How Can They Say Science Is Wrong?

As many of you are aware, there are various statements made by Chazal that are at odds with current scientific understanding.  These include statements regarding the physiology of some extant animals, the existence of animals that are now considered to be fanciful, the age and nature of the universe, the movements of the heavenly bodies and other subjects.  Natan Slifkin, in a recent post, described the approach that various critics of his take towards reconciling these differences.  One such approach, taken by Rabbi Moshe Shapiro, is characterized by Rabbi Slifkin as follows:

Anyone with the slightest grasp of Chazal will realize that they were not speaking about the physical biology of bats. In the world of pnimiyus, the bat actually does lay eggs.

Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, of Far Rockaway (is he related to R. Moshe Shapiro?) takes a similar approach.  He writes:

In general, whenever Chazal make a scientific statement, they are not talking about the observable universe but rather the "real" universe. What we - and the scientists - see is only a graphic user interface, so to speak. The real world - the real sun, real moon, real earth - is not observable by current scientific means. Chazal were talking about the real world when they spoke. I'd recommend this Shiur for a full treatment.

Therefore, the Jewish sages were talking about the "real" universe, which indeed behaves exactly as the Chachmei Yisroel described. The non-Jewish scholars were arguing with limited information, i.e. with what their scientists could see on the "outside," GUI world. We agree that on the outside, it would appear the way they say. But the Chachmei Yisroel saw deeper, they saw into the real world and there, their description is correct.

Of course, they'd never believe the source of our information, which was the Torah's insight into the world, and it is likely assur to explain it to them anyway. So we couldn't really win this argument. But we were right. 

I find this particular approach to be totally incomprehensible.  Set aside, for the moment, that there is little, if any, indication that Chazal were not talking about the actual physical universe.  The real difficulty with adopting this approach is the fact that you cannot then use any of Chazal's statements as a basis for arguing with modern science.  You cannot say that science is wrong regarding bats laying eggs and, at the same time, use Chazal's statements regarding bats and eggs as proof that science is wrong.

Rabbi Yaakov's argument ends with the statement that we're right and the scientists are wrong.  But he's really fighting a phantom.  He says that when Chazal make statements about our world, they are talking about some "reality" that is not observable through our senses or experimentation.  The scientific community, on the other hand, makes no such claim.  They deal in the observable universe.  They make no such claim regarding any behind-the-scenes metaphysical universe that the Rabbis Shapiro claim that Chazal speak of.

In short, by adopting this approach, the Rabbis Shapiro have ceded the argument to the scientists vis-a-vis the  observable universe.  Science says bats don't lay eggs?  Not a problem -- since Chazal weren't talking about physical bats, we can say that science (which concerns itself with physical, observable bats) is correct (regardless of whether Chazal are right or wrong about metaphysical bats) in it's statement that bats do not lay eggs.  Spontaneous generation (such as with mud-mice or lice)?  Also not a problem -- science is right because it deals with physical, observable animals, not metaphysical ones.  The same can be applied to the age of the universe, and just about any other area of argument regarding science and Torah.  In short, by making the claim that Chazal were talking about some unobservable meta-physical reality, they have lost the ability to use Chazal's statements as a basis for saying that science is wrong about anything.

The Wolf

See? Science and Torah Can Agree!

The Boston Globe is reporting that genealogists have discovered that President Barack Obama is a distant cousin of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin -- high profile members of the opposition political party.

I don't really care to comment about Obama, Limbaugh or Palin -- you'll notice that I rarely, if ever, bring up politics on this blog. But the article brought me to an interesting conclusion -- that there is one thing that even the most ardent Biblical literalist and the most atheistic evolutionist can agree on -- that if you trace back far enough, all human beings are related to each other.

See, science and Torah can agree! :)

The Wolf

Don't Fall for Flawed Torah Proofs.

I recently came across a web site that claims to have proof that the Torah was given by God to the Jewish people.  As regular readers of my blog know, I have come across sites like this one before and have yet to find *any* conclusive iron-clad proof from the text that the Torah was written by a Divine Being.  Every proof that I've seen has some fatal flaw -- whether it be faulty reasoning, begging-the-question or just plain factual error.  Sadly, this site's "proofs" suffer from the same fatal flaws.  I'll be going through some of them in a minute.  Before I do that, however, I want to point out several things:

1.  Lack of evidence does not equal evidence of lack. 

I'm sure that many of you have heard this before and it is100% valid.  Just because I can't prove that the Inivisible Pink Unicorn does not exist does not mean that it does not exist.  Of course, each individual has to weigh for themselves how strongly consider the lack of evidence when making a determination -- but it cannot be used as definitive proof that the object you are considering does not exist.

2.  Demolishing a proof does not equal demolishing the underlying argument.

In each case, I will show how the proof being presented is flawed.  I will not, however, be presenting any counter-arguments.  I will make no statements of my own regarding the Divinity of the Torah (which, for the record, I do believe in), nor will I be making any arguments against it.

3.  Don't ever let anyone "guilt" you into believing something.

The site that we're looking at has the following paragraph on it's home page:

The evidence brought down in this website should convince a reader that the Holy Torah was given to the Jewish people by G-d himself.  If the evidence does not convince you or someone, that does not mean that the evidence is not strong, it just means that you do not want to be convinced. Just like there are holocaust deniers, even though there is prove, there are G-d deniers even though there is prove.

Did you get that?  If you don't believe his proofs, you're the equivalent of a Holocaust denier.  All he's trying to do is to make you feel guilty for not believing in his proofs.  If you aren't utterly persuaded by my evidence, he (in essence) says, it's not the evidence's fault but yours.  Don't fall for that.  By all means, if his evidence is conclusive, believe him -- but don't do it because he puts a guilt-trip on you.

That being said, let's get down to his "proofs."

His first proof is as follows:

How does a person keep his/her balance?

Well, according modern science, the ear may hold the answer. "The inner ear includes both the organ of hearing (the cochlea) and a sense organ that is attuned to the effects of both gravity and motion (labyrinth or vestibular apparatus). The balance portion of the inner ear consists of three semi-circular canals and the vestibule." (Wikipedia, Ear)

Since Hebrew is a Holy Language, every word is self descriptive. The word "ear-אוזן" (Ozen) is of the same root as "balance-איזן" (Izun). The linguistic miracle of ancient Hebrew, proves its Divinity.

Pretty cool, no?  The ancients must have somehow known that the ear controls the balance of the human body and even encoded it in the Hebrew language by using a similar word for both "ear" and "balance."

This is a classic example of begging-the-question.  Begging-the-question is a logical fallacy whereby you assume the point you're trying to prove.  The whole proof rests on the fact that we assume that when the words "Ear" and "Balance" were created in the Hebrew Language, they were purposely given similar roots.  However, if you consider that it might be a simple coincidence, then the whole proof falls apart.

"Ah," the true believer might counter, "how can you say it's a coincidence?  What are the odds that two completely different words would be so similar?"  Indeed, the author of the "proof" calls it a "linguistic miracle," implying that it's almost impossible that such a thing could happen naturally.

