Why the yeshiva world keeps creating a certain type of OTDer

Or How A Certain Godol* Almost Made Me Go Off The Derech

This was originally going to be a very long post, with quotes and pictures and even sources. But then I realized I could express my point in two sentences. Here they are:

1. Don't make your supreme religious value “chippush haemes” (searching for the truth) and require people to essentially do that every day for hours, and then simultaneously require them to believe obviously incorrect - ridiculously incorrect - things like the world is 6000 years old, the mabul covered the whole earth, Chazal knew all of science, and that Rishonim never make mistakes.

2. If you do do number 1, at the very least don't mock people who try to find answers to these issues as kofrim, idiots, or modern Orthodox, or put them in cherem.

Problem solved. You may just find you can have your Torah and your truth too.

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Here is some of what remains of the early draft below. It’s a little jumbly, but I don’t have time to refine it. I still think it gets the point across.

Unfortunately, the way the yeshiva world is designed we can only get two types of gedolim:

1. The oblivious to the outside world type. These are true Torah scholars who somehow are able to learn all of Torah simultaneously without knowing anything that isn't written in a sefer. These people usually end up becoming the gedolei hador, and this lack of knowledge is extolled as a virtue (which it may well be).

2. The krum as a pretzel type. This type of person contorts and twists anything to match his own personal beliefs. This person may not realize it, but he often is very off-putting to those who actually are mechapes the emes. Unfortunately, many kiruv “experts”, especially those focusing on ‘adults at risk’ are this type.

Here's the type we can never get:

• the true polymath who has an insatiable curiosity to know everything truthfully. This godol would be the closest thing we get to the rishonim, especially the Rambam. Unfortunately, those type of people either descend into modern Orthodoxy (nebach) or go off the Derech fully. Even if they try to find answers, they are mocked by the type 2s.
  

If your religion prizes finding truth, you better make sure you actually have it. Otherwise, you will be left with disdain by some of your brightest pupils.

And its a pity, because precisely since I was forced to find answers I managed to discover new layers of Torah I didn’t know existed. I can see the various strands of the Torah and how they illuminate new perspectives. I can see how the Torah gives a monotheistic polemic and countermyth to the various ancient myths of antiquity. I can see how Chazal used medrash attuned to the issues latent text. I found Hashem in the Torah again. But most people won’t be like me. If they are gaslit about their questions and forced to believe ridiculous things, they will leave, especially if their prime religious value inoculated from their youth is truth. And we need those questioners to find the answers that are surely there if the Torah is indeed the truth.

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*name has been omitted after I didn’t want eggs thrown at me but you can probably guess and I will deny strenuously