Thursday, July 31, 2008

Existential Angst July '08

Jul 28, 2008 10:02 PM

Apology to RJM: Chazal destroy Kuzari proof!

I was going to take a nice long vacation (from blogging) but a commenter inspired me to post some more (you know who you are!).

So, I have to apologize to RJM. My post last week on the volcano was quite silly. I now realize (based on comments) that Chazal and the Rishonim themselves are the biggest anti-Kuzari proof, no need to drag RJM into it. Plus he tries hard and is about the most intelligent apologist out there, so I feel bad for giving him a hard time.

Here are two examples of why we don't need RJM to dismiss the Kuzari Proof:

1. Shabbos 86b:

Our Rabbis taught: On the sixth day of the month [Siwan] were the Ten Commandments given to Israel. R. Jose maintained: On the seventh thereof. Said Raba: All agree that they arrived in the Wilderness of Sinai on the first of the month. [For] here it is written, on this day they came into the wilderness of Sinai;15 whilst elsewhere it is written, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months:16 just as there the first of the month,17 so here [too] the first of the month [is meant]. 

So here we have a machlokes on what day Har Sinai happened. You would think that the most momentous event in Jewish History would have a clear date! But nobody knows for sure. We all know 9/11, but the date of Mattan Torah? Not sure! Also, the Gemarah goes on for 2 or 3 pages discussing when it happened, with various people bringing various pesukim and darshening them. But nobody (here or elsewhere) ever says he has a Mesorah on it from his father? Why not? Isn't that the biggest proof?

2. Moreh Nevuchim III 33

It is clear to me that what Moses experienced at the revelation on Mount Sinai was different from that which was experienced by all the other Israelites, for Moses alone was addressed by God, and for this reason the second person singular is used in the Ten Commandments; Moses then went down to the foot of the mount and told his fellow-men what he had heard. Comp., "I stood between the Lord and you at that time to tell you the word of the Lord" (Deut. v. 5). Again, "Moses spake, and God answered him with a loud voice" (Exod. xix. 19). In the Mechilta our Sages say distinctly that he brought to them every word as he had heard it. Furthermore, the words, "In order that the people hear when I speak with thee" (Exod. xix. 9), show that God spoke to Moses, and the people only heard the mighty sound, not distinct words. It is to the perception of this mighty sound that Scripture refers in the passage, "When ye hear the sound" (Deut. v. 20); again it is stated, "You heard a sound of words" (ibid. iv. 12), and it is not said "You heard words"; and even where the hearing of the words is mentioned, only the perception of the sound is meant.

This Rambam is amazing. He destroys the Kuzari proof in 2 ways. Firstly, if he is correct, then the only thing that the Bnai Yisrael heard was a loud noise, and only Moshe heard God speak. So all we have is 2 million witnesses to a loud noise, and one witness to a Revelation. This puts it in league with Jesus or Mohammed.

Secondly, the Rambam argues on other Rishonim, e.g. Ibn Ezra. But this is no small detail, such as the date. This is an argument about the basis of the entire event! Did the Bnai Yisrael hear God speak the asseres hadibros, or did they just hear an awesome noise?! And yet nobody knows for sure. And of course nobody brings down 'evidence from their father', rather they really on drashos on logic or drashos on pesukim.

Seems nobody really had any mesorah on this, except what was written in the Torah itself.

So much for the Kuzari Proof.                                                                                                                                                   

Jul 28, 2008 9:54 AM

Vacation!

See ya.                                                                                                                                                                                          

    

Jul 25, 2008 4:59 PM

Shafran: Confused yet again

In yet another rather confused article, Rabbi Avi Shafran attempts to discuss miracles and hashgachah prattis. He exhorts us to be grateful for all the many times that arab terrorists don't actually blow us up or kill us, times we often don't realize.

When, twice this month, Arabs turned bulldozers upon Jewish residents of Jerusalem, amid the sorrow over the dead and wounded, and the reminder of the evil that exists in some twisted hearts, a realization also merited attention: There are bloodthirsty Jew-haters at the wheels of countless vehicles large and small in Israel every day of every month of every year. And so, each day we are spared tragic news is a miraculous one.

Wow! Every time we don't get horrendously murdered it's a nes! And if he hasn't been silly enough until now, don't worry, he's about to get even sillier. To illustrate his point further, he quotes a story from the Holocaust, where a Nazi was going to blow up a shul during Friday night davening, but was so startled when everyone suddenly turned round to face him (it was the end of lechah dodi), that he dropped the grenades and only a few people were hurt.

What a miracle!

Shame that they all ended up getting gassed to death in concentration camps though. Along with six million other poor Jews. But remember folks, the lecha dodi miracle proves that if we just daven enough we can expect miracles. And the rest of the Holocaust proves that if we don't keep mitzvos correctly then God will turn away from us and kill us all. I mean, what other explanation could there possibly be?

And if in fact everything that ever happens proves that God wanted it exactly that way, for some reason, by definition. And every time something bad happens, we deserve it. But if 3 people get saved out of 6 million killed in the most appalling way, it's a miracle!

Boruch Hashem.                                                                                                                                                                             

Jul 25, 2008 11:14 AM

Holy Moly: RJM destroys my emunah in Har Sinai!!!

_Oh my Gosh.

RJM just (inadvertantly) destroyed all credibility in Har Sinai. And I'm absolutely NOT twisting his words (though no doubt he will accuse me of doing so). I will quote him VERBATIM.

It goes like this.

One of my commenters mentioned the case of Zeitoun. Zeitoun was the sight of a mass miracle in 1968, where a vision of the Virgin Mary was (said to have been) seen by thousands, even millions of people, over a period of a few years. This shows that (false) mass revelation claims are indeed possible, thus destroying the Kuzari Proof.

So what does RJM respond? He says:

The Zeitoun case is irrelevant for two reasons:

Everyone agrees that the event occurred - many people witnessed it, and nobody is denying that something unusual took place. The question is the interpretation of the event, what its significance was. Most people assume there is a scientific explanation for what happened, even if we are not sure of how precisely to account for it.

A scientific explanation?????!!!! But wait, it gets worse! RJM continues:

"Had there been clear articulate speech projected, or perhaps lightning, thunder and fire (i.e., unambiguous [super] natural disturbances orchestrated simultaneously) establishing a new religion in front of the same number of witnesses, it would be a credible claim on par with Sinai. "

Do you see what RJM is saying? Seriously.

He's saying that if something very strange occurred, which could not be explained naturally, then it would be legitimate to interprete it super-naturally.

Do you honestly think that people in the desert 3,000 years ago were capable of experiencing a volcano and figuring out a scientific explanation for it?

OF COURSE ancient people ascribed supernatural explanations for all manner of very natural occurances.

In fact a great deal (even the majority) of all ancient mythology has its roots in natural phenomenon which ancient people couldn't explain: volcanos, earthquakes, eclipses and so on. This is a well documented FACT. Read 'When They Severed Earth From Sky' for more details.

RJM concludes:

"I still think, however, that the large number of eyewitnesses to the phenomenon establish that they did see something out of the ordinary. My assumption is that there is a heretofore undiscovered scientific explanation for the anomaly. "

A 'heretofore undiscovered scientific explanation for the anomaly'? Holy crap! Have you ever read Shemos?

Exodus 19:16: And it came to pass on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a horn exceeding loud; and all the people that were in the camp trembled. 17 And Moses brought forth the people out of the camp to meet God; and they stood at the nether part of the mount. 18 Now mount Sinai was altogether on smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.

Can you imagine a more exact description of a volcano (from the ancient world)? I randomly grabbed a volcano picture from the Internet (see above left). There's smoke, fire, a thunderstorm, the works. Also, there was plenty of volcanic activity in the Arabian peninsula. Mattan Torah could easily have been a volcano, or based on a volcano.

Last week, there was a major storm here, and the lightening and thunder were incredible. My kids were scared beyond belief, my daughter was literally shaking and crying. I was even a little scared. And this was in the comfort of my own home! Can you imagine what it would be like if:

a) It was 3,000 years ago, and nobody had a clue about science?
b) You were an ignorant slave on the run?
c) You were in the desert, faraway from civilization and home?
d) You had never seen a volcano before, or even heard of one?
e) You have a charismatic leader?
f) You find yourself at the foot of an erupting volcano?

I mean seriously folks, could you imagine a scenario more primed for a 'super-natural' occurrence?

And we see from his comments that RJM (were it not for his bias) would clearly agree. And if the Bneis Yisrael in the Midbar had had the remotest clue about Science, they would have assumed, just like RJM, that there must be a ''heretofore undiscovered scientific explanation for the anomaly'.

And in the subsequent debate in the comments RJM digs himself in even deeper:

OK, wait for a thunderstorm and volcano to coincide and then let's see you stand on the mountain and produce a heavenly voice establishing a new religion. On the contrary, you would be running away for dear life as anyone would when confronted with a volcanic eruption.

A heavenly voice? Even Chazal say that maybe all they heard was a sound of the first letter, and then they got scared as heck. Have you ever heard a volcano erupting??? Don't you think that it's entirely possible that an ancient people would have attributed that scary sound to the Gods (or God)?

OF COURSE it's entirely possible. As to the content of the revelation, there's no evidence whatsoever that such content actually came out of Sinai. In fact, all evidence suggests it came later.

This is without even getting into the content of Judaism and its radical departure from the primitivism that appealed to the Jews so strongly.

Urrm, we've been through this before. The majority of early Israelites worshipped idols, as is plainly documented in Nach. The evolution from polytheism, to henotheism, to monolatry, to anthro-monotheism to abstract-monotheism was very, very long and slow, and certainly not a 'radical departure'.

The point is that illusions involving light are not as remarkable as natural disturbances operating in concert with a revelatory communication. This should be obvious.

Sure. But you are committing the fallacy of assuming what you are trying to prove. We have no evidence of any actual revelatory communication. All we have is reports of a mountain with fire and smoke, a thunderstorm, and a very awesome sound. At best you have ONE witness to any actual revelatory communication, and that's Moshe. If he even was there.

By 'assuming a scientific explanation' for Zeitoun, you pretty much did yourself in RJM, because clearly, in 1200BCE, a bunch of scared slaves on the run in the desert would not have been capable of 'assuming a scientific explanation'.     

Jul 24, 2008 5:29 PM

That's not the Kuzari proof, this is the Kuzari proof!

