This is brilliant. You have verbalized and organized my attempts at argumentation with the “non-believers “. It’s just not my department. So thank you.
Overall, this piece is a collection of misclassification and misunderstanding. You differentiate between things that are the same and you lump together things that are different. You speak unclearly about things and make up words when they are not necessary. Your conclusions are silly, but they are a product of your misguided premises.
Altogether, it's not surprising that you think you have a good reason for believing in god. This is because you've not only been indoctrinated in god-belief but also have either been taught this ridiculous framework or developed it on your own with insufficient guidance from those who possess clear thought and are free of bias.
>>>Belief doesn’t want to hear about information to the contrary. Belief spits in the face of logic. Belief is just a matter of whim, and nothing more.
This might seem pedantic, but you're confusing the words "belief" and faith". The reason a distinction is made is because beliefs can be justified or unjustified, but faith is never justified. And when I say that, I mean faith similar to belief (a) where it's faith in the veracity of a claim, rather than faith (b) which would be faith in your son's ability on the soccer team.
Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason for it. That's Matt Dillahunty's definition, and I find it helpful because otherwise, it's just a synonym for belief, but now it's reserved for unjustified belief.
Now, I'm not here to tell you how to speak, and I do like to keep in mind that words are here to service us rather that serve as a strict framework into which we must fit and subjugate ourselves. But I find that it would be helpful if we maintain standardization, rather than each of us going off in our own directions. When most religionists are asked about god, the conversation goes like this:
Question: Hi. Do you believe in a god?
Answer: Oh yes! He's wonderful! He loves us and he saved my grandson from cancer and he saved my sister in a car crash. They were both in tough spots, but then they both pulled through!
Q: Hmm...why do you think it was god and not the doctors who helped your sister and your grandson?
A: I believe god's hand is involved in all of these miracles!
Q: Yes, but you're just telling me once again what you believe. Do you have any good reasons to believe in this? It should be the case that if there were doctors with a god behind them and doctors without a god behind them, there would be some way to determine the difference. When one set of doctors has training and the other doesn't, we can tell...and that's how we know that training makes a difference. When one set of surgeons uses antiseptic and the other doesn't, we can tell the difference, and that's how we arrived at the conclusion that pre-operate antiseptics matter. It's not a whim, but rather a good assessment of outcomes as a reflection of differing actions during surgery. So do we have one set of doctors with a god and one without a god to see if a god would make a difference? Perhaps we wouldn't want to know beforehand which group has a god, because this way the data could be blinded prior to assessment...but we would need to know afterward which one had a god? But you have no way of telling god vs. no god. So it seems like you're just making hollow claims, and then when challenged, offering further hollow claims to explain or substantiate, and it's never ending.
A: You can say that, but I have faith that my god is real and that he really did help my grandson and my sister.
Seeing how this is actually how conversations proceed, Matt Dillahunty came up with the best definitions of these words (belief and faith).
It appears that you are in the same boat as this lady in the example, pointing to a god that hasn't been shown to exist.
You open by describing a word incorrectly, which is likely why your perspective is so bizarre. You should have googled the word 'belief' before you began writing.
"Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists."
(There is a second definition, but we'll get to that at the end so as to avoid confusing the two uses of the word.)
There are reasonable beliefs and unreasonable, and it is definitionally unreasonable to have unreasonable beliefs. But let's begin with truth vs falsehood because it's not binary.
We should begin by describing four categories that deal with belief:
1) True things that you believe are true [TRUE POSITIVE]
2) True things that you do not believe are true [FALSE NEGATIVE]
3) False things that you believe are true [FALSE POSITIVE]
4) False things that you do not believe are true [TRUE NEGATIVE]
We should all seek to maximize #1 and 4, while at the same time seeking to minimize #2 and 3. We should do this because we should seek to minimize error. Mistakes would ideally never be made. To believe things to be true that are really false (#3) would be to commit a type 1 error, and to fail to believe true things (#2) would be to commit a type 2 error. Ideally, we'd accurately label all true things as true (#1) and all false things as false (#4) but we're just not informed enough to do this, and so errors exist and will persist.
We don't need a new word to explain belief because rational and irrational are already suitable. A-rational would not mean anything that's not already included in one of these already formed categories.
>>>I won’t say “irrational”, because you can believe something that turns out to be rational, but belief itself is 100% detached from any rational process.
You're incorrect here again because you are confusing the two meanings of the word "belief".
>>>It lives in the guts; not in the brain.
Now you're just being ridiculous.
Guts have no bearing on belief and if you think they do, it means you understand neither guts nor belief. Maybe you meant to be poetic here, but I can't really grasp what the metaphor would be. I hope you don't think I missed your point by being pedantic here, as it sure seems like you were making literal statements here, but please correct me if I misunderstood.
>>>A person can believe in elves or fairies without ever having seen any evidence for or against the proposition that elves and fairies exist, because belief doesn’t care about evidence.
Again, you don't understand what beliefs are. Odd that you wrote a primer on belief when you're not clear on what they are.
Now before I close my response to this paragraph, let's touch upon the confusion between the two meanings of the word "belief"
a) an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists
b) trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
Let's say that the teacher or the soccer coach bring you in to discuss your son's achievement in class or on the team, and after expressing concerns, you respond "I believe in my son." That's what (b) above would refer to. You don't mean to tell the soccer coach that you believe your son exists, but that you believe he can fulfill his potential and doesn't need to be cut from the team. When Christians say they believe in Jesus, they do not mean this. Rather, they mean that Jesus existed (a). They mean that Jesus is the name of the man who was also the son of god and that he was born of a virgin and performed miracles.
By contrast, Orthodox Jews do not believe in Jesus. Not because they want to hold a no confidence vote in Jesus because he's just not performing in a way that we would have liked when we hired him...that would be using the (b) definition. Rather, Orthodox Jews do not accept that Jesus was real. And by real, it's not to question whether there was a man named Jesus. I'm sure there's at least 50 guys named Jesus in NYC right now, if not 500 if not 5,000 if not more. I mean that Orthodox Jews maintain that there was no man Jesus who was born of a virgin and performed miracles and was the son of god. And not because they don't like him! But because there's insufficient evidence for support such a claim.
So when you say that you believe in god as an Orthodox Jew, you might think that you're explaining (b) but you really should be using (a). The second definition refers to having confidence in the actions of a thing or person, not in the existence of a thing or person. So if the car is on the fritz but you want to drive it to a wedding out of state, you might say that you believe in it. And that would be (b), just like you believe in your son that he'll improve on the soccer team. But that's not what people mean when they say they believe in god. They mean that they accept that he exists. And that's a claim that just doesn't have sufficient evidence. There have been claims of thousands of gods, and none of them have ever panned out. The secularists are waiting and willing to hear evidence. But instead of providing extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims, when the religions say ridiculous things like "it's a-rational" or "it's in my guts" they lose all credibility. You don't seem ready to have a serious conversation about what you believe and why.
Okay, I struggle with belief, conviction, whatever you want to call it. I certainly don't argue against the conviction in the Torah's truth. But here is my response to "how it could have happened" that we got convinced to accept as truth something that is part of a broken chain of commission.
In "Kings" for example, Josiah discovers a Torah scroll and realizes that he and Israel have not been keeping to the law. When I read this without rabinnic commentary, it seems to me the plain meaning is that the Israelites completely forgot about this text, had to re-learn it, and re-enforce it. So it was not handed down mouth to mouth, so to speak.
