Avodah Mailing List

Volume 34: Number 92

Thu, 11 Aug 2016

• 1. Re: How to teach emuna (Marty Bluke)
• 2. Re: intelligent design + emuna (Daas Books)
• 3. Re: How to teach emuna (Micha Berger)
• 4. Re: How to teach emuna (Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer)
• 5. Re: How to teach emuna (Micha Berger)
• 6. Re: intelligent design (Micha Berger)
• 7. Re: kiruv cholent [was: how do you teach emuna?] ()
• 8. true navi/false navi (Simi Peters)
• 9. Life saving vs. Torah Learning? (Rich, Joel)

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Zev Sero <z...@sero.name> wrote:
> On 10/08/16 03:37, Marty Bluke wrote:
>> The Ramban that I quoted states explicitly that the majority of Jews
>> completely forgot Torah and Mitzvos.

> He refers to Yerov'am, not Yoshiyahu.   I don't know his source that this
> happened in Yerov'am's time, especially since the gemara tells us that
> even by Ach'av's time they were still keeping kosher, and the names of
> Ach'av's sons show that they still worshipped Hashem -- he didn't call them
> Achazbaal and Baalram, but at any rate it has no connection to what was
> happening in Yehudah, where they had and attended the BHMK even while they
> were serving AZ in Gei Ben Hinnom.

The Ramban writes that "shakchu rov haam hatorah v'hamitzvos l'gamri",
he writes most of the nation completely forgot torah and mitzvos without
any qualifications.

The Radak (Melachim 2 22:8) comments the following on the story with
Yoshiyahu:
    "Manasseh was king for a long time, for he reigned 55 years, and he
    did evil in the eyes of G-d, following the disgusting ways of the
    gentiles. He built altars to idolatry in the house of the Lord and he
    made the Torah be forgotten by the Jews. None turned to it, for all
    turned to other gods and the laws of the gentiles, and in 55 years the
    Torah was forgotten... so the Torah scroll was a surprise for them."

There is a 3rd alternative: that we don?t know.

I believe this is the position of most irreligious people; not atheism but
agnosticism. 

They don?t disbelieve in a Creator, they merely say, the evidence for a
Creator is no stronger than the evidence for a lucky accidental fluctuation
in the nothingness of the mutiverse.

You and I obviously disagree with their assessment, but that?s what they
say.

BTW, I am presently reading a wonderful book that anyone interested in this
topic would do well to read.

It?s called The Cosmic Code by the late Prof. Heinz Pagels
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Pagels> .

He tells the story of Einstein, Bohr, Relativity and Quantum Mechanics in a
very engaging and understandable way (i.e., as a story), and continually
refers to God as the creator, and the scientist?s job is to understand God?s
creation. It doesn?t come across as religious (I don?t know whether or not
he was) but respectful of theism, in a very Einsteinian way (?I don?t
believe God plays dice.?). He didn?t know Einstein personally, but studied
at Princeton with people who knew him, and Einstein was often quoted as
saying he got his intuitive insights from ?The Old One?.

Here?s the book: 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486485064?ie=UTF8&;tag=j099-20

FYI

Alexander Seinfeld

> The idea of matter being infinite (always having existed) is just as
> impossible to understand as the idea of an infinite Creator that is beyond
> scientific detection in the physical world -- and believe that by using
> random natural selection they hae obviated the need to believe in Him.
> 
> They will then challenge that idea by asking 'Who created God?' ad
> infinitum, thus believing they have refuted the 'first cause'
> premise. They somehow do not understand the concept of 'First cause'. By
> definition, the 'creation buck' stops there! The Creator' needs no
> creator because He has always existed. difficult to understand but no
> less difficult than saying the universe has always existed.


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On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 05:35:14PM +0300, Efraim Yawitz wrote:
: In short, do you really believe that Yoshiahu and Ezra were convincing
: people about the origin of the Jewish people...
:          If so, what did convince them?  If that's what you think, then I
: guess the whole thing really is a scam.