It’s funny, every time I debunk the Kuzari proof someone comes along and says 'That’s not the Kuzari proof, this is the Kuzari proof!' And then proceeds to give some minor variation of the argument which is just as flawed as the original. There’s probably quite a large number of variations, but they all suffer from the same problem – myth formation. We know humans are excellent at creating myths, and we know that legends and myths grow over time to epic proportions. We also know that people have an unusual capacity to believe (and rationalize) the biggest nonsense, especially when it comes to religion. How else can you possibly explains the millions, even billions, of people who believe in the biggest religious nonsense? (they’re all goyim)

Anyway, here is Benny with his version:

The Kuzari proof is that in our generation we have millions of people who say the exact same thing: that they were told by their parents, who were told by their parents etc. etc. all the way back to the generation that left Egypt, that they themselves were witnesses to G-d giving the Torah to Moshe at Sinai.This tradition must be true because just like it is impossible for someone to convince me (for example) that I was told XYZ by my parents, if in truth my parents never told me about XYZ, it is surely impossible to convince millions of people that they were told something (in our case, this tradition) by their parents if in fact they were never told about it. Therefore one must conclude that our generation is telling the truth (i.e. that they were told this tradition by their parents). And likewise, one must say the same of all of the generations between us and the generation which left Egypt, that started off the tradition. And they certainly must be believed because it is against logic to propose that hundreds of thousands of people (and for that matter even a few hundred people) should make up the exact same lie, and try to convince others that they witnessed (in our case) the giving of the Torah, if they never really saw it.I believe that the above argument destroys the rebuttals from your post.

Benny presents this in the form of a deductive argument with an initial condition. Once the initial condition is shown true, then you can logically reason to our present day.

Benny says that you can’t convince someone that their parents told them something, if their parents didn’t actually tell them that thing. I think this is true enough. You can’t tell me that my parents taught me to play the piano, I know they didn’t. So my parents told me about Judaism, that much is fact. Also, clearly my parents were told about it by their parents. And so on all the way back. I agree with that in general, obviously you also have converts and BTs etc. The tradition came from somewhere, and it was transmitted down through the ages, parent to child (or equally validly neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, kiruv clown to BT wannabe etc).

The big question of course is how it all got started. And this is where Benny’s argument falls apart. Benny says that when you go all the way back, you must have a case of the original people telling the children that they themselves witnessed it, rather than them just passing on a tradition about their ancestors. And in a perfect world, that might be true.

But this isn’t a perfect world, and there is a gaping hole here.

Benny writes that ‘it is against logic to propose that hundreds of thousands of people (and for that matter even a few hundred people) should make up the exact same lie’, but by this logic, many other religious traditions could be true. For example hundreds of people are reported to have seen Jesus do miracles, and Benny’s argument validates that too.

The obvious flaw in all these cases is that the myth could easily have been created by one or two people only, deliberately or mistakenly, creating a legend about their ancestors. They then tell it to 2 others who believe them, they each tell it to 2 others, and before you know it, you have millions of people believing in something, all because of the original 2 people. 2 raised to the factor of 2 gets very big very fast. If you don’t believe me, try doing 2*2 on your calculator, and keep hitting the = button. There’s no way of proving that this didn’t happen, because if you do the math, 2 people back in 800 BCE would have millions (actually billions) of descendants today.

All you need is ONE original person to have started it, and before you know it you have a full fledged religion. If L Ron Hubbard could do it in this modern day and age, then certainly someone could do it 2000 years ago.

Not only that, but we actually have very good evidence that this kind of thing does happen. Scientology started from one guy, and so did Mormonism. Now, Benny might say that those are different, because the original legend was only about one guy, and so it was easier to convince people of the legend. But again, people are very gullible when it comes to religion, as has been shown, and just like it is possible to convince one person that one man four hundred years ago got resurrected, it is equally possible to convince one person that 600,000 people four hundred years ago were at Mt Sinai.

Benny will no doubt respond: ‘But that person will say I never heard that story from my parents! and you won’t be able to convince him ’. But the response is obvious: He can get convinced by the following argument ‘Your parents are ignorant Jews who don’t know of such things! Believe me, your ancestors were at Har Sinai 400 years ago. And you better believe it or else your crops will fail etc etc’. So then the person gets convinced, and then passes down the information to their kids that their ancestors were at Har Sinai, even though he did not in fact hear this from his parents, but really from the local Priest. And then hids kids pass it down to their kids, and over time the story gets garbled and the myths grow.

How many of us know what our great-great-grandparents did 200 years ago? Or who they were? Or anything at all about them? And this is after the invention of writing and mass production of books! Kal vechomer in 500 BCE when people didn’t have a clue about history.

So after we have got done showing how easy it is for myths to grow, the fundies try a different angle. They say, if its so easy, why didn’t every other religion do it! But the fact is, we have shown it is easy, so this argument is really just a kashye on the other religions, it certainly doesn’t create the proof.

And I think the answer is timing. A mass revelation myth was doable in 800BCE, but it just wasn’t as doable in 70CE or 700CE. Why? Because of writing. Writing is the key differentiator here. Myth formation in the age of oral transmission is completely different than myth formation in the age of highly available writing. When no writing is available, no history, no scrolls, no books, you can pretty much make up anything. However once we have written histories, then claiming that 600,000 people did something becomes next to impossible, because where are the written testimonies? Where is the evidence? You simply can’t do it. So you are forced to invent stories of one man getting a revelation.

That’s the real difference here, the lack of a widely available publishing industry, coupled with less understanding and knowledge about history, makes the world of 800 BCE (pre Greek philosophy) entirely different than the world of 70 or 700 CE. You really can't compare 800BCE with 70CE.

A better comparison in terms of myth would be to compare the Jewish myths of 800 BCE with other myths of that period, to see how fantastic they were by comparison. And they were all quite fantastic back then; Gods and monsters, epic tales, it was all the rage. But by 70CE, that didn’t happen so much anymore, not on that grand scale, anyways.

So there you have it, the Kuzari Proof bites the dust. Yet again.                                                                               

Jul 24, 2008 12:53 AM

Kuzari Proof For Dummies

_Wow. I'm still surprised by the number of otherwise intelligent people who fall for the Kuzari proof, and don't realize the logical fallacy contained within it. I must have posted this ten times already, but here we go again. There are actually a few forms of the KP, ranging from basic (very stupid) to advanced (logical fallacy).

The basic form of the Kuzari proof goes like this:

P1. No way can you convince 600,000 people that they saw mattan Torah if they really didn't. Maybe you can convince a few people, or maybe a crowd of a few thousand could have mass hallunication, but 600,000 people? No way could they all be fooled. Therefore, TMS must be true.

The fallacy here is obvious, here is the rebuttal:

R1. True, you probably couldn't fool 600,000 people that they saw TMS. However this never happened in the first place. What actually happened is that a few HUNDRED people in 800 BCE were gradually fooled into believing that 600,000 of their ANCESTORS saw TMS 600 years PREVIOUSLY. Fooling a few people about something that happened hundreds of years ago is very possible, in fact it happens all the time, and continues to happen to this day. Over the years, those few hundred people who believed the myth of TMS spread it to a few million people, just like the few original Christians spread Christianity to several billion people.

The fundies then get a little more sophisticated.

P2. If you say it was myth formation, then how come no other religion started with a mass revelation claim? If such a claim could so easily be spread, why did Islam & Christianity start with a single prophet? Since Judaism is the ONLY religion with a mass revelation claim, that proves that such a claim is impossible to promote unless it is actually true.

The rebuttal is a little convoluted, but it works just the same.

R2. First of all, there could be many reasons why Christianity and Islam didn't do mass revelation. By that time, writing was more widespread, and so spreading a claim like that would have been impossible. Judaism's claim however spread from the years 1300 BCE to 800BCE, a time when there was no mass writing and all religion was transmitted orally. There could be many other reasons too.

Secondly, there have been other mass claims. For example with the Aztecs and similar.

Thirdly, so the Jews were unique, and this was a unique claim that nobody else had. So what? On the scale of things, some things will always be unique.

Finally, the fundies argue like this.

P3: If an Event E, should it happen, would leave massive evidence, and if the evidence wasn't there, nobody would believe it happened, then if you have a case that people believed in event E, then must be that it happened. TMS falls into this pattern. Everybody believed in it, and no way could you have fooled even the descendants in 800BCE that their ancestors saw something if there was no evidence, so must be there was evidence (back in 800 BCE)

This one is pretty crazy.

R3: Firstly, there are plenty of events that had they happened would have left massive evidence, yet they didnt, yet people still believe. Global Mabul is a prime example. Yetziat Mitzrayim is another. Also this argument works to discredit TMS: The whole story of SHemos should have left some evidence somewhere (besides the Torah), yet nothing has ever been found which would corroborate this story in any way. The absence of evidence in this case is pretty damning.

Note that with the Mabul its not a case of absence of evidence. Rather there is actual evidence that the global Mabul did NOT in fact occur. Yet people still believe in it.

Why is this?

Because when it comes to religion, people will believe anything. DUH.

Just ask your local Scientologist. Or Chareidi.

                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Jul 23, 2008 2:05 PM

Bon Jovi Kills The Kuzari Proof

One of the foundatios of the Kuzari proof is that no way could later generation have been convinced that 600,000 people stood at Sinai, had it not in fact happened. Unfortunately, exagerrations of numbers are all too common, even in our own times. Read this amazing article in the New York Times about how City officials used to estimate the number of concert goers at major Central Park concerts:

How, by the way, did anyone figure that 300,000 people came to hear Elton John or 750,000 for Garth Brooks? “You would get in a room with the producer, with a police official, and a person from parks, and someone would say, ‘What does it look like to you?’” ...“The producer would say, ‘I need it to be higher than the last one.’ That’s the kind of science that went into it.”

However, after performing some real analysis on a recent Bon Jovi concert, park officials now realize that probably all these concerts had about 50,000 people maximum, and not the 300,000 or even 750,000 people that was originally claimed:

“You look out at the sea of people from the stage, and your mind tells you, ‘That’s what hundreds of thousands of people looks like,’ ” Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said. “Now we know it’s 48,500.”

As a famous skeptic [hat tip on request] writes:

Do you realize how devastating this is for the kuzari proof? This article shows that in 24 hours, in modern technologically, scientifically, and administratively advanced America, the number of people alleged to have been at a historical event can be multiplied by a factor of 10. Now, ask yourself this: over 1,000 years (around 10 million hours), in a backwards, ignorant, superstitious and credulous society, can the number of people alleged to have been at a historical even be multiplied by a factor of ten, 6 times?

Of course if you believe God wrote the Bible, then accusing God of not being able to estimate the number of people at an event would be very chutzpadick indeed, and would show a tremendous lack of yiras shamayim.

But since He quite obviously didn't write it, this is not an issue.                                                                                 

Jul 22, 2008 11:14 AM

Massively Conflicted

Yesterday someone characterized (charicatured?) my blog as thus:

1)Bash Religion, (the crowd roars)
2)Better Religion, (the crowd boos)
3)Angst, (the crowd pities)
4)Repeat from step 1.

Firstly, that's not even correct even if it was the cycle, it would be more like this:

1)Bash Religion, (the skeptics roar, the believers boo)
2)Better Religion, (the believers boo, the skeptics roar)
3)Angst, (empathic readers pity, the rest think I'm a wuss)
4)Repeat from step 1.

Secondly, that's not the cycle. This is the cycle:

1. Become inspired by something / someone religious. Get inspired to promote religion.
2. Hear / read some retarded drashah / book on some stupid fundie nonsesne, start bashing religi0n again.
3. Repeat endlessly.

The problem is I'm massively conflicted here.

