Why not Why?

In the current lack of discourse in the American political system, we hear "Why" being tossed about as though it is a meaningful or even a useful question. "Why did the Democrats...", "Why did Obama...", "Why are the Republicans...", and other such questions are tossed out there. A good example of this would be watching Glenn Beck, and count the number of time he uses "Why" in a single show.

"How" and "What" require useful responses, while "Why" will almost always result in made-up answers, or the person asking them is not really seeking an answer. "Why do liberals want to kill unborn babies?" is not really looking for an answer, but is a way to initiate a smear-fest. "Why does the Right have such a love affair with their guns?" is also not seeking any real answers, and is also a platform to bash the right.

Listen to children. They can "Why" you to death! And listen to your responses getting less and less based on reality. A child may ask:

"Why do cats purr?"

The truth is, we still don't know, but parents rarely say "I don't know". If we could transfer our consciousness into a cat's body and experience the reason, we could answer that, but we cannot, so any answer is just conjecture.

"How do cats purr?", or "What research has been done concerning their purring?" are far more interesting and require a truthful, objective, answer, than the listener's subjective one, which is probably not true.

Let us bring this down into an adult world.

In the American slug-fest over the Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is a question "Why are some of Obama's crony's getting exemptions?" And people are getting all emotional over this "Why".

In this issue of the Washington Post it exposed that those making this "why" are doing so based on misinformation and their feelings about it. As such, people asking "Why" are not interested in an answer, but are using it to cry out "I feel that it is corrupt!". The "Why" is never the real question. Rather "What" or "How" are the real adult ways to question when one wants an answer. Because "Why" will often require that you have the ability to jump into the minds of the people who made that decision, with the belief that you can provide a truthful response. But you cannot.

Now, to ask the adult question: "What companies are exempt" and "How are companies exempt" require honest answers. And if you go to the federal web site, you will see that the real answers are available, meaning that "exempt" has been misused by those who love "Why", and you can see the details of a temporary delayed implementation of a specific point for a maximum of one year for those who would suffer by doing otherwise.

"What" and "How" require specific details that can be found and provided. "Why" goes to those who hold that what one feels, or one's subjective perception of something has any validity as a real answer.

The question put to your son, "Why did you hit your little brother?" will get you the kid's feelings, his thoughts, or perhaps an "I don't know", but you won't hear the truth.

The question, "Why did the U.S. economy take a nose-dive?" will not get an honest single answer either, while "How" and "What" requires a list of specific objective items to support the "How" and "What", while "Why" requires no evidence whatsoever, and might even bring forth another "Why" and another, in a never-ending cycle.

So the next time you hear some emotional rant, start counting the number of "Why" that comes out, and ask yourself "Is there a "What" or "How" that can address this?" And if there is not, then it's a childish expression that was not really asking anything. However, if there is a "How" or "What", then one can have an adult conversation that is looking for real answers.

Why not give it a try? ;)

Severed Hand, or Not?

In Ki Teitze (Devarim 25:11-12) we read:

"When there will be men fighting together, a man against his brother, and the wife of one gets close to rescue her husband from the hand that is striking him, and she extends her hand and grabs tightly his embarrassing place (genitals), you will cut off her hand- there shall not be pity in your eye."

Rashi quotes the Gemara (Bava Kamma 28a) which is a page about taking the law into your own hands, and using excessive force and when or not it is appropriate.

"Come and here: (Devarim 25:12) 'You will cut off her hand.' MAMON (financial). Does not this ruling apply even if she cannot do anything else to save [her husband]? No, [the punishment] only applies if she could have saved him some other way, and she is exempt from punishment. But if so, why does it say "and she extends her hand", rather than that of the beit din (court)? Could not this argument be made in a subsequent clause [by adding] she is treated like an officer of the court, and that she could not have saved him any other way - so she is exempt from punishment.

Now several things bother me about this Gemara.

1. The first word, "mamon", if removed, reads equally well.
2. Why quote "You will cut off her hand" rather than "If she extends her hand" unless "You will cut off her hand" was assumed, and the discussion goes on about "and she extends her hand".
3. At no point do we find any financial wording ("she will pay", etc.).
4. At no point does it question the use of "you shall sever". This is the only place in all of the Talmud that this sentence is quoted, and one would think that "Do not read it as..." or some such thing to clarify the source of thinking "you will sever means something else", even "Halacha l'mMoshe m'Sinai" is missing.
5. Payment is to compensate for a loss. At no point is a "loss" ever discussed, while in all other cases around it, loss or potential loss are discussed.
6. It appears that the discussion is how to lighten the punishment, based on her point of view that she had no choice.

So I am wondering if is it likely that the word "mamon" was an editorial insert because the idea of chopping off a woman's hand was unacceptable. If so, that certainly is a good thing!

It is something to ponder.