I can imagine a situation where Ezra is able to convince people that their ancestors saw something they did not. That seems not much more difficult than Joseph Smith convincing people he spoke with God. Of course, he couldn't convince them their grandparents knew these things, but he could convince them that their great great grandparents many times removed did and stopped passing it down during times of idolatry.
I'm not trying to question other people's Judaism here, but trying to articulate my own lingering doubts in the assurance from authorities that 600,000 plus people witnessed the events at Sinai. (And don't get my started on my sci-fi fantasies that Moshe could have duped the Israelites with, essentially, smoke and mirrors).
In the end, I put aside these doubts and "believe" on "faith" because, in fact, my gut wants me to--among other things.
Here's the thing, Thomas. Those two periods, Josiah and Ezra, are problematic for the theory that the Torah was "invented" then. The Samaritan Torah is based closely on ours. When did they copy it?
Did they, right around the time that Josiah of Judah campaigned wildly through their land, destroying temple and burning graves, decide, "Hey, these Judahites just invented a Torah. We should copy it!" It seems unlikely.
And Ezra. A time when we turned away the Samaritans because they weren't our people and they were angry enough to make up libels to the Persians about us? That's when they also decided to go all in on the newly minted Torah of the Judeans?
It's not plausible. It's far less plausible than the idea that the Torah had been around for a long time before that. If it was ancient, it's easier to see how the Samaritans might have copied it, even at a time when they hated us. Sort of like the way in which the "Palestinians" try and co-opt Jewish history. But something brand new? I doubt it.
And I get the trickery angle. I can't read about Eliyahu on Har Karmel without thinking that the water he had poured on the bulls could have been a flammable liquid. :)
Maybe you do "believe" on "faith". I consider both of those to be dirty words. I don't have it in me to believe on an emotional level. Maybe the fact that I wasn't raised frum makes it easier for me. I know a lot of FFB folks who lose their emunah continue acting as though they haven't because the social price would be too much. And I bet a lot of them won't let themselves question because the *internal* price would be too much. But I'm an advocate of "the unexamined life is not worth living". And "Check your premises".
I don't know anything about the Samaritan Torah, but I wasn't suggested Josiah "made it up." What I was suggesting was that he re-discovered an ancient text about which he had no knowledge, no oral transmission, and so, essentially he and people after him interpreted that text in ways that may well have been misguided.
And yeah, I've also thought that Eliyahu might have poured kerosene on those bulls :-).
As for being FFB. I was raised Christian, a kind of mild protestant, and didn't embrace my Judaism until I was 40.
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on belief and conviction and am thinking to use this as a starting point for a discussion in my class today on, of all things, vampires.
In Dracula, Van Helsing asks characters to believe in what they cannot believe, the existence of vampires, a belief they resist even when they see direct evidence of it. Because, I guess it goes against their convictions.
>>>and am thinking to use this as a starting point for a discussion in my class today
Oh man...please don't use anything written here for any purpose other than demonstrating poor critical thinking. Bad ideas are perpetuated when people write nonsense and then other people take that nonsense and use it to teach others.
Does this not provide good insight into how uncritical thinking could have perpetuated silly ideas like faith throughout the generations?
>>>I put aside these doubts and "believe" on "faith" because, in fact, my gut wants me to--among other things
Faith is not a good pathway to truth because it will always fail to filter out type 1 errors. Since there's no position one can't take on faith, faith will necessarily lead you to a group of beliefs that include:
Things that are true and that you think are true [TRUE POSITIVE]
Things that are not true but you think they are true [FALSE POSITIVE]
Since faith, by definition, differentiate between the two, it's not a sound epistemological method, which is just a $5 way of saying that "faith isn't a good mechanism to pursue truth." Since it groups truths and non-truths into the same category and labels the entire category as truth, you will need a better way.
That's why Dillahunty says that "faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason for it." If you had a good reason, you wouldn't use a crummy thing like faith, which is weak and therefore terrible.
Thomas, do you not care if your beliefs are true or not?
Actually, I think truth is overrated. First of all we can’t ever really know what is true, especially when we’re talking about things like religion, things that depend upon knowledge of a distant past related through an ancient texts. We certainly can’t know the truth about the origins of the universe with any certainty once you get to a certain point.
I know that it’s true that I exist. And I know that various things in my daily life are true. But once we get beyond pragmatic every day truth, things get a lot more dicey.
So, first of all, I don’t believe a lot of what people say is true can be actually proven.
I’m basically agnostic on quite a bit.
But I recognize that we need meaningful ideas in our lives, strong, narratives, and into some extent it doesn’t may not matter if they are literally true or not.
Actually, it's not. This is special pleading. No Orthodox Jew would ever say this about a Hindu worshipping Ganesha and no Orthodox Jew would say this about whether a car is really is in drive or reverse or whether the scalpel is new or used or whether the water for the pasta has had salt added or not. Of course, there are times when we prioritize other things over truth, such as when we lie to protect someone's feelings or finances or to save them from harm or death. This doesn't mean that truth is overrated any more than saying that paying for grocery items is overrated, but when you're in the paper towel aisle and someone falls and hits their head and he's bleeding, you take the paper towel from the shelf and use it to stop their bleeding. And the grocery store likely won't charge you or the injured man for the roll of paper towel.
>>>First of all we can’t ever really know what is true
Again, special pleading. Total true knowledge may be elusive, but it's a spectrum, where true justified beliefs is considered a good definition of knowledge. However, it's only in controlled examples where we can have omniscient narrator-level information as to the truth of a proposition being tested by an epistemology.
So is this pilot going to get you to your destination and is this doctor going to give you the right injection? You can't know for sure, but that doesn't mean you do no activities to ensure that you can maximally protect yourself from injury and error. My entire point here is that the religion wall off their religion from reasonable scrutiny, pretending that religion should be safe from criticism, and your response is that it should be safe from criticism. But why? Because. Yes, that IS my entire point. People who are gullible fall prey to the mass delusion that religion is in a special category.
>>>especially when we’re talking about things like religion, things that depend upon knowledge of a distant past related through an ancient texts
The problems religion have in substantiating their truth with good evidence is not the problem of the need for good evidence but with the religion. That is why religion is seen as silly nonsense by those who have not been indoctrinated in it. You are an atheist in relation to all the thousands of gods you do not believe in for this very reason and you do not but them any slack. Hence, special pleading.
>>>We certainly can’t know the truth about the origins of the universe with any certainty once you get to a certain point.
Exactly. Which is why the only reasonable thing to say when you don't know is to say, "i don't know." Not to make silly claims that the Egyptian magicians were able to do blood magic and frog magic but not live magic because lice are smaller than barleycorns. It's really so transparent that you have no good foundation.
>>>So, first of all, I don’t believe a lot of what people say is true can be actually proven.
Is this a good argument? That since you are being irrational on Monday you should also be irrational on Tuesday? Or that since you're being irrational at the supermarket you should also be irrational at the doctor's office?
>>>I’m basically agnostic on quite a bit.