On the one had, I genuinely feel / believe / rationally think I can prove that there is a lot of good in religion in general, and OJ specifically. The morality of a true ben Torah and his family (not the benchwarmer in Lakewood who is shvindling the goverment, or the over the top materialist type in Boro Park, or increaingly Lakewood) is I believe superior to much of the alternative. And of course the beauty and richness of much religious writing and practice is also amazing. I want all that.

On the other hand, the stupidity of some / most / all of the beliefs, and the insistence that we belief in such nonsense, really kills it all.

However hard I try, I just can't reconcile these two apparent 'facts' - It's all amazing vs. It's all nonsense. Yes, I know in theory both 'facts' could be true, and through whatever rational reasons and causes Chazal etc just happened to have hit upon a few universal truths, plus it's probably not really that objectively amazing, I'm just brainwashed. But still, I can't shake either feeling and I can't reconcile them either. This is the problem.

Sometime I think I should force the issue - either I should just become a believer and force it one way, or alternatively (and more realistically) I should just commit myself to secular humanism, by going out to east a cheeseburger on Yom Kippur with the wrong brachah. Though even from a Chareidi perspective it's hard to imagine that God is so vindictive and petty that He could possibly really care if I eat some cheese and beef.

So, I try and push the Divine Inspiration model as a potential way of reconciling these two facts. However I'm still left with the problem that most of the major Jewish Orthodox thinkers were true beleivers, which then makes me doubt their credibility, and we're back to square one again.

Does anyone have a model or way of dealing with this? I think this is the true reconciliation which is needed. Reconciling the fact that many if not all of the foundational beliefs and stories are simple not true, with the fact that this is a good religion and I (personally - I'm not out to convert anyone here) don't want to give it up. At least not today.         

Jul 22, 2008 11:14 AM

Were Chazal more moral than the Babylonians?

In a recent post I commented that Chazal had to re-interpret 'vekatzosah es kapah' (cut off her hand) to mean money, since amputation for grabbing someone by the goolies would have been morally unnaceptable to Chazal, based on the morality at that time. RJM however commented thus:

You are operating with an assumption that is completely erroneous here, namely, that the society in which Chazal lived possessed a higher level of morality than the Torah in line with which they felt compelled to interpret the Torah. This is simply and utterly false. The non-Jewish communities of that period did not exhibit any lofty moral standards that the Rabbis would have been pressured to emulate. On the contrary, even taken literally, the Torah is light years ahead of Greek, Roman and other "civilizations" of that time. Your projection of secular values onto the past is an anachronism. If you argue that it was the Rabbis themselves who evolved this remarkable ethical sensitivity, you will then be hard pressed to explain why adherence to a barbaric system of laws (in your view) generated men of such refined sensibility.

I don't know enough about ancient Babylonian society to know if RJM is correct or not. Would limb amputation in Babylon have been considered morally unacceptable like I argued? If not, then RJM has a good point, and maybe it's time to just admit that Chazal were light years ahead of their time in moral issues.                                                                  

Jul 21, 2008 5:41 PM

When the day is done

When the party’s through
Seems so very sad for you
Didn’t do the things you meant to do
Now there’s no time to start anew
Now the party’s through.

In the late 90s I used to have two recurring dreams, which was rather strange, because I’m not the type of person who has very vivid dreams, and certainly not recurring ones. But these two particular dreams were very, very vivid, and they each recurred 3 or 4 times, maybe more, over a period of a few years.

The first dream was about a plane crashing in Manhattan. This was way before 9/11, though in my dream the plane survives the crash, and the crash wasn’t terrorist related. Still, a bit spooky.

The second dream was far more disturbing. In this dream, I was back in high school, or possibly college, and certainly realized that the end of year final examinations were tomorrow (or very soon), and I hadn’t studied at all. (This dream is somewhat based on an actual occurrence in my life!).

The disturbing aspect of this second dream was the awful feeling which is hard to describe, the feeling of ‘Oh ****, I missed the boat, I’m out of time, if only I had woken up sooner’. Presumably most of you can imagine this feeling.

Now, this is the feeling I have about life. I feel life is moving faster and faster. One day I find ten years have got behind me. The next day it’s twenty years. Am I progressing towards any goal? Am I any closer to enlightenment? I certainly don’t feel any closer.

What are we here for? What’s the point of it all? I used to think I knew, now I realize I never knew. I have a horrible fear that I will be laying on my death bed, and in between the terrifying thoughts of death and pain, I will still be thinking ‘What was it all about? Oh **** I totally missed the boat, if only I had woken up sooner’.

What’s the solution? Spend the next 10 or 20 years reading every philosophy of life I can? Religion? Family? Career? Therapy? Just learn to enjoy the small things in life and maintain low expectations? Denial & delusion?

People say that if you have an engaging job, a family, some hobbies etc, [UPDATE: and a religion!] you will enjoy life. But these seem to be diversions – you get so engaged with these things you forget about the fact that life seems meaningless, pointless, or at least difficult to tell what the meaning and point is. These things divert your mind from the existential angst, they don’t cure it. Seems to me you might still get to your death bed thinking you missed the boat.

We need a deathbed survey.

When the day is done
Down to earth then sinks the sun
Along with everything that was lost and won
When the day is done.                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Jul 20, 2008 11:03 PM

Torah SheBaalPeh: The Ultimate Kvetch

We are all familiar with the standard argument for TSBP: The Torah is so incomplete in it's details, there simply MUST have been a parallel Oral law to go along with it. But in reality, it works the opposite way: The Torah is so incomplete, contradictory, and in some cases plain wrong, the Rabbis (etc) simply HAD to invent an 'explanation' to go along with it. There are many examples of this, in fact the whole Gemarah is one big example, but a simple one will suffice.

In Devarim 25/11 the Torah is pretty explicit:

יא כִּי-יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים יַחְדָּו, אִישׁ וְאָחִיו, וְקָרְבָה אֵשֶׁת הָאֶחָד, לְהַצִּיל אֶת-אִישָׁהּ מִיַּד מַכֵּהוּ; וְשָׁלְחָה יָדָהּ, וְהֶחֱזִיקָה בִּמְבֻשָׁיו. יב וְקַצֹּתָה, אֶת-כַּפָּהּ: לֹא תָחוֹס, עֵינֶךָ.

11 When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near to deliver her husband out of the hand of him that smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets;

12 then thou shalt cut off her hand, thine eye shall have no pity. 

It doesn't get much clearer than that: If she grabs his goolies, chop her hand off, don't show any mercy.

Of course to Chazal, that was too barbaric, so they said it must mean money, just like 'eye for an eye'. And you can always kvetch and say the Torah wrote it this way to teach you that in reality she deserved to have her hand chopped off (why?), but the Halachah was more lenient. But the poshut peshat is that this was the original law, and then Chazal re-interpreted it.

There are tens, probably hundreds of examples like this, but none of them will sway the true believer. On the contrary, to the true believer, every additional example of crazy stuff in the Torah's text is just one more reason why TSBP simply must be true. They never even stop to consider that the alternative explanation is way more likely: sacred texts conflicted with common sense, and the moral standards of the day, therefore sacred texts were re-intrepreted.

Believers will always reject this explanation, because then it means Chazal were not quite 100%. And we know Chazal were the most amazing people who ever lived because...err....because Chazal said so, of course! And we know Chazal couldn't have been wrong on this, because they had the one true Mesorah from Sinai. And we know they had the one true Mesorah from Sinai because..err..because Chazal said they did! And of course Chazal are right about that without any question since Chazal were totally non biased. And we know that's true because Chazal say whoever learns Torah will be non biased. And we know Chazal were the greatest Torah scholars who ever lived, because...err....Chazal said so. And we know that must be true because the Gemarah is the greatest compendium of Torah ever produced, and Chazal produced it! Q.E.D.

(Ha, I bet you thought that was going to be a circular argument.)

The big question of course, is what the heck were Chazal thinking?

I'm assuming they weren't deliberate con-men, and they must have known they were inventing TSBP somewhat, and it's not like they were latter day kiruv clowns trying to maintain emunah in Chazal. And they certainly had the cojones to change whatever they needed to, so when Chazal said TMS, what did they really mean?

The only answer that makes sense is that Chazal were a shtickle reconstructionist / metaphorical themselves.  When they said TMS, they meant TMS, kaveyochol.                                                                                                                             

Jul 19, 2008 11:33 PM

Whoops, I forgot Har Sinai

One of the funny things about Tenach is the enormous amount of glaring discrepancies in it. My chavrusoh pointed out to me a while back that there are a few Tehillim which recount the history of the Bnai Yisrael, yet leave out Har Sinai! Apparently Har Sinai wasn't an important story in some traditions, though of course later it became very prominent. There is also confusion about the name, with some traditions calling Chorev. Now I see there is a similar example in Joshua 24, courtesy of Rejewvenator (read his blog, it's good):

1. And Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem, and called for the elders of Israel, and for their heads, and for their judges, and for their officers; and they presented themselves before God. 
 2. And Joshua said unto all the people, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Your fathers dwelt on the other side of the flood in old time, even Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nachor: and they served other gods. 
 3. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the flood, and led him throughout all the land of Canaan, and multiplied his seed, and gave him Isaac. 
 4. And I gave unto Isaac Jacob and Esau: and I gave unto Esau mount Seir, to possess it; but Jacob and his children went down into Egypt. 
 5. I sent Moses also and Aaron, and I plagued Egypt, according to that which I did among them: and afterward I brought you out. 
 6. And I brought your fathers out of Egypt: and ye came unto the sea; and the Egyptians pursued after your fathers with chariots and horsemen unto the Red sea. 
 7. And when they cried unto the LORD, he put darkness between you and the Egyptians, and brought the sea upon them, and covered them; and your eyes have seen what I have done in Egypt: and ye dwelt in the wilderness a long season. 
 8. And I brought you into the land of the Amorites, which dwelt on the other side Jordan; and they fought with you: and I gave them into your hand, that ye might possess their land; and I destroyed them from before you. 
 9. Then Balak the son of Zippor, king of Moab, arose and warred against Israel, and sent and called Balaam the son of Beor to curse you: 
 10. But I would not hearken unto Balaam; therefore he blessed you still: so I delivered you out of his hand. 
 11. And you went over Jordan, and came unto Jericho: and the men of Jericho fought against you, the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I delivered them into your hand.

12. Whoops! I forgot Har Sinai! (Or was it Har Chorev?)                                                                                                

Jul 18, 2008 10:27 AM

Our Strategy

I'm feeling in a strategic mood today, so let us articulate our strategy.

I. Goals
The goal of the MORI Movement (Moden Orthoprax Reconstructodox Ignostic) is to reformulate Modern Orthodoxy to truly reconcile it with Modernity, while remaining true to the values and traditions of the religion.