Objective Morality

Having working in nearly a dozen different computer languages over the past 40+ years, a couple that come to mind are Lisp and Prolog, which were both considered AI languages of their day. In using them, you would define parameters and let the program produce a result, determining the most effective pathway based on the parameters given. It was a completely different way of looking at a problem, but one that is worth noting because of a problem we have in defining Morality.

If I were to define the parameters for an Objective Morality (OM), we would have a linear model, where a "+" (good) is at the very end of the horizontal line, and a "-" (bad) is put at the opposite end, with a "0" (neutral) is placed right in the middle of it. We now need to define direction and magnitude. Let's start with magnitude.

The magnitude will be defined by the quantity of the effect multiplied by the duration, which will always be a whole number raised to the next integer value. If the number of people (quantity) affected is zero, or if the duration of the effect is zero, then there is no magnitude and the event will be treated as neutral. A repeated event will cause a linear addition of the magnitude, and the time form (seconds, hours, etc) will be based on the highest form in the addition.

Now for the direction, which you can visualize as an arrow sitting on top of the "0" in the middle of the line, will either be pointing to the left (bad), to the right (good), or straight up (neutral). We now need a measurement to cause this directional setting to occur. Using freedom/oppression as the general concept as applied in a great number of papers on Well-Being and related topics, I chose to use that as the general director.

For example, if a husband slaps his wife in the face for not bringing home any beer, that is considered oppressive. She has no freedom from pain, both emotional and physical. This occurs at least a couple of times a week, so we would double the magnitude of "bad". And it has been going on since he lost his job a year ago, which would extend the magnitude of 2*52 (duration) times 1 (quantity). Now if there are two children at home who see this happening, who have their freedom to feel security threatened, then we would triple the quantity, making this a very bad thing indeed.

In a real example, a girl was trying to learn to read, and a man came by and shot her in the face as an example to the other girls in the village, so that they should not be learning to read. The magnitude to the minus is quite long. When she is taken to another country, where a plastic surgeon restores her face, and she is brought back to a point where her physical and emotional oppression are eliminated, then the direction arrow sways to the other direction, as a good thing. She now can return to her village where she had become a symbol for freedom. If she does nothing more, it is neutral. But if she seeks to encourage freedom for others, to free girls from the oppression of the village bullies, then that is a good thing.

But we are basing this one freedom versus oppression.

This works fine until we do just one more thing - once we add religion into the mix, then the entire enterprise falls apart. If the holy text tells you that a man is free to hit his wife or that females learning to read is forbidden by God, then, according to those who give credence to such things, you cannot label it as bad.

My wife brought up an example that provides a minor expression of that.

If you are Jewish and you hand over your baby son to the mohel to be circumcised, is this good or bad? After all, the man will hand the child over to someone, who will make sure that if the child squirms, he will be kept in place while the mohel takes his knife, causes pain, daubs the bleeding point of flesh with a gauze, and puts a bit of cloth that was soaked into the baby's mouth to dull the pain.

Certainly, on our scale, the arrow would be pointing to the minus side, as bad, although the magnitude would not be so great unless there was a problem during the procedure or during the time that follows. But it is still bad, using this programming logic. But we cannot call it bad because God said that we have to do it, and once you apply religion to the mix, the formula falls apart, because religion overrules everything else.

So in the world, where there is religious violence, religious intolerance, and religious indifference, so long as we give "religion" the ability to overrule any logical application of what is right or wrong, then it is valid to say "who are you to apply your morals to another society"? This was true in the USA when it came to slavery, as Andrew Jackson held up the Bible and proclaimed that "God is on our side, for we follow His word!" From that view, slavery could not be judged as bad, because God told Moses that it was OK.

I bring this up because the faithful cannot say "without our book, there is no such thing as objective morality". As you can see, we can define an objective morality that is not associated with any holy text. However, our global problem is that we give all religions a free pass, resetting the arrow from "-" to some other direction, saying "wife beating in that culture is supported by the Koran, and so it isn't bad" or "slavery is approved by God, and so it isn't bad".

Religious morality is not objective morality. Is that good?

A Final Geocentric Wrap-Up

Here is the last email that I sent on the subject, and will most likely be the last thing I am going to say about it. One note before pasting it here: Saying that the sun goes around the Earth is no different than driving a car and saying that the car is still, but the Earth is spinning under you. Read further and see why some hold:

Dear Listmates,

There have been some nice points on this topic, and while an earlier post of mine somehow fell into that “black hole" we call the Internet, I thought it would be good to summarize the 5 items rather than just re-send it.

1)      RELATIVITY: The example given by Einstein was a train moving quickly and a person dropping a ball, and the person on the train sees it as falling straight down while the person outside, looking through the glass walls sees it curving. However, this comparison falls apart for the geocentrist because, like this example, we have two data collecting and reporting satellites, one approaching the edge of the SOLAR system (not GEO-system), and one that is nearly so, which, like the observer outside of the train, can validate that the view of an earth-centered SOLAR system is not what is going on in reality, even though it is a comfortable view for some non-scientists.

