The truth, the partial truth, and everything but the truth

Another nutty theory from Avodah:

"The mabul happened, but the scientist lives on the wrong plane of reality to experience its aftereffects. That would explain why the human record is full of myths founded in the mabul experience, but the ground shows nothing. Why people both remember the flood and remember building societies elsewhere at the time (and before migdal bavel!)".

Oy.

I have a much better explanation: The human record is full of myths about massive floods because ..... lots of massive floods actually happened! Amazing how that works! But none of them were the 'mabul' by any stretch of the imagination.

Same author goes on to say:

There is only one emes. It's not a matter of "sufficient to contradict" as though we're playing a game and looking to see who has more points. Both sources of data must be in concert. If they aren't, then obviously I don't understand one or the other.

What's incredibly silly about this statement, and indeed about the whole discussion, is that the statement "both source of data must be in concert (i.e. Torah & Science) is of course a faith based belief.

The author doesn't hold that the Koran and Science must be in concert, nor does he hold that the Upanishads and Science must be in concert. Only Torah and Science must be in concert. Yet, based on this faith-based belief, we have spawned an entire industry of pundits looking to 'reason' to reconcile their core faith beliefs with science.

Either your methodology is based on reason and evidence, or it's based on faith and tradition.

If it's based on the former, then all the Science & Torah questions don't even start, as the global community of scientists has conclusively shown. According to this methodology, there is no good reason or evidence whatsoever to believe that the Torah is a source of inerrant historical truth (especially in early Breishis), so there's no conflict. End of discussion.

If it's based on the latter, then all the Science & Torah questions don't even start, as the global community of Gedolim has conclusively shown. There is no possibility that the Torah could be wrong, so any conflicts from science must be incorrect, for one reason or another.

Of course we have a third camp, those who want to keep their fundamentalist faith and also their science. They somehow want to base their methodology on both faith and reason. Since they 'believe' both must be true, they twist themselves into pretzels dodging and weaving trying to make sense of it all. The basis of their methodology is neither pure faith nor pure reason, but rather 'both must be true!' (which is in fact just faith).

Read this post for a good example.

Problem is, it doesn't work.

Bigger problem is, it makes the people desperately trying to make it work look very, very silly.

Biggest problem is, many of these people might otherwise have great things to contribute to
man's search for meaning, but they waste their time on trying to reconcile the unreconcileable and defend the indefensible.

When will they have the honesty to admit that?

On the other hand.....

The masses can't be expected to be told the cold hard truth, and yet still be passionate about Torah & Mitzvos. Once people realize what's true and what's not, they will lose their faith, and descend into the nihilistic hedonism common in popular culture (quite possibly).

Even hard core atheistic humanists try to make a case for Judaism, (see 'Respecting The Wicked Child' by Mitchell Silver), because they recognize the value of it. And there's no doubt that in this century at least, Orthodoxy is a far more viable form of Judaism than Conservative, Reform or Reconstructionist.

And arguments from Dawkins, Dennett and Harris that without religion the world would be a better place just aren't that convincing, see the review by the Chief Rabbi in a post below.

So, we want the values, beauty and lifestyle of religion (well, most of it), but we recognize most of it isn't true, or certainly not true enough to warrant 100% pure belief. However a community composed entirely of skeptics doesn't seem to work, and will inevitably tear itself apart just like Conservatism is doing before our very eyes. The Halachah has value (mostly), as this article by David Hazony demonstrates quite well.

I think many of us skeptics have come to the conclusion that truth is not the only fundamental. I posted about this a few weeks ago, also see this recent post by Orthoprax for a nicely written summary of a similar idea.

So what do we do? Ignore the truth? Be party to a pious fraud? Keep our views to ourselves? Form a new branch of Judaism? Just drop it and move on?

Over Yom Tov I heard that a well known Rabbi, Rabbi X, says you only need to believe in some kind of yetziat mitzrayim, and some kind of revelation at Sinai and that's it. I heard this from a very reliable source. And this isn't Rabbi Wolpe, or Rabbi Ismar Shorsh, or Rabbi Neil Gilpin. No! This is a well known Rabbi in the Orthodox community in Israel (speaking pivately of course). And I have heard similar from many other Rabbis too. My own Rabbi deems Judaism to be merely in the realm of the 'plausible', though I doubt he would preach that from the pulpit.

So are we doomed to only be able to admit the truth in private? I wonder if there is a branch of philosophy which deals with the truth, and when it needs to be discarded for the better good of society. Hopefully something more than Truthiness.

Anyone have any suggestions?