II. Guiding Principles
The guiding principles of MORI are as follows:

1. Jewish Values
We greatly value the Jewish tradition and practice, believing (based on evidence) that there is much value there. We also value Jewish values, especially Orthodox Jewish values. We believe we can articulate very reasonable arguments as to why our values are very good, and better than many (possibly most) competing value systems. Of course all discussions of values are ultimately circular, since we use our values to judge our values, and therefore it is no surprise that we tend to value our values. he three primary values of Judaism are Torah, Avodah and Gemillus Chassadim, which can be loosely translated as Learning, Service and acts of Lovingkindness.

2. Learning
We believe that an ultimate value needs to be that of knowledge creation and acquisition (a.k.a. 'learning'). This involves learning all aspects of life, science and religion. We follow the research, opinions and advice of recognized experts in all fields of life, where reasonable. This includes Chazal, Rishonim, Acharonim, Scientists, Historians, Archeologists, Secular Philosophers and other religious, spiritual, political and knowledge leaders, each in their respective fields.

2. Service
Service includes the ritual ceremony and associated practices. Human beings need ritual, and ritual serves many purposes in life. The Orthodox Jewish tradition includes a rich history and portfolio of ritual, which we uphold as valuable and life-enriching.

3. Lovingkindness
The Jewish tradition contains a long and proud history of morals, ethics and the performance of 'mitzvot' - good deeds. This is (or should be) the foundational component of any religion.

4. Acknowledging Knowledge
Science and other related academic scholarship has clearly proven the following:

a) The universe is very ancient, approximately 15 billion years old.
b) Mankind is very ancient, modern man is about 30,000 years old, ancient man has been around for millions of years.
c) No bona fide miracles have ever been observed to happen, and it is more likely than not that none have ever happened.
d) Modern scholarship in the fields of archeology, history, Bible studies etc clearly show that the Bible is a composite work, produced over many centuries.
e) Halachah is clearly man made, and has clearly evolved over the centuries.

5. God
No evidence exists to show that God exists or does not exist. Furthermore, no comprehensible description of God exists either. 'God' is an abstract concept, which in reality symbolizes meaning, morality, and spritiuality. Each one of us conceptualizes God is various (ultimately ways. and this is a highly personal matter. Religion has evolved a language to speak about 'God', and this is fine as far as it goes.

6. Halachah
Halachic communities which practice halachah as it is supposed to be practiced have a higher moral standard than other communities, with lower rates of infidelity, divorce, physical / sexual / drug abuse and crime than the national average. Since halachah has been the glue that binds the Jewish people together for thousands of years, and since halachah can be proven to create highly moral societies, we uphold the value of halachah. Of course no system is perfect, and there are certai areas of halachah which seem unjust and need revision. However the integrity of the system is such that all change must proceed slowly and carefully, even sub-consciously in some respects. Based on evidence and statistics, we firmly believe that the halachic community is in general superior to the alternative, and therefore it is ultimately more moral to belong to this community than not. (Of course ultimately morality is subjective, so this argument is ultimately as circular as any and all arguments to the contrary).

7. Reconstructionism
Radical reconstruction of ideas is disingenuous. For example, to reconstruct 'Torah' to mean 'ethics' would be incorrect. However, evolutionary reconstructionism is acceptable, and even traditional. For example, 'Torah' can certainly mean the combined wisdom of the Jewish people, and 'Min Hashamayim' can certainly mean 'Heavenly', i.e. Divinely Inspired (inspired by the idea of the Divine). We support evolutionary reconstructionism in the spirit of the Rambam, but reject radical reconstructionism.

8. Focus on today
MORI is not intended to be the final word in religion, nor could it ever be. Nothing is ever final in this world. New advances in knowledge occur every day. Relgions evolve and change all the time, even fundamentalist religions. MORI is yet the latest step in the process of human evolution. Nobody can predict the future, and in fact the most significant events in history were always the least expected. We shall focus on the here and now, and the needs of our constituents today, with the understanding that things can and certainly will change in the future.

9. Stagnation vs. Evolution
Nothing remains static, and we must continually be on the lookout for new ideas, new knowledge and enw ways of thinking, without trampling or discarding the values, traditions and practices of our past (assuming they still have value). No system can be successful if it is constantly in a state of flux, however too much stangnation is not healthy either. We must be constantly vigilant in finding the right balance between evolution and stagnation.

III. Strategy

To develop and promote MORI, we will follow a multi-facted strategy.

1. Validate and articulate our values
The core motivation behind MORI is that we truly value our (Orthodox) Jewish values. As an ongoing effort of justification and motivation, we shall strive to fully articulate our values, and explain why we value them.

2. Taamei Hamitzvot (reasons for the commandments)
All the ritual and other commandments in Judaism clearly have reasons, or else they would not have been created. In some cases the reasons are obvious. For example Shabbat, a day to turn away from materialistic concerns and instead focus on meaning, morality and spirituality (and of course family) is obviously of value, and even secular people recognize this. Other areas of halachah are harder to explain, but clearly everything has some reason, or else it would not have become law. Our task is to articulate the reasons behind halachah as much as is possible. In cases where the original reasons no longer apply, AND there is limited value in the halachah, careful consideration must be made. We do not advocate wholesale and rapid halachic change, as this will lead to the dissolution of the enterprise, as recent experience with Conservative Judaism clearly shows.

3. Combating Fundamentalism
We have a moral duty to compabt fundamentalism, since extremist fundamentalist ideas can clearly be very dangerous. In addition, in order to clear a space for MORI proponenst within the (LWMO) Orthodox world, we would need to clearly articulate our reasons for why we reject fundamentalist beliefs (they aren't true).

4. Continued exploration of Philosophy, Theology, Science etc
We cannot afford to remain static. We will constantly evaluate and study new ideas and knowledge, to see what ramifications there are for MORI. However we must be careful not to introdcue to much flux and instability into the system.

5. Reconstructionism
We need to engage in a certain amount of evolutionary reconstructionism. At its most disingenuos, this can amount to cherry picking and deliberate mis-transalation of key phrases. We will strive to reconstruct as non disingenuously as possible. We believe there are many sayings and beliefs in Chazal, Rishonim and modern day jewish thinkers which provide much fertile ground here. The dogmas of modern day Judaism, as embodied in the Rambam's ikkarim, are certainly a late invention and are of little consequence.

IV. Approach

1. Community
We need to create a community of like minded individuals. This can be a concrete community, or an online community, or a combination of both. Certain elements of the LW MO / RW Conservadox world are very close to our conception of religion, certainly close enough in many cases. Significant institutions are YCT, Mechon Hadar and similar.

2. Study
We need to embark on a study program, especially for the reconstructionist aspects of the strategy. Primary texts include Heshchels TMS, various works by Rav Kook, and various works by modern day thinkers, especially works produced by the Hartman and Shalem institutes.

We also need to study & promote the findings of Biblical Criticism, both as a means to promote our ideas, and also as legitimate 'parshanut'.

3. Facts on the Ground
We need to work on gaining influence 'on the ground'. This means finding, promoting and cultivating relationships with key individuals in the Jewish scene. There are many LW MO Rabbis who agree with our agenda, though opinions might differ as to the best approach here.

V. Conclusion
There has never been a better time to embark on this course of action. The Jewish community is straining for new modes of expression, and for Modern Orthodoxy to truly reconcile Modernity with Orthodoxy (praxy). Many new institutions, educational, spiritual and social are being formed across the country and around the globe to address the needs of our constituents. Rather than dwell on the mistakes of the past, let us work together for a more productive future!              

Jul 18, 2008 9:20 AM

The Return of Religion

[XGH: Not bad]

By Roger Scruton

Faced with the spectacle of the cruelties perpetrated in the name of faith, Voltaire famously cried ‘Ecrasez l’infâme!’. Scores of enlightened thinkers followed him, declaring organised religion to be the enemy of mankind, the force that divides the believer from the infidel and which thereby both excites and authorises murder. Richard Dawkins is the most influential living example of this tradition, and his message, echoed by Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, sounds as loud and strident in the media today as the message of Luther in the reformed churches of Germany. The violence of the diatribes uttered by these evangelical atheists is indeed remarkable. After all, the Enlightenment happened three centuries ago; the arguments of Hume, Kant and Voltaire have been absorbed by every educated person. What more is to be said? And if you must say it, why say it so stridently? Surely, those who oppose religion in the name of gentleness have a duty to be gentle, even with – especially with – their foes?

There are two reasons why people start shouting at their opponents: one is that they think the opponent is so strong that every weapon must be used against him; the other is that they think their own case so weak that it has to be fortified by noise. Both these motives can be observed in the evangelical atheists. They seriously believe that religion is a danger, leading people into excesses of enthusiasm which, precisely because they are inspired by irrational beliefs, cannot be countered by rational argument. We have had plenty of proof of this from the Islamists; but that proof, the atheists tell us, is only the latest in a long history of massacres and torments, which – in the scientific perspective – might reasonably be called the pre-history of mankind. The Enlightenment promised to inaugurate another era, in which reason would be sovereign, providing an instrument of peace that all could employ. In the eyes of the evangelical atheists, however, this promise was not fulfilled. In their view of things, neither Judaism nor Christianity absorbed the Enlightenment even if, in a certain measure, they inspired it. All faiths, to the atheists, have remained in the condition of Islam today: rooted in dogmas that cannot be safely questioned. Believing this, they work themselves into a lather of vituperation against ordinary believers, including those believers who have come to religion in search of an instrument of peace, and who regard their faith as an exhortation to love their neighbour, even their belligerent atheist neighbour, as themselves.

At the same time, the atheists are reacting to the weakness of their case. Dawkins and Hitchens are adamant that the scientific worldview has entirely undermined the premises of religion and that only ignorance can explain the persistence of faith. But what exactly does modern science tell us, and just where does it conflict with the premises of religious belief? According to Dawkins (and Hitchens follows him in this), human beings are ‘survival machines’ in the service of their genes. We are, so to speak, by-products of a process that is entirely indifferent to our well-being, machines developed by our genetic material in order to further its reproductive goal. Genes themselves are complex molecules, put together in accordance with the laws of chemistry, from material made available in the primordial soup that once boiled on the surface of our planet. How it happened is not yet known: perhaps electrical discharges caused nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms to link together in appropriate chains, until finally one of them achieved that remarkable feature, of encoding the instructions for its own reproduction. Science may one day be able to answer the question how this occurred. But it is science, not religion, that will answer it.

As for the existence of a planet in which the elements abound in the quantities observed on planet earth, such a thing is again to be explained by science – though the science of astrophysics rather than the science of biology. The existence of the earth is part of a great unfolding process, which may or may not have begun with a Big Bang, and which contains many mysteries that physicists explore with ever increasing astonishment. Astrophysics has raised as many questions as it has answered. But they are scientific questions, to be solved by discovering the laws of motion that govern the observable changes at every level of the physical world, from galaxy to supernova, and from black hole to quark. The mystery that confronts us as we gaze upwards at the Milky Way, knowing that the myriad stars responsible for that smear of light are merely stars of a single galaxy, the galaxy that contains us, and that beyond its boundaries a myriad other galaxies slowly turn in space, some dying, some emerging, all forever inaccessible to us – this mystery does not call for a religious response. For it is a mystery that results from our partial knowledge and which can be solved only by further knowledge of the same kind – the knowledge that we call science.