Alas, that simply isn't the case.  To understand why, you might need a (very) brief primer in the Hebrew Language.  Words (especially verbs) in Hebrew tend to have three-letter roots, which are then altered (usually with prefixes and suffixes) to denote subject and tense.  The author's argument rests on the fact that the roots for ear and balance are the same or similar.  The Hebrew alphabet consists of 22 letters.  So, the odds of any two three letter words being the same are 1 in 22³, or 1 in 10,648.  Unusual?  Maybe.  Miraculous?  Hardly.  Absolute proof that a Divine Being created the two words?  No way.  Absolute proof that God authored the Torah?  Not even close.  Note that the "proof" doesn't address the Divine authorship of the Torah at all.  The absolute most it could prove is that those two words (and *prehaps* the Hebrew language) was composed by a Divine Being.  But it doesn't even come anywhere close to that. 

On to his second proof.  This one involves the length of time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth.  The Gemara states Rabban Gamliel had a tradition from his father's house that the period between two new moons is not less than 29.0359 days after the previous new moon.  Since Rabban Gamliel did not have a telescope or an advanced timepiece, and since the statement is factually true (barring slight variations due to tides, etc.), the fact that he knew this must mean that the knowledge came from a Divine Source.  Pretty cool, no?

Now, before I give you the answer to this one, I want you to consider one thing:  Suppose the statement is true.  Suppose God Himself appeared to Rabban Gamliel (or his ancestors) and said "The period between new moons is not less than..."  Does that prove that God gave us the Torah?  Does that somehow prove the existence of the Avos?  Does that in any way cast evidence on the historicity of Mattan Torah or the Exodus?  The answer, very simply, is no, it does not.  It simply means that Rabban Gamliel had a tradition from God Himself on this one fact.

That being said, now let's look at the facts.  I don't know that God Himself didn't, in fact, appear to Rabban Gamliel's ancestors and impart this fact.  But we do know that the Babylonian astronomer Naburimani also calculated the synodic period of the moon (the fancy way of saying the time between one new moon and the next) several hundred years before Rabban Gamliel lived. 

"Ah, " the true believer will say "perhaps the Babylonians got the figure from us.  After all, how could the Babylonians (or anyone else from the ancient world) have figured it out to such precision?"

Before we answer the question, let's consider the fact that while it's possible that the Babylonians got the figure from us, there is no proof of it.  It's at least just as likely that Rabban Gamliel's ancestors got the figure from the Babylonians.  Nonetheless, there is a simple way to figure out the synodic period of the Moon.  Since a solar eclipse can *only* occur at the time of conjunction between the sun and the moon, all you need to do is calculate the number of days between two solar eclipses and divide it between the number of lunar months between those two eclipses.  Don't believe me?  Go to this list of solar eclipses and calculate it for yourself.  (Keep in mind, of course, that the number of lunar months is not the same as the number of solar months.  There are 235 lunar months in 19 years, not 228).  You too will be able to easily calculate the synodic period to a few decimal places.  Since it is presumed that the ancients did know how to count days and months, it is hardly a Divine miracle that the ancients possessed this knowledge.*

On to the third proof.   This time, the author brings a Gemara in Niddah which tells us that all fish that have scales also have fins.  Only a Divine Being, the argument tells us, with knowledge of every fish species in the world could possibly have made such a statement.  After all, the ancients certainly didn't know of every species of fish on their own.  Heck, we're still discovering new species of fish today.  Hence, such a definitive statement could only have come from an all-knowing God.  No non-omniscient man could possibly have made such a statement.

To the best of my knowledge, the statement is correct.  Although I am not a marine biologist, I am not aware of any species of fish that has a fin but no scales.  Pretty convincing, no? 

Again, however, the author is making the leap from asserting that if one statement of the Torah is true, it must all be true.  There is simply no basis for such an assertion.  As with the period of the moon, the *most* that it can prove is that God told the ancients secrets of marine biology that they could not have otherwise known.  

But it doesn't even prove that.   This is yet another case of begging-the-question and assuming that a Divine authorship before proving it.  To illustrate, let me give you an example.  I'm going to make a statement right now:  Every star (barring collapsed, dead stars) conducts nuclear fusion in it's core.  Now, fast forward 1000 years, a million years or even a billion years and suppose we find that, indeed, every star that they've ever found fuses atoms in its core.  Does the fact that I made that successful prediction make me Divine?  After all, I certainly didn't examine every star in the universe.  How could I possibly know that there are no stars that don't fuse atoms? 

The answer, of course, is that I simply extrapolated from what I do know and made a general rule.  Since I know that every star we've found so far fuses atoms, it's not too hard to make a rule that all stars conduct nuclear fusion.  Similarly, an ancient, examining the fish around him, could easily notice that every fish that has scales also has fins and make such a rule.

"Ah, " the true believer will counter, "but wouldn't he be afraid of being caught?  Wouldn't he be afraid to make such a statement if there was even a possibility that someone in the future might disprove him?  Surely someone making such a statement would have to be 100% sure, or else face the possibility of being disproven."

This, however, is another example of begging the question.  The believer is assuming that the person making the statement would be afraid of "being caught."  But is that the only possibility?  Perhaps he wasn't concerned about being incorrect.  Perhaps he simply thought he was correct just as I think I am about stars.  Perhaps he was simply making a general rule without regard for exceptions.  In short, you can't prove that this statement came from a Divine source and you certainly can't prove from this that the entire Torah is Divine in origin.

The author has quite a few more "proofs" at his site and I don't have time to go through them all.  Perhaps I'll look at some of the others another time.  But the important thing I want you to take away from the post is this -- just because someone says that something is a proof, that doesn't make it so.  In order for it to truly be a proof, it has to stand up to tests against both logic and empirical fact.  Sadly, none of the "proofs" that I posted about here do that.

The Wolf


* As an aside, if you want an interesting eye-opener into how much astronomy you could learn with only a stick, a rope and a stone, read chapter 5 of Neil DeGrasse Tyson's book Death by Black Hole.

Being Uninformed Is Not The Same As Being Stupid...

Over in the Coffeeroom, someone opened up the whole science/Torah can of worms again. In this case, the topic came down to what happens when the empirical evidence that you can see with your own eyes contradicts traditional Jewish sources.

Charlie Hall, who sometimes comments on this blog, mentioned that the available evidence shows that the world is more than 6000 years old. A poster named Joseph, took him to task on this stating:

charlie disagrees with the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida amongst others.

I choose the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida over charlie.

When another commentator vouched for Charlie's intelligence, Joseph responded as follows:

Smarter than the Rema, the Maharal, Aruch Hashulchan, Chasam Sofer, Rabbeinu Bachyai, the Alshich, the Radvaz, and the Chida combined?

Smarter than any one of them.

Charlie and I both responded to that with the same point almost simultaneously -- that the aforementioned sages did not have access to the evidence and information that we have now.

Sadly, I see this from yeshiva people all the time - anytime you bring up the idea that X did not know Y, they take it to mean that you think that X is stupid (or less intelligent than modern people who do know Y). But that's not the case -- it's simply that we, today, live in a society that has the infrastructure and knowledge base to know Y while X did not.

To give a simple example: Could Rashi have constructed an airplane? The answer, very simply, is no. And that's not because Rashi was stupid -- on the contrary, Rashi was extremely intelligent. But he lived in a society and a time where it would have been impossible for *anyone* to build an airplane. Rashi did not have access to the physics and engineering that we have today. If he lived today, could he have done so? Maybe -- but we'll never know for sure. But to say that he couldn't do it is not to say that he was stupid or any less intelligent than today's engineers. It just means that today's engineers have access to better resources.

