On the flipside: imagine a world where someone has no Torah at all, just empirical science. How would they rediscover the youngness of the earth, the global flood, the miraculous Exodus, etc? No reason to believe these things other than the book said so.
If we lost all of our accumulated scientific knowledge, we could rediscover it the same way as we did before. If we lost all of our Torah knowledge, how would we find it again?
"In the human-eye-view of the world, everything has deep Godly meaning. Chazal refer to the wisdom of the “speech” of the trees (i.e. how trees “communicate” with humans), astrology (how humans read the stars), palm reading, witchcraft and more. Although nowadays these ideas have been labeled as primitive by those who think they know best, these are actually what the world truly is about. "
slowly realizing that this guy is living in alternate reality and talking to him is pointless
Lol I am just seeing this now. I really hope we get to talking.
You really don't get anything about Judaism do you? isn't Judaism all about an alternate reality? Like with souls and angels and well, God? If you can't have an honest conversation about this alternate reality, you're the one not willing to listen, which is pointless.
I wasn’t referring to your beliefs about the spiritual world. Talking trees, astrology, palm reading and witchcraft are claims about *this* world, and these claims are trivially, demonstrably false. Someone who says “I believe in astrology and witchcraft” is identical to someone who thinks the sky is green or the earth is flat. I.e. not worth taking seriously about anything at all.
Actually, due to the nebulous and morphous use of those terms, they are quite difficult to disproven, as their may be one supposed right way that they work that hasn't yet been tested. It isn't as trivial as you may expect.
I never said a word about talking trees. I even used quotations to make that clear. You decided that astrology is in this world. Palm reading is about the immaterial soul. The fact that it can affect this world is way beyond the pale of discussion between you and me at this point. It's very easy to deny something you don't know about.
I promise you, I am no flat earther and I abide by the same 'freethinking' reasonability you do (great word btw, now that you explained it! Great post!). You think that's impossible, but if you can handle a discussion, I will be asking you to question your reality the same way you are asking me to question mine. My ideas may be even harder to break through, but obviously to accept Judaism, you have to be open to the possibility of a river *in this world* turning into blood which is super 'irrational.' (O, and If rivers in this world is akin to flat earth, we are at an impasse.)
I hope your freethinking helps you question even more basic things (as opposed to rationality which has a harder time accepting rough conclusions). I am currently writing some boring stuff about Plato, but if you can, read them - my next post will begin the first step of our discussion...
1) If we take Chazal at face value, this has apparently happened a few times. Hard to take that at the plain meaning though.
2) God will have to give it again. If he gave it in our generation, I suspect the commandments would be the same, but the history different. It would probably use some other way of deriving meaning than exegesis as well.
I will be addressing these points in my next post... Just a preview, I think there is an important distinction between the age of earth question and the flat earth/spontanious generation etc question
Good post and I agree with a lot of it, but I think that it misses the point. Nobody is trying to learn science from the Torah, just like nobody is trying to learn math, engineering, basket weaving, how to fly a plane, etc. But we have to take what the Torah says seriously. If the Torah says something happened, it happened. As you mention, the Torah is not lying. Yes, there could be many layers, and yes, current knowledge could help us with interpretation, but the interpretation has to make sense as an interpretation (ie, you can't allegorize something that was clearly meant as real). You can understand why if the Torah tells us that Hashem created the world in 6 days, people would have a problem saying that really, life evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
Now does that mean 6 days can't be interpreted in some way that is consistent with the latest and greatest scientific evidence? No. Maybe it can, but you understand why people would have a lot of difficulty with that, especially if your interpretation is not so smooth. It's not because they think we learn science from the Torah. I don't believe you are fully appreciating this point.
Love how you scoff at "the latest and greatest scientific evidence", as if updating your views in light of new evidence is a bad thing. No, the true rationalists (Torah Jews) never change their minds no matter what!
On the flipside: imagine a world where someone has no Torah at all, just empirical science. How would they rediscover the youngness of the earth, the global flood, the miraculous Exodus, etc? No reason to believe these things other than the book said so.