You're all-or-nothing-ing it. But I do believe that a small core of
maaminim had to convince the masses that the Torah we have was dictated to
Moshe (+/- a few pesuqim at the end) by G-d, that *everyone* experienced
the 10 commandments, and other core beliefs that the Kuzari Principle
would say it is impossible for them to do so.

We should also be clear about what is our actual topic, since I have
already seen that RYGB and I are talking about different things.

I was trying to answer the question in the subjwect line. Which I
identified as having two parts: (1) giving someone convincing reason to
believe, and (2) teaching the contents of belief once the reasons
(and therefore the basic few individual facts) are accepted.

I think Rn Simi Peters is the only one who broached #2.

But even #1 it appears is not consistently the topic being discussed.
E.g. on Sun Aug 7, 2016 @ 5p, EST RYGB wrote:
> If you are looking for "proof" you will not find it.

> Evidence, you will find aplenty.

And yesterday (Aug 9, @5:58pm) he wrote:
> Is Avodah a kiruv forum or a high level Torah discussion group? I was
> not addressing how one approaches a questioner. I was making a statement
> for internal consumption.

Which is not about teaching emunah, but how does one gather evidence
to create and develop their own justification for belief.

RMBerkovitz was clearly talking about the difficulties of imparting
reasons for belief given the age of Google. The original topic --
teaching emunah (subtopic 1).

And what he was saying is that it's a harder criterion. One not only
needs to have a valid justification (if not proof but a set of strong
arguments and/or personal experience) AND be something that will stand up
to today's knee-jerk cynicism. He emphasized that any justification that
doesn't stand up to critical thought will be subject to that cynicism,
since one needn't be clever to be able to find a rebuttal, likely with
all the sarcasm already provided, somewhere on line.

So, for example, even if the misnamed Kuzari Principle were valid
justification, the fact is that for someone with a cell-phone, they wont'
accept it as such. There are enough rebuttals they coule find with a
few seconds of typing.

To make R Berkovitz's point, it's irrelevent whether more than a cabal
actually did know about ma'amad Har Sinai in Ezra's day. It's only
whether someone can argue that it could have been, well enough to
defuse the KP's power to convince.

On the subject of proofs vs other justification for belief... Just today,
RGStudent on Torah Musings pointed to part II in an exchange of letters
wuth R/Dr Lwrence J Kaplan and Shmuel Rosner in like of RLJK's recent
publication of a seifer from notes of RYBS's lectures on the Moreh
Nevuchim.
<http://www.jewishjournal.com/ro
snersdomain/item/the_maimonides_exchange_part_2_between_ethics_and_the_inte
llect>

Quoting from RJLK's response:

    R. Soloveitchik is well aware of the change in intellectual
    climate from Maimonides' time to our own. He attributes it
    primarily to Immanuel Kant's successful refutation in principle
    (in R. Soloveitchik's view) of the standard rational proofs for
    the existence of God. That is, Kant showed - so R. Soloveitchik,
    along with most modern philosophers, believes - that one cannot
    rationally demonstrate the existence of God based on a scientific
    examination of either the existence or order of the universe,
    since scientific categories, as categories intended to organize
    finite empirical experience, are operative only within the bounds
    of time and space. In this respect, as the question correctly notes,
    "science and divinity are rarely seen as interrelated."

    Does that mean that Maimonidean rationalism is obsolete? For R.
    Soloveitchik, while it is impossible to maintain Maimonidean
    rationalism its original form, it may be possible to update it. Here
    my comment in my previous reply "that R. Soloveitchik's stress
    in these lectures on human subjectivity and, following from that,
    on the subjective nature of religious experience ... have a modern
    flavor and reflect his emphases more than those of Maimonides" is
    important. That is, while R. Soloveitchik's stress on subjective
    religious experience may not be true to Maimonides' own views,
    it can provide us with a way of updating them.