Similarly, the chachamim that Joseph mentioned did not have access to the scientific evidence that we have today regarding the age of the universe. That doesn't make them "less intelligent" than Charlie - it just means that they went with whatever information and evidence that they had at the time - just as we do so with the evidence that we have today.

The Wolf

P.S. The shocker in the thread came a bit later on. Charlie asked Joseph:

Would you eat a piece of meat that the author of one of your sources had told you was kosher, when you yourself had seen it taken from the carcass of a pig?

To which Joseph responded: Yes. Just utterly shocked.

The Wolf

This Is It... The BEST Reason To Discard Science....

From this DovBear thread:

What if one day these scientist prove that the Torah is correct. It'll be too late to get those who went off the derech back. Science always seems to be giving conflicting information.

Man, sometimes the stupid just hurts.

The Wolf

The YWN CoffeeRoom, Plagiarism and Multiple Personalities

It seems that there is a rash of plagiarism going on over at the YWN CoffeeRoom.

In a discussion on evolution, four consecutive posters simply copied and pasted their anti-evolution arguments directly from Frumteens (without attribution). Mind you, this is *after* I called out another poster for plagiarizing (although, I suspect, he was merely copying himself under a different username).

"Toras Moshe" has a post that starts:

Once should never confuse science with scientists. Science is knowledge; scientists are people, complete with their own agendas, weaknesses, and dishonesties. Their PhD’s do not make them any more moral or honest or objective than truck drivers.

The Frumteens Moderator posted that back in September 2005 here.

"Hill of Beans" wrote an essay that starts:

Scientists are involved in finding "scientific fact", which is not the same as "truth", or even plain "fact." This is because scientists - not science - have agreed to restrict "scientific proof" to things that fulfill their own self-imposed criteria, which limits the type of truth they will find. Example: If an experiment cannot be reproduced in the laboratoy, it is not considered scientifically proven.

However, he stole that from the Frumteens moderator here (second post).

"Bogen" starts his piece with:

That Hashem first made man from dirt and then blew into him a Neshama is not in question. But to say that the Torah can agree with the theory of evolution is another matter entirely. The theory of evolution - and the word itself, which means slow change, the opposite of "revolution," which means sudden change - requires many generations of gradual development, and man was already functioning on the day he was created.

However, that, too, is ripped from FT here.

"Will Hill" starts his piece with:

Evolution, by definition, means "slow progress", the opposite of revolution, which means sudden progress. When did this "evolution" supposedly occur?

That, too, comes from FT here (second post).

That four *consecutive* posts simply rip their arguments from another source (and the same source, at that), tells me that something stinks in the CoffeeRoom.

I don't mind a paragraph copied and pasted (with attribution) to support a point you're making, but to simply mass-copy your argument and present them as your own is simply wrong (and doing it under four different names so as to make it appear that you have a multitude on your side is even worse). How about a little honesty guys...

The Wolf

(P.S. -- For the record, I posted in the CR thread about my findings. Let's see if the post is actually approved. UPDATE: It went up.)

The Type Of Science That Some Frum People Believe In

(click to enlarge)

Did I ever mention that I love Non-Sequitur?

The Wolf

The Accuracy (or lack thereof) of the Jewish Calendar

Rabbi Gershon Tannenbaum, in his weekly My Machberes column in the Jewish Press talks about the Jewish calendar. As a part of this column, he makes the following observation:

In 4104 (344 CE), Hillel wrote his formulas predicting the Hebrew calendar until the Hebrew year 6000 (2240 CE). In 1949, the National Institute of Time and Technology established the Atomic Clock to standardize times throughout the world. Since its establishment, the Atomic Clock has been readjusted several times. Hillel's calendar has never been readjusted and remains supremely accurate. The precision of the Molad announced in every shul during Rosh Chodesh Bentching, indicating the exact time of the new moon in Jerusalem, continues to be breathtaking.

Now, as my mother told me when I was young, it's okay to toot your own horn, but don't do it by putting down others - and especially when don't toot your own horn and put others down when you're wrong.

The Hebrew calendar is pretty accurate, no question about it - but compared to the Atomic clock, it just falls flat.

First, a little background. The Jewish calendar, unlike most calendars, is a luni-solar calendar. While the months are reckoned according to the phases of the moon, it is occassionally reconciled to the solar calendar. Because the solar calendar is longer than the lunar calendar by 11 days (approximately), an extra month is inserted into the calendar 7 out of 19 years. As a result, there are 235 month (12 x 19 + 7 extra months) in the Jewish calendar every 19 years. These 235 lunar months come out to the same length as 228 solar months.

But not exactly.

As it turns out, 235 lunar months does not exactly equal 228 solar months. In fact, the 235 lunar months come out (on average) to about two hours longer than the 228 solar months. Now, two hours over a 19 year span may not sound like much, but over the course of the centuries, they add up. In about 216 years, you have a one-day difference. Since we're 1,665 years away from when the calendar was first set up by Hillel, the differences between the solar and lunar calendar have built up to about eight days. That means that we celebrate our holidays about eight days later in the year than Hillel did. Carried far enough (assuming Moshiach doesn't come by then), we could, in theory, begin celebrating Pesach in the summer! The Hebrew calendar may have been pretty accurate considering the technology of the time that it was established, but to say that it remains "supremely accurate" is just plain bunk.

As for the atomic clock, it's probably unfair to compare it to the Hebrew calendar. Part of the reason for that is that the atomic clock does not reckon time by the motions of heavenly bodies but by the occelations of a cesium atom. A second is no longer 1/31557600 of a year, but is now defined as follows:

The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770* periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.

In other words, instead of reckoning time by the sun, they now use cesium atoms (hence the name "atomic clock"). As such, comparing it to the Hebrew calendar would be like comparing apples and oranges... they judge time by two completely different standards.

However, we can look at the Gregorian calendar, which has been in use for over four hundred years. The average Gregorian year differs from the astrnomical year by about 26 seconds per year. As a result, the Gregorian calendar gains a day every 3300 years. That being said, let's see which calendar is more accurate:

Gregorian: gains 1 day in 3300 years
Hebrew: gains about 15 days in 3300 years (1 day every 216 years or so).

Clear winner: Gregorian.

Of course, Pope Gregory had a twelve hundred year head start on Hillel, so it's understandable that his calendar might be more accurate. But to state that the Jewish calendar is "supremely accurate" while descibing the secular calendar as less accurate is just plain wrong.

While we're at it, we should also take a look at this statement of Rabbi Tannenbaum's:

The precision of the Molad announced in every shul during Rosh Chodesh Bentching, indicating the exact time of the new moon in Jerusalem, continues to be breathtaking.

It may be breathtaking, but it's also wrong.

The molad is based on an average period between new moons of 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes and 3 1/3 seconds. However, that period is actually wrong. The true period for the molad is about 3/5 of a second longer than that. Again, 3/5 of a second per month may not sound like a lot, but over the course of the centuries, they add up. Currently, the true molad is about two and a third hours later than the molad according to the Jewish calendar. Therefore, the molad that is announced in shul is no longer the exact time the new moon is visible over Jerusalem, but the time the new moon is visible over Afghanistan.

The Wolf


* I wonder if people in Chabad would find some significance in that number.