HALOSCAN COMMENTS

The Kuzari Proof – it works!

I think I finally figured out that the Kuzari proof might indeed work, though maybe not in the direction that some people hope.

The Kuzari ‘proof’ goes like this:

The story of Sinai is so huge - 600,000 males (approx 2.5 million people) all experiencing God’s revelation (in some fashion)- that it could not have been made up and then accepted by the public. Nobody in ancient Israel would have believed such a story if it wasn’t common knowledge already. Hence it must be true.

R Dovid Gosselieb has a long essay about this, and adds that a further argument for this proof is that no other religion has such an origin story. All the other religions start with a revelation to a small group of people, or just one ‘prophet’. If a mass revelation story is easy to fabricate, then why didn’t every other religion start such a story? The fact that there are no parallels shows that such a story could not be ‘sold’ unless it was actually true.

The issue with this argument is of course that ‘Myth-Formation’ is a well known phenomenon (which even Gossleib admits is real and proven). Basically, myths develop over the centuries and are not deliberately invented to fool people. Hence each generation believes in only an incrementally larger myth. There is no huge deception involved.

As to why only Judaism has an origins story on such a grand scale, there are many possible reasons. Firstly, maybe the Jews had more chutzpah than everyone else! Secondly, and more seriously, critical historical writing started with the Greeks around 400 BC. Mass produced paper (papyrus) started around 100 BC (or thereabouts). Before that, most religious traditions were passed down orally, and there was not a clear notion of critically examined history. Early Judaism would have been able to evolve a myth on the scale of Sinai, whereas later religions would not. Finally, so maybe Judaism evolved a unique story. Unique things do happen, and do not in themselves prove anything.

However the Kuzari proof might work in the opposite direction. An event of such magnitude - 2.5 million people fleeing Egypt and witnessing a Divine revelation - would have left some evidence somewhere, either in archeology, history or similar. Yet no such evidence exists. There is no independent corroboration whatsoever.

In other words, we have two possible arguments here

1. The scale of the Sinai story is so huge that it could not have been invented, hence it must be true.

2. The scale of the Sinai story is so huge it would have left evidence somewhere, yet none has ever been found. Hence it must be false.

Given what we know about myth formation and ancient history, which argument do you think is stronger? At best, it’s a tie. At worst, argument 2 is way stronger.

However, there is no denying that we have an amazing and unique story here. A group of nomadic people, (or possibly a smaller sub-group settled within Israel), created a unique monotheistic religion which changed the world. The Old Testament has been called the most influential book ever. For those people who believe that God exists, and has a hand in shaping history, it’s hard not to think that God was somehow quite intensely involved here, in some fashion.

I think this correlates with the Science & Torah view of evolution. The reconciliators argue that even though all the evidence seems to show 15 billion years of purely random evolution, a believer will still say that God is behind it all. (I will discuss the issue of whether this means God is a trickster in another post). Likewise, one could argue that even though the evolution of Judaism/Torah looks random and/or man made, God was really behind it all.

Of course you could also argue the same for any other religion too, that God was really behind it all. I suppose that if you have an intense feeling that God arranges everything for a reason, then maybe your particular task is to follow the religion you are born into, and that’s God’s will. Then again, maybe you were put here to be skeptical, and prove to your co-religionists that your particular religion is false. That could be God's will too. Hard to say really.

And of course this line of argument only works if God (the classical Jewish God) actually exists, in any sense of the word. Some people seem to think that there is good proof for Sinai (i.e. Torah Min Hashamayim), but no proof for God. This makes no sense, since if TMS is true, then God must exist. So, you can hold there is no proof for either concept, or good proof for both concepts, or maybe good proof for God but not for TMS. But it is logically impossible to have good proof for TMS yet not for God.

On my previous blog I came to the conclusion that since there was no way to know any of this for sure, the only possible option is ‘shev ve’al taaseh’. But this just leads to paralysis, and isn’t very practical when your kids are about to start 15+ years of Jewish education. So, we have to come up with something.

The question is, what?

The Story So Far

[A short and not particularly accurate history of the last few years]

A long time ago, in a world far, far away, lived a regular guy called GH. GH was not particularly interested in Science and Torah, though some people he knew quite well were. GH had never been a skeptic, nor had he even entertained any skeptical thoughts, except one time in Yeshivah for about two days, but that might have been caused by eating some bad egg salad.

