I have received a letter from
Aaron,
which questions the veracity of the Tanakh.
There are various people / websites that disprove the
bible. This is why I can not even consider the oral torah a legitimate
claim to begin with. What is your response to this excerpt below? This
is where my struggle is at. Help me out, aaron.
The "excerpt" is very lengthly. I wanted to reproduce it below, but
it's formatting is just too horrible and convoluted, to the point where
I could not undo it easily. Aaron, please send me the excerpt in text
form, or give me the URL, if it's on the web. While the excerpt is very
long, it mainly deals with the Kuzari argument, which is a non-issue.
1.
Tradition of 600,000 as evidence of Revelation: The excerpt
devotes a great deal of time to the Kuzari argument. You are right. It
is
a faulty argument. But there are others.
2.
Evidence of Truth in outcome:
we also find several Judaic spiritual leaders stating
explicitly that "truth is whatever leads to the good and to the will of
the Creator" (R' Eliyahu Dessler, "Michtav MiEliyahu," v. 1, p. 94),
and that "the difference between lie and truth is measured by the
outcome of the things that follow from them" (Rabbi Yerucham of Mir,
"Daat Chochma UMussar," v. 1, p. 113), or, to put it clearly, that "the
end justifies the means."
I am pleased to see that
my
views are not original and there is precedent for them among
Rabbinic scholars. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
If they are saying what I think they are saying, then I don't
understand what you have against it. You bring up "the end justifies
the means", which has a negative connotation, and basically stop there.
Isn't this
guilt
by association?
What you seem to be confusing is the perceived end and the actual end.
The usual application of the saying is as follows. A person
perceives
the end of his immoral actions to be good, so he engages in them. The
actions are immoral, and the actual end is bad. The saying states,
don't engage in immoral actions just because you perceive the end to be
good. You might be myopic, and not see the true, actual end.
What is immoral? It is those actions that are incompatible with the
world, that in
actual end, as seen from history and logic, lead
to negative results. And likewise, moral is those actions that lead to
positive results. So the saying should be "The perceived / myopic end
does not justify the means. But the actual end is what the means are
all about." If we have a Law, and we see that, historically, whenever
we follow this Law, things are well, isn't that evidence that the Law
should be followed in the future as well? It's that simple.
You say that people who take such an approach might lie, because they
think that the lie will bring belief in God, which they see as good.
First, this is an
appeal to
consequences. But yes, they might lie! If they do, they are in
error, as they are confusing the perceived end with the actual end.
3.
Length of the Persian period: Do not base your entire world
view on
a
few disputable historical records.
4.
Rabbinic commentators on the Scripture disputed even what
the Ten Commandments actually were.
They disagreed on how to subdivide the
Ten
Commandments into ten parts, not on the content of the text. So
what?
Posted by Ami at October 17, 2004 04:28 AM
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