    Thus, in his important monograph And From There You Shall Seek, R.
    Soloveitchik argues that the first stage of the individual's search
    for God takes the form of a natural-cosmic encounter with Him. He
    describes this initial encounter with God as a rational religious
    experience, though, in truth, it derives not so much from man's
    rationality, but from a dynamic, powerful desire to sense the
    transcendent in the finite, from a quest for the presence of God in
    the world....

What the Kalam, Scholasticist or Aristotilian rishon thought they could
get by proof was denied by the Kantian, neo-Kantian, Existentialist,
and most later schools of philosophical though.

And even if Kant were wrong, that would change the answer of how to
justify belief, but not the answer about how to impart belief. The
zeigeist of the world your hypotehtical talmid is immersed in is reflected
by which schools of philosophy (to which I should add post-Modernism,
although I don't think PM is compatible with any Orthodoxy, pace R Rashag)
are currently dominant.

The Kuzari itself prefigures Kant's objections, but Rihal's answer
to the question of how to justify belief is mesorah. Which neither works
for the BT or children of BT, or for many others in a world where few
of those who descend from any of the 3 Abrahamic faiths still believe.

The Rihal has the chaver (1:11) open with 

    The Rabbi replied: I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel,
    who led the children of Israel out of Egypt with signs and miracles;
    who fed them in the desert and gave them the land, after having
    made them traverse the sea and the Jordan in a miraculous way; who
    sent Moses with His law, and subsequently thousands of prophets,
    who confirmed His law by promises to the observant, and threats
    to the disobedient. Our belief is comprised in the Torah -- a very
    large domain.

To recast into the Ikkarim's 3 ikkarim, using Rosenzweig's buzzwords,
the G-d of Revelation is the G-d of Creation. But emunah begins with
Revelation. Which is how Hashem put it as well, in the first diberah;
He defines Himself in terms of Yetzi'as Mitzaryim, not maaseh bereishis.

The Existentialist focus on experience one hears in RYBS is more in
concert with how people think today. We believe in the G-d of Shabbos,
kashrus, taharas hamishpachah, the Author of the Torah that yeilds such
beautiful lomdus, and the Torah and kelalei pesaq by which He gave
them to us.

To today's maamin, the G-d of Personal Redemption is logically first. And
I would suggest that this is even true of nearly every maamin who thinks
his reasons are more Scholastic / Maimonidean. The conscious arguments
(proofs, as the Scholastist believes them to be) and their actual
motivating justifications need not be the same.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

Of course one can google and go to Wikipedia and find rebuttals. At that 
point, as RNW says, you (or your interlocutor) must be a judge, not a 
lawyer. I think the Freddie Gray case is a good one in point of how a 
judge differs from a lawyer, and certainly from the masses. Rebuttals of 
the KP and ID are a dime a dozen and worth about as much.

KT,

YGB


On 8/10/2016 1:12 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> [snip]
> And what he was saying is that it's a harder criterion. One not only
> needs to have a valid justification (if not proof but a set of strong
> arguments and/or personal experience) AND be something that will stand up
> to today's knee-jerk cynicism. He emphasized that any justification that
> doesn't stand up to critical thought will be subject to that cynicism,
> since one needn't be clever to be able to find a rebuttal, likely with
> all the sarcasm already provided, somewhere on line.
>
> So, for example, even if the misnamed Kuzari Principle were valid
> justification, the fact is that for someone with a cell-phone, they wont'
> accept it as such. There are enough rebuttals they coule find with a
> few seconds of typing.
>
> To make R Berkovitz's point, it's irrelevent whether more than a cabal
> actually did know about ma'amad Har Sinai in Ezra's day. It's only
> whether someone can argue that it could have been, well enough to
> defuse the KP's power to convince.
> [snip]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 01:27:06PM -0400, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer wrote:
: Of course one can google and go to Wikipedia and find rebuttals. At
: that point, as RNW says, you (or your interlocutor) must be a judge,
: not a lawyer...