We must be agnostic in all things, if you need true justified belief but we can't have truth without a controlled experiment. But on the scale of evidence, with more and more providing greater and greater confidence, we ought to base our need for evidence on the extraordinariness of the claim. And claiming that you should not mix waste water with drinking water unless you add chlorine is a fair claim and it's been tested and we know that it's not only true but that we can figure out the ideal level of chlorine. Can you know that your business partner isn't cheating you but pretending not to? No. But what other choice do you have? You need to involve other people in your life, else go live on a desert island or end your life.
I fail to see the problem this poses.
>>>But I recognize that we need meaningful ideas in our lives, strong, narratives, and into some extent it doesn’t may not matter if they are literally true or not.
Ah! So here we have what you and the others should have just said in the first place. That you don't care if Judaism is true and you're not actually interested. And so it's not even something you believe. It's just a framework to live within, because it gives you structure and happiness. Candyland doesn't exist. I mean, the game does, but the imaginary land that the game describes you traveling through doesn't. But when you're playing, it's exciting when you win. Why? Because while we're playing, we pretend that it matters...that's how modern day competition works, as a form of civilized war and battle. Let's not actually hurt each other, but still compete, so we fence with guards and masks and everyone gets to go home to their families. We run around with balls and no one has to die. But let's not pretend that Candyland is true or real. It's just that we want to play.
But most people are not as honest and courageous as you are, Thomas. Religion would be fine if it were like baseball, with each team's fans merely saying that this is what they want to do. But no...they pretend that they have good reasons and they pretend that it's true.
Thank you for being the first and only one here so far who is honest. I am also honest. For those who want to do these things, orthopraxy is the only good explanation. Orthodoxy fails.
That’s a very long response and honestly, I don’t have the time to go point by point. But I’ll just reiterate a couple things. First, I think you can distinguish between practical truth and theoretical truth. All the stuff about piloting an airplane or buying paper towels or having an honest business partner that’s all practical every day pragmatic truth. Which to my mind is in a different category.
Though I have raised him in an orthodox way, I have taught my son to respect all religions. And I respect all religions. I believe there are many ways to the truth, and by that truth, I mean a good life.
I personally don’t feel the need to invalidate anybody’s religion. And I also understand that everybody’s religion invalidates everybody else’s religion to some extent.
Which is why I don’t pick fights with more orthodox Orthodox People. If anything, I tend to challenge atheists because they are so sure of themselves that they actively try to tear down other people’s systems of living without really offering much in the way of a substitute. Whereas the orthodox people that I know, mostly just want to live their own lives.
Of course they want their children to be orthodox, but we all have expectations of our children. I’m sure they are quite a few cases of atheist parents who react badly when their kids turn religious.
If you’re more interested in my thinking, you might wanna have a look at my post
>>>All the stuff about piloting an airplane or buying paper towels or having an honest business partner that’s all practical every day pragmatic truth. Which to my mind is in a different category.
Worse than making a category error is inventing a category where one doesn't exist.
Sam Harris addresses this point, where religionists make wild claims and then when challenged on them, they respond that these are personal beliefs about theoretical truths and what's it your business what they do and what they believe. When Christians make wild claims about souls swooping into fertilized eggs, it might seem innocuous 100 years ago when the Church first responded to the question of modern-day abortion to anything other than abortion. But even without getting mired in an abortion debate, stem-cell research has been stymied because of these silly religious arguments.
It's easy for you to say that god discussions are theoretical. They quickly become pragmatic when you're a woman stuck in a marriage or a couple with a disfigured fetus that the rabbi you asked deemed insufficient for an abortion. And the Sanhedrin is no longer in force, but for someone who blasphemes or commits adultery or gathers sticks, Judaism becomes very pragmatic very quickly.
>>>I have taught my son to respect all religions...[a]nd I respect all religions
That's a big problem. You don't respect differing views on math or on geography or on radiation safety. And when it comes to things where there are differing views, such as on history, you only respect different views that have a basis in reality. That are verifiable and agreed upon by those who don't merely line up according to partisan bias.
But religion teaches nonsense and you should have too much respect for the people with these views to accept their nonsense without scrutiny, and when you don't you are being uncompassionate while thinking you are doing the opposite. This is the harm that comes from religion. Respect needs to be earned, and dumb ideas without sufficient basis ought not to be respected. And now you're teaching this to your kids. If anyone wants to know how there can be generation upon generation of people telling their kids lies and feeding them bad information, we see it here and now, before our very eyes and in these very conversations. It's a wonder that anyone can't see it, especially once someone has admitted that they care about the social function of the religion rather than the truth value.
>>>I personally don’t feel the need to invalidate anybody’s religion
Do you think that's what I'm doing here? The way I see it, you came here and voiced your perspective, which makes it fair game, and I imagined that you are interested in discussion (having posted a portion of a discussion to a discussion board). I didn't come to your house and knock on your door.
Insofar as you commented, I thought I would comment in response.
When you write that I am "invalidat[ing]" your religious views, you make it seem like I am doing something devious or hurtful. But in a discussion about the truth of religion, is posing a counterargument hurtful? The invalidation of the religion is from the information available, and I am merely the conduit, taking information from here and placing it there. And for those disinterested in gaining greater clarity, they are free to not comment and to not read.
>>>I tend to challenge atheists because they are so sure of themselves that they actively try to tear down other people’s systems of living without really offering much in the way of a substitute.
You reveal here your confusion on what atheism is. Atheists merely reveal to the religionists that their arguments are bad. This has got nothing to do with a way of life or with a system of living. Making claims about fairies ought to be countered with challenges to provide evidence for these fairies. Is it a reasonable position to take to ask the fairy-deniers what they have to offer in place of fairies after they've been rejected?
These lines of consideration are common in those who live in a bubble and have no regularly confronted truth. The indoctrination bubble is really good at encapsulating those inside and making them not even realize there is an outside of the bubble.
>>>I’m sure they are quite a few cases of atheist parents who react badly when their kids turn religious.
Yes, but the negative reaction is because the kids are making strong claims with insufficient evidence.
>>>If you’re more interested in my thinking, you might wanna have a look at my post
I have seen it, but I can look again and respond if I haven't already.
I’m sorry. I really don’t have the time to respond to all this so maybe this is not a good exchange for you and I.
I see you have swallowed the Sam Harris line, hook line and sinker. And that’s fine. You can accuse me of all kinds of philosophical errors. If I had the time I could respond to them one by one. I’m hardly an uneducated person and hardly new to argument. I did post here and that invites replies. But I also don’t have the time for this kind of exchange. So you can take the win if you see it that way.
All that I’m saying is that life is complicated, that religion offers people, comfort, and meaning. And that secularism has just as many if not more problems. And that some truths are more easy to prove than others and that we don’t have to live only by rational proof. You can call that special pleading or pull out other stock phrases if you like.
I wish you and all the other people struggling to figure out the best way to live. Good luck on this journey.
If for example, a religious worldview helps me to lead a happier life, contribute more to the world, raise happier, children, and be kinder to people, then what difference does it make if it’s true
I'm not chassidish, but I have no problem with chassidim wearing shtreimels. I think it's very regal, because they look very fancy, but it's also silly because of all the demands that come with it. What about individual expression? What about when it's too hot? But those are problems for these people who wear one, not for me who doesn't. I'm just here wondering if these people feel trapped and stuck and I want them to know they don't need to live this way. But they can continue.
And that's your argument. You like this. Great...so do I. It matters because it's so obviously not true, and everyone other than you pretend that it is. But the chassidim don't pretend that shtreimels are truly necessary...it's just what they want to do.
