A Blustery Day

A proof I saw

In my previous (aka the really long previous) post, I mentioned that something that was asked of me is to delineate the difference between God and Law.

I saw somewhere (but can't say where...for personal reasons you see, wasn't suppose to find it) a proof written up about why one should follow the torah.
The end results is that it does not matter if God exists in order to follow the torah, becuase the torah is seen as a better system for interpersonal relations. However if there is a God, then it should be innately logical to follows its statutes.

I take strong issue with such a proof. First on a basic level (understanding Jewish law, and later on the very realm of its philisophic proof)

A) Siniactic (did I make up a word?) law is based on the principle of chok, becuase laws of catagories such as purities and impurities cannot be explained, the most famous law being the laws invovled in Parah Aduma. I challenge anyone in the Olam Hablog to explain why the process of creating the ashes to purify those contamentated with impurity of death will make impure the priest who made the ashes.

This proof, in fact, cannot really quantify the existence of any form of impurity, including those who's practices are still around today (ie Tumat Niddah u'Zava).

Further, to call a system better or worse when it comes to interpersonal contact ignores completely the point of this upcoming week's parasha, Parshat Zachor. Running around killing people..yup makes for a great interpersonal system.

Or how about this: Cohanim marrying giyoriot. Unless you can prove by medical examination that she is betulah (a virgin) (something unlikely in this day and age where the hymen can be destroyed by such wonderful childhood activities as ballet!), she ia automatically zonah. That's right, she is like a prostitute. A female convert is assumed to have led a prostitute like life before she converted. If you think this makes for great interpersonal conduct, guess what...you are wrong (I would like to say thank God for people like my rabbi from Israel, who's rabbinic speciality was hard marriage cases for cohanim...he tried finding as many loopholes as possible for love's sake, though it won't work in all cases, so I have heard of a number of situations of what would be assumed as impossible situations actually being solved)

And Judaism is assumed to be the nice religion.

B) There are two huge philisophical assumptions that need warrants in this proof.
1) You can objectively measure a social system as being better or worse.
and
2)If there is god, god comes with the caveat of it being able to communicate with us, and hence can give us directives.

1) As a person who like reading anthropology and sociology papers sometimes, I can tell you that the David Buss (evolutionary psychology) reasoning works to a limited degree. A society that allows for its people to flourish will be the one that exists, no if and or ors about it. Just because one society works at a given point in time and place, doesn't mean that that fact will always hold true. In order to justify that a social system in a better social system, one has to justify why there is a dropping Jewish birthrate in both Israel and the United States and a dropping affilations in both countries (see both the Jewish population survey see the line about weakening ties among jews and the AviChai study). In other words, Judiasm as a whole, by the numbers, is losing ground to the other world(s) out there, which seem to satisify something that allows an individual to think that he is flourishing.

It seems that in the long term, this trend is going to continue. A religious lifestyle actually has to offer soemthing to keep its numbers up (and yes you can tell me all you want about the gains in numbers by the religiously modern orthodox...this is due to the ba'ale teshuva movement, and less so to actual population increases...a good chunk of those raised religious "fall off the derech" ASAP...plus there is a rising marriage age among the modern orthodox...which will result in this and the many articles here...)

To call it a better system may not be true in the sense of numbers.

Then you have the moral question....of course, this bring up a huge amount of questions as to objective morality, and if we know of whatever that objective standard might be when it comes to communal behavior. Remember, although you think mechizahs are the end all and be all perfect way to concentration in prayer, others might see it as a hinderance. (And this is why we get both the Shira Chadasha and the Belz approach in Jerusalem, let alone lack of mechizahs in UTJ-type Concervative synagoges) Which is the most moral mechizah...I don't know, and if you can tell me, then you have told me a lot, becuase people have perspectives about morality.

it is like knowing that the death penalty is the right thing to do...there is no absolute way to be sure, you can only go with your gut on the issue.

2)This fallacy is a little more straightfoward. This is about the defintion of god. Something that made a strong impression on me in midrasha is that it is impossible to define gods existence (or non-existence) on a yes/no system of logic. Otherwise you end up with assumptions about god (or even that god exists). We have absolutely no way of knowing if the bible hold true as god word beyond that it says that it is god's words....this is a circuitous fallacy and should not be encouraged...this holds true for all religious works claiming that it is god's word. There is no way of knowing anything about God, and to automatically link God and word is a suppostion, and should not be part of the proof itself. The proof only says otherwise that god exists; we know nothing about the nature of god. For all we know, by not going around fornicating becuase of the bible's statues, we might be displeasing God (I mean I doubt that, but still...)

The proof would require a whole bunch of other steps to prove that that bible is true without using the bible's own logic, plus show it's divine authorship, ir order to say one should follow it becuase it is the word of god.

As it is, despite it's awe inspiring beauty, I always wanted to know where the matching pottery shards filled with writing about biblical events have dissapeared to....

The best I can do on the bible is to follow Umberto Cassuto thoughts against the Documentary Hypothesis...so I don't see how his epic poem theory of Shemot translates into the word of God. (I would like to put here that Umberto Cassuto was an italian orthodox rabbi...those italians liberalness)

In conclusion:

Stop trying to walk around with proofs...they can be taken apart easily by those looking.

Note: I have not put foward anything as a new arguement for any of these problesm...to those who ask why..you can still apriciate the tree despite knowign (or in this case, not knowing) where it comes from.

posted by In the Lee of the Wind @ 12:20 AM