Wednesday, September 10, 2008

The First Sign Of A Poor Premise In An Argument

From this YeshivaWorld CoffeeRoom thread:

Music has a powerful effect on the Neshama; that is not debatable.

In my experience, whenever someone says that something is not debatable, it often is extremely debatable.

The Wolf

7 comments:

SuperRaizy said...

In that case, I think you would love this video:
"Indisputable Proof That Moshe Rabbeinu was a Satmar Chassid":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwbWv2oiuAs

It's a riot.

BrooklynWolf said...

Raizy,

Psst! Look here. :)

The Wolf

SuperRaizy said...

Oh, my bad!
That must be where I saw it first.

Beisrunner said...

"In my experience, whenever someone says that something is not debatable, it often is extremely debatable."

Unquestionably true.

Anonymous said...

There seems to be ,a clash between "whenever" which is 100% of the time, and "often", which might even be less than 50% of the time.

DAG said...

That's like the guy who calls a talk show and says, I'm not a racist, BUT..."

Anonymous said...

Off topic but going back to our (or at least mine) favorite part of the Jewish Press - letters to the editor: evolution edition


"Torah Truth Vs. Scientific Theories

The moral quandary some people experience when science occasionally appears at odds with the Torah likely stems from science being viewed as "reason" and the Torah as "faith." These labels are misnomers, though.

The Big Bang has been a theory of an expanding universe that's slowing down and will eventually collapse under gravity or just stop expanding, depending on its mass. Relatively recent discoveries that the universe's expansion was accelerating absolutely dumbfounded scientists. That is, a half-century of pat theories suddenly turned into a baffling mystery that turned fundamental theories of cosmology on its head.

Theories about our planets were also "well understood" before space probes shot many of them down. Even our moon being a lifeless "dead rock" seemed to be a pretty solid theory until we found igneous moon rocks, signs of extreme thermal activity.

On the other hand, the Torah makes statements like "every fish that has scales has fins," and "only four animals in the world either chew their cud or have split hooves" (that is, all other animals have both or neither). After thousands of years and the discovery of millions of species of fish and land creatures, not one of these or other Torah
declarations has been disproved.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY"

Someone quick send him all of R' Slifkin books, or at least the cliff notes version. It will bogel his mind!