To me, it's the same, and to you, it seems it's the same as well, when you consider it more deeply. But to the others commenting here, you'll see that they as of yet disagree with you. They actually think it's true. And people are suffering because of it. Many, many people suffer from religion, from the chassidim who don't know that they can be religious without shtreimels to the people having way too many kids while on a kollel check and no education, to the women stuck with soon-to-be ex-husbands who refuse to permit them to divorce, to kids who feel they can't disappoint their parents after they wake up and no longer want to follow silly rules that don't make sense, to the people who are killed because of religion which is not true, but only what people want to do.
All I'm saying is that your comments are a total departure from what you've apparently written above and from what everyone else is saying. Let's all please notice that.
>>>Since the Oral Tradition acts as a key that seamlessly fits the lock and unlocks the door, it is obviously prima facie true...the Oral Tradition is way too comprehensive and sophisticated to have been willfully fabricated
Judaism uses an unfalsifiable end point as the conclusion to all directives, whether it be "make sure your lulav is this tall" or "make sure your mezuzah script is this neat" or "make sure the tea was made with this kli shlishi." The end result is:
"this is permitted" vs "this is prohibited" or
"you have now fulfilled" vs "you have not yet fulfilled" or
"you must redo this" vs "you can now stop"
When you recite the regular מוסף for שבת when it's שבת חול המועד, you haven't fulfilled your requirement of מוסף and you need to go back and recite the proper one. But if you had to run out of shul for an emergency during מוסף and that emergency only ends after שבת is over, and you were fully engaged the entire time, you do not go back and recite מוסף. Explanations are given as to why the two situations differ in the halachic response to the two situations, but my point is that there are actually no differences. There is no need to recite מוסף in the first place. It accomplishes absolutely nothing and since gaining it provides nothing, lacking it causes no loss. All of הלכה is like היזק שאינו ניכר in that doing things or not doing them "properly" only effects imaginary gains or losses.
When you can write endless checks and your account never has to dispense funds, and you don't even have to have an account, it's an obviously silly system to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated or has broken free of said indoctrination. Orthodox Jews love to feel good about all the מצוה tickets they've accumulated but it's like a kid who gets endless tickets from his friend, but there's never a raffle. It's so difficult to break free of the raffle mindset and you can see here how many people have flocked to this article, consumed no actual content and yet profess to have loved it and gained so much insight, and even want to now use this to mislead others.
Sam Harris said, "there can be no debt without a creditor" but I think I like "if there's no raffle, tickets have no value" better. And when I ask people how they know there's a raffle, they keep showing me their tickets...and you do the same here now.
The difference between belief and conviction is a function of the evidentiary base employed to arrive at one's conclusions -- but both belief and conviction absolutely rely on evidence.
Belief can even summon evidence from books, holy or otherwise, to prove itself. It can rely on personal experience, or the experience of others that's then related directly to other believers.
Conviction, by contrast, can be based on an evidentiary body that's scientific and, at the same time, entirely false. How? Because, in the end, science, too, is no more than a belief system that requires its adherents to bow to the textual authorities espousing the latest paradigm.
See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, a book that demonstrates the instability of scientific "reasoning" and the importance of remaining free of conviction altogether -- even in the "holy" realm of scientific inquiry!
In the end, I suppose, the two are almost the same, and attempting to parse a difference may be less than fruitful.
That is, the Torah and Isaac Newton's Principia, l'havdil, may be equally believable and convincing, though they draw upon widely divergent evidentiary bases. And, of course, only one is from G-d.
Not at all. Read it again. Emunah is properly translated as conviction. Belief is, at most, emunah peshuta. The unthinking belief of little children.
Convictions can be based on anything. Did you think I was suggesting that because someone is convinced of something, that makes it right? Because that would ridiculous. But belief is only ever right in the sense of the proverbial broken clock.
I'm not claiming infallibility for scientists. Anyone who fell for that nonsense clearly never did the "Sociology of Science" unit in Soc 101. They get trapped inside their own paradigms, and then demand that everyone else join them.
Who exactly do they encourage to have emunah peshuta? And in what context. Because emunah peshuta is legit when you're starting out. But yirah is a higher level than that. And emunah is a higher level yet.
Good article. Good points. Perhaps, belief is an avenue for those whose only path left open is a ‘child’s belief’ because they have not strength left for anything else. I knew many like that. Sadly they are all gone. Survivors each and every single one of them. May their Neshamas have an Aliyah.
>>>I sense a sweetness in his soul...You may be right about that
The both of you continue to make claims without evidence.
1) Why do you think souls exist,
2) let alone that I have one,
3) let alone that there's sweetness in it.
Until such time that the both of you quit making things up, you will not be able understand what I'm even saying.
This reminds me of a story Nel deGrasse Tyson tells of when he was on jury duty and the judge and lawyers were going through the voir dire process, where they assess whether potential jurors can be fair and impartial. The judge asked if anyone would have a problem convicting and Neil raised his hand and said that if the only evidence available is eyewitness testimony, then everything I know about it tells me that I shouldn't trust it on the level of putting someone in jail because of it. (Whether we agree with this so far is not the point...rather, it's merely backstory for what I'm about to retell...) What the judge said next, Tyson recounts, was "are there any other jurors, like juror #14, who needs more than one witness before they would be able to convict?" The person in front of Tyson, another potential juror, piped up and said, "Your Honor, that's not what he said!" Tyson then tells about how he resisted with all of his might to say the following: "Your Honor...you were eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago and got it wrong."
The point of me telling that story was to show the irony of the situation here. While I am trying to have conversations with the both of you about what you think and why, and to ask for good reasons, you are making comments that demonstrate your combined lack of sensitivity for the need for good reasons.
I see what he wrote, and I was responding to him that he's very likely making a type 1 error. Type 1 errors are false positives, when the things we claim to see are not really there.
I said this because, from past discussion with Plonius, he has continually made reference to other claims of sensing things for which he could provide no good evidence. I therefore short circuited the discussion here, and jumped to immediately linking this claim of his to his previous claims, all of which I challenged him to justify as truthful claims rather than type 1 errors.
>>>If you don't sense it then you just don't.
How should we differentiate between type 1 errors (false positives) vs cases where Person A actually observes the thing and Person B is missing out? Do you think a rigorous method should be employed, or do we just trust the people who see ghosts to be the paramount adjudicators of whether or not they see ghosts and if we don't see them, it just means we don't have the special powers they claim to have?
This is brilliant. You have verbalized and organized my attempts at argumentation with the “non-believers “. It’s just not my department. So thank you.
I'm glad to have helped.
I love this, Lisa. You really have the art and accuracy of explanation!
Lisa, you are ruthless!
(That’s a compliment).
Overall, this piece is a collection of misclassification and misunderstanding. You differentiate between things that are the same and you lump together things that are different. You speak unclearly about things and make up words when they are not necessary. Your conclusions are silly, but they are a product of your misguided premises.
Altogether, it's not surprising that you think you have a good reason for believing in god. This is because you've not only been indoctrinated in god-belief but also have either been taught this ridiculous framework or developed it on your own with insufficient guidance from those who possess clear thought and are free of bias.
>>>Belief doesn’t want to hear about information to the contrary. Belief spits in the face of logic. Belief is just a matter of whim, and nothing more.