2)      TIME: Since the earth is still, to the geocentrist, and slanted at 23.5 degrees, according to science, the Earth will have no seasons to speak of (about every 6 hours it will change, which is the same as none at all) as the sun whizzes around the Earth every 24 hours.

3)      SPACE: If you hold the Earth as the center, and have the moon, Venus, Mercury, and the sun (pick whatever order suits you) whizzing around the Earth, the distance of the Earth from Mars will increase by about 800%, taking about 6 years to fly there from Earth, rather than the current REAL time of less than a year. I have seen very complicated models trying to set up the GEO system, but they all fail on keeping the current verified measured distances (confirmed by external crafts hurtling through space – the external observer with advanced measuring equipment).

4)      TRUE: I asked a week ago if someone could draw a picture of a GEO System (versus a Solar System) where time and space will match externally confirmed reality. If one can be made where the sun and all of the planets are the same size and the same distances from one another with the same orbiting speeds that have been externally verified, I am willing to accept that there is a plausibility (within religion and philosophy) that the GEO-System model has some sort of merit. Until then, I withhold that.

5)      FALSE: Some have said that just because something is unlikely, it doesn't make it untrue. It is more correct to say that, with theories, they express the greatest plausibility and possibility of truth until proven wrong, and then, they are not true at all. There are many examples of failed theories. With NON-theories, (such as Young-Earth-Creationism, Flat Earth, and Geocentrism, to name a few), they are considered false unless there is evidence to justify their consideration, and if they fail peer review, they fail and are false, not simply “less true”.

The difference between religion and science is that, with religion, you can interpret something in unique ways, and while it may not be accurate, it will have validity in its application. This is true in Midrash, for example, and that is a good thing.

In science, while there are areas where one speaks of plausibility, some things are more or less plausible, but there is no such thing as more or less true, just more or less plausible. For once it is disproved, it is false, in science (and that process may take a long time), while in religion, it remains. So it is incorrect to say that Geo-Centrism is “not AS true as heliocentrism”, but, rather, it a false concept of the universe that we long discarded once we invented the telescope that can be used on this world, as well as ones that hurtle among the vast reaches of our SOLAR system.

I don’t think that I can add anything else to the topic. I updated my blog to reflect this. I leave the rest to you.

UPDATE

The list manager responded with a few points. I will not post the long reply, but it comes down to this.

1) Quotes a paper that he never read. The paper is how you can use, in science, a Geocentric model for satellites that are close to the earth rather than a standard one, providing that adjustments are made. No argument there, but we were discussing planets that are not near the Earth, which the authors were not proposing.

2) He claims that the sun wobbles as it travels around the Earth, so there will still be seasons.

3) This answer was short, so I repeat it in full:

"And again there is a second motion of Mars, which matches the sun's (above) and a third order one around the sun."

Which made no sense in reference to how Mars would be incorrectly measured at a six year difference.

4) In requesting him to draw a map of his solar system that would have matching values of our existing reality, he wrote:

"But the distances and time won't be exactly the same -- relativity includes lorentz contractions of both."

 Which is saying that our measurement will only appear to lengthen, while ignoring that if a ship leaves the Earth and arrives on Mars 10 months later, which model is that reality representing?

5) Skipped it.

I had to finally quit that list. I can only deal with Flat Earthers, Young Earth Creationists, and Geocentrists for only so long. Life is too short to try to convince the deluded.

To Be True Or To Give Honor

In a previous post I stated the the Lubavitcher Rebbe was wrong in saying that a Geocentric Universe is just as correct as a Heliocentric one, if not more so. I later explained in this other post the reasons that his position made little sense and went against reality. (One example is that a non-moving earth with a Universe spinning around it at a rate of 24-hours/cycle would cause one to have a season, such as winter, to be only 6 hours long. There are many other issues as well.

Several people had sent me private email, chastising my criticism, saying that while the Rebbe's position was not as correct and while calculations would not work using it, it does not mean that it is wrong, just that it is less useful. Another claims that I was missing the nuance of language concerning this great person. There were other exchanges that were a bit more caustic.

Now, I do realize that, had I written this in the 1st century CE, I would have been taken out and whipped an inch from my life, or put to death, for daring to correct a Rabbi in front of his students (even though he is dead, that is a minor point).

In the July-August period we read the following parshyot:

• V'etchanan - Keep all of the rules that God gave you, and do not stray left or right.
• Eikev - Keep all of them and do not tread on even the lightest mitzvah with your heel.
• Shoftim- Appoint judges and officers of the court. Do exactly as they rule, and do not deviate left or right (even if they are wrong and seem to be saying that right is left and left is right - Rashi). Any mand who does not obey the Kohen or the Judge shall die.