Only ignorance would cause us to deny that general picture, and the evangelical atheists assume that religion must deny that picture and therefore must, at some level, commit itself to the propagation of ignorance or at any rate the prevention of knowledge. Yet I do not know a religious person among my friends and acquaintances who does deny that picture, or who regards it as posing the remotest difficulty for his faith. Dawkins writes as though the theory of the selfish gene puts paid once and for all to the idea of a creator God – we no longer need that hypothesis to explain how we came to be. In a sense that is true. But what about the gene itself: how did that come to be? What about the primordial soup? All these questions are answered, of course, by going one step further down the chain of causation. But at each step we encounter a world with a singular quality: namely that it is a world which, left to itself, will produce conscious beings, able to look for the reason and the meaning of things, and not just for the cause. The astonishing thing about our universe, that it contains consciousness, judgement, the knowledge of right and wrong, and all the other things that make the human condition so singular, is not rendered less astonishing by the hypothesis that this state of affairs emerged over time from other conditions. If true, that merely shows us how astonishing those other conditions were. The gene and the soup cannot be less astonishing than their product.

Moreover, these things would cease to astonish us – or rather, they would fall within the ambit of the comprehensible – if we could find a way to purge them of contingency. That is what religion promises: not a purpose, necessarily, but something that removes the paradox of an entirely law-governed world, open to consciousness, that is nevertheless without an explanation: that just is, for no reason at all. The evangelical atheists are subliminally aware that their abdication in the face of science does not make the universe more intelligible, nor does it provide an alternative answer to our metaphysical enquiries. It simply brings enquiry to a stop. And the religious person will feel that this stop is premature: that reason has more questions to ask, and perhaps more answers to obtain, than the atheists will allow us. So who, in this subliminal contest, is the truly reasonable one? The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation.

One of these is the question of consciousness. This strange universe of black holes and time warps, of event horizons and non-localities, somehow becomes conscious of itself. And it becomes conscious of itself in us. This fact conditions the very structure of science. The rejection of Newton’s absolute space, the adoption of the space-time continuum, the quantum equations – all these are premised on the truth that scientific laws are instruments for predicting one set of observations from another. The universe that science describes is constrained at every point by observation. According to quantum theory, some of its most basic features become determinate only at the moment of observation. The great tapestry of waves and particles, of fields and forces, of matter and energy, is pinned down only at the edges, where events are crystallised in the observing mind.

Consciousness is more familiar to us than any other feature of our world, since it is the route by which anything at all becomes familiar. But this is what makes consciousness so hard to pinpoint. Look for it wherever you like, you encounter only its objects – a face, a dream, a memory, a colour, a pain, a melody, a problem, but nowhere the consciousness that shines on them. Trying to grasp it is like trying to observe your own observing, as though you were to look with your own eyes at your own eyes without using a mirror. Not surprisingly, therefore, the thought of consciousness gives rise to peculiar metaphysical anxieties, which we try to allay with images of the soul, the mind, the self, the ‘subject of consciousness’, the inner entity that thinks and sees and feels and which is the real me inside. But these traditional ‘solutions’ merely duplicate the problem. We cast no light on the consciousness of a human being simply by re-describing it as the consciousness of some inner homunculus – be it a soul, a mind or a self. On the contrary, by placing that homunculus in some private, inaccessible and possibly immaterial realm, we merely compound the mystery.

It is this mystery which brings people back to religion. They may have no clear conception of science; no theological aptitude, and no knowledge of the arguments, down the ages, that have persuaded people that the fabric of contingency must be supported by a ‘necessary being’. The subtleties of the medieval schools for the most part make little contact with the thinking of believers today. Modern people are drawn to religion by their consciousness of consciousness, by their awareness of a light shining in the centre of their being. And, as Kant brilliantly showed, the person who is acquainted with the self, who refers to himself as ‘I’, is inescapably trapped into freedom. He rises above the wind of contingency that blows through the natural world, held aloft by Reason’s necessary laws. The ‘I’ defines the starting point of all practical reasoning and contains an intimation of the thing that distinguishes people from the rest of nature, namely their freedom. There is a sense in which animals too are free: they make choices, do things both freely and by constraint. But animals are not accountable for what they do. They are not called upon to justify their conduct, nor are they persuaded or dissuaded by dialogue with others. All those goals, like justice, community and love, which make human life into a thing of intrinsic value, have their origin in the mutual accountability of persons, who respond to each other ‘I’ to ‘I’. Not surprisingly, therefore, people are satisfied that they understand the world and know its meaning, when they can see it as the outward form of another ‘I’ – the ‘I’ of God, in which we all stand judged, and from which love and freedom flow.

That thought may be poured out in verse, as in the Veni Creator Spiritus of the Catholic Church, in the rhapsodic words of Krishna in the Baghavad Gita, in the great Psalms that are the glory of the Hebrew Bible. But for most people it is simply there, a dense nugget of meaning in the centre of their lives, which weighs heavily when they find no way to express it in communal forms. People continue to look for the places where they can stand, as it were, at the window of our empirical world and gaze out towards the transcendental – the places from which breezes from that other sphere waft over them. Not so long ago, God was in residence. You could open a door and discover him, and join with those who sang and prayed in his presence. Now he, like us, has no fixed abode. But from this experience a new kind of religious consciousness is being born: a turning of the inner eye towards the transcendental and a constant invocation of ‘we know not what’.

Distrust of organised religion therefore goes hand in hand with a mourning for the loss of it. We are distressed by the evangelical atheists, who are stamping on the coffin in which they imagine God’s corpse to lie and telling us to bury it quickly before it begins to smell. These characters have a violent and untidy air: it is very obvious that something is missing from their lives, something which would bring order and completeness in the place of random disgust. And yet we are uncertain how to answer them. Nowhere in our world is the door that we might open, so as to stand again in the breath of God.

Yet human beings have an innate need to conceptualise their world in terms of the transcendental, and to live out the distinction between the sacred and the profane. This need is rooted in self-consciousness and in the experiences that remind us of our shared and momentous destiny as members of Kant’s ‘Kingdom of Ends’. Those experiences are the root of human as opposed to merely animal society, and we need to affirm them, self-knowingly to possess them, if we are to be at ease with our kind. Religions satisfy this need. For they provide the social endorsement and the theological infrastructure that will hold the concepts of the transcendental and the sacred in place. The insecurity and disorder of Western societies comes from the tension in which people are held when they cannot attach their inner awareness of the transcendental to the outward forms of religious ritual. People have turned away from organised religion, as they have turned away from organised everything else. But the atheists who dance on the coffin of the old religions will never persuade them to live as though the thing inside were dead. God has fled, but he is not dead. He is biding his time, waiting for us to make room for him. That, at least, is how I read the growing obsession with religion and the nostalgia for what we lost when the congregations shut their Bibles and their hymn books, broke asunder and went silently home.    

Jul 17, 2008 1:33 PM

Kill The Kid

Popout                                                                                                                                                                                          

Jul 17, 2008 12:00 PM

When Harry Met Skeptically

Here is my response to Harry’s comment on my last post, regarding 2 million people leaving Egypt. Harry is in italics.

The question you raise in the post is such an obvious one, it wouldn't have taken a millennium to ask it. Many if not most people are by nature skeptics. There would have had to be large numbers of people that just did not buy the sudden appearance of a Torah with such fantastic stories in it.

This is completely wrong. On the contrary, the history of religion shows that many if not most people accept the stories they were indoctrinated with at birth and hardly ever question or think about it. In a world where millions upon millions of people are convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, or Muhammed flew to heaven on a horse, or believe in Scientology, I don’t see how you can possibly claim thsat most people are by nature skeptics (at least when it comes to religion)

Also, there was no ‘sudden appearance’ of the Torah with ‘fantastic’ stories in it. There was a gradual evolution of a myth over hundreds of years. This has been documented in many other religions, and is certainly quite feasible.

Yet the skeptics in history are relatively few - far outnumbered by believers whose beliefs are transmitted by parents generation after generation going back to a time where the actual participants witnessed it. Those participants are the ones we ultimately rely upon plus the belief that our parents didn't make this stuff up.

If you are arguing that ‘number’ count, then we should all convert to Christianity, since ‘the Orthodox Jews in history are relatively few - far outnumbered by Christian believers whose beliefs are transmitted by parents generation after generation going back to a time where the actual participants witnessed it. ‘Those Christian participants are the ones we ultimately rely upon plus the belief that Charistian parents didn't make this stuff up.’

‘What possible reason would there be to make up such a ridiculous Exodus story? Why not simplify it so as to make it more believable? ‘

Every ancient religion created unbelievable myths. You think the Aztec myths are any better? Or the Summarian myths about half God half monster creatures battling it out, and then the world being created out of the skull of a dead monster? Or the world being supported by a giant Elephant (or is it a turtle?) What 'possible reason would there be to make up such ridiculous stories? Why not simplify it so as to make it more believable?'

You may want to read up on the history of mythology.

I could have thought up a much better story and had an easier time selling it than the one the Torah tells us... e.g. God created the universe billions of years ago populated it with millions of people at some point and then He appeared to all of them at one moment and gave us the rules and said 'Live by them or die - or what ever punishment applies to a given rule.' That is a much easier sell. No questions about fantastic stories, no miracles to worry about. Straight forward. Each generation would simply have a book of rules to follow given to us by God - and witnessed by - all of mankind early in the course of human history.

See above.

Instead we are told to believe a fantastic and impossible narrative. Don't you think someone would have said before now that 'the emperor has no clothes? And yet very few did.

Spinoza said it in 1500. Hiwi Al Kalbi said it in 900. Acher said it in 300. And I’m quite sure there were skeptics in 500 BCE too. And these are just the people we read about in religious literature. However religious coercion meant that a skeptic could be (and often was) put to death, and apart from the famous ones, the average skeptic didn't have books (or blogs). I’m quite sure there have always been plenty of skeptics throughout history. And anyway, are we playing the numbers game? Because OJ doesn’t win the numbers game.

The story must have had validity because only the most gullible would have believed such a story that suddenly appeared.

Again, it didn’t ‘suddenly appear’.

What explanation could they have given to all the skeptics? How did they explain the sudden late appearance of a book like the Torah? And why then?

It didn’t ‘suddenly’ appear! (except maybe for Devarim). There were ancient stories and fables which evolved and were transmitted orally over hundreds of years. Eventually these were written down in various versions, and eventually these were canonized into one version. Your argument that ‘people wouldn’t have believed it if it weren’t true’ is patently false, and is easily disproved by looking at any other religion. Many thousands if not millions of people believe in Scientology. And this is a ridiculous religion founded 50 years ago! Imagine what ancient people who had no TV, no newspapers, no Internet and no clue about Science would have believed!

What was it like for this nomadic homeless people before they had a Torah? What kind of cohesiveness did they have? Why were they persecuted and still stuck together for centuries before they came up with this book and the ridiculous stories in it?

They had their religious traditions. Just like everyone else. Eventually, when writing became feasible, they wrote these traditions down. Just like everyone else.

