
Dec 5, 2007 1:32 PM
[From evanstonjew, our resident PoMo Hocker]
Most post modernist authors are on the political left to far left. Rorty is an old fashioned 1930's socialist, whereas the French were deeply influenced by the university riots of 1968 and are more radical. One question they keep on asking is "Why does the right/capitalism keep on winning?" A similar question in OJ is why people can’t stand up the dictatorship/hegemony of the rabbis?
The [post modernists] have developed a whole gaggle of ideas under the idea of hegemony and interpellation (Althusser). In [plain] English, the fight is whether capitalism defines people, pins them down with an imposed identity so that they can’t even think of anything different (upper middle class consumer, entrepreneur, manager, etc.), or whether it is possible to conduct a guerrilla war against the capitalist machine one kvetch /identity group at a time.
In OJ the issue is whether a rabbinical/yeshiva education so interpellates its students that they must always worry whether the Big Other, the charedi Gedolim approve, and will allow nothing to move without enlisting some rabbinical cover. The other possible Jewish alternative is to develop the analog of identity politics, the Orthodox Jewish feminists and GLBT sub community, the apikorsim, the not so frum Orthodox, the haters and the unhappy, the BT’s who curse the day they were turned, the various "contingent sites of frum life" and find some way to form a serious resistance to charedi domination, a rearticulation of power.
Dec 5, 2007 12:21 AM
BEWARE: The Torah State Will Come_
[From Areivim, in reference to this article about a Chareidi take over of Bet Shemesh]
Who says a taliban-type approach is wrong? How many times in the torah does it talk about lo tachanem and uviarta harah mikirbecha? Maybe each non-haredi town/village etc NEEDS to be converted over time, and like in the block-busting eras of the 60s-70s US, maybe a tipping point is reached, and then [the neighborhood] falls to the victor (and the haredi commmuity benefits--since prices then are lower). The non-haredim can try to cluster into other areas, but [they] will always lose in the end due to smaller families, massive post-zionist yerida etc. It could be that it is actually a VERY good thing that is happening in these areas.
And when the State reaches 40-50% haredi, others would be even more inclined to leave - thus the Torah state will come.....
[and thus all the Chareidi sub groups will spend all day fighting each other, and the country will be a disaster. Also the country will get destroyed by the Arabs cos no one will be left to serve in the Army. Great plan! Not.]
Dec 5, 2007 12:21 AM
Seems like Chanukah is everyone’s favorite holiday, from Reform Jews to Chassidim. How can this be? Simple, each group reads into the story whatever version suits them best.
Chassidim/Chareidim: Chanukah represents the victory of the Torah True Maccabees over the Modern Orthodox Misyavnim.
Modern Orthodox Jews: Chanukah represents the victory of the nice, normal Macabees over the Reform Hellenizers.
Reform Jews: Chanukah represents victory for the nice Jews over the Nazi like Greeks.
My Kids: Chanukah represents presents! Lots of presents.
Me: Mmmm, sufganiyot.
Dec 5, 2007 12:21 AM
[Yes, it's that time of year again. Time that is for the Skeptics to point out that Chanukah (a) didn't happen like Chazal said it did, and (b) Was a victory for religious coercion and intolerance. This year, Christopher Hitchens joins in the fun.]
Bah, Hanukkah
The holiday celebrates the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness
Christopher Hitchens
High on the list of idiotic commonplace expressions is the old maxim that "it is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." How do such fatuous pieces of folk wisdom ever get started on their careers of glib quotation? Of course it would be preferable to light a candle than to complain about the darkness. You would only be bitching about the darkness if you didn't have ¬a candle to begin with. Talk about a false antithesis. But at this time of year, any holy foolishness is permitted. And so we have a semiofficial celebration of Hanukkah, complete with menorah, to celebrate not the ignition of a light but the imposition of theocratic darkness.
Jewish orthodoxy possesses the interesting feature of naming and combating the idea of the apikoros or "Epicurean"—the intellectual renegade who prefers Athens to Jerusalem and the schools of philosophy to the grim old routines of the Torah. About a century and a half before the alleged birth of the supposed Jesus of Nazareth (another event that receives semiofficial recognition at this time of the year), the Greek or Epicurean style had begun to gain immense ground among the Jews of Syria and Palestine. The Seleucid Empire, an inheritance of Alexander the Great—Alexander still being a popular name among Jews—had weaned many people away from the sacrifices, the circumcisions, the belief in a special relationship with God, and the other reactionary manifestations of an ancient and cruel faith. I quote Rabbi Michael Lerner, an allegedly liberal spokesman for Judaism who nonetheless knows what he hates:
Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theater of Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes.