These rulings that would give the priest and the Judge power would be later expanded to include all things besides civil courts, meaning, that a Rabbi would become the judge who would rule, and you are obligate to accept his words in nearly all things. (There are forms that would be held exempt).

Now, the Sages took this very clearly, holding that any student who openly corrected his Rabbi in public would be put to death. What follows is from Berachot 31b, where the Rabbis are discussing that story of Hannah bringing Shmuel, at the age of two, to Eli the priest:

For this child I prayed. Rabbi Eleazar said: Shmuel was guilty of giving a decision in the presence of his teacher; for it says, "And when the bullock was slain, the child was brought to Eli." Because the bullock was slain, did they bring the child to Eli? What it means is this. Eli said to them: 'Call a priest and let him come and kill [the animal]'. When Samuel saw them looking for a priest to kill it, he said to them, 'Why do you go looking for a priest to kill it? The shechitah may be performed by a layman'! They brought him to Eli, who asked him, 'How do you know this?' He replied: 'Is it written, 'The priest shall kill'?' It is written, 'The priests shall present [the blood]: the office of the priest begins with the receiving of the blood, which shows that shechitah may be performed by a layman.'  He said to him: You have spoken very well, but all the same you are guilty of giving a decision in the presence of your teacher, and whoever gives a decision in the presence of his teacher is liable to the death penalty. Thereupon Hannah came and cried before him: 'I am the woman that stood by thee here etc.'. He said to her: Let me punish him and I will pray to God and He will give thee a better one than this. She then said to him: 'For this child I prayed'.

This is but one instance, but, as I said, they took this chutzpah of a student very seriously.

Because of that, today, where one is not beaten or killed for saying "You do realize that you end up with a 6-hour season, don't you?", we end up with people who hold one of the following positions when a Rabbi is obviously saying something obviously wrong as the Lubavitcher Rebbe did. You have people who will:

• Cry "Lashon HaRah!", using the Chofetz Chaim's redefinition of the term when they hear something that they cannot respond to.
• Deny it was ever said.
• Claim that it was a metaphor.
• Say that it is not wrong, but another form of correctness.
• Say it's a misunderstanding by someone not well educated to the nuance of the language used.
• Claim that you are wrong, since the speaker must be right.
• Redefine what was said or what opposes what was said.
• Say amazing things that will cause your jaw to drop!

Or to quote Ben Yehodia in his commentary to Pesachim 94b where the Cosmology of the Sages was not in line with reality, he wrote:

"Whatever the explanation, you must know with truth and faith that the words of the Sages of Israel in every place are living and enduring, for they are truth and their words are truth. And aside from the secret meaning to which they intended to allude with their words, sometimes you find that even in the peshat approach they had a deep intent. And it is because we are lacking many preparations even in the way of peshat, we cannot understand their true meaning, even according to the peshat of their words…"

In other words, if it appears wrong that they said that the sun goes around the Earth, then it is really your misunderstanding of their intent. But then, in the 20th century you had the Chabad Rebbe proclaim that the view was to be accepted at the phsat level, and that it was just as correct as actual cosmology.

So the question is this:

If someone says something so incredibly awkward, and you know that it has a chance to mislead others to make errors in their life, which comes first, respecting the person (or the memory) and letting the error not only stand, but to support it? Or should one speak the truth?

It is my position that if someone, like Ovadia Yosef, who claims that God sent a disaster to the USA because of George Bush's participation in the expulsion of Jews from Gush Katif, says such outrageous things, do we keep silent? Or do we cry out "Are you kidding me?!?! Excuse me, it's time for you to step away from the podium, put your hands in the air, and walk away from your role as a leader.!

But you will always have leaders who have your fans. Frauds, such as Ner ben Artzi succeeds because there is not a great outcry to tell the truth. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, who is seen as nearly a deity (if not a full deity) by thousands (if not tens of thousands), made incredibly bad statements about science, and his devotees will treat them as "gospel", hold them close to their hearts, and claim that they are true.

That is the error of keeping silent when the truth is trampled upon. By trying to not harm the presentation of a human who erred, you are a passive supporter of misleading others. 

In the first century, I would be dead by now. But, then, I live in the 21st century where I can freely point to the Emperor and declare "He has no clothes on!"

The Rebbe Was Wrong - Really!

I received an email from a fan of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, defending the position that the sun goes around the Earth. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was not only a Young Earth Creationist, but a Geocentrist as well. For the sake of this blog, I will ignore all of the nonsense that was used to rationalize why the Rebbe was "right", including the misuse of "special relativity". The key sentence that got to me was this:

What recommends heliocentrism (plus the sun's, galaxy's, etc... motions) is the elegence of the model and its ability to more easily get more correct answers. Not right vs wrong.