In the end it always comes back to the following:

Do we know for a fact that people have a tremendous ability to believe all sorts of crazy stuff, ESPECIALLY when it comes to religion? Yes.

Do we know for a fact that any of the miracles or stories in the Torah are true? No. In fact, they are contradicted by pretty much every archeologist, ancient historian and Biblical scholar, with the only people insisting they are true being the very people who are religiously required to believe so.

You do the math.                                                                                                                                                                           

Jul 16, 2008 12:49 AM

The question that killed fundamentalist OJ

The question which truly does OJ in is the one about the 2 million.

The Torah is quite clear that 600,000 males between the ages of 20-60 left Egypt. Simple math shows that when you include women and children the total number of people must have been well into the multiple millions. Yet such a number is completely impossible, given the logistics and population sizes of the ANE.

Arguing that there was no evidence left in the desert because their clothes never wore out and they ate manna doesn't help. Firstly, camping remnants and other excretia would be huge for 2 million people. But even without any of that, an army of 600,000 men would have been unbelievable in the ancient world, where armies 20,000 strong were the largest seen. Not to mention the fact that the entire population of ancient Egypt was 4 million. 2 million people leaving would have left some kind of mark, but besides the Torah there is zero evidence of such an Exodus. And let's not even talk about the logistics of moving 2 million people overnight out of Egypt.

Even Hirhurim admits this question has no answer, he writes:

'The single largest question about the historicity of the Torah is how so many people could leave Egypt and stay in the desert for so long without leaving any trace....No historian accepts that figure and I don't have an answer to the question. But we don't die from a question. Much worse is pretending that the question doesn't exist.'

And the latest crop of OJ apologists and reconcilers don't even go near this question. Why not? Because while you can kvetch away in Breishis, in Shemos you are totally stuck. The narrative was handed to the Bnei Yisrael just after it happened, saying that it's metaphorical makes no sense at all. Plus, the placement of the narrative is way too sensistive. It's one thing to say ancient stories in the distant past like Gan Eden are allegorical. But Yetziat Mitzrayim, THE foundational story of our religion?! Might as well give up on OJ if that one is allegorical.

Some people argue that 'elef' means 'clan', or 'army troop', or similar.  But this doesn't work when you look at the census later on, which gives detailed individual numbers. And to say that the story here is exagerated to teach some kind of lesson seems very bizarre, as the Dor Hamidbor would have known the truth. And anyways, that makes the census detail look even more crazy.

The only reasonable explanation here is that this whole story was written years later. Hundreds of years later. And totally exagerated (if it even happened at all).

It's ironic that the kiruv clowns use the 600,000 number as a proof that the Torah is true. In fact, it's just the opposite. The 600,000 number proves the Torah is false. That's the real Kuzari proof.

Hirhurim writes that a question won't kill you.  That's correct. But it might kill your fundamentalist religion.          

Jul 15, 2008 11:34 AM

Not very likely....or is it?

One of my chief arguments against fundamentalism has been that given all the evidence, it's just not very likely that God wrote the Torah, or that 2,000,0000+ people left Egypt, or that any of the other unbelievable claims of OJ are true.

eKvetcher blogs about Nassem Taleb's 'Black Swan' research, a topic I intended to write about myself (honestly). Taleb points out that all the really major events in history were completely unexpected, and that when we post analyze with hindsight claiming that in retrospect it was obvious, we are merely pandering to our bias in wanting things to conform to our view that history should be rational.

The other aspect of my argument against the fundies is that when they claim TMS is too unlikely to have just happened by natural means and therefore God must have done it, I always respond that unlikely things do indeed happen, just not very often.

Well, according to my own logic, and confirmed by Taleb, if unlikely things do indeed happen, then couldn't it be possible that OJ is true? So arguing that it's not very likely isn't as strong an argument as you might think, because not very likely things happen all the time.

Of course this argument works for all religions equally well, so it doesn't help the fundies much, except to provide some kind of generic pseudo intellectual cover for justifying beliefs in religion in general. Though it's hard to justify what would otherwise be termed immoral behavior, just by appealing to some unlikely belief.

But I think it does work for God (vague God, not a specifically named God). Nobody knows anything about God, and nobody knows (or could even comprehend) how the Universe got here. When atheists say that God is unlikely, there's really no argument there. He's just as likely as not. Actually you don't even need the Black Swan theory to say this. Since we know nothing about universe creation, we have no data to be able to state whether Gods are likely or not. It's simply an unknown.

Typically, when cornered, atheists will resort to utilitarian rather than logical arguments here; they will say that since nobody really knows anything about God, it's pointless to talk about Him (or Her). Well, once you are in utilitarian territory you have probably lost the argument, because then the fundies can arue that there is certainly a utilitarian point e.g. motivation for morality etc.

So in summary, I would say this:

It is certainly a fact that fundie religion is unlikely to be true, and basing your faith on the maxim that 'unlikely things do happen' isn't really much comfort here, since that's just as strong an argument for scientology (or Chareidism).

However, when it comes to God, all discussions of 'likely' vs. 'unlikely' are off the table. There's simply no data to base anything on. In that case, the discussion must by definition move to the realm of feeling and utility, in which case the Theists do have a reasonable argument. Not airtight, but they do have something. An indescribable, incomprehensible something.

Oh well.                                                                                                                                                                                             

Jul 15, 2008 12:44 AM

I finally found the truth, but I didn't really like it

Nobody knows anything about God and all religion is man made.

That  has been my mantra for a while now, and it's damn depressing. Life is ultimately pointless and meaningless and we're all going to die. Even though we're young, life flies by pretty damn quickly, and before you know it, you're lying in the terminal ward dying painfully of cancer, or clutching your chest on the living room floor.

And that's if you're lucky.

So, given that, you might as well have faith. The gain of feeling intellectually superior to the silly fundamentalists is outweighed by loss of faith, meaning, community and much more. Obviously one can't force themselves to believe in the unbelievable, but in the realm of vague thoughts about God (whatever that means) and Divine Inspiration (whatever that means) there's plenty of wiggle room. Plus, in rare moments you can conceivably forget about all the reality and just go with the flow.

Everyone, extreme skeptics included, have faith in unproven things. The best example is the little god (free will). It's very rare to find someone who really, truly denies that particular prime mover, yet everything we know about the laws of physics makes it impossible.

So if you are going to believe in the little god because it makes sense, matches your feelings, and makes the world a more reasonable place, why not the big God? I guess some will argue that they do indeed deny the little god, but I don't believe it. And of course I'm not talking about the specific God of the Bible, or any such Deity, I'm talking about God, kaveyochol. Something bigger than we can understand.

Faith against the evidence is silly, to be sure. But a bit of faith in general religious ideals where no evidence exists either way can be quite healthy I think. Take away the silly ontological beliefs in Judaism  and dig deeper into the underlying principles and it's pretty good stuff.

I don't think you can stretch this to say God wrote the Torah, or even something happened on Sinai (apart from a volcano and maybe a religious experience). But you can stretch it to say that God exists (kaveyochol), and the Torah is Divinely Inspired (kaveyochol) and play around with that.

I call it my Kaveyochol Theology.

Humans need religion, and will generally always gravitate to one form of religion or another. Science doesn't provide value, community, spirituality, leadership etc. And in the rare cases where it does, then science is simply the religion. Religion doesn't have to be supernatural, or include impossible beliefs. It's basically a worldview, lifestyle, and all the extras.

So it's not a question of rejecting religon or not. Pretty much everyone has a religion, the only question is which one will you pick; atheism or Judaism (or Scientism or Chareidism or Digitalism* or a million other varieties).

I think the best religion for me personally is some kind of Orthopraxy, with vague beliefs. That way I still have a religion, still have connections to my peers, family and community, yet can also still feel I am close to the truth. I also still get to feel a little intellectually superior to my fundie friends, without straying so far that I look back regretfully.

Luckily, there's quite a bit of material on the LW MO / RW Con border to work with, and with all the new forms of Conservadoxy springing up at places like Mechon Hadar, there's never been a better time to pursue this path. Also, I know a bunch of LW MO Rabbis, educators and relatives who basically think like this, though would never admit it.

So, apologies to everyone who was offended by the last year's worth of extreme skepticism, and now it's back to our regular radical LW MO Ignostic Reconstructodox programming.

* Digitalism: A religion based around small electronic objects. Worshippers read Gizmodo religiously, and will line up outside an Apple store just to get a 3G ipod.

Popout                                                                                                                                                                                               

Jul 14, 2008 1:47 PM

Holy Moly! Rav Dessler on Rabbi Louis Jacobs:

"You…cannot imagine the value of this Kollel [Gateshead Kollel]. In it are gathered the great exemplars of the country, who have fled having learned in the great Yeshivas, and…amongst them are numerous true greats…There is one young man [Louis Jacobs], a product of Manchester (he is the only native [Anglo] product), and it is no exaggeration for me to say that hitherto, I have never seen an ilui [Talmudic genius] of such depth together with the other strengths in any one … he is a truly great one...able to plumb the depths of thought."

Mikhtav Me-Eliyahu, 166.

[Quoted here]

So, either RLJ has a haskamah of one of the greatest Gedolim (and not stam a Godol, but someone recognuized to be a master of Machshavah / Hashkafah) of the 20th Century, or the Gedolim have no ability to judge other people. Either way this doesn't look too good for the Gedolim worshippers.                                                                                            

Jul 14, 2008 1:58 AM

A Troubled Cure For A Troubled Mind

I'm going to try the Divine Inspiration theory for a bit. From a purely skeptical POV, there is no good reason to believe in it. On the other hand, nobody really accepts pure skepticism le'maaseh, we (almost) all like to believe we have free will for example, and even those who claim to have ridden themselves of belief in the 'little god' still act for all intents and purposes as if human beings have to take responsibility for their actions. Seems like some things are just too important to jettison. Can a skeptic force (train?) himself to believe in something without good reason? We'll have to see. Talk amongst yourselves for a while.                                                                                                                                                                

Jul 10, 2008 11:23 AM

Why people become Conservative

Why do some of the finest products of the Orthodox Movement trend towards Conservative?

Let's look at a couple of examples:

Rabbi Louis Jacobs, Rabbi New London Synagogue (deceased)
Rabbi Jacobs studied at Manchester Yeshivah, and later at the kolel in Gateshead (Rav Dessler's Kolel. It doesn't get any frummer than that). Jacobs was ordained as an Orthodox Jewish rabbi at Manchester Yeshivah (The Manchester Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Segal, was widely acknowledged as one of the biggest tzaddikim and top gedolim anywhere. It doesn't get much frummer than that).

Rabbi David H. Lincoln, Rabbi Emeritus of Park Avenue Synagogue
Rabbi David H. Lincoln attended Gateshead Talmudical College in England (Gateshead Yeshivah is about 10 times frummer than Lakewood) and spent two years in rabbinical study in the Yeshivat Kol Torah in Jerusalem (Kol Torah is pretty darn frum too). He received the certificate of practice as Rabbi from the Office of Chief Rabbi in England, and was ordained at the Etz Chaim Yeshiva (very frum) and by the Ab Beth Din of London (very frum).