But away with all that, says Lerner. Let us instead celebrate the Maccabean peasants who wanted to destroy Hellenism and restore what he actually calls "oldtime religion." His excuse for preferring fundamentalist thuggery to secularism and philosophy is that Hellenism was "imperialistic," but the Hasmonean regime that resulted from the Maccabean revolt soon became exorbitantly corrupt, vicious, and divided, and encouraged the Roman annexation of Judea. Had it not been for this no-less imperial event, we would never have had to hear of Jesus of Nazareth or his sect—which was a plagiarism from fundamentalist Judaism—and the Jewish people would never have been accused of being deicidal "Christ killers." Thus, to celebrate Hanukkah is to celebrate not just the triumph of tribal Jewish backwardness but also the accidental birth of Judaism's bastard child in the shape of Christianity. You might think that masochism could do no more. Except that it always can. Without the precedents of Orthodox Judaism and Roman Christianity, on which it is based and from which it is borrowed, there would be no Islam, either. Every Jew who honors the Hanukkah holiday because it gives his child an excuse to mingle the dreidel with the Christmas tree and the sleigh (neither of these absurd symbols having the least thing to do with Palestine two millenniums past) is celebrating the making of a series of rods for his own back. And this is not just a disaster for the Jews. When the fanatics of Palestine won that victory, and when Judaism repudiated Athens for Jerusalem, the development of the whole of humanity was terribly retarded.
And, of course and as ever, one stands aghast at the pathetic scale of the supposed "miracle." As a consequence of the successful Maccabean revolt against Hellenism, so it is said, a puddle of olive oil that should have lasted only for one day managed to burn for eight days. Wow! Certain proof, not just of an Almighty, but of an Almighty with a special fondness for fundamentalists. Epicurus and Democritus had brilliantly discovered that the world was made up of atoms, but who cares about a mere fact like that when there is miraculous oil to be goggled at by credulous peasants?
We are about to have the annual culture war about the display of cribs, mangers, conifers, and other symbols on public land. Most of this argument is phony and tawdry and secondhand and has nothing whatever to do with "faith" as its protagonists understand it. The burning of a Yule log or the display of a Scandinavian tree is nothing more than paganism and the observance of a winter solstice; it makes no more acknowledgment of the Christian religion than I do. The fierce partisanship of the holly bush and mistletoe believers convicts them of nothing more than ignorance and simple-mindedness. They would have been just as pious under the reign of the Druids or the Vikings, and just as much attached to their bucolic icons. Everybody knows, furthermore, that there was no moving star in the east, that Quirinius was not the governor of Syria in the time of King Herod, that no worldwide tax census was conducted in that period of the rule of Augustus, and that no "stable" is mentioned even in any of the mutually contradictory books of the New Testament. So, to put a star on top of a pine tree or to arrange various farm animals around a crib is to be as accurate and inventive as that Japanese department store that, as urban legend has it, did its best to emulate the Christmas spirit by displaying a red-and-white bearded Santa snugly nailed to a crucifix.
This is childish stuff and if only for that reason should obviously not receive any public endorsement or financing. The display of the menorah at this season, however, has a precise meaning and is an explicit celebration of the original victory of bloody-minded faith over enlightenment and reason. As such it is a direct negation of the First Amendment and it is time for the secularists and the civil libertarians to find the courage to say so.
Dec 3, 2007 11:16 PM
The Dummies Guide to PostModernism_
Over the weekend I read an entire book on PostModernism! OK, so it was a short book, but I read it cover to cover. Here is what I learned.
Post Modernism is a broad term, applying to art, architecture, linguistic theory and philosophy. At its core, it doesn't mean anything really specific, but rather tries to capture a general change in attitudes which started to become prevalent in the 60s and 70s. According to this book, PoMo has almost run it's course now.
In Art, PoMo was all about totally new forms of art, for example a toilet, or a pile of garbage. If only I'd known that piles of garbage were art, I could have saved a lot of effort cleaning my house. Why are these art? I'm not sure, but by calling this stuff art, it forces the viewer to ponder deep questions, and this kind of assult on the viewer is very PoMoish. What kinds of questions does it present to the viewer? Probably, 'Why the heck is this toilet called art?'
In literary theory, PoMo is linked to deconstructionism and structuralism. Deconstructionism when applied to a text basically means to tear the text apart, uncover the author's biases and contradictions, his frameworks and assumptions. Structuralism is the idea that all concepts are linked to all other concepts, and nothing really has objective meaning except in terms of everything else. Since language must be used to explain any idea, and since all words only makes sense in the context of anything else (the dictionary is circular: every word is defined in terms of another word!), this means that nothing can ever be said objectively.
Because language doesn't mean much anyway, or rather means whatever you take it to mean, PoMo authors have had a field day writing all sorts of crazy sounding stuff. It's so bad, that PoMo authors regularly win competitions for the World's Worst Writing, without intending to. Here is the first prize winner from 1997:
"The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power."
Not sure who the writer is but it does sound a lot like Josh Harrison of Reshimu. (OK I admit, I'm jealous. I wish I could write like that!).
Even worse, some PoMo writers use scientific concepts (such as Quantum Physics), in new and totally gibberish ways, infuriating Scientists in the process. PoMo writing was famously parodied by Alan Sokal who submitted a completely fake article to a prestigious PoMo magazine, and they didn't notice. Actually, it wasn't fake at all, but was very good PoMo gibberish, which was exactly the point.
