"One thing I found throughout the book is the confidence in the methodologies of literary scholarship. Perhaps I am biased because of my background in math, but I find that the liberal arts are taken way too seriously by their adherents. They are full of assumptions and guesses, and in the end cannot actually prove anything. Folks, this isn't science. Stop pretending that it is."
These people generally argue like this:
"It's true that Science 'proves' the world is ancient, therefore we must interpret Breishis allegorically. (And I might extend that to agreeing about Noach, Evolution and even the amount of people by YM, just not officially). But don't ask me any questions from the DH, or archeology, or ancient history, because these are all highly subjective arguments, not based on hard science, and therefore they are not strong challenges to OJ. Therefore OJ remains (mostly) true. The end."
The funny thing is, when you probe these people further to try and find out why they think that OJ is so true, the reasons and arguments that come back are even weaker and more nebulous than all the historical, archaeological and literary arguments that they so cavalierly dismissed just a moment ago. Don't these people get it?
And even worse (for the fundies) is the fact that the historical and literary 'soft sciences', have convinced the entire academic world (and even quite a few 'Orthodox' scholars such as Jacobs, Kugel etc) that the Bible is a composite, man made text, whereas the only people who still insist that the Bible is a single Divine text are the people who are religiously required to believe so. That should tell you something.
And just in case you still don't get it, here is a simple graphic which explains it all. Note that the arguments from the Hard Sciences (e.g. Physics and Chemistry) such as an ancient earth and no global flood destroy Chareidi Judaism specifically, but Modern Orthodoxy can wriggle out of it by kvetching like the Rambam. However arguments from the soft Sciences (e.g. ancient history, literary criticism) that the Bible is man made destroy all Orthodoxy, so it's understandable why MO types try to distinguish between the two.
And of course there IS a bit of a distinction: Hard Sciences are extremely strong proofs, whereas the Soft Sciences are more nebulous. But still, even the Soft Sciences are head and shoulders above the arguments for fundamentalist religions, so the distinction is basically moot.
I mean, are there academic departments studying the 'proofs' for Judaism? Are there world wide conferences in whether the 'Kuzari Argument' is solid? Are there journals? Global agreement? Ever wonder why there is a 150 year old 'soft science' in Biblical Criticism, with participation from all types of people from multiple (non fundamentalist) religions, whereas no equivalent academic discipline exists in 'proving the truth of OJ' ?
Seriously, why do you fundies think that is?
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