Yes, this person believes that the idea that the sun goes around the Earth is not wrong, it's just the viewing the sun in the center allows one to get correct answers more easily. To him, they are both the same, and easily switchable.

So I decided to put this one to bed and I responded as follows (I am providing some graphics here that were not in the original response since the text-only email list that I was one did not permit it, and visuals always help. Also, anything with a "Note:" prefix is something I added here to make it more clear to the blog reader, or to make a calculation change, since I had originally composed this reply just before bed and pressed SEND without reviewing what I wrote.)

Dear ___,

 

Geocentrists incorrectly hold a Solar system that looks like this:

 

 

(Note: geocentrists also ignore the fact that Mars and Venus cannot skim across the face of the sun, and hence, there will be many millions of miles of gap on either side - 129 million in the case of Mars, and 67 million miles in the case of Venus.)

If you were not aware of it, one of our telescopes, NASA's Casinni Satellite was sent towards the sun. Its purpose was to slingshot back past the Earth as it head towards Saturn, using the gravitation of other objects to do this, with the sun always behind.

 

 

It has been heading away from the sun on a slight curve for several years. The sun keeps retreating. The sun has never gotten closer as it's instruments measures visual and other forms of light. (NASA would be really interested to know that the sun bobs and weaves).

 Last year, as it was approaching Saturn, it took a shot of Venus passing before the sun, a sun that Cassini had left behind. That doesn't play out well for the geocentric view where Venus is always between the earth and the sun.

 

 

Look up the speeds of Venus to see the problem.

(Note: from the geocentrist view, the sun is spinning around the Earth at 10,000 MPH, caught in the gravity of this smaller object, and must get around the Earth in 365 days, making it faster than Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and so forth. In fact, from the point of view of the geocentrist, Saturn spins around the Earth at 1/30th of the speed of the sun. This would mean that in one Saturn year, the Sun would bob back and forth as a mean distance of 96,000,000 miles 30 times, something that the sunlight monitoring units on the space probes would have noticed. From the view of the much slower Saturn, the 1-million mile diameter sun would always be growing as it advances 96 million miles and shrinking as it goes away 96 million miles.

Look at the Geocentric graphic posted above, once more, to see the problem)

A few days ago Cassini's cameras looked back at us from Saturn and took a photo of our pale blue dot (Earth).

Now, according to the Geocentrist view, the sun takes 365 days to go around the earth, and Saturn, that slow gas ball, takes 10,832 days to go around the Earth. Or, from a Geocentric view, during the 2 years from Jupiter to Saturn, the sun was 96-million miles closer and then 96-million miles further from Jupiter and Saturn, doing this 29 times! Hence my "bob and weave" mention. 

(Note: My brain was obviously frazzled at that point. To be honest, in the 2 Earth-year period it would have only bobbed back and forth two times. It would have done 29 or 30 throughout a single Saturn year. But while the number of times is incorrect, the fact that it does it at all, in this case, twice, creates the same problem).

 

Saturn was chosen because of its specific distance from the sun WHICH DOES NOT CHANGE in order to measure solar affects upon the rings.

(Note: yes, I know of the minor elliptical orbit delta, but that doesn't cause a problem like a 96,000,000 mile delta!)

 

In a geocentric view, this is impossible. NASA would have noticed.

(Note: To clarify, what I meant was that it is impossible, in a geocentric view, to have a satellite positioned near Saturn for any length of time without the sun growing and shrinking by 96,000,000 miles. Those collecting data on the illumination on Saturn's rings would have noticed.)

Finally, here is the simple math that most Geocentrists ignore:

The sun is HUGE in comparison to the Earth, about 109x as big. This means that from the geocentrist view, Mars is not really about 34 million miles from the earth as the NASA scientists plan. Mars needs to be further from the sun than the Earth is (Mars is cooler), but since the sun is in between the Earth and Mars, Mars is, in reality ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY MILLION MILES AWAY from the Earth, based on the Geocentric view, which means that the rover would not have taken about a year to get there, but MORE THAN FOUR YEARS.

 

But it didn't. And the Cassini would still be nowhere near Saturn, but it is.

(Note, after having my morning cup of coffee, I realized that 130-million is too small of a number. It would, in reality, not be 96m (the millions of miles between the sun and the Earth) plus 34m (the heliocentric millions of miles between Mars and the Earth), making it 130m. Since Mars needs to be at least 129m from the sun in order to have its current cooler environment, and since the sun has a diameter of about .9m (we will round it up to 1), the real calculation for the geocentric model is 96m plus 1m plus 129m, which totals to 226 million miles, and not the 130,000,000 miles that I originally noted. This would, of course, increase the trip to Mars by nearly 60% (for a geocentrist) for a total of about 6 years, while, as we all know, it took less than one year, based on a heliocentric model of only 34 million miles, which is our reality. Notice this is nearly 1000% difference in distances. The reality of less than a year of travel confirms the reality of a heliocentric system. Even though my numbers have changed, they only changed to make it worse for those who agree with the Lubavitcher Rebbe.)