Fundamentalists and Science... and a Funny Non Sequitur Strip

(click to enlarge)

Interestingly enough, that is the way that many fundamentalists (of various religions) seem to think that science should run. You start with the stated fact that the world is 6000 years old and then you work backwards using mental gymnastics to try to find a way to get the carbon-14 dating, radiometric dating, the doppler shift and the like to fit your facts.

I've always maintained that the fundamentalists would have a much better logical argument by simply chucking the science altogether. Instead of coming up with silly theories like the boiling water of the flood made the earth appear billions of years old, they should just say "God did it" and leave it at that. Of course it sounds silly and it opens up a bunch of other questions, but at least then they don't have to fight the scientists.

The Wolf

How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Spot?

A fellow blogger (I'm not going to give him/her the pleasure of a link) posted the following:

The fossils have lead to evolution.
Evolution has led to atheism.
Atheism has led to psychopathy.
Psychopathy leads to death, either through murder, suicide, addictions or failure to have children.

How many logical and factual errors can you spot in these thirty words? Twenty Wolf points to the person who lists more valid logical/factual fallacies than anyone else.

I've already spotted a few. I'll post my findings in the comments later.

The Wolf

I'm Convinced 'Torah Proofs' Cause More Harm Than Good

Sometimes I have to wonder if people who peddle "Torah proofs" aren't, in fact, doing more damage than good. They proclaim that they have "scientific proof" that the Torah is divine and then follow it up with arguments that could be called faulty at best and downright loony at worst. Personally, I feel that no proof is better than a bad proof. If I tell you that I believe that God exists and that the Torah is divine, it's not subject to refutation. True, a belief on my part is not as strong as a "proof," but unlike a bad "proof," it won't leave someone feeling "lied to" when they discover the truth of the argument.

I just listened to one such lecture given (downloadable here) by Rabbi Yossi Mizrachi. The title of the lecture is Proof That Torah is Divine Part I. In his lecture, he claims to bring "scientific proofs" that the Torah is of Divine origin. Sad to say, very few of his "proofs" stand up to serious scrutiny. He goes through a lot of material in his presentation, and for me to debunk everything he says would simply take too much time. However, I don't actually have to debunk everything he says. Right at the beginning of the lecture, he presents his cardinal rule for debunking religions -- if a mistake can be found in the "holy book" of a religion, then it is a proof that the book is not Divine and the religion that it supports is bunk. So, the net result is that, according to him, if I can show that any one of his premises regarding the Torah is false, and that the Torah has a flaw, then Judaism itself is bunk. That's a rather high bar to set and, if I apply to Judaism the same conditions that he applies to other religions, then it's easy to show that Judaism is false.

Before I go any further, I want to make one thing very clear: I *do* believe in Judaism. Just because a person shows that a "proof" to Judaism is flawed and invalid doesn't make the religion itself flawed and invalid. I *do* believe that the Torah is of Divine origin and if a real proof to it is discovered one day, I will wholeheartedly embrace it. But I will not embrace flawed proofs, shoddy logic or emotional claptrap.

Biblical Errors And Consistent Standards

As I mentioned earlier, Rabbi Mizrachi begins with his cardinal rule; that if an error can be found in a "Divine book," then that error serves proof that the book is, in fact, not Divine, and that the religion that it supports is false. As an example, he brings up the verse in Acts 7:14 which states that Jacob went down to Egypt with 75 people. Of course, we know from Beraishis (46:27) and Shemos (1:5) that the number of people that went down to Egypt was only seventy. Did God forget how many people went down? Of course not, hence, it is argued that Acts (and, by extension, the rest of the Christian Bible) is a flawed document and not Divine.

On the surface, it's a sound argument. However, one has to wonder if Rabbi Mizrachi actually gave the Christians and honest and sincere hearing on the matter. Assuming that most of the Christian clergy are not total idiots, I'm fairly certain that some of them must have noticed this contradiction. Has he asked any of them for an explanation? Somehow, I doubt it. A simple Google serach turned up two possible answers that Christians can use to reconcile the 70/75 count; and, truth to tell, those answers are entirely plausible -- or at least certainly as plausible as the answer given to explain why the total given in Beraishis 46 is 70 while only 69 names are mentioned.

In other words, I can support the basic premise that Rabbi Mizrachi puts forward -- i.e. that if you find a flaw in a book claiming to be Divine then the book is not Divine. What I do object to, however, is the fallacy of holding Christians accountable for contradictions in the text itself, without giving them a chance to reconcile the contradictions, while allowing Chazal, the Rishonim and Achronim to engage in explanations that, to an outsider, would sound far-fetched and forced. In other words, if you're going to call out Christian books because they contradict themselves (or other established sources), then you have to allow the adherents to explain the contradictions; much as you wold allow yourself to explain the apparent contradictions in Tanach. I'm not saying, of course, that you have to accept the explanations offered, but, in the name of honesty, you have to give them the chance and to accept the possibility of an explainable if it sounds plausible. Somehow, my gut tells me that Rabbi Mizrachi would not accept *any* explanation from a Christian of the 70/75 discrepancy, but would entertain almost any effort to explain an apparent error in the Torah.

Mass Revelation

Rabbi Mizrachi also brings up the argument of mass revelation. In short, the argument is that Judaism is unique because it has, at its origin, a mass revelation. Millions of people (he says between six and fifteen million, but that's quite a stretch, even accepting the 600,000 number as literally true) stood at Mt. Sinai and literally heard God speak. Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that the only proof that this happened is because it says it in the very book you're trying to prove, it's a fair argument. Most religions, begin with a single individual who makes an unverifiable claim (Mohammed receiving the Koran from the angel Gabriel, Joseph Smith receiving the Golden Plates from the angel Moroni, etc.). The fact that Judaism makes a claim of mass revelation is a striking point in its favor. However, Rabbi Mizrachi is not content with that. He says that if *any* religion can claim that they had an origin even involving one other eyewitness, then that proves the Torah is false, since (and I don't know his source for this) he says that Torah says that no other religion will be able to make the claim of a plural origin.

Sadly, his claims do not stand up to scrutiny. The Aztecs, for example, had a mass revelation story. They believed that their god, Huitzilopochtli, led them (in person) to the site of present-day Mexico City. Based on Rabbi Mizrachi's assertion, the very fact that another group even claims a mass revelation shows that the Torah is not true. I suppose it's a good thing that I don't agree with Rabbi Mizrachi's underlying assertion. :)

Textual Variations and Consistent Standards

The next claim he makes is that if a "holy book" has multiple versions, then it cannot be divine. After all, how would you know which version is the correct one? He makes the point that there are over 150,000 textual variations of the New Testament (I don't know if this is correct or not... it's really beside the point) and therefore, it's impossible to determine which is the "correct" version that would have been Divinely given. R. Mizrachi makes the point that no matter where you go in the world, the Torah is the same. Since it's the same everywhere in the world, it must be divine. Well, I don't know if Rabbi Mizrachi has ever been to Yemen, but there are Jews there that have a different Torah than ours. In fact, there are nine differences. But even if we dismiss the Yemenite Torahs, we even have differences here in the United States. There are two different versions of the word "daka" in Devarim 23:2; some Torahs have an aleph as the last letter while some have a heh. So, which Torah is the correct one? The Yemenite? The daka-aleph? The daka-heh? Does this mean that the Torah is not divine? If Rabbi Mizrachi were to apply the same standard that he does to the Christians to the Torah, he'd have to say no, but I don't think he's going to do that.