This might seem pedantic, but you're confusing the words "belief" and faith". The reason a distinction is made is because beliefs can be justified or unjustified, but faith is never justified. And when I say that, I mean faith similar to belief (a) where it's faith in the veracity of a claim, rather than faith (b) which would be faith in your son's ability on the soccer team.
Faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason for it. That's Matt Dillahunty's definition, and I find it helpful because otherwise, it's just a synonym for belief, but now it's reserved for unjustified belief.
Now, I'm not here to tell you how to speak, and I do like to keep in mind that words are here to service us rather that serve as a strict framework into which we must fit and subjugate ourselves. But I find that it would be helpful if we maintain standardization, rather than each of us going off in our own directions. When most religionists are asked about god, the conversation goes like this:
Question: Hi. Do you believe in a god?
Answer: Oh yes! He's wonderful! He loves us and he saved my grandson from cancer and he saved my sister in a car crash. They were both in tough spots, but then they both pulled through!
Q: Hmm...why do you think it was god and not the doctors who helped your sister and your grandson?
A: I believe god's hand is involved in all of these miracles!
Q: Yes, but you're just telling me once again what you believe. Do you have any good reasons to believe in this? It should be the case that if there were doctors with a god behind them and doctors without a god behind them, there would be some way to determine the difference. When one set of doctors has training and the other doesn't, we can tell...and that's how we know that training makes a difference. When one set of surgeons uses antiseptic and the other doesn't, we can tell the difference, and that's how we arrived at the conclusion that pre-operate antiseptics matter. It's not a whim, but rather a good assessment of outcomes as a reflection of differing actions during surgery. So do we have one set of doctors with a god and one without a god to see if a god would make a difference? Perhaps we wouldn't want to know beforehand which group has a god, because this way the data could be blinded prior to assessment...but we would need to know afterward which one had a god? But you have no way of telling god vs. no god. So it seems like you're just making hollow claims, and then when challenged, offering further hollow claims to explain or substantiate, and it's never ending.
A: You can say that, but I have faith that my god is real and that he really did help my grandson and my sister.
Seeing how this is actually how conversations proceed, Matt Dillahunty came up with the best definitions of these words (belief and faith).
It appears that you are in the same boat as this lady in the example, pointing to a god that hasn't been shown to exist.
>>>Belief is inherently a-rational.
You open by describing a word incorrectly, which is likely why your perspective is so bizarre. You should have googled the word 'belief' before you began writing.
"Belief is an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists."
(There is a second definition, but we'll get to that at the end so as to avoid confusing the two uses of the word.)
There are reasonable beliefs and unreasonable, and it is definitionally unreasonable to have unreasonable beliefs. But let's begin with truth vs falsehood because it's not binary.
We should begin by describing four categories that deal with belief:
1) True things that you believe are true [TRUE POSITIVE]
2) True things that you do not believe are true [FALSE NEGATIVE]
3) False things that you believe are true [FALSE POSITIVE]
4) False things that you do not believe are true [TRUE NEGATIVE]
We should all seek to maximize #1 and 4, while at the same time seeking to minimize #2 and 3. We should do this because we should seek to minimize error. Mistakes would ideally never be made. To believe things to be true that are really false (#3) would be to commit a type 1 error, and to fail to believe true things (#2) would be to commit a type 2 error. Ideally, we'd accurately label all true things as true (#1) and all false things as false (#4) but we're just not informed enough to do this, and so errors exist and will persist.
We don't need a new word to explain belief because rational and irrational are already suitable. A-rational would not mean anything that's not already included in one of these already formed categories.
>>>I won’t say “irrational”, because you can believe something that turns out to be rational, but belief itself is 100% detached from any rational process.
You're incorrect here again because you are confusing the two meanings of the word "belief".
>>>It lives in the guts; not in the brain.
Now you're just being ridiculous.
Guts have no bearing on belief and if you think they do, it means you understand neither guts nor belief. Maybe you meant to be poetic here, but I can't really grasp what the metaphor would be. I hope you don't think I missed your point by being pedantic here, as it sure seems like you were making literal statements here, but please correct me if I misunderstood.
>>>A person can believe in elves or fairies without ever having seen any evidence for or against the proposition that elves and fairies exist, because belief doesn’t care about evidence.
Again, you don't understand what beliefs are. Odd that you wrote a primer on belief when you're not clear on what they are.
Now before I close my response to this paragraph, let's touch upon the confusion between the two meanings of the word "belief"
a) an acceptance that a statement is true or that something exists
b) trust, faith, or confidence in someone or something.
Let's say that the teacher or the soccer coach bring you in to discuss your son's achievement in class or on the team, and after expressing concerns, you respond "I believe in my son." That's what (b) above would refer to. You don't mean to tell the soccer coach that you believe your son exists, but that you believe he can fulfill his potential and doesn't need to be cut from the team. When Christians say they believe in Jesus, they do not mean this. Rather, they mean that Jesus existed (a). They mean that Jesus is the name of the man who was also the son of god and that he was born of a virgin and performed miracles.
By contrast, Orthodox Jews do not believe in Jesus. Not because they want to hold a no confidence vote in Jesus because he's just not performing in a way that we would have liked when we hired him...that would be using the (b) definition. Rather, Orthodox Jews do not accept that Jesus was real. And by real, it's not to question whether there was a man named Jesus. I'm sure there's at least 50 guys named Jesus in NYC right now, if not 500 if not 5,000 if not more. I mean that Orthodox Jews maintain that there was no man Jesus who was born of a virgin and performed miracles and was the son of god. And not because they don't like him! But because there's insufficient evidence for support such a claim.
So when you say that you believe in god as an Orthodox Jew, you might think that you're explaining (b) but you really should be using (a). The second definition refers to having confidence in the actions of a thing or person, not in the existence of a thing or person. So if the car is on the fritz but you want to drive it to a wedding out of state, you might say that you believe in it. And that would be (b), just like you believe in your son that he'll improve on the soccer team. But that's not what people mean when they say they believe in god. They mean that they accept that he exists. And that's a claim that just doesn't have sufficient evidence. There have been claims of thousands of gods, and none of them have ever panned out. The secularists are waiting and willing to hear evidence. But instead of providing extraordinary evidence for your extraordinary claims, when the religions say ridiculous things like "it's a-rational" or "it's in my guts" they lose all credibility. You don't seem ready to have a serious conversation about what you believe and why.
Okay, I struggle with belief, conviction, whatever you want to call it. I certainly don't argue against the conviction in the Torah's truth. But here is my response to "how it could have happened" that we got convinced to accept as truth something that is part of a broken chain of commission.
In "Kings" for example, Josiah discovers a Torah scroll and realizes that he and Israel have not been keeping to the law. When I read this without rabinnic commentary, it seems to me the plain meaning is that the Israelites completely forgot about this text, had to re-learn it, and re-enforce it. So it was not handed down mouth to mouth, so to speak.
I can imagine a situation where Ezra is able to convince people that their ancestors saw something they did not. That seems not much more difficult than Joseph Smith convincing people he spoke with God. Of course, he couldn't convince them their grandparents knew these things, but he could convince them that their great great grandparents many times removed did and stopped passing it down during times of idolatry.
I'm not trying to question other people's Judaism here, but trying to articulate my own lingering doubts in the assurance from authorities that 600,000 plus people witnessed the events at Sinai. (And don't get my started on my sci-fi fantasies that Moshe could have duped the Israelites with, essentially, smoke and mirrors).