Yes, but RNW is playing lawyer for the emunah side, and he isn't allowing
the interlocuter a layer for the kefirah side, nor to play one himself.
A dayan cannot judge by only listening to one to'ein.

: Rebuttals of the KP and ID are a dime a dozen and worth about as
: much.

This gets to the issue of proof vs evidence / strong argument.

If you really want to present KP or ID, present them as arguments by
pre-emptively acknowleding one could poke holes in either. A proof is
all or nothing, which is why it's wrong to present arguments as proofs,
and in the age of the cynical -- counterproductive.

But as evidence.... It is valid to conclude that KP + ID + the beauty of a
good devar Torah + ... are all most easily explained by positing Hashem's
existence, to the point that the amount of evidence is a convincing
inductive argument. Albeit not proof, but still beyond reasonable doubt.

I still agree with R/Prof Shalom Carmy's 2007 post, though, in which
he eschews the entire deductive philosophical approach to emunah, whether we
speak of proof or of justification. Advocating the more experiential
approach we just saw RLJK attribute to RYBS. Evidence as actual evidence,
not as a description of an argument.

RSC wrote in Avodah v7n87:
> People who throw around big words on these subjects always seem to
> take for granted things that I don't.

> The people who keep insisting that it's necessary to prove things about
> G-d, including His existence, seem to take it for granted that devising
> these proofs is identical with knowing G-d.

> Now if I know a human being personally the last thing I'd do, except
> as a purely intellectual exercise, is prove his or her existence.


On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 11:06:46PM -0400, H Lampel via Avodah wrote:
: And the Doros HaRishonim, Tekufas HaMikreh, brings proof texts from
: Tanach for this in the eras of the Shoftim and Melachim. And I've
: come across additional ones. For one, Eliyahu's challenge to Bnei
: Yisroel to obey either the Baal or Hashem, and not both, as they had
: been doing...

But there was a Canaanite god named "El" (much as the Xian trinitarian
god is also named "God"). And many of the locals accepted Y-HV-H as
a name for their head god, but a name for a very pagan deity, someone
with a wife and children. Use of the sheim havayah doesn't mean they
were discussing the Borei.

Even if Eliyahu haNavi got them to worship one G-d named Y..., it was
only one step toward getting them to worship Hashem rather than some
pagan father god superhuman pagan thingy.

El as a pagan god was more common among the sinners of Malkhus Yisrael
(Elihau's audience) and Kenaanim, sometimes identified with Baal. Y... as
a pagan god was more common among Moav, Edom, the Keini (and since
Yisro was himself Keini, that's a connetion to Moav), and the sinners
of Malkhus Yehudah. (The the aforementioned potsherd written by someone
who thought Bayis Rishon was dedicated to Asheirah's husband.)


-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

The following article about the lack of explanation of biogenesis,
something RYGB mentioned, literally *just* reached my facebook
feed
http://www.algemeiner.com/2016/08/10/its-easy-to-be-an-ath
eist-if-you-ignore-science
"It's Easy to Be an Atheist if You Ignore Science", by R Moshe Averick.
As you'll see below, this kind of thing isn't my mehalekh, but as a
service for those for whom such things "work"...

On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 12:52:44PM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: from http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php
: 
: Is intelligent design the same as creationism?
: 
: No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically
: detect whether the "apparent design" in nature acknowledged by virtually
: all biologists is genuine design...

The Argument from Design is not new, this is "just" its intersection
with evolution and life.

The problem is that there is no rigorous definition of "design". As long
as design is a subjective "I know it when I see it", there is no way to
objectively prove it is present.

Or even to make an empirical argument (non-proof) for its presence.