 

Yes, before there were telescopes and spaceships, one might have had a valid discussion concerning relativism in a solar cosmology. But that was hundreds of years ago

But there will always be holdouts: http://theflatearthsociety.org

 

UPDATE

 

The group discussing this came up with some interesting possibilities:

"...it's not "wrong" to assert...that (as Chazal believed) the universe revolves around the Earth. It's just not a very productive way to calculate anything. "

So it's not wrong to think that the sun revolves around the Earth, it just isn't productive. An interesting view!

">> The sun rises daily, not annually. Each were thought to revolve around the earth roughly daily: the sun was actually daily, the moon was roughly daily, plus a one month epicycle. "

In other words, the stationary earth at a 23.5 degree tilt will have a change of seasons every 6 hours. How nice! Now you can sleep through your least favorite season!

I finally asked anyone who believes in this to please draw me a picture of our solar system, just up until Jupiter, to show a design that will actually work, maintaining the same distances of the planets to the sun and the planets to the Earth that we know exist.

Somehow, I don't think anything useful will come from this.

 

The Rebbe said what?!?

You can read the following excerpts at this Chabad archive link, entitles "Theories of Evolution".

"...one cannot exclude the possibility that dinosaurs existed 5722 years ago, and became fossilized under terrific natural cataclysms in the course of a few years rather than in millions of years; since we have no conceivable measurements or criteria of calculations under those unknown conditions."

and

"Even assuming that the period of time which the Torah allows for the age of the world is definitely too short for fossilization (although I do not see how one can be so categorical), we can still readily accept the possibility that G-d created ready fossils, bones or skeletons (for reasons best known to him), just as he could create ready living organisms, a complete man, and such ready products as oil, coal or diamonds, without any evolutionary process." 

Yes, a Jewish leader would tell his flock that you cannot rule out that dinosaurs walked the Earth during the time that the Babylonians were brewing beer and the Chinese were fermenting rice for their own brewing tastes. If I saw a T-Rex, I'd want a drink as well!

And then we have the second (of many) bit of nonsense, that God decided to play a joke and created fossils and then aged them badly so the earth would only appear to be old. Perhaps to test the faith of humans, and creating the earth with a great lie.

I did respond to that web site, but all posts need approval, and it appears that only those who post respectfully will be shown to the world, and those who criticize will not be.

To the first quote, I posted "Of COURSE you can exclude it, and one should!" C'mon! His dance of "science doesn't really know" and "they are all guessing" and "God could have made it look old", and all of that nonsense is nothing more than apologist dancing to hide the fact that they have been teaching Biblical Literalism, which is always going to bite you in the end.

But the Chabad Rebbe was, if nothing else, consistent in his literalism. Since the Torah says that the sun revolves around the Earth, Rebbe taught that as well, and would misuse relativism to support such a point of view of Torah.

There is an interesting article concerning the Rebbe's actual level scientific knowledge and how badly he used it to disprove science at this link.

Now jut imagine, if this is only the tip of the iceberg, and how many other things he made up in order to transform the Scientific reality into something that Chabad could feel superior about. "Yeah, you Scientists and your 'theories' think you are so smart? How come crocodiles didn't evolve, huh?"

/facepalm

Rabbi Slifkin's Challenge

After sharing my post relating to Rabbinical VS Ptolemaic Cosmology, I was recommended to read Rabbi Natan Slifkin's "The Challenge of Creation." Knowing that his book was banned in Chareidi circles didn't hurt the decision, and I bought a copy and see what he had to say. Now it's time to note what I consider about this book.

Rabbi Slifkin begins chapter one by quoting Jewish sources that defines Gods place in the Universe, and then gives a valid Jewish argument for having a Creator. In these first couple of pages, he is speaking from a solid footing. And in the page that followed, he presented the types of irrational arguments that the anti-Science people often parrot, and he rightly winks at them.

Rabbi Slifkin noted in his forward that he would be honest and straightforward and that he would not include out-of-context quotes. And I can say that this is certainly the case. He does cite a lot of sources, and he does treat them honestly.

Unfortunately, he is quoting sources that have a shared agenda, which is to present the idea that religion and science are not incompatible, and, in fact, science has it's very foundation in religion, and one can be a ideologue and a scientist at the same time. This is the core presentation of his first chapter.

Under the subtitle, "Forgotten Foundations" his book tries to prove that not only is science compatible with religion, but that Science owes it's very existence to religion, and the implication is that one exists hand-in-hand with the other. This was not unexpected, since science and Judaism are apparently the author's two great loves.