If we lost all of our accumulated scientific knowledge, we could rediscover it the same way as we did before. If we lost all of our Torah knowledge, how would we find it again?
Oh, one of my favorite books discusses the science version:
https://a.co/d/4jjt1Lk
R Dovid will claim we could potentially rediscover the true reality, as it exists in the background if we had the tools
https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/the-acceptance-of-torah
"In the human-eye-view of the world, everything has deep Godly meaning. Chazal refer to the wisdom of the “speech” of the trees (i.e. how trees “communicate” with humans), astrology (how humans read the stars), palm reading, witchcraft and more. Although nowadays these ideas have been labeled as primitive by those who think they know best, these are actually what the world truly is about. "
slowly realizing that this guy is living in alternate reality and talking to him is pointless
Lol I am just seeing this now. I really hope we get to talking.
You really don't get anything about Judaism do you? isn't Judaism all about an alternate reality? Like with souls and angels and well, God? If you can't have an honest conversation about this alternate reality, you're the one not willing to listen, which is pointless.
I wasn’t referring to your beliefs about the spiritual world. Talking trees, astrology, palm reading and witchcraft are claims about *this* world, and these claims are trivially, demonstrably false. Someone who says “I believe in astrology and witchcraft” is identical to someone who thinks the sky is green or the earth is flat. I.e. not worth taking seriously about anything at all.
Actually, due to the nebulous and morphous use of those terms, they are quite difficult to disproven, as their may be one supposed right way that they work that hasn't yet been tested. It isn't as trivial as you may expect.
(I don't think they actually work though).
I never said a word about talking trees. I even used quotations to make that clear. You decided that astrology is in this world. Palm reading is about the immaterial soul. The fact that it can affect this world is way beyond the pale of discussion between you and me at this point. It's very easy to deny something you don't know about.
I promise you, I am no flat earther and I abide by the same 'freethinking' reasonability you do (great word btw, now that you explained it! Great post!). You think that's impossible, but if you can handle a discussion, I will be asking you to question your reality the same way you are asking me to question mine. My ideas may be even harder to break through, but obviously to accept Judaism, you have to be open to the possibility of a river *in this world* turning into blood which is super 'irrational.' (O, and If rivers in this world is akin to flat earth, we are at an impasse.)
I hope your freethinking helps you question even more basic things (as opposed to rationality which has a harder time accepting rough conclusions). I am currently writing some boring stuff about Plato, but if you can, read them - my next post will begin the first step of our discussion...
Good point.
1) If we take Chazal at face value, this has apparently happened a few times. Hard to take that at the plain meaning though.
2) God will have to give it again. If he gave it in our generation, I suspect the commandments would be the same, but the history different. It would probably use some other way of deriving meaning than exegesis as well.
Interesting thought experiment!
I will be addressing these points in my next post... Just a preview, I think there is an important distinction between the age of earth question and the flat earth/spontanious generation etc question
Good post and I agree with a lot of it, but I think that it misses the point. Nobody is trying to learn science from the Torah, just like nobody is trying to learn math, engineering, basket weaving, how to fly a plane, etc. But we have to take what the Torah says seriously. If the Torah says something happened, it happened. As you mention, the Torah is not lying. Yes, there could be many layers, and yes, current knowledge could help us with interpretation, but the interpretation has to make sense as an interpretation (ie, you can't allegorize something that was clearly meant as real). You can understand why if the Torah tells us that Hashem created the world in 6 days, people would have a problem saying that really, life evolved over hundreds of millions of years.
Now does that mean 6 days can't be interpreted in some way that is consistent with the latest and greatest scientific evidence? No. Maybe it can, but you understand why people would have a lot of difficulty with that, especially if your interpretation is not so smooth. It's not because they think we learn science from the Torah. I don't believe you are fully appreciating this point.
Love how you scoff at "the latest and greatest scientific evidence", as if updating your views in light of new evidence is a bad thing. No, the true rationalists (Torah Jews) never change their minds no matter what!