One can try to make a riogorous definition of design.
The first attempt was useful form, as per the Rambam, Moseh 2:intro
proposition 25 and 2:1:

    Each compound substance consists of matter and form, and requires an
    agent for its existence, viz., a force which sets the substance in
    motion, and thereby enables it to receive a certain form. The force
    which thus prepares the substance of a certain individual being,
    is called the immediate motor.


But more scientifically, design as something you can measure...

- The inverse of entropy. Problem is, over the full system, entropy
  always increases. Life means that there is more entropy in the air,
  etc... that more than compensates from the entropy being lost in
  evolution and living.

  In thermodynamics, entropy measures the number of microstates --
  patterns of molecules -- that all appear to be the current macrostate.
  There are more ways to evenly mix molecules around the room than to
  arrange all of them in one corner of the room.

- Of Informational (Shannon) Entropy -- the minimum number of bits
  necessary to describe a message, with lossless compression. For example,
  if one in general flipped a coin, but whenever there were two of the
  same in a row one picked the opposite, then a message of "HHT" only
  has two bits of information -- you don't need to send it in order for
  the receiver to put together the whole message.

  Adding compression and the notion that two different "messages"
  can contain the same information and thereby counting them as 1, not
  2 microstates.

- Of Chaitin's Algorithmic entropy / Kolmogorov complexity (lots of names,
  same thing) -- the amount of entropy in the description of an algorithm.
  Now we'll allow for compression that does lose information, as long
  as the resulting description is still enough to describe the same
  algorithm well enough for it to work.

See a more detailed discussion at
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/algorithmic.html

And Dr Lee Spetner's (a famous Israeli proponent of Divinely guided
evolution) use of the idea
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/information/spetner.html

Here's the rub: Thermodynamic entropy always increases. Shannon
information always decreases. But algorithmic complexity doesn't.
Even if all use the word "entropy". E.g. see
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb01.html

Not much different than Behe's mistake of talking about "Irreducible
Complexity" -- all-or-nothing -- instead of talking about the absurdly
low probability of such complexity arising without Divine Guidance.

In a sense, this means that if this is the best we can do to define
"design", ID is an indication of creation, not a proof.

But R' Aqiva's argument appeals directly to experience and, I find,
much more convincing.

Medrash Tanchuma on "Bara E-loqim" (Bereishis 1:1):

    A heretic came to Rabbi Aqiva and asked, "Who made the universe?".
    Rabbi Aqiva answered, "Haqadosh barukh Hu". The heretic said,
    "Prove it to me." Rabbi Aqiva said, "Come to me tomorrow".

    When the heretic returned, Rabbi Aqiva asked, "What is that you
    are wearing?"

    "A garment", the unbeliever replied.

    "Who made it?"

    "A weaver."

    "Prove it to me."

    "What do you mean? How can I prove it to you? Here is the garment,
    how can you not know that a weaver made it?"

    Rabbi Akiva said, "And here is the world; how can you not know that
    HaQadosh barukh Hu made it?"

    After the heretic left, Rabbi Aqiva's students asked him, "But what
    is the proof?" He said, "Even as a house proclaims its builder,
    a garment its weaver or a door its carpenter, so does the world
    proclaim the Holy Blessed One Who created it.

The Chovos haLvavos Shaar haYichud pereq 7:
    The analogy of this: When one sees a letter of uniform handwriting
    and writing style, one will immediately consider that one person
    wrote it because it is not possible that there was not at least one
    person. If it were possible that it could have been written with
    less than one person, we would consider this possibility. And even
    though it is possible that it was written by more than one person,
    it is not proper to consider this, unless there is evidence which
    testifies to this, such as different handwriting style in part of
    the letter or the like.

Once we are talking about artument rather than proof, I find the direct
appeal to experience more compelling than arguing over elaborately
designed arguments, their postulates, and resulting air-tightness.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
mi...@aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
http://www.aishdas.org
Fax: (270) 514-1507

 
From: Micha Berger via Avodah _avodah@lists.aishdas.org_ 
(mailto:avo...@lists.aishdas.org) 


>> It's a first-hand experience we can't simply share with  others, and with
those who go OTD, we obviously didn't do so well enough to  justify
the personal cost to keep on observing....