Faulty "Scientific" Proofs And Dubious Claims

In his lecture, Rabbi Mizrachi attempts to give "scientific proof" to the divinity of the Torah, but all that happens is that he comes off sounding incredibly uneducated about science. He trots out various "proofs," however, very often the underlying assumption of the proof is simply wrong.

For example, he tries to prove that the Jews knew, through the Torah (specifically, a verse in Isaiah), that the world was round before anyone else. He mentions that before Columbus, no one knew that the world was round. The spherical nature of the earth was discovered when Columbus sailed off to the west and returned from the east. Of course, that's not true. In order to do that, you have to go around the world, something that Columbus never did. It was not until Magellan's voyage, in 1521, that anyone actually went around the world. However, even that's not important, because people *did* know that the world is round many years before Columbus. The ancient Greeks knew the world was round because they observed that the earth casts a circular shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse.

He also tries to show that the Zohar, written in the days of the Tanaim (itself a very dubious claim) revealed many secrets of the world, that could not have been known before the advent of modern science. However, for two of the proofs that he brings, it's very clear that the Zohar was *not* written by a Divine Being. A Divine Being would not have peddled such incorrect information.

One proof from the Zohar that he mentions is a passage that descibes that there is one place in the world where it is always light and only dark for one hour a day -- the North Pole. However, that statement is simply not true. The North Pole is not always bathed in light except for one hour. The fact is that the sun is above the horizon at the North Pole for six months in the summer and below the horizon for six months in the winter. In other words, it is daytime for six months straight and night (to various degrees) for six months. In other words, the Zohar is completely wrong in the way it describes the North Pole.

Another "proof" from the Zohar is the fact that different people in the world look differently. According to the Zohar (at least according to Rabbi Mizrachi -- I haven't actually checked the source material), the climate affects the appearance of people. Or, to put it in Rabbi Mizrachi's words: "In Africa, everyone is black, almost the same face. Same hair, same face, same shape in the face. You go to China -- copy machine. Two billion copies." Rabbi Mizrachi clearly doesn't know what he's talking about here -- Africa is the most genetically diverse place on Earth. To say that everyone in Africa has the "same hair, same face, same shape in the face," simply shows that Rabbi Mizrachi hasn't done a great deal of reading about genetics or geography. In any event, to get to the point, the fact that different people in different regions look different is hardly a surprising discovery, even in the days when the Zohar is said to have been written. Anyone who had traveled would have known that.

As another proof to the idea that only God could have written the Torah, he mentions the Gemara in Megillah which purports to give the exact number of stars. Rabbi Mizrachi states that the number given is 10¹⁹ , although the true number mentioned in the Gemara is approximately 10¹⁸. However, we can forgive him the math error. What's harder to overlook is the simple logical mistake of using the Gemara's figure to prove the actual number of stars. In other words, the Gemara gives a really number, so it *must* be right. The fact is that the only way to prove that it's right is to compare it to another counting. The current estimate to the number of stars is actually 7x10²².

There are other "proofs" that he brings in his speech, which are equally easy to discredit (the four animals proof, the fins/scales proof and the calendar proof stand out most prominently), but this post has already gone on for quite a while.

Where R. Mizrachi Completely Disproves His Own Point

There is, however, a deeper, more fundamental problem with Rabbi Mizrachi's argument. He attempts to prove that the Torah (and by extension, the Oral Torah) is Divine because it's an error-free document and contains information that only a Divine Being could have possessed. However, by allowing supporting proof from the Gemara and the Zohar, he also leaves them open to refutation. In other words, if you're going to claim that the Pentateuch is divine, then you can only find fault with items in the Pentateuch. But by stating that the Gemara and Zohar are also divine, Rabbi Mizrachi is asserting that they, too, are error-proof. He's also asserting that they, too, must be free of textual variations (since a divine document must have only one version). The fact of the matter is that there is no one today who will say that the Gemara doesn't have textual variations. So, according to Rabbi Mizrachi's definition, the Gemara is not Divine; and if the Gemara is not divine, then the religion it supports, Judaism, must be false.

Far More Harm Than Help

At the beginning of his speech, Rabbi Mizrachi states that over 100,000 people are religious today because of this lecture (whether delivered by him or someone else). All I can say is that I find that *extremely* hard to believe. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, and yet, I was able to pick apart most of his arguments pretty easily. If this is the "proof" of Judaism, I'm left to wonder if his lectures don't do far more harm to the kiruv movement than help.

The Wolf

Evolution And Shoddy Logic

It seems that the Evolution/Creation debate has broken out in the YeshivaWorldNews coffeeroom. To his credit, the YW Editor has been putting up both pro- and anti-evolution posts.

One thing that often amuses me about arguments like this from the Creationist* side is the fact that the Creationists inevitably end up using shoddy logic to prove their point. I have long maintained that it would be much more logical for Creationists to simply ignore the evidence and state that they hold their position solely as a matter of faith rather than argue with the evolutionists on a scientific basis. By waging the battle on the "scientific turf," they open themselves up to arguments that simply do not work.

I had a good example of this in the YWN thread. A poster named Bogen came up with this gem:

Evolution is just a theory, not a fact. (And a false theory, at that.)

Past evidence for evolution has been overturned. In the past, major scientific revolutions have overturned theories that were at the time considered factual.

In the past there have been scientific hoaxes regarding evolution, such as the Piltdown Man forgery.

Pieces of "evidence" for evolution such as Ernst Haeckel's 19th-century embryo drawings, were not merely "scientific errors" but frauds; Biology textbooks have continued to reproduce such "evidence" long after it had been debunked.

Evolution is a pseudo-religion (evolution is based on faith, supporters of evolution revere Charles Darwin as a prophet, and supporters of evolution dogmatically reject alternative suggestions out-of-hand.)

Evolution is "unfalsifiable" (there is no tests that could be made that would demonstrate that the statement is false). Any "fact" can be "fitted" into the evolutionary framework. Past events of speciation are not observable and repeatable, and therefore evolution is not falsifiable. In 1976, Popper himself said that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme".

I don't mean to pick on Bogen personally here. These arguments are typical of the ones that you find in the less-educated corner of the Creationist camp. And every one of these arguments utterly fails when it comes to disproving evolution (which was Bogen's goal):

• The fact that he mentions that evolution is "only a theory" shows that he does not understand just what a scientific theory is. Gravity, too, is a theory.
• The fact that " major scientific revolutions have overturned theories that were at the time considered factual," hardly proves that evolution is false. After all, at one time we had theories as to how diseases were transmitted. Now,we have the germ theory. The fact that an older theory was overturned does not invalidate the germ theory. Likewise, the fact that older evolutionary models were overturned does not invalidate newer models.
• The fact that frauds such as Piltdown Man and Haeckel's embryo drawings were perpetrated does not invalidate evolutionary theory. Fraud has existed in all branches of science at one time or another. The fact that the frauds were eventually discovered and discredited is a point *in favor* of the scientific method.
• The claims that evolution is a pseudo-religion, that Darwin is revered as a "prophet," that evolutionists dogmatically support *anything* (isn't that against the very idea of the scientific method?) and that evolution is unfalsifiable and has never been observed are simply false. A simple Google serach or common sense will show them to be outright false.