Since all language is subjective, and all concepts are subjective, and all people are subjective, then (taken to the extreme), PoMo means that any idea we have, even science, is only subjective. Most people reject this extreme version of PoMo, except for Kiruv Clowns and sophisticated fundamentalists, who are eager to have a modern philosophy which bashes science. However before we bash the Chareidi PoMo crowd, we should acknowledge that Eugene Borowitz, a famous Reform Rabbi, constructs his entire Theology on the basis of PostModernism, and even mentions in one of his essays that he was pleased to discover that Science isn't objective.
So what do I think of PoMo? Well, there is obviously a little bit of truth in it. People are indeed subjective. But Science (at least the good parts of Science) is about as objective as you can get in this world, so bashing Science is rather stupid. Does PoMo open up new avenues for religious faith? Not really. I think it was always common sense that Science isn't the whole story, and could never be, you don't need PoMo for that, just a little philosophy of Science.
I also think that when certain skeptics bash any attempt to go with extra-rational thought (e.g. based on intuition or feelings or faith) as being 'PoMo' that's just plain wrong. Even though I reject extreme PoMo, and don't really think my toilet is art, I do think that the fundamentalist "I shall only believe things which are proven" skeptics are wrong. There's more to being human than being a robot logic machine. People have feelings, intuition and even faith. This is normal, natural and healthy. If it wasn't, we probably wouldn't have evolved that way.
Dec 3, 2007 1:51 PM
The Truth isn't the most important value after all, paskens the Chief Atheist_
As I have written previously, Skeptics are generally obsessed with the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They insist that believing in anything not proven is terribly wrong. Even I once wrote a post entitled 'Truth is the only fundamental'. But is the truth really as important as these people make out? Are lies never okay? What about the following scenarios:
1. Your wife looks fat. She asks you 'Honey, do I look fat?' You know that she would be very upset if you answer yes.
2. You are a general in the army. Private Dibble has been killed in action, unfortunately due to his being very cowardly. You have to inform his 96 year old mother who is very sick and thought the world of him. She asks you 'Did he die courageously?'.
3. You are an Allied soldier captured by the Nazis in WWII, and they ask you about your military plans.
I could go on but the point is clear. Most normal people would agree that a 'white lie' is ok. What exactly is a white lie? A lie which is harmless, or more accurately, a lie where the good which results is greater than the harm. And once you open that pandora's box the question of when it is okay to lie it becomes highly subjective. Even the Chief Atheist, Richard Dawkins, agrees that the truth isn't always so important. Talking about Bill Clinton, he writes:
But he was entitled to lie about his private life: one could even make a case that he had a positive duty to do so.
Dawkins later explained that his point was that since the Impeachment Committee had no right to ask Clinton about his private life, Clinton was justified in lying. In fact, Dawkins gets so fluffy about the truth he even starts to invoke the sacred nature of oaths:
Taking an oath is a sacred relic of our religious history which really does have some value. It retains a kind of sacredness which we respect, even though we no longer believe in the religiously sacred.
Whoa! So swearing on a non existant Deity, based on Biblical Law, has some 'sacred value'?! Is Dawkins losing his mind?
AgnosticWriter writes:
A very basic, perhaps the most basic, function of the mind is reality perception. And an important part of this reality perception is existential awareness: "Who am I, and what shall I accept about the meaning of my life?" ...lying to ourselves about how much we know about this world, and about what meaning we must believe we have, is, therefore, a terrible blow against the mind and spirit of man.
Other skeptics have written similar prose. But these kind of statements are no more than highly subjective polemics. Believing in God is a terrible blow to the mind and spirit? Says who? Maybe being an Atheist is a terrible blow to the spirit? Ask a skeptic how can he be so sure that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is always the most important value and he'll probably splutter, or more likely revert to subjective polemics.
And to argue that the most basic function of the mind is reality perception is rather silly, considering that 4 billion people believe in some kind of supernatural reality. You would be better off arguing that a basic function of the mind is religion.
And, more importantly, when it comes to liberal non fundamentalist religion, we're not even talking about absolute lies here. Nobody is lying when they say they believe in God, or even if they teach such belief to their children. I guess if someone said that God's existence was 100% proven and the entire world agrees to that then that would be a lie, but few parents say such things. At best we're talking about layering some 'fantasy' over reality, fantasy which isn't proven.
The Truth is that The Truth is not always the most important value. And 'aint that the Truth.
Dec 2, 2007 7:42 PM
Dawkins proves that Atheism leads to Immorality_
Wow. What a Godsend! Richard Dawkins writes a wacked out article, wishing that we could 'rise above' sexual jealousy, and not be concerned if our spouses commit adultery. He says that cheating on your marriage is not in anyway a sin, and:
'Only a person infected by the sort of sanctimonious self-righteousness that religion uniquely inspires would apply the meaningless word 'sin' to private sexual behavior. '
Now certainly, there are occasions (from a secular viewpoint) I could imagine that cheating in a marriage is not a 'sin', for example if the spouse is cheating also, or if the spouse is mistreating you, or not showing you any love (assuming you made best efforts to rectify the situation).
But to claim that all cheating at any time is no sin?
