tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post115605107750776027..comments2023-07-01T06:21:23.426-04:00Comments on Torah, Science, Et Al.: BibliographyUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-58736558575050903822007-10-17T19:59:00.000-04:002007-10-17T19:59:00.000-04:00Re. (1): I may have obscured my actual point by sw...Re. (1): I may have obscured my actual point by switching from the Adam example to the age of the earth example. I meant only to say that if the universal or perhaps almost universal consensus of (eg.) Rishonim is that X is true, and I believe that X is false, I may well agree that the Rishonim simply made a mistake and did not realise that X was false. However, if they all say that the truth of X is a fundamental dogma of Judaism, and I believe X is false, I may have to reject Judaism.<BR/><BR/>Re.(2): I agree. One needs to have good judgment, or to consult someone who does.<BR/><BR/>Re. (3): You say, "Judaism has enough going for it to resist such an absurd idea." That is precisely what I believe needs to be assessed on a case-by-case basis: Is there sufficient evidence in favour of the truth of Judaism to outweigh the indications that it insists on a falsehood? An extreme example: If everyone from Moses on down averred unambiguously that they had positive knowledge that the Torah insists the earth is flat, that mass of data might trump the evidence in favour of Judaism. I do not see how I could claim that Judaism does not aver X if every single one of its past exponents said that Judaism does. One must consider, in each case, on the one hand (a) the strength of evidence in favour of the Torah's veracity; and on the other hand, both (b) the strength of evidence contradicting the assertion(s) it is supposed the Torah makes, and (c) the strength of evidence that the Torah actually does make those seemingly false assertion(s). After weighing these considerations, one can draw inferences about whether the Torah has stood up to scrunity.<BR/><BR/>So far I think it's doing fine.DEShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02795113792190583167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-45636885547261351582007-10-17T02:20:00.000-04:002007-10-17T02:20:00.000-04:001. I see no difference between the Adam case and t...1. I see no difference between the Adam case and the creation case. )I don't see why there might be a difference. <BR/>2. One can make a "judgement call" that anything is a fundamental statement of dogma, eg. anti-Zionism, ie that Zionists are all kofrim; that Rav Eliashiv is THE gadol hador, ie anyone who denies this is a kofer;,that the world is made from four elements, that Rashi had ruach hakodesh, that Hazal had ruach hakodesh, that segulot work, that every aggadic statement of Hazal was given at Sinai, etc. etc. <BR/>3. What you say in your last paragraph is true only to a point. When the statement is so patently absurd, then Judaism deserves at least that much respect as to say that this statement could not possibly be a fundamental dogma of Judaism. Judaism has enough going for it to resist such an absurd idea. This is different from where Judaism has been "found out" to be wrong on many matters that it judges sincerely and informatively about that simply "turned out" to be wrong. Yehuda GellmanYehuda Gellmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07782987101117947466noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-86745911966971897862007-10-16T14:57:00.000-04:002007-10-16T14:57:00.000-04:00I think it would depend on who asserted Chazal's i...I think it would depend on who asserted Chazal's infallibility, and how they did it. <BR/><BR/>For example, if all the Rishonim said that Adam was created directly from earth, not from evolution of species, and if I were convinced that he was the product of evolution, I might well agree that although the Rishonim, having no reason to assume otherwise, took Genesis literally and understood Adam's creation as being from earth, their unanimity on this matter would not imply that Adam's non-evolutionary origin is a fundamental tenet of Judaism.<BR/><BR/>However, if Rambam, Ramban, Tosfos, Rashba, etc. - or Chazal - all insisted that it is a fundamental precept of Judaism that the earth is quite literally less than 6000 years old - leaving no wiggle room - and if I held this dating of the earth to be incorrect, I am not sure what I would do. It would be a judgment call as to whether this assertion ought to be considered part of basic Jewish dogma or not.<BR/><BR/>Similarly regarding the infallibility of Chazal: one must make a judgment call as to what constitutes a fundamental statement of dogma.<BR/><BR/>Note that in order for something to be verifiably true, it must make assertions that are, at least in theory, falsifiable. If one assumes that any Torah assertion that is falsified must not actually be a Torah assertion, one precludes the possibility of falsifying the Torah, which means that the Torah can never really be proven true either: whenever a problem crops up, we will simply edit it out of the Torah. So I do not take the falseness of an assertion found in the Torah to imply that the assertion is <I>ipso facto </I>not actually part of the Torah. Whether it is really Torah dogma or not must be assessed without reference (or at the very least without exclusive reference) to the assertion's truth.DEShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02795113792190583167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-58856575237317867922007-10-16T14:53:00.001-04:002007-10-16T14:53:00.001-04:00My thinking on this is quite different from yours....My thinking on this is quite different from yours. The idea that the Rabbis made no false claims about scientific matters is so patently absurd that if all we had were statements saying they were infalllible then I would conclude that the people who said the latter were simply mistaken. They obviously know nothing about science. I would not take their pronouncements about the Rabbis as a dogma but as just obviously NOT a dogma of Judaism. I suspect you are sharing with some of your opponents the idea of all statements adding up to doctrines and dogmas. Yehuda GellmanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-6920206272537310692007-10-14T17:26:00.000-04:002007-10-14T17:26:00.000-04:00I personally agree with you. If there were no tra...I personally agree with you. If there were no traditional sources saying Chazal could err, I think it would still behoove the thinking modern Jew to draw the conclusion that Chazal had erred. <BR/><BR/>However, if traditional Judaism insisted explicitly, unequivocably and universally that Chazal had not erred, it might force us to doubt the validity of Judaism as a whole: if one non-negotiable part of the package falls, the rest may fall with it. These sources demonstrate - I think - that no Jew need find himself in this predicament, because there has never been such an explicit, unequivocable and universal insistence on Chazal's scientific infallibility.<BR/><BR/>These sources also lend support to those who argue (as indeed I do myself) that the belief that Chazal could err is not so marginal that one can claim it is now heresy, having "fallen out of the masorah."<BR/><BR/>Also, <I><B>if</B></I> one believed that the evidence in favour of the Torah's correctness outweighed all the modern evidence against Chazal's various problematic scientific pronouncements, and if one believed the Torah treated Chazal's scientific statements as necessarily correct, one would presumably need to conclude that the Torah was true, and the modern science false. This list might entitle such an individual to believe in both the Torah and the contradicting modern science, rather than accepting the Torah and rejecting the science. (I am not such a person, but I believe that such people do exist.)DEShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02795113792190583167noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21083596.post-1610897952032178632007-10-14T14:17:00.000-04:002007-10-14T14:17:00.000-04:00Very very impressive. HOWEVER, Supposing there wer...Very very impressive. HOWEVER, Supposing there were not a single religious source for the conclusion that the Rabbis could not make a mistake in matters of science. Would that make it any better a belief that they could not be mistaken? All one has to do is read what the Rabbis said about cosmology, about animals, about a woman's womb, about rain, and so on and so on.The idea is absurd on its own merits. Yehuda GellmanYehuda Gellmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07782987101117947466noreply@blogger.com