Interestingly enough, I don't have a problem with a faith based argument, regardless of whether or not I can show it to be false. For example, a cornerstone of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus. Now, I personally wasn't present and can't state for certain whether it happened or not. I don't have a problem with a Christian who maintains that it happened -- after all, I have no argument to counter it and say that it didn't happen. I don't even have a problem with a faith based argument that is counter to scientific evidence. For example, someone can maintain that the universe is only 5769 years old and that God rigged the evidence to make the world look older. Now, I personally don't agree with that statement, but if that's what you want to believe, then go ahead.

Shoddy logic, or outright false claims, on the other hand, is something that I feel the need to address. In other words, when Creationists claim that evolution didn't happen because they maintain it as an article of faith, then I won't argue. I may consider you wrong, but not foolish. On the other hand, when they use bad logic and false statements, then they are wrong, and possibly foolish or malicious.

The Wolf

Related Post: Exactly Whom Is Doing The Arguing?
Also, check out The Rebbetzin's Husband's post regarding Creationist arguments.


* When I say "Creationist" in this post, I'm specifically referring to the Young Earth Creationists who maintain that evolution did not/does not happen. I fully recognize that one can believe in both Creation by a Divine Power and evolution at the same time.

NB: I don't mean to be attacking Bogen here "behind his back." However, past experience has shown that whenever I link to (or even refer to) my blog, the YWN editor does not put up the post. So there really is no effective way for me to alert him to this post. If someone has a way of getting the message to him, I'd appreciate it.

You've Gotta Love Arguments Like These...

The Jewish Philosopher* has a post about the Flood on his blog. In his post, he brings up the questions that many people have about the flood -- where did the water come from, where did it go, how did all the animals fit, etc. He then answers it by stating, simply, that God did it. Or, to use his words:

The answer is: God did it. In other words, these events cannot be explained according to the laws of physics, chemistry, biology etc. They can only be explained by miraculous divine intervention.

He follows this up later by taking the view that the lack of evidence (and, perhaps, the evidence of lack) does not matter. He says:

There is no geological evidence of the Biblical Deluge, however when one considers the miraculous nature of the Deluge, this is hardly surprising. Surely no one would argue that the lack of scorch marks on Mount Sinai proves that the Ten Commandments were never given there.

OK, that's fine. If you choose to simply ignore all the physical evidence and posit that God deliberately created counter-evidence to a global flood, you're free to do so. *I* don't believe it, but I won't stand in your way of believing it either.

However, in the same post where he says that physical evidence doesn't matter, he brings archaeological evidence of the dating of the Flood**. In other words, his position is this: where evidence exists to support me, I welcome it. Where evidence exists against my position, I'll simply ignore it by saying "God did it..."

You've gotta love these "heads I win, tails you lose" games.

The Wolf

Related posts:

Exactly Whom Is Doing The Arguing? (on the approach Young Earth Creationists SHOULD take)
Of All God's Miracles Large and Small (on the Flood and miracles)


* Believe it or not, this is the post I was going to publish about the Jewish Philosopher today, not the one I put up earlier today.
** I'm not going to comment on whether or not his evidence is correct or not. It's not relevant to the point.

So, What's The Difference Dr. Stern?

I love it when people say things and don't grasp the enormity or irony of what they are saying. Case in point, Dr. Ya'akov Stern's letter to the editor in today's Jewish Press (bolding mine):

Rabbi David Willig (Letters, Sept. 12) would have us believe that Torah-true Jews sacrifice their reason at the altar of faith, but let's consider the rabbi's account of the creation of man: "My personal belief, for what it's worth, is that God used the evolutionary process in creation and at some point added the spark of Tzelem Elokim to a manlike creature and thus made the pre-human into a human being."

I see. So for 350 million years these soulless man-forms aimlessly wandered across the planet until one day God said to Himself, "Hey, let's make this world more interesting and give these golems a brain." All I can say is that if someone out there will buy that hooey, I have a special year-end sale on New York's bridges.

Um... and this is fundamentally different from your story of creation in what way, Dr. Stern? In your version, God one day said to Himself "Hey, let's make this reality more interesting and create a universe."

Why is one any more logical than the other that you suspect people who believe in the former are liable to buy New York bridges at discounts while the latter are perfectly sane and logical?

The Wolf

Science and Torah in the Jewish Press, Again

From this week's Letters To The Editor (Jewish Press):

The debate over evolution that emerges every so often in the Jewish Press is fascinating. There are two issues I have always had with supporters of evolution, and I hope they can resolve them for me.

One, supporters of evolution claim the world is billions of years old and that human beings, rather than being spontaneously created by God, gradually evolved. If you accept this, then many parts of Genesis cannot be taken literally. This includes the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, and the Flood. And if you concede that these stories are allegorical, it is difficult to say where the allegories end and the historical account begins. There needs to be a logical explanation of why Abraham should be any more real than his figurative ancestors.

A second issue concerns the role of faith and reason in this debate. For the evolutionists, what would happen if no great rabbis in the past supported your position?

Imagine that rabbis like the Rambam and Rav Hirsch were squarely against a non-literal interpretation of the Bible. Would you still believe in evolution and its hundreds of years of accumulated scientific evidence? Or would you suppress your reason in favor of remaining a religious Jew?

Neither approach should appeal to people who consider themselves both rational and religious. If you accept reason over God, even hypothetically, you cannot claim to still be religious, since God is no longer supreme. Rather, the next issue of Biblical Archeological Review will decide what you believe.

And if you choose to remain religious, what is the value in knowing the two approaches are currently compatible? In the end, reason will have to be sacrificed for the sake of your faith. If not by evolution, then by biblical criticism or some other field of study.

Once you admit you are willing to give up reason, you are effectively saying, like your opponents, that in order to be religious you have to drink the Kool-Aid. The fact that your flavor happens to be a little more diluted does not make it any easier to swallow.

It seems to me that attempting to reconcile reason and religion is like that old proverb about trying to dance at two different weddings at the same time. It is a wonderful idea, but in the end you finally have to make a choice.

Mordechai Silberstein
Brooklyn, NY

Dear Mr.* Silberstein,

Your first question is certainly a valid one. One can certainly make the mistake of going too far and allegorizing the entire Torah. Your right that there needs to be some logical explanation as to why one part should be taken literally and the other not. However, before I address that point, I feel the need to point out that even if one lacks a logical explanation, that does not negate the fact that the first parts of Genesis might be true only in the allegorical sense. In other words, a failure to explain a distinction between the two sections does not mean that the distinction does not exist... any more than the failure to explain nuclear fission fusion until recently doesn't mean it hasn't been happening in the stellar cores for (at least) the last few thousand years.

That being said, I think that when you look at events listed in Tanach, you will generally find that they fall into three broad categories: those for which there is external evidence that it occurred as literally described, those for which there is no evidence one way or the others, and those for which there is physical evidence *against* it happening as literally described. Things that fall into the first category tend to occur later in Tanach -- the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, the existence of the Davidic dynasty, etc. Things in the second category tend to fall out earlier -- David himself, the earlier Shoftim, etc., the Avos (Patriarchs) themselves fall into this category. The last category tends to include items that are in the earliest part of Genesis -- the story of Creation and the Flood. By examining the physical evidence, you can easily conclude that the earth and humanity have been around longer than 5768 years. You can also easily conclude that a world wide flood, as described in Parshas Noach, could not have happened literally as described. In other words, there is physical evidence (and quite a bit of it) *against* a literal reading of these verses. One could easily postulate that events for which there is physical evidence that they could not have occurred as described should not be taken literally, whereas for events in the other two categories, we can state that they could have or did happen as literally described.