In the end, I put aside these doubts and "believe" on "faith" because, in fact, my gut wants me to--among other things.
Here's the thing, Thomas. Those two periods, Josiah and Ezra, are problematic for the theory that the Torah was "invented" then. The Samaritan Torah is based closely on ours. When did they copy it?
Did they, right around the time that Josiah of Judah campaigned wildly through their land, destroying temple and burning graves, decide, "Hey, these Judahites just invented a Torah. We should copy it!" It seems unlikely.
And Ezra. A time when we turned away the Samaritans because they weren't our people and they were angry enough to make up libels to the Persians about us? That's when they also decided to go all in on the newly minted Torah of the Judeans?
It's not plausible. It's far less plausible than the idea that the Torah had been around for a long time before that. If it was ancient, it's easier to see how the Samaritans might have copied it, even at a time when they hated us. Sort of like the way in which the "Palestinians" try and co-opt Jewish history. But something brand new? I doubt it.
And I get the trickery angle. I can't read about Eliyahu on Har Karmel without thinking that the water he had poured on the bulls could have been a flammable liquid. :)
Maybe you do "believe" on "faith". I consider both of those to be dirty words. I don't have it in me to believe on an emotional level. Maybe the fact that I wasn't raised frum makes it easier for me. I know a lot of FFB folks who lose their emunah continue acting as though they haven't because the social price would be too much. And I bet a lot of them won't let themselves question because the *internal* price would be too much. But I'm an advocate of "the unexamined life is not worth living". And "Check your premises".
I don't know anything about the Samaritan Torah, but I wasn't suggested Josiah "made it up." What I was suggesting was that he re-discovered an ancient text about which he had no knowledge, no oral transmission, and so, essentially he and people after him interpreted that text in ways that may well have been misguided.
And yeah, I've also thought that Eliyahu might have poured kerosene on those bulls :-).
As for being FFB. I was raised Christian, a kind of mild protestant, and didn't embrace my Judaism until I was 40.
Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts on belief and conviction and am thinking to use this as a starting point for a discussion in my class today on, of all things, vampires.
In Dracula, Van Helsing asks characters to believe in what they cannot believe, the existence of vampires, a belief they resist even when they see direct evidence of it. Because, I guess it goes against their convictions.
>>>and am thinking to use this as a starting point for a discussion in my class today
Oh man...please don't use anything written here for any purpose other than demonstrating poor critical thinking. Bad ideas are perpetuated when people write nonsense and then other people take that nonsense and use it to teach others.
Does this not provide good insight into how uncritical thinking could have perpetuated silly ideas like faith throughout the generations?
I’ll perhaps reply after all sometime over the week as this thread, for better or worse, remains on my mind.
>>>I put aside these doubts and "believe" on "faith" because, in fact, my gut wants me to--among other things
Faith is not a good pathway to truth because it will always fail to filter out type 1 errors. Since there's no position one can't take on faith, faith will necessarily lead you to a group of beliefs that include:
Things that are true and that you think are true [TRUE POSITIVE]
Things that are not true but you think they are true [FALSE POSITIVE]
Since faith, by definition, differentiate between the two, it's not a sound epistemological method, which is just a $5 way of saying that "faith isn't a good mechanism to pursue truth." Since it groups truths and non-truths into the same category and labels the entire category as truth, you will need a better way.
That's why Dillahunty says that "faith is the excuse people give for believing something when they don't have a good reason for it." If you had a good reason, you wouldn't use a crummy thing like faith, which is weak and therefore terrible.
Thomas, do you not care if your beliefs are true or not?
Actually, I think truth is overrated. First of all we can’t ever really know what is true, especially when we’re talking about things like religion, things that depend upon knowledge of a distant past related through an ancient texts. We certainly can’t know the truth about the origins of the universe with any certainty once you get to a certain point.
I know that it’s true that I exist. And I know that various things in my daily life are true. But once we get beyond pragmatic every day truth, things get a lot more dicey.
So, first of all, I don’t believe a lot of what people say is true can be actually proven.
I’m basically agnostic on quite a bit.
But I recognize that we need meaningful ideas in our lives, strong, narratives, and into some extent it doesn’t may not matter if they are literally true or not.
>>>Actually, I think truth is overrated.
Actually, it's not. This is special pleading. No Orthodox Jew would ever say this about a Hindu worshipping Ganesha and no Orthodox Jew would say this about whether a car is really is in drive or reverse or whether the scalpel is new or used or whether the water for the pasta has had salt added or not. Of course, there are times when we prioritize other things over truth, such as when we lie to protect someone's feelings or finances or to save them from harm or death. This doesn't mean that truth is overrated any more than saying that paying for grocery items is overrated, but when you're in the paper towel aisle and someone falls and hits their head and he's bleeding, you take the paper towel from the shelf and use it to stop their bleeding. And the grocery store likely won't charge you or the injured man for the roll of paper towel.
>>>First of all we can’t ever really know what is true
Again, special pleading. Total true knowledge may be elusive, but it's a spectrum, where true justified beliefs is considered a good definition of knowledge. However, it's only in controlled examples where we can have omniscient narrator-level information as to the truth of a proposition being tested by an epistemology.
So is this pilot going to get you to your destination and is this doctor going to give you the right injection? You can't know for sure, but that doesn't mean you do no activities to ensure that you can maximally protect yourself from injury and error. My entire point here is that the religion wall off their religion from reasonable scrutiny, pretending that religion should be safe from criticism, and your response is that it should be safe from criticism. But why? Because. Yes, that IS my entire point. People who are gullible fall prey to the mass delusion that religion is in a special category.
>>>especially when we’re talking about things like religion, things that depend upon knowledge of a distant past related through an ancient texts
The problems religion have in substantiating their truth with good evidence is not the problem of the need for good evidence but with the religion. That is why religion is seen as silly nonsense by those who have not been indoctrinated in it. You are an atheist in relation to all the thousands of gods you do not believe in for this very reason and you do not but them any slack. Hence, special pleading.
>>>We certainly can’t know the truth about the origins of the universe with any certainty once you get to a certain point.
Exactly. Which is why the only reasonable thing to say when you don't know is to say, "i don't know." Not to make silly claims that the Egyptian magicians were able to do blood magic and frog magic but not live magic because lice are smaller than barleycorns. It's really so transparent that you have no good foundation.
>>>So, first of all, I don’t believe a lot of what people say is true can be actually proven.
Is this a good argument? That since you are being irrational on Monday you should also be irrational on Tuesday? Or that since you're being irrational at the supermarket you should also be irrational at the doctor's office?
>>>I’m basically agnostic on quite a bit.
We must be agnostic in all things, if you need true justified belief but we can't have truth without a controlled experiment. But on the scale of evidence, with more and more providing greater and greater confidence, we ought to base our need for evidence on the extraordinariness of the claim. And claiming that you should not mix waste water with drinking water unless you add chlorine is a fair claim and it's been tested and we know that it's not only true but that we can figure out the ideal level of chlorine. Can you know that your business partner isn't cheating you but pretending not to? No. But what other choice do you have? You need to involve other people in your life, else go live on a desert island or end your life.
I fail to see the problem this poses.
>>>But I recognize that we need meaningful ideas in our lives, strong, narratives, and into some extent it doesn’t may not matter if they are literally true or not.