Rather than being content with this cognitive dissonance, keeping religion distinct from science, Rabbi Slifkin attempts to unite his two great and incompatible loves, and uses the first chapter to justify their uniting. And I am certain that Rabbi Slifkin is being honest in his presentation - it is just that he is unwilling to accept that, like Abraham's dilemma of Sara and Hagar, the honest evaluation is that they cannot live together.

Quoting other authors, some Christian, Rabbi Slifkin tries to support his problem by touting a fictional scientific belief rather than the actual scientific method. He does this by quoting authors who play linguistic games with words like "faith" and "belief" and applying them incorrectly when speaking of scientific inquiry. It would be akin to equating that the belief that angels tell the grass to grow is no different than the theory of gravity, which is equating a scientific theory to a belief.

In the quote used by Rabbi Slifkin, the idea is brought forth that science could not come from anything but from Western Civilization with the Church at its center. I am certain that Euclid, Ptolemy, and Pythagoras would have disagreed, even though Rabbi Pliskin will later claim that Greece never formed real science, quoting Christian author, Rodney Stark, a revisionist when writing of Church history and it's influences.

The development of the scientific method can be traced back to 1600 BCE, to about the time of the giving of the Torah. But the recorded method did not come from the monotheistic Jews, but from the polytheists of that same period. You can read of this history here, on Wikipedia. All of these discoveries in relation to medicine, astronomy, and physics too place by polytheists, while the Jews continued to believe that the world was flat, and that the sun and the moon were simply lights. The views of the Jews were contrary to those of their polytheistic neighbors who developed, through scientific inquiry, the model of the spherical earth, with a moon that was not made of the same stuff as the sun. Can you imagine what would have happened had a Jew suggested such a thing? The heresy laws of Judaism at that time could cripple one for life, if the infections from the whippings didn't kill him first. It is obvious that science certainly could not have blossomed in a monotheistic controlled world.

But with the fall of the second temple, and the rise of Christianity, a new level of barbarity would occur. Yes, it was true that scientific inquiry took place in order to validate the faith, but since there was so little that one could validate, science was not propelled, but impeded. Faith without proof was not only a doctrine, but was seen as a character trait worth developing. The belief in demons causing diseases, rather than the infected rats, would cause the faithful to kill cats, who worked with demons, cats which could have killed the rats and prevented the Black Plague. In short, theocracy has promoted ignorance over systematic and logical thinking, and accepted death over truth.

It would take the church more than 15 centuries before it would accept a heliocentric solar system, one that had been proposed before Christianity ever came into being, and had already been ignored by the Jews. It was the fear of the Church had kept such ideas buried, calling them heresy and punishable by death, and burning all heretical documents. Galileo declared it, not because of the Church, but despite the Church, and, in the end, after this old man was beaten and tortured, he recanted, and damned any scientist by being forced to say:

Therefore, desiring to remove from the minds of your Eminences, and of all faithful Christians, this vehement suspicion, justly conceived against me, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith I abjure, curse, and detest the aforesaid errors and heresies, and generally every other error, heresy,  and sect whatsoever contrary to the said Holy Church, and I swear that in the future I will never again say or assert, verbally or in writing, anything that might furnish occasion for a similar suspicion regarding me; but that should I know any heretic, or person suspected of heresy, I will denounce him to this Holy Office, or to the Inquisitor or Ordinary of the place where I may be.

The full confession can be viewed here.

And yet Rabbi Slifkin would have you believe that not only is science compatible with religion, but that one birthed the other.

If it was a birth, it was an overdue one that barely survived after a series botched abortion attempts.

The fact is that, after thousands of years of Jewish, and then Christian dominance, there was no real scientific advancement by the very observant within their sects. Not for thousands of years. And then, "boom", you have a sudden explosion of science. And Rabbi Slifkin would say "See, monotheism made Science happen!"

This sudden burst of science (after thousands of years of very little by monotheism), does not point to religion as giving rise to science, but, rather, that Science escaped the shackles, despite the attempts of monotheism to kill it. It was the act of those who saw its beauty and risked their lives to keep it alive that caused the boom. They nurtured it despite that it was forbidden to by the True Faith.

We have Rabbis as late as the 17th century declaring that the earth is flat. Why? Because the Sages said so. Period. There is to be no discussion to the contrary, for those discussions are heretical. And you have Christians who resent that recently, hundreds of years after Galileo died, the Church finally forgave him!

Most respected theologians accept the proofs of science, but it was not because it was a natural expression of their faith, but because they were dragged to a point where disagreeing with objectively proven truths was just plain stupid. You can only claim that the moon is nothing more than a light in the sky for so long, but once you have photos of someone walking on it, it's time to put that argument to rest.