Your second point (regarding the fact that Rabbis in the past have not accepted evolution/cosmology, etc.) is a red herring. One could easily state that the Rambam (since you bring him up) was simply not aware of the evidence. In the lack of evidence to the contrary, I, too, would probably believe in a literal six day Creation. However, I have access to evidence that the Rambam did not. Lest you think that I'm committing some form of heresy by stating that the Rambam may have been deficient in some sort of knowledge, I advise you to open up your Mishneh Torah to the third chapter of Hilchos Yisodei HaTorah where the Rambam provides an entire astronomical scheme which has since been proven wrong. He states that the planets and stars are attached to glass spheres with no empty space (!) between them. He states that the Earth is 40 times the size of the moon, but that is not true by any reasonable measure. He also states that the sun is about 170 times the size of the Earth, but this calculation, too, is incorrect. In other words, do I have to believe these things despite their being physical evidence to the contrary because the Rambam (and many others) believed them to be? The answer is no -- the Rambam did not have access to modern observatories to be able to tell that his measurements were wrong. He could not know that the stars and planets aren't attached to glass spheres because he did not have the technology to find the evidence that it isn't true. The same could easily apply to evolution and cosmology. Since they lacked the evidence that such things could not have literally happened, they were fine with taking a literal approach. Now, however, that we have physical evidence to the contrary, we can (and perhaps must) state that these chapters of Beraishis cannot be taken literally.

You ask the following question:

Imagine that rabbis like the Rambam and Rav Hirsch were squarely against a non-literal interpretation of the Bible. Would you still believe in evolution and its hundreds of years of accumulated scientific evidence? Or would you suppress your reason in favor of remaining a religious Jew?

But what you fail to consider is a third possibility: that perhaps the Rambam would agree with us if he were living today. Perhaps if they had access to today's information, they, too, might agree that evolution occurred. Unless you are going to postulate that the Rambam (and other Gedolim) knew everything and could not possibly be misinformed, ignorant of science or mistaken, then you have to account for the possibility that, if the evidence were available in their day, they might looked at it and concluded that yes, the Flood could not have occurred as literally described.

Your conclusion also seems to have a false dichotomy. You seem to indicate that one must allow literalism to triumph over evidence (or reason, as you put it) since, if not, the person who relies on evidence will eventually have to discard his belief since he will undoubtedly uncover some evidence someday that will disprove the entire religion. But once again, you are failing to allow for a third possibility: the possibility that not everything in Tanach *has* to be read literally, the possibility that allegorical interpretation is allowed**, and the possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, the evidence is correct and that God wants us to use our brains in evaluating it and draw reasonable inferences from it. If not, let me ask you the question in reverse: if you put the Chumash before reason, then what do you do when you find something that incontrovertibly contradicts what the Chumash says? What do you do when you see places that have been inhabited continuously for over four thousand years (in contradiction to the literal reading of the Flood story)? What do you do when genetic studies (the very same genetic studies, mind you, that were celebrated in the Jewish world showing that most Kohanim today descend from one person 3000 years ago) show that it is impossible for us to have all had one common ancestor at the time of the Mabul? What do you do when physical evidence in the earth itself clearly shows it to be older than 5700+ years? Do you just plug your ears and go "la la la I'm not listening?" Or do you think that it's possible, just possible, that perhaps the Torah wasn't speaking literally. If the former, then I respectfully ask just whom is not acting rationally.

Yours truly,

The Wolf


* I do not, in any way, intend to demean Mr. Silberberg. If he has, in fact, earned the honorific "Rabbi," then I would be happy to use that greeting instead. His letter does not indicate one way or the other.

** Of course it's allowed. Or does he think that God's hand was literally seen by the Sea? Does he literally think that Eve is the mother of *all life*? Does he think thatGod's voice literally walked in the Garden?

What's In Rabbi Falk's Encyclopedia?

Josh, over at Parshablog, brings us this excerpt from Rabbi Falk's book Oz VeHadar Levushah:


Rabbi Falk advocates "doctoring" books that don't agree with what the Torah says. He specifically speaks to the issue of the age of the universe, but I would be willing to wager that he means this to apply to other areas where the encyclopedia disagrees with traditional Torah statements. As a result, Rabbi Falk has a lot of doctoring to do in his encyclopedia:

Just about everything about astronomy has to be "doctored," as no encyclopedia that I know of states that the geocentric model of the universe is the correct one, as the Rambam has it. Certainly no encyclopedia mentions (except, perhaps in the mythology section) that the stars are attached to a sphere which revolves around the earth each day.

Much of geology has to go out the door, because of the age of the universe problem. Likewise with archaeology -- you can't read that there are cities have been inhabited continuously since before the days of Noach.

A good deal of biology naturally has to be ripped out as well. Evolution, as you can imagine, is a big no-no. However, I'm fairly certain that most encyclopedias do not mention spontaneous generation (as in lice, or half-earthen rodents) as fact either.

Much of history has to go as well, since, in many places, the current historical understanding of events/places/dates may not match the traditional Jewish chronology. In addition, some historic events may involve details that we may not want children getting a hold of.

A fair portion of the section on genetics and its related entries have to be expunged as well. After all, genetics and mutations form a basis for the study of evolution.

Any of the sections dealing with biblical personages have to be cut out. Surely these are not written from a Jewish perspective and will contain information or allegations that are contrary to traditional Jewish thought. In fact, the whole section on Biblical books will have to be cut out (due to the Documentary Hypothesis and other similar theories), as will the entire section on Judaism - since it too, no doubt, contains misinformation about Judaism (for starters, that there are other branches of Judaism...)

Sections dealing with other religions, theology, mythology and religious personages have to be chopped too. Can't have mentions of other religions that aren't completely derogetory.

Any section dealing with popular culture (movies and their stars, radio programs, television programs, celebrities, etc.) also have to be removed.

This list is by no means complete. I'm sure that there are plenty of things that I missed in my list. So, after all this material is cut out of the encyclopedia, one has to wonder what is left?

The Wolf

How Many Fallacies/Errors Can You Spot?

Over at Jacob Da Jew's blog, we're discussing the Age of the Universe. One of the commentators on that blog came up with this:

Also please keep in mind that a short while after the world was created there was a worldwide flood and for 40 days and nights (to represent a mikvah and to clean the world) everything was submerged in water (acc. to some opinions this water was actually burning sulfur [this is an answer to the "scientists" who believe we started as a sulfur world]). Have you ever put your hand or anything for that matter in water for a few hours? what happens? it shrivels up looks much older! now try it for 40 days and nights! Now try it with burning sulfur! this is another explanation as to why the world looks so much older than it actually is.

and

As a side point, I pointed out that according to some opinions the world was submerged in sulfur for 40 days and nights. According to college level science when things are submerged for extended times in liquids especially if those liquids are hot (and especially boiling) they take on properties of being appearing to be older. This can help explain why there are fossils that carbon date to millions of years ago!
All of this about things looking older is not an answer to the question at hand i.e. why the world was created developed, this is an answer as to how "scientists" can carbon date things back millions of years!