Ah! So here we have what you and the others should have just said in the first place. That you don't care if Judaism is true and you're not actually interested. And so it's not even something you believe. It's just a framework to live within, because it gives you structure and happiness. Candyland doesn't exist. I mean, the game does, but the imaginary land that the game describes you traveling through doesn't. But when you're playing, it's exciting when you win. Why? Because while we're playing, we pretend that it matters...that's how modern day competition works, as a form of civilized war and battle. Let's not actually hurt each other, but still compete, so we fence with guards and masks and everyone gets to go home to their families. We run around with balls and no one has to die. But let's not pretend that Candyland is true or real. It's just that we want to play.
But most people are not as honest and courageous as you are, Thomas. Religion would be fine if it were like baseball, with each team's fans merely saying that this is what they want to do. But no...they pretend that they have good reasons and they pretend that it's true.
Thank you for being the first and only one here so far who is honest. I am also honest. For those who want to do these things, orthopraxy is the only good explanation. Orthodoxy fails.
That’s a very long response and honestly, I don’t have the time to go point by point. But I’ll just reiterate a couple things. First, I think you can distinguish between practical truth and theoretical truth. All the stuff about piloting an airplane or buying paper towels or having an honest business partner that’s all practical every day pragmatic truth. Which to my mind is in a different category.
Though I have raised him in an orthodox way, I have taught my son to respect all religions. And I respect all religions. I believe there are many ways to the truth, and by that truth, I mean a good life.
I personally don’t feel the need to invalidate anybody’s religion. And I also understand that everybody’s religion invalidates everybody else’s religion to some extent.
Which is why I don’t pick fights with more orthodox Orthodox People. If anything, I tend to challenge atheists because they are so sure of themselves that they actively try to tear down other people’s systems of living without really offering much in the way of a substitute. Whereas the orthodox people that I know, mostly just want to live their own lives.
Of course they want their children to be orthodox, but we all have expectations of our children. I’m sure they are quite a few cases of atheist parents who react badly when their kids turn religious.
If you’re more interested in my thinking, you might wanna have a look at my post
https://open.substack.com/pub/perplexedjew/p/were-all-orthopraxists-now?r=hhumo&utm_medium=ios
>>>All the stuff about piloting an airplane or buying paper towels or having an honest business partner that’s all practical every day pragmatic truth. Which to my mind is in a different category.
Worse than making a category error is inventing a category where one doesn't exist.
Sam Harris addresses this point, where religionists make wild claims and then when challenged on them, they respond that these are personal beliefs about theoretical truths and what's it your business what they do and what they believe. When Christians make wild claims about souls swooping into fertilized eggs, it might seem innocuous 100 years ago when the Church first responded to the question of modern-day abortion to anything other than abortion. But even without getting mired in an abortion debate, stem-cell research has been stymied because of these silly religious arguments.
It's easy for you to say that god discussions are theoretical. They quickly become pragmatic when you're a woman stuck in a marriage or a couple with a disfigured fetus that the rabbi you asked deemed insufficient for an abortion. And the Sanhedrin is no longer in force, but for someone who blasphemes or commits adultery or gathers sticks, Judaism becomes very pragmatic very quickly.
>>>I have taught my son to respect all religions...[a]nd I respect all religions
That's a big problem. You don't respect differing views on math or on geography or on radiation safety. And when it comes to things where there are differing views, such as on history, you only respect different views that have a basis in reality. That are verifiable and agreed upon by those who don't merely line up according to partisan bias.
But religion teaches nonsense and you should have too much respect for the people with these views to accept their nonsense without scrutiny, and when you don't you are being uncompassionate while thinking you are doing the opposite. This is the harm that comes from religion. Respect needs to be earned, and dumb ideas without sufficient basis ought not to be respected. And now you're teaching this to your kids. If anyone wants to know how there can be generation upon generation of people telling their kids lies and feeding them bad information, we see it here and now, before our very eyes and in these very conversations. It's a wonder that anyone can't see it, especially once someone has admitted that they care about the social function of the religion rather than the truth value.
>>>I personally don’t feel the need to invalidate anybody’s religion
Do you think that's what I'm doing here? The way I see it, you came here and voiced your perspective, which makes it fair game, and I imagined that you are interested in discussion (having posted a portion of a discussion to a discussion board). I didn't come to your house and knock on your door.
Insofar as you commented, I thought I would comment in response.
When you write that I am "invalidat[ing]" your religious views, you make it seem like I am doing something devious or hurtful. But in a discussion about the truth of religion, is posing a counterargument hurtful? The invalidation of the religion is from the information available, and I am merely the conduit, taking information from here and placing it there. And for those disinterested in gaining greater clarity, they are free to not comment and to not read.
>>>I tend to challenge atheists because they are so sure of themselves that they actively try to tear down other people’s systems of living without really offering much in the way of a substitute.
You reveal here your confusion on what atheism is. Atheists merely reveal to the religionists that their arguments are bad. This has got nothing to do with a way of life or with a system of living. Making claims about fairies ought to be countered with challenges to provide evidence for these fairies. Is it a reasonable position to take to ask the fairy-deniers what they have to offer in place of fairies after they've been rejected?
These lines of consideration are common in those who live in a bubble and have no regularly confronted truth. The indoctrination bubble is really good at encapsulating those inside and making them not even realize there is an outside of the bubble.
>>>I’m sure they are quite a few cases of atheist parents who react badly when their kids turn religious.
Yes, but the negative reaction is because the kids are making strong claims with insufficient evidence.
>>>If you’re more interested in my thinking, you might wanna have a look at my post
I have seen it, but I can look again and respond if I haven't already.
I’m sorry. I really don’t have the time to respond to all this so maybe this is not a good exchange for you and I.
I see you have swallowed the Sam Harris line, hook line and sinker. And that’s fine. You can accuse me of all kinds of philosophical errors. If I had the time I could respond to them one by one. I’m hardly an uneducated person and hardly new to argument. I did post here and that invites replies. But I also don’t have the time for this kind of exchange. So you can take the win if you see it that way.
All that I’m saying is that life is complicated, that religion offers people, comfort, and meaning. And that secularism has just as many if not more problems. And that some truths are more easy to prove than others and that we don’t have to live only by rational proof. You can call that special pleading or pull out other stock phrases if you like.
I wish you and all the other people struggling to figure out the best way to live. Good luck on this journey.
If for example, a religious worldview helps me to lead a happier life, contribute more to the world, raise happier, children, and be kinder to people, then what difference does it make if it’s true
I'm not chassidish, but I have no problem with chassidim wearing shtreimels. I think it's very regal, because they look very fancy, but it's also silly because of all the demands that come with it. What about individual expression? What about when it's too hot? But those are problems for these people who wear one, not for me who doesn't. I'm just here wondering if these people feel trapped and stuck and I want them to know they don't need to live this way. But they can continue.
And that's your argument. You like this. Great...so do I. It matters because it's so obviously not true, and everyone other than you pretend that it is. But the chassidim don't pretend that shtreimels are truly necessary...it's just what they want to do.
To me, it's the same, and to you, it seems it's the same as well, when you consider it more deeply. But to the others commenting here, you'll see that they as of yet disagree with you. They actually think it's true. And people are suffering because of it. Many, many people suffer from religion, from the chassidim who don't know that they can be religious without shtreimels to the people having way too many kids while on a kollel check and no education, to the women stuck with soon-to-be ex-husbands who refuse to permit them to divorce, to kids who feel they can't disappoint their parents after they wake up and no longer want to follow silly rules that don't make sense, to the people who are killed because of religion which is not true, but only what people want to do.