If the Temple and the Sanhedrin never fell, it is obvious that there would have been equal attempts to persecute and destroy those who would do true scientific inquiry, just as the Church did. The sages condemned any Jew who would read the secular works of the Greeks, threating them with no share in The-World-To-Come. And it is unlikely, if the world was controlled by a monotheistic theocracy, that we would never have had a man walk the moon at all. And now that the child, the one that the Judeo-Christian revisionists call "son", has become strong and powerful despite the countless failed attempts to abort it, the cause of it's delayed birth would say "But you come from us!"

And this is the biggest problem that Rabbi Slifkin has. On the one hand, he tears apart the view that the all of the words of the Torah are completely true (geocentric, flat.), and quotes the Keepers of Science to do just that. On the other hand, he loves Torah, and so tries to undo any destruction that he has already done, claiming (perhaps by having some sort of navuah since this claim would infer that he knows the mind of God) that God had to lie to the Jews because they wouldn't have understood the truth. In doing so, he reduces the Torah into a book of fables, while, at the same time, holding that it is the Word of God. And it was for this that this book was rightly banned by the Chareidim.

When it comes to Torah and Science, Rabbi Slifkin would transform the intent and meaning of Torah and Science, turning what is most desirable by the supporters of each incompatible view of the world, into something silly.

Rabbi Slifkin loves Torah and loves science. That is apparent. And, unlike the Rambam who knew the limits of Jewish Rationalism, and where to stop in order to keep being an Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Slifkin does not. Rabbi Slifkin has a challenge, which is to make a choice.

You might like some parts of this book, but it will be the rare person who is comfortable with it completely, be you Scientist or Talmudist.

A Proper View of the Universe

While interacting with a number of individuals over the Torah-based cosmological view of the Universe, it became clear to me that the normal sources, such as Mesechet Pesachim and others, were not being properly understood. One person pointed out the explanation in the Artscroll, and it became apparent as well that they were not helping matters very much.

The primary problem is that we have an acceptable view of the Universe as provided by secular science. And then we read a term, such as rakia, and we translate it into some vague concept, such as equating it with the outer reaches of our solar system, when the Torah text is very clear that the birds can reach it, while the sun and moon travel within it.

Because of our influence by secular science, we have the tendency to overlay our reasonable understanding of Cosmology onto Torah-based expressions. By doing that, we can bypass any possible discrepancies, such as the Torah stating that the sun travels around the earth, that it is smaller than the earth (logically deduced), and that the world is less than 6000 years old. And it is because of this, and agenda-laced interpretations by companies, such as Artscroll, the student often ends up being confused by descriptions that do not seem to make sense.

Once you understand what was the real point of view between the two parties, and once you understand what the real discussion is, then everything clicks into place.

As an example of this, I have uploaded a video to show the discussion that Rebbe is having with his contemporaries as one example of this. In the lower right corner of the screen is a symbol for displaying the video in full-screen.

Hopefully you will find it useful.

 

 

Cleopatra and Rabbi Meir

Near the end of the page of Mesechet Sanheidrin 90b it says “Queen Cleopatra questioned Rabbi Meir…”

Obviously that could never have happened. Queen Cleopatra VII committed suicide in 30BCE, her children and relatives were executed, the Ptolemy dynasty came to an end, and Egypt would have no more kings and queens, but would have a similar governorship by Rome as was in Israel.

Rabbi Steinsaltz in his text, as well as “Rabbi Artscroll” remark “Cleopatra was the name of a long line of Egyptian queens” (which is correct) “The one mentioned here is *not* the one commonly known.” (which cannot be correct). I do not know the source they used to state this, and it does not appear to be correct.

The implication is that this was a later Queen Cleopatra in Egypt. But there was none, and neither source cites where they got that idea from.

I found another source (W.Bacher in the JQR, I., 336)  that turned the Aramaic for “Queen Cleopatra” into “Patriarch of the Cutheans” as an anagram. But in order to do that, he needs to ignore the mem and lameds in the original, and toss in a dalet and an extra yud for it to work, which doesn’t have a satisfying answer to me, either. He tries to equate Midrash Rabbah 5:11 where a Cuthean is asking R’ Meir if the dead will come back to life in secret or in public with the Cleopatra question if the dead will come back to life dressed or naked, and does the forced anagram to make them the same - sort of.

Such a forced explanation leaves me flat and the odd anagram makes no sense.

My current thought on this is that Cleopatra is being used as a symbol, one who made herself Isis incarnate to the Egyptian people. To the Egyptian people, Cleopatra was the mother goddess who would gather the parts of her dead husband/brother together from all over the world, brought them back to life, and they mated. From this union came forth Horus, their son from the resurrected death of his father. While it would not be seemly to have Rabbi Meir speak with a Goddess (Isis), to have him speak to a historical figure who made herself Isis would have been a better fit. And the Egyptians would bury their dead with all that they would need in the next life, including clothing, so Isis making this question on those who do not follow that practice (Jewish burials), about the clothing during the resurrection period, will something be provided, was a valid question.