OK, without looking at my comments on Jacob's blog, how many fallacies and/or errors can you spot in those 231 words?

The Wolf

Loshon Hara causes.... Science

Warning... this could make your brain hurt.

We all know about the terrible sin of lashon harah (speaking evil of someone). It's a sin that causes untold grief, disrupts marriages, destroys friendships, and causes baseless hatred between man and his fellow man. Volumes have been written about this sin and the terrible disharmony that is a result of it.

However, there is a side effect of it that I bet you weren't aware of. As it turns out, lashon harah also causes advances in science. No, I kid you not. According to Divrei.org:

As Rabbi Kessin has pointed out, if the Jews sin, then the Soton receives the flow of Divine energy, twists it into a physical caricature of its spiritual form, and gives it to the nations. In this case, the light of Moshiach, a divine wisdom which gives insight into the spiritual worlds, was converted into a body of knowledge that shows the mechanics of the physical world. And what is that? Science.

That's right... Science is only a perverted form of Divine energy. And is science a good thing? Well...

Certainly we have benefited from the many advances in science, along with the rest of the world. There has been a terrible price, however. Why does the Soton want the world to be filled with knowledge of science? Until science’s advent, atheism was unheard of; it had no intellectual underpinnings. Science, however, can be construed to present a form of reality that does not include Hashem, chas v’shalom. Once the Soton could influence the nations into giving up their religions (which, twisted they may be, still involve an awareness of a divine being), he could then turn the nations onto the Jews and “enlighten” them. How many millions of Jews abandoned their Torah when confronted with the very real powers of science? From simple shtetl yidden who were bowled over by their first glimpse of a locomotive train, to ambitious university students who felt obligated to drop their “backwardness” in order to get ahead, the fires on the altar of science have had no shortage of fuel. Today, nine of ten Jews are nebbuch totally non-religious, with at most a token “seder,” an occasional bagel, and a casual visit to a temple on the High Holidays to show for their heritage. We have no idea how many millions of “gentiles” are in fact lost Jews who fell away from our nation over the centuries. Furthermore, gedolim are becoming a rarity, as the siyatta d’shamaya dries up more and more. What’s more, the sheer effort to become a ben Torah has become a larger and larger mountain. As one rav ruefully observed, “The [primary] purpose of kollel today is to make frum ba’alabatim!”

That's right... Science is only a tool of Satan to get us to abandon God. Certainly HaShem doesn't want science, right? After all, it's Satan's tool.

And what should be the proper Jewish approach to the wonders of science? The author of the piece suggests the following (emphasis his):

Since all the advances in science came ultimately from the Soton, who had taken the ohr Moshiach that had been meant for us, had twisted it into a force for understanding the physical world, and had given it to the nations, we must take another attitude every time that we visit one of those big-box electronics stores to buy yet another appliance. As we gaze in wonder at the latest super-small, yet super-speedy computers (far faster than last year’s model) and marvel at the latest that technology has wrought, a sad thought must cross our minds: “All this is but a perverted shadow of what was really meant – for us!”

That's right. Advances in science are simply perversions of the light of Moshiach. And, therefore, what should we do?

Says Rabbi Kessin: Look at the damage done by loshon hora. Not only does a Jew’s speaking or believing loshon hora enable the Soton to prosecute him and then punish him, but this sin also gives the Soton the ability to take the kedushah which was meant for us, pervert it, and give it to the nations, who then can use it against us. Furthermore, when the Soton is able to take from the ohr Moshiach, the advent of Moshiach is delayed, and he is able to continue his destruction in ways never imagined before. On the other hand, one who guards his tongue not only preserves his mazal, his good fortune, but continues to direct the shefa of kedushah to Klal Yisroel (to both his and all Israel’s benefit), including the ohr Moshiach, thus directly hastening Moshiach’s arrival.

Yep, that's it. Don't speak lashon harah and the evil of science will stop. If we would all just stop speaking evil of one another, those awful scientists will stop trying to cure diseases. Hey, maybe if we're really good at it, they'll forget the vaccines to polio, smallpox and the like. Perhaps we'll even forget about electricity and go back to learning Torah by candlelight, as we were obviously meant to. Certainly many of the horrible agricultural advances that proved Malthus wrong could be turned around, and we can return to those wonderful times of the world population having to worry about famines every now and again.

Perhaps, if we're really good at curbing our hate speech, we will no longer have refrigeration and modern sanitation. Heck, the Torah *meant* for us to have cholera and other diseases brought about by unsanitary conditions.

In addition, I want to know whose lousy lashon harah inflicted us with the printing press. Don't we know that the sefarim that we have nowadays (produced until recently on a printing press and now on computers) are just products of the Soton and really should all be handwritten?

If only HaShem would forgive us for the horrible sin of lashon harah and take back the "curses" of modern medicine such as surgery, antibiotics, vaccines, preventive medicine and physical therapy. If only we could defeat the Soton and his handiwork of heavier-than-air flight, communications, agricultural advances, plastics and modern sanitation. If only we could stop speaking lashon harah, we could return to the wonderful way of life we had a thousand years ago:

• when the life expectancy was not even forty
• when families could almost be assured of losing at least one child to disease or accident
• when women routinely died in childbirth
• when Torah books were so rare that most people didn't even have a siddur in their house (let alone all the sefarim that they have now)
• when any number of medical conditions from a ruptured appendix to diabetes to cancer meant certain death
  
• when human and animal waste were almost omnipresent in homes and in the streets due to the lack of sanitation, inviting (often incurable) disease into our lives
  
• when travel from one town to the next often involved fears of highwaymen
• when the fastest that news could travel was the maximum speed of a horse or a ship
• when food could not be stored beyond a day or two due to the lack of refrigeration

and lastly...

... when a community (such as Lakewood) where thousands of people learn all day and do not work could never exist.

The Wolf

Hat tip: OnionSoupMix

(And before anyone gets any wise ideas - no I'm not condoning Lashon Harah. My opening paragraph was meant sincerely. It's just the silly idea that LH causes science [thereby making science bad] that I'm taking issue with).

How Not To Teach Your Kids About Dinosaurs

The age old question of dinosaurs (pun intended) was brought up in an Imamother thread recently. A poster took her son to the museum where they had a mock archeology dig. However, when her son began asking her questions about dinosaurs and the Torah approach to them, she didn't quite know what to answer.

One poster put in with this comment:

I don't see why there's any need to validate the museum's "hashkafa", or not imply that it's not what we believe.

Surely your son understands that the museum guides aren't Jewish, and he can be simply told that the whole dinosoar thing is goyishe . It shouldn't be hard for him to understand that while we are so lucky we have the Torah, where it tells us how Hashem created the world, Breishis Borah Elokim, etc., and the Torah is truth, Toras Emes, so we know the truth,

but that goyim don't have/ believe in the Torah, and sometimes they make things up taht are not true, like dinosoars and other "shtusim" e.g. fairy-tales.( you don't have to go into the whole evolutionary theory and refute it here, for your innocent little three year old's keppeh'le, just say that it's not what it says in the Torah, and goyim made up these stories.)

Now, if you want to believe that "the whole dinosaur thing is goyishe," I suppose I can't stop you. After all, it's your life and you're free to believe whatever you wish, however mistaken and foolish it