Then one day, while sitting alone at his computer reading DovBear and Hirhurim, GH had a bright idea. Why not start a blog of his own? He figured a couple of friends would read it, plus if he baited some of the existing bloggers maybe they would come too. He dashed off a couple of posts on some random topics and, basing his title on a long forgotten but quite amusing British TV show of the 80s, named his new blog 'Not the Godol Hador'.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate. The blog was originally called 'Godol Hador', with the tag line of 'I am the Godol Hador, you will obey me'; but in the first of what was to be quite a few teshuvah fits, GH renamed it to something more modest.

The audience was small, the comments were few, the posts infrequent. Then one night, whilst lying in bed, a spark of inspiration came to GH, and the famous ‘chas vesholom’ letter began to compose itself in his head, as if by magic (or divine inspiration). GH knew what he had to do. He jumped out of bed, and began feverishly typing. Too afraid to post this piece of letzonus on his own blog, he posted it as a comment on Hirhurim (and possibly DovBear too).

Later, after the letter received critical acclaim, it found a new home on NTGH. The letter was followed by more ‘insanely irreverent’ funny stuff, all hosted by the Godol’s evil twin, The Koton Hador. In short order the consulting firm of Koton & Godol LLP was born, dispensing advice to the Gedolim of our time. Some ridicule also followed, but we don’t talk about that anymore, it was a long time ago, and anyway, none of those people were real Gedolim, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more say no more.

Soon the Godol’s fame grew, as did his outrage at the events surrounding the Science & Torah scandal. The Godol started debating the issues of Science & Torah, and soon gained a sizeable following of RW UOs, LW UOs, RW MOs, LW MOs and plenty more besides. The issues of Science and Torah were debated extensively; more extensively than Hirhurim, more extensively than DovBear, even more extensively than that bastion of sophisticated hashkafic debate, ‘The Avodah Forum’, (but with a lot less nutty theories from various Torontonians).

In fact, the depth and breadth, and more importantly openness and honesty, surpassed anything ever seen before (or since). No comments were ever deleted and no commenters were ever banned (well, not for long, anyway).

The commenters grew in number, and in stature. Mis-nagid, Ford, Satyaman, David G, Y Aharon, you name it, they commented. Jewish Atheist and Lakewood Yid were both inspired to start blogs of their own.

But there was trouble brewing.

GH, being an insanely honest type of guy, too honest for his own good in fact, began to get a sneaking suspicion that maybe he wasn’t being so honest on his blog. Every time he bashed the fundies with some devastating argument, the Skeptics would pounce on him, using the exact same arguments against him. He tried to ignore them, but at the back of his mind he knew: If the arguments he used against the fundies could just as easily be used against him, then something was very wrong with his position. He had to find some middle ground, immune to the irrational faith of the fundies, yet strong enough to withstand the sharp arguments of the skeptics.

So began the search for a rational orthodoxy.

For many months GH debated the skeptics. He fought bravely, often alone. Occasionally Anonymous would lend her expertise on the Documentary Hypothesis, sometimes even the legendary Gil Student would chime in. But mostly GH battled alone, into the dark hours of the night, sparring with Orthoprax, Mis-nagid and Boruch Spinoza, or Mark, Bishel Akum and various other yeshivah Bochrim home from Lakewood for Bein Hazmanim.

But GH just couldn’t understand what was happening. Debating the fundamentalists was simple, he could demolish their arguments without even thinking about it. But the skeptics; well, they were different. Try as he might, he just couldn’t beat them. He tried everything, Science, Hashkafah, appeals to common sense, a sense of tradition, anything and everything. But ultimately GH had to concede, the skeptics had a point. Just what did GH believe and why?

GH turned to people he knew in the kiruv world, but they were no help. He turned to his Rabbeim, but they were no help either. Only the blog world offered sophisticated debate on these issues, it could not be found anywhere else. And the blog world was dominated by the skeptics (except on the blogs which banned them). Why were the arguments of these skeptics so strong? Why could they not be beaten? Just what was going on? Could it be (chas vesholom) that they were right (chas vesholom)? Perish the thought!

Looking for allies, GH turned to his old buddies DovBear and S. But they didn’t seem to have anything to say against the skeptics either. In fact, they even seemed to agree with the skeptics on some key issues. Just what was going on?! Had all the smart people already figured all of this out? Was GH just a dope for only realizing all this stuff at age 36? Surely not!

Then came the clincher. A well known and extremely articulate skeptic blogger moved into the neighborhood. His arguments were persuasive, his demeanor pleasant. He had none of the vitriol of some of the famous skepto-bloggers, just a quiet self-assured manner, he knew his arguments were correct, and that was all there was to it. GH had to admit, the simplistic emunah peshutah of his childhood was gone forever, to be replaced by….

And so the saga continues…