So what on earth made these two shining stars of Orthodoxy, educated at literally the finest (and frummest) Orthodox institutions anywhere, close talmidim of some of the most illustrious Gedolim of the 20th century, become Conservative?

What, they didn't like Chulent?

[Answer: They realized that OJ isn't true.]                                                                                                                          

Jul 9, 2008 4:06 PM

Yiras Shamayim

I am still very disturbed by Rabbi Jeremy Weider’s extremely disingenuous use of the term ‘Yiras Shamayim’, and it deserves another post.

Yiras Shamayim means fear of Heaven, or more specifically fear of God. What it should mean to convey is a person who fears God to the extent that they will not sin, for example they will not cheat, lie, steal, even in private when no one is looking, because they believe that God is always watching and judging. Of course ‘ahavah’ is better than ‘yirah’, but ‘yirah’ is better than nothing.

From a skeptical POV, ‘ahavah’ can be explained as follows: that a person should love good and hate evil so much that even in private they would never do evil. But this post is not being written from a skeptical POV. Even from a ‘faithful’ POV RJW’s comments are very wrong.

What on earth does Yiras Shamayim have to do with Biblical Criticism? If you become convinced that the DH was true, and that God did not write the Torah, how would Yiras Shamayim prevent you from accepting that?

On the contrary, if God did not in fact write the Torah, then someone with true Yirash Shamayim would refuse to continue to believe in TMS, since this would be an extreme insult to God, to ascribe authorship of some very strange material to him.

When RJW mentions Yiras Shamayim in the context of the DH clearly he means a very perverted form of Yiras Shamayim: basically a fear mentality of ever disagreeing with your religious indoctrination, or your leaders and peers. The lack of courage to accept the truth, and do what’s right. That’s the only type of ‘Yiras Shamayim’ that would prevent a student from accepting the DH, should it sound convincing to him.

But that’s not Yiras Shamayim. That’s more like ‘Ve vere only following orderz’.

Ridiculous.

[And please don’t tell me that RJW was lecturing to a chareidi crowd. He wasn’t. It was a mixed MO crowd, you can even hear questions from a girl at the end.]                                                                                                                                 

Jul 9, 2008 2:04 PM

Responding to evanstonjew

ej writes pretty good comments, and here is one which raises a number of good (but wrong) points, so here is my response. ej in italics.

XGH... For the millionth time we do not know that God exists or that TMS is true. That is what emunah means …we believe but do not know. Are these beliefs held without adequate evidence, the paradigm being the evidence we have for common sense beliefs? Yes and Klal Yisrael ought to be grateful to you for pointing out to those of us who needed reminding that we do not actually remember being mekabel the Torah, despite the success of the shiduchim website Saw You At Sinai. My main problem with your repeating this point endlessly is that it assumes OJ requires epistemic probability. It doesn’t. It only requires epistemic possibility plus utility, a point which you yourself acknowledge when you present your explanation for why you choose Orthodoxy. Most of those engaged in apologetics only want to sugar coat the improbable so that emunah doesn’t become impossible. (I am not talking of the kamikaze types such as Jacob Stein or Rabbi Maroof, who if they didn’t exist you would have to invent.)

I don’t agree. The vast majority of those in ‘apologetics’, and the vast majority of OJs (not LW MO) really believe it is most probably true, or else they wouldn’t believe in it. More importantly, 'epistemic possibility' applies to every single religion, so it's not saying anything. Either this is most probably the one true religion, or else it is yet another man made system and should be treated accordingly.

Most Orthodox know there is no way of knowing that Torah is true; they just want to make it seem a little more plausible than a flat earth hypothesis. So they give in here and darshen there and change the topic when weather permits. I maintain they are doing the best they can with the material they have, and net-net are doing more right by Orthodoxy and by the Jewish people than this constant "it’s dumb, it’s silly, only an idiot would believe it" rhetoric you seem to favor. And the reason is they feel a responsibility first and foremost to keep up the way of life called Orthodoxy.

I don’t agree. I think the reason first and foremost is that they don’t have the intellectual objectivity to be able to be able to see that it’s false, nor the emotional and spiritual courage to deal with the consequences thereof. In fact I think that the skeptics like me feel more of a responsibility. I suspect that many of these people would just drop the whole thing if they ever felt it was false, whereas the community of skeptics here is very engaged despite the fact that we know it is false.

You OTOH would allow Orthodoxy to fall by the way side if necessary rather than forego the opportunity to destroy some apologist who doesn’t meet your standard of evidence. I am not saying you are like some others on this site who wish for the destruction of Orthodoxy, but rather you do not take into account that if widely accepted the destruction of Orthodoxy would be a probable if unintended consequence of your polemics.

Firstly, considering people's ability to believe in nonsense, I don't think OJ is in any danger of being destroyed any time soon. However there are a large number of people within OJ who would like to continue to have some kesher to OJ, but cannot believe it is true (and for good reason). These are the people who can benefit from a branch of OJ (or ever outside OJ) which is Orthoprax Reconstructionist. And, to enhance their 'acceptability' within mainstream OJ, it certainly helps if the reasons why they reject the beliefs OJ as false are well understood by all. This is my mission and I believe it is a good one.

I raise this point because it provides a context for why I feel more is required in this discussion that common sense, a clear mind and introductory philosophy. And I resent your dismissal of anything that requires more than 10 minutes of reading time as irrelevant to the conversation. ("Personally I couldn't give a monkeys about technical philosophical arguments … We all know what 'truth' means… The only people who attack 'truth' are the people who don't like what truth has to say.")

Seems I hit a nerve. Just to clarify: I think the philosophical discussions around ‘justified beliefs’ are in fact very relevant and important. I just have little patience for Chardal’s redefinition of ‘truth’ just to suit his religious preferences.

As a ben torah you know it is not for you to arrive at the end, and each pathway and byway of conceptual thought is worthy of endless attention. The task as I see it is to help those who have sefikot in emunah deal with these issues. I now fully accept the playing field has changed and the issues raised by the DH can no longer be summarily dismissed. But the goal remains the same. Given some particular version of the DH, not the generic cliff notes version you prefer, how are we best to understand the point and meaning of Orthodoxy?

Good question. This is the task I have been engaged in, but admittedly it’s not easy. Given the DH (any version), the point and meaning of Orthodoxy seems pointless and false, unless it is radically reconstructed.

I do not see the task as you do, find some bullshitter and make him look like an idiot for trying to make Orthodoxy look a little more modern than it really is.

Aww, come on. That provides comic relief to an otherwise existentially depressing subject.

There are many worse things in life than Rabbi Weider and YU intellegensia. The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College with 10 students of whom 8 are women and nine are lesbians is one.

Hello? What the heck is wrong with 8 women and 9 Lesbians? I thought you were more open minded than that. I am quite surprised at you.

And for my task of finding a way to help Jews strengthen their emunah you can never have enough philosophical ideas, analytic and boring, post modern and wild , old fashioned and archaic, all of it.

First you have to convince me that ‘strengthening emunah’ (emunah in what?) is the right task. On the contrary, I think weakening emunah is the correct task here.                                                                                                                     

Jul 8, 2008 5:48 PM

What is 'Truth' ?

Our favorite pomo fundalectual, Chardal, has this to say:

Many skeptics don't even realize that by defining truth as correspondence to reality, they are staking out a philosophical postion that is by no means established (this is what evanston Jew has tried to pound into their brains).

Funny. Personally I couldn't give a monkeys about technical philosophical arguments as to the definition of the word 'truth'. We all know what 'truth' means, and for all practical purposes we all accept pretty much the same working day to day definition of what 'truth' means, and 'correspondance to reality' is pretty much it. The only people who attack 'truth' are the people who don't like what truth has to say.

But let me be clear, 'Reality' is not by definition limited to the material world. It could certainly encompass spiritual reality as well as physical reality. It could also encompass Flying Spaghetti Monster reality too. As long as these things are 'real' in some sense, and not just the fantasies of some highly imaginative or delusional people.

But does spiritual reality exist? Nobody knows. People certainly have a capacity for 'spiritual' feeling, but that doesn't neccessarily mean that a seperate spiritual reality exists. As a matter of common sense, I think it would be prudent to expect more 'proof' of a reality than just the highly biased fantasies of your typical fundamentalist believer.

Also, nobody really knows what reality is anyway. Is it strings? Is it quarks? Is it doodles? From a certain very small vantage point, reality looks like a lot of nothing with some tiny energy fields. Is that reality? Could be.

The simplest way to debunk all these fundallectuals is this:

Do we know for a fact that ALL people have an extremely high capacity to delude themselves into believing entirely false ancient mythologies? Yes.

Do we know for a fact that most, (if not all), ancient mythological and religious beliefs are entirely false? Yes.

Do we know for a fact that God wrote the Torah? Or even that He exists? No.

You do the math.                                                                                                                                                                           

Jul 7, 2008 10:37 AM

Silence of the Lamms: YU Apologetics

As the premier Modern Orthodox educational institution on the planet, I would imagine that YU has more Intellifundies, Fundalectuals and all round apologetics than anyone. My own Rabbi, who attended YU, told me that his Bible teacher told him that 'You can believe in a Redactor as long as his name was Moshe Rabbeinu (R standing for 'Rabbeinu'). Here is a fun list of other YU apologetics on Biblical Criticism, courtesy of a commenter 'Silence of the Lamms'.

David Zvei Hoffman demolished it.

Modern literary approaches offer a unity.

You can use Rav Breuer if you want.

You see, the critics were wrong- camels were known in the time of Abraham.

Look, the Daat Hamikra does use historical data.

Bar-Ilan is "orthopax" and you dont want to wind up like them.

Nahmanides, as interpreted by the Shem mishmuel, presents Devarim as a different voice.

We cant really do Pentatuch history but to question Abraham would be a post-modern attack against Judiasm [and Zionism].

One can pick holes in the theories of the minimalists.

Rebbe Tsadok had a historical apporach.

We can only do the Dead Sea Scrolls.

We understand the text through hazal or meforshim and then there are not real problems.

Using modern literary techniques to explain meforshim makes us very modern and up to date- unlike the Biblical critics who are still in the 19th century.

Rav Bin-Nun [or Leibtag] will be visiting in town next week, save your question and ask him.

Look, there is an entire cadre of Orthodox Bible scholars, like Grumet, Leibtag, Helfgot, Zornberg, and Carmy- if they are not bothered by your question then it is not a real question.

To which I would add this one from Rabbi Weider:

If you had Yiras Shamayim, these questions wouldn't bother you!

Any others?                                                                                                                                                                                     

Jul 7, 2008 10:37 AM

Rabbi Jeremy Weider on Academic Bible Study: Not Sexy

_I finally got around to listening to the Jeremy Weider's shiur on ‘Academic Bible Study’, since I had a long drive back from the beach (oooh a clue!) and had already listened to The Wall, the Dark Side of the Moon, the Final Cut and Wish You Were Here, and that was the only mp3 left on my player.