And the same  psychology of those who go OTD comes to play among those
who become BTs.  Experience, emotions, and the threshold of personal
cost.

This is the  reason for those cynical comments about kiruv being more
about chulent than  talmud Torah. Hopefully you haven't heard them.
But that's the seed of  truth.

 
>>>>>
 
It's not "cynical" to say that inviting someone for a Shabbos meal can be  
an effective way -- maybe the most effective way -- to introduce someone to  
Torah.
 
It goes back to the Gemara, I believe:  "Tavlin yesh ushemo  Shabbos."

--Toby Katz
t6...@aol.com
..
=============


------------------------------------------------------------------- 
 
 


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R' Eli Turkel wrote:

Yirrmayahu haNavi prophesizes that Nevuchadnezzar and his son/grandson will
rule over Judea.  Chananiah announces that within 2 years G-d will destroy
the Babylonian empire.

 

I would imagine that Chananih looked like a very pious individual. How was a
Jew at that time to decide between the two opposing sides? Today with
hindsight we know that Yirmiyahu was the true prophet and Chananiah was the
navi sheker.

However, at the time both sides seem to be legitimate

 

My 2 cents:

As a rule, nevi'ei emet  generally told people things they did not want to
hear, while nevi'ei sheker tended to say things that made everyone,
especially the powers that be, comfortable.  

 

Case in point:  Yehoshafat has two reasons to suspect that Ah'av's neviim
are lying (Melakhim Alef, Perek 22):  

First, they are all saying, en masse, exactly the same thing, which means
that they rehearsed it.  (Ein shnei nevi'im mitnab'im besafa ahat.  Or maybe
it is 'lashon ehad'.  I may not have the exact lashon here.  Corrections
welcome.)  

Second, they are telling Ah'av exactly what he wants to hear, which is not
what Yehoshafat-who is a tzadik, despite his mistaken alliance with
Ah'av-expects from a navi Hashem.  Ah'av himself says that he doesn't like
to ask Mikhayhu ben Yimla anything because he always prophesies badly and
never says anything good.  (Check out the perek; the street theater aspects
are almost comical.)

 

I've been asked the same question by many students over the years:  How
could people worship idols/sin/doubt Hashem (pick your variation) when they
had nevi'im?  The subtext is something like:  We, nebbach, don't have access
to revelation/truth/God (again, pick your variation), so we can't help
ourselves, but our ancestors had miracles, prophets, etc.  The short answer
is something like what R' Eli has said:  Where there are true prophets (the
real deal), there's a profitable marketplace for false prophets (the
comfortable lie).  (Sorry, just noticed the pun.)  Determining what is
genuine requires real spiritual work, self-awareness, and introspection.
The fact that there were prophets in bayit rishon did not remove the fact
that there was also, as always, behira hofshit.

 

Kol tuv,

Simi Peters

 

 



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From R' Aviner CPR Course
Q: What is preferable - a CPR course or learning Torah during that time?
A: Learning Torah, which resuscitates the soul. Learning Torah is equal to
them all. Ha-Rav Moshe Feinstein wrote that while it is a Mitzvah to save
people, there is no Mitzvah to study medicine (In his Teshuvah on whether
or not it is permissible for a Cohain to study medicine. Shut Igrot Moshe,
Yoreh Deah 2:155).

Interesting use of word preferable vs required/forbidden.  What "dvar reshut" (if you believe it exists) would ever be preferable to torah learning?

jShe-nir'eh et nehamat Yerushalayim u-binyanah bi-mherah ve-yamenu,
Joel Rich

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immediately by replying: "Received in error" and delete the message.  
Thank you.
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A list of common acronyms is available at
        http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/acronyms.cgi
(They are also visible in the web archive copy of each digest.)