All I'm saying is that your comments are a total departure from what you've apparently written above and from what everyone else is saying. Let's all please notice that.
>>>Since the Oral Tradition acts as a key that seamlessly fits the lock and unlocks the door, it is obviously prima facie true...the Oral Tradition is way too comprehensive and sophisticated to have been willfully fabricated
Judaism uses an unfalsifiable end point as the conclusion to all directives, whether it be "make sure your lulav is this tall" or "make sure your mezuzah script is this neat" or "make sure the tea was made with this kli shlishi." The end result is:
"this is permitted" vs "this is prohibited" or
"you have now fulfilled" vs "you have not yet fulfilled" or
"you must redo this" vs "you can now stop"
When you recite the regular מוסף for שבת when it's שבת חול המועד, you haven't fulfilled your requirement of מוסף and you need to go back and recite the proper one. But if you had to run out of shul for an emergency during מוסף and that emergency only ends after שבת is over, and you were fully engaged the entire time, you do not go back and recite מוסף. Explanations are given as to why the two situations differ in the halachic response to the two situations, but my point is that there are actually no differences. There is no need to recite מוסף in the first place. It accomplishes absolutely nothing and since gaining it provides nothing, lacking it causes no loss. All of הלכה is like היזק שאינו ניכר in that doing things or not doing them "properly" only effects imaginary gains or losses.
When you can write endless checks and your account never has to dispense funds, and you don't even have to have an account, it's an obviously silly system to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated or has broken free of said indoctrination. Orthodox Jews love to feel good about all the מצוה tickets they've accumulated but it's like a kid who gets endless tickets from his friend, but there's never a raffle. It's so difficult to break free of the raffle mindset and you can see here how many people have flocked to this article, consumed no actual content and yet profess to have loved it and gained so much insight, and even want to now use this to mislead others.
Sam Harris said, "there can be no debt without a creditor" but I think I like "if there's no raffle, tickets have no value" better. And when I ask people how they know there's a raffle, they keep showing me their tickets...and you do the same here now.
I think there may be a mistake here.
The difference between belief and conviction is a function of the evidentiary base employed to arrive at one's conclusions -- but both belief and conviction absolutely rely on evidence.
Belief can even summon evidence from books, holy or otherwise, to prove itself. It can rely on personal experience, or the experience of others that's then related directly to other believers.
Conviction, by contrast, can be based on an evidentiary body that's scientific and, at the same time, entirely false. How? Because, in the end, science, too, is no more than a belief system that requires its adherents to bow to the textual authorities espousing the latest paradigm.
See The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn, a book that demonstrates the instability of scientific "reasoning" and the importance of remaining free of conviction altogether -- even in the "holy" realm of scientific inquiry!
In the end, I suppose, the two are almost the same, and attempting to parse a difference may be less than fruitful.
That is, the Torah and Isaac Newton's Principia, l'havdil, may be equally believable and convincing, though they draw upon widely divergent evidentiary bases. And, of course, only one is from G-d.
Not at all. Read it again. Emunah is properly translated as conviction. Belief is, at most, emunah peshuta. The unthinking belief of little children.
Convictions can be based on anything. Did you think I was suggesting that because someone is convinced of something, that makes it right? Because that would ridiculous. But belief is only ever right in the sense of the proverbial broken clock.
I'm not claiming infallibility for scientists. Anyone who fell for that nonsense clearly never did the "Sociology of Science" unit in Soc 101. They get trapped inside their own paradigms, and then demand that everyone else join them.
You're arguing a complete strawman here, Dean.
Forgive me, emuna is the unthinking belief of little children?
No. Emunah peshutah is. You should read more carefully. Do you know the difference between emunah and emunah peshutah?
Please, explain. The Baal Shem Tov and a number of other Chssidix Masters encourage us to have emunah peshuta.
*Chasidic
Who exactly do they encourage to have emunah peshuta? And in what context. Because emunah peshuta is legit when you're starting out. But yirah is a higher level than that. And emunah is a higher level yet.
Emunah peshuta is not for grownups who think.
Hi Lisa, I read and enjoyed much of your writing back in the day. Especially the Biblical chronology type stuff (eg stuff like this: https://slifkin-opinions.blogspot.com/2013/01/torah-misinai.html?showComment=1359574995487#c521554585818749334 ) IIRC, you had a whole bunch of blogs. Any way I can access your old writings?
Thanks in advance.
Good article. Good points. Perhaps, belief is an avenue for those whose only path left open is a ‘child’s belief’ because they have not strength left for anything else. I knew many like that. Sadly they are all gone. Survivors each and every single one of them. May their Neshamas have an Aliyah.
אמן
Ramchal "ever jew needs to believe and know"
The Ramchal wrote in English?
How is this different from the guy who thought whole and holy were related? The Ramchal never said the word "believe".
You may be right about that.
>>>I sense a sweetness in his soul...You may be right about that
The both of you continue to make claims without evidence.
1) Why do you think souls exist,
2) let alone that I have one,
3) let alone that there's sweetness in it.
Until such time that the both of you quit making things up, you will not be able understand what I'm even saying.
This reminds me of a story Nel deGrasse Tyson tells of when he was on jury duty and the judge and lawyers were going through the voir dire process, where they assess whether potential jurors can be fair and impartial. The judge asked if anyone would have a problem convicting and Neil raised his hand and said that if the only evidence available is eyewitness testimony, then everything I know about it tells me that I shouldn't trust it on the level of putting someone in jail because of it. (Whether we agree with this so far is not the point...rather, it's merely backstory for what I'm about to retell...) What the judge said next, Tyson recounts, was "are there any other jurors, like juror #14, who needs more than one witness before they would be able to convict?" The person in front of Tyson, another potential juror, piped up and said, "Your Honor, that's not what he said!" Tyson then tells about how he resisted with all of his might to say the following: "Your Honor...you were eyewitness to what I said 20 seconds ago and got it wrong."
The point of me telling that story was to show the irony of the situation here. While I am trying to have conversations with the both of you about what you think and why, and to ask for good reasons, you are making comments that demonstrate your combined lack of sensitivity for the need for good reasons.
He wrote that he senses it.
If you don't sense it then you just don't.
Oh, hi Yehoshua! Welcome to the discussion.
>>>He wrote that he senses it
I see what he wrote, and I was responding to him that he's very likely making a type 1 error. Type 1 errors are false positives, when the things we claim to see are not really there.
I said this because, from past discussion with Plonius, he has continually made reference to other claims of sensing things for which he could provide no good evidence. I therefore short circuited the discussion here, and jumped to immediately linking this claim of his to his previous claims, all of which I challenged him to justify as truthful claims rather than type 1 errors.
>>>If you don't sense it then you just don't.
How should we differentiate between type 1 errors (false positives) vs cases where Person A actually observes the thing and Person B is missing out? Do you think a rigorous method should be employed, or do we just trust the people who see ghosts to be the paramount adjudicators of whether or not they see ghosts and if we don't see them, it just means we don't have the special powers they claim to have?
>>>Tyson’s perspective is stupid
Again, I was only retelling this story for the purposes of demonstrating the irony.