A few things stood out:

1. This was the first shiur I have EVER heard in my entire life where the maggid shiur used the word ‘sexy’ (as in ‘academic Bible study is not ‘sexy’). I almost fell off my chair, or would have done so had I not been wearing my seat belt. Is this the state of YU these days? What a shandah for the chareidim.

2. The second thing which struck me was how ridiculous his shiur was. The point of the shiur was (apparently) to defend Yeshivah college’s pratice of using ‘academic’ methods to study Tenach. Now of course Rabbi Weider and the Yeshivah hold of Torah Min Hashamayim just like the Chareidim do, so he wasn’t trying to justify any apikorsus here, and in fact he stressed his belief in the ‘ikkarim’ multiple times.

But in the course of the shiur he said quite a few statements which totally contradicted this. For example, at one point he said that we now have access to knowledge and facts that Chazal didn’t have (talking about the ‘psil’), and that this didn’t mean any disrespect to Chazal at all, but simply meant that we were fortunate to be the beneficiaries of new information that wasn’t available to Chazal. He also repeated multiple times that you cannot ignore the facts, and you have to adjust your theology to fit the facts, not the other way around. Also he said Chazal were not infallible. All this being true, why on earth then is he so convinced that that Chazals’ take on Torah MiSinai is correct? He never explains this, only saying that this is an ikkar emunah. But maybe Chazal didn’t have all the information?

(It was also pathetic that he talked about James Kugel but wouldn’t mention him by name. )

3. The shiur was poorly constructed. He started talking about 5 possible meanings of the word ‘academic’, but then never followed through on that. Then he launched into a defense of ‘academic Bible study’, but never really explained what exactly is academic bible study. He jumped around talking about Science and Torah a bit, mentioned the Slifkin ban, but then never really followed through on that either.

Ultimately it was just yet another silly, non rational Modern Orthodox attempt at reconciling the irreconcilable. If you are going to base you entire approach on ‘faith’ (and to his credit he did say that Nevuah was unprovable), then don’t give shiurim which try and give an aura of pseudo-academic respectability to your enterprise. Don’t say ‘we must face the facts’, but then say that you have ‘red lines’ (i.e. ikkarim) which cannot be crossed.

4. Finally, and most silly of all, was his explanation and defense of why academic Bible study in Yeshivah college is not necessarily harmful to everyone. His argument was that as long as someone has sufficient Yiras Shamayim (teacher and student), then there’s no need to worry. But if someone has more ‘chochmah’ than ‘yiraah’, it could be a problem.

What it does it mean when someone has tremendous Yiras Shamayim? In this context, it can only mean:

a) They really, really, really believe their religion is true

and/or

b) They would be really, really, really afraid of starting to think their religion is not true.

And for that type of person, it’s okay to teach academic Bible study!

Well DUH.

And what does it mean when you have someone where ‘chochmoso kodem leyirasoh’ ?

It means you have someone who is after the truth no matter what the consequences are, and wouldn’t be frightened of God if he figured out that his religion wasn’t true. For that kind of person, it could be dangerous to expose them to critical Bible study.

Well DUH again.                                                                                                                                                                              

Jul 2, 2008 5:10 PM

Hirhurim endorses Breuer Samet

I've long wondered what Gil really thinks of the Documentary Hypothesis. I know he has a fondness for the 'new' School of Parshanut, i.e. Breuer and company, but I see now that he has said it explicitly:


'Single authorship is not going to win any academic battle because it only works if you assume divine authorship and the need for interpretation.'

In typical Gil style, his wording is rather (too) succint. But what he is saying is this:

If you believe God wrote the Torah, then all the contradictions, ommisions, repetitions, mistakes, different use of language etc etc were put there by God davkah to be interpreted. However if you regard the Torah as a human book, then it no longer makes sense as a unified text, since as a human book it looks like a messed up composite text, exactly as the academics see it.

I don't buy this explanation at all. For the following reasons:

1. It's just a convenient answer. If the book was perfect, you can be sure everyone would say 'See, look how perfect it is! Yes, I know Chazal themsleves made a lot out hay of (some of) the textual problems. Duh. Thoguh I guess Gil could argue that he's just taking Chazal's approach to the next logical (insane) level, but at some point it just becomes ridiculous.

2. Chazal's basic assumption when darshening the text is that the text is supposed to make sense. 'Dibrah Torah Keloshon Bnei Odom'. The answer above is basically saying that everything was written crazily just so we could darshan it. Those two statements don't seem to jive.

3. You can tell that even Gil and friends don't really believe this themselves, because they are always going to great lengths to try and show unity in the text. But if this theory was correct, why should you bother to try and show any unity? On the contrary, admit its a mess but then go darshen!

I think this answer is obviously a con. Whenever the believers can show unity, you can be sure they will. Whenever they fail, they just fall back on this answer. A typical example of an unfalsifiable religious answer, very similar to: 'God planted all the evidence of the ancient world' and things like that.

These answers technically do 'work', but at the end of the day you have to ask yourself what kind of God would plant false dinosaur bones, or create a Torah which davkah looks like it is a human composite text.

UPDATE: Gil writes:


'And for what it's worth, I much prefer R. Elchanan Samet's approach over R. Mordechai Breuer's. I don't buy the "multiple voices" theory.'

So  how is Samet any different? And how could R Breuer, one of greatest Torah experts, be so wrong? And if the latest generation of Torah scholars and expert OJ Torah 'readers' can't even agree with each other on the basics (never mind the details) how do they expect to have any credibility at all???                                                                                       

Jul 2, 2008 11:10 AM

Quiz: Evolution to Chareidim is like Documentary Hypothesis to *what*?

(Answer: Modern Orthodox.)

Chareidim view evolution as one of the most heinous heresies ever, completely incompatible with Orthodoxy. When Pepsi ran an ad campaign in Israel showing the evolution from monkey to a Pepsi drinking man, the Chareidim went nuts, and that continues to this day with various bans and so forth.

Yet to the Modern Orthodox, evolution is no problem at all. Now this isn’t a halachic disagreement, but rather an intense disagreement due to very different perceptions. Chareidim have always believed that Man was literally created by God on the 6th day. They cannot conceptualize a Judaism which doesn’t include this belief. Shabbos only makes sense to them within this context. However the average Modern Orthodox person has always assumed that Man evolved, that God is behind it all in some way, and that the stories in Breishis were always allegorical, metaphorical and moshological, and that poses no issue to them at all. It’s all about perceptions and preconceived notions.

The same thing plays out with the Documentary Hypothesis. The RW Modern Orthodox freak out with it, can't conceive how OJ could be viable with it, yet there are plenty of LW MO and RW Conservadox who have no problem with it at all, still believe in the general Divinity of the Torah / Jewish people, are still committed to Halachah, and take a Halivni / Jacobs approach to the whole thing.

Just like the MO regard the Chareidim as being ridiculous and ignorant for rejecting evolution, likewise the LW MO/ RWC regard the RW MO as being ridiculous and ignorant for rejecting the Documentary Hypothesis, which is just as ‘proven’ (in a broad sense) as evolution is. Evolution also has some missing links, yet the broad consensus of all expert (non biased) scientists is that evolution is obviously true. Same thing with Biblical Criticism.

So are we ever going to see the RW MO accept the DH? Yes, when we see Chareidim accept evolution. In other words, probably not, since religious fundamentalism is quite a powerful force stopping people from being honest and accepting the truth.

Some people have spent much energy trying to persuade Chareidim to accept evolution (and similar science). I spend much energy trying to get MO to accept Documentary Hypothesis (and similar). Both of these activities of course produce tremendous amounts of conflict (not to mention hostility), but the goal is the same – to rid religion of ignorance and dishonesty, and to get people to accept reality.

The people working on the evolution side have a slightly easier task – there are various midrashim and Rabbinic snippets here and there which they can use to support their views. On the DH side, the picking are much slimmer. But still, there are some sources: e.g. Ibn Ezra’s ‘secrets’ line, sources about Ezra writing the Torah, Midrashim about how the Bnei Yisrael already had the Genesis stories in Egypt, some things from Rav Kook, and probably a few more besides.

I could imagine that someone could write a ‘Documentary Hypothesis & Torah’ book, (published by Yashar) which could make a (half) decent case for it. At the very least, an essay or paper. I know for a fact that there are respectable LW MO Rabbanim and others who believe this to be the case, so why don't they write something up? Are they worried that this will instantly 'passel' them? There are ways around that, for example present it as a 'hypothetical' theory, or disguise it as a dialogue, or other tricks like that.

I wonder if that will ever happen? Does anyone have any links to something in this genre? I guess Halivni and Jacobs come the closest, but of course they are not fully OJ.                                                                                                                

Jul 1, 2008 10:52 PM

Why don't OJ Bible Scholars decisively squash the DH once and for all?

I mamash don't understand.

The DH is a bunch of nonsense, right? A stupid, illogical and absurd theory, originally concocted by a bunch of anti-semites, perpetuated only by dogma, bias and the inability to read hebrew and learn the meforshim.

Even an average Yeshivah Bochur can 'read' the Chumash better than the most senior professor of Biblical scholarship. Plus Orthodox Jews have the advantage of thousands of years of Biblical exegesis. And not just any exegesis, but the exegesis of the most holiest, best Bible reading people of all time: Chazal, the Rishonim, and the Acharonim. I mean if these people didn't know peshat in Chumash, then nobody does!

Now I understand why it might be beneath the dignity of the Gedolim to address the DH, they have more important things to ban do rather than write refutations of nonsense. But for the more Modern Rabbonim and Orthodox Bible scholars, surely this should be something they should focus on?

I mean, one only has to read all the blogs to see so many poor souls geshmaded through exposure to the DH. Imagine the kiddush Hashem it would bring if a bunch of Orthodox Rabbis & Scholars explained clearly and concisely why the DH was really a bunch of nonsense, and how the traditional Jewish reading makes much more sense!

Not only would all these poor skeptics be saved. but the implications for the rest of the world could be immense. Can you imagine the gains for OJ, when we simply show how the dominant Bible critics are all completely wrong?

I mamash don't understand why the Orthodox academics don't do this. And if you will argue that it would be bad for their careers, I would argue that only initially it would be bad. But once everyone read their books, they would see how poshut it all is.

And if you still want to argue that academia would just never accept it because they are just too biased, still at the very least shouldn't we publish the books for the sake of our own skeptics and would be skeptics?

And if the academics won't do it, then there is no shortage of Rabbonim and amateur scholars who could easily take up the task. Rabbi Shalom Carmy, Rabbi Yitz Etshalom, Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, Gil Student, even Ari Lamm. All these people are incredible 'readers' of the text (by definition), and showing the essential unity of the Torah, and showing how the DH is absurd nonsese, would surely be a trivial matter for them.

Why haven't they done it? Why don't they just do it?! Why is Yashar Books publishing silly tracts on philosophy and science, yet neglecting this most essential (and easy) endeavour?

It's mamash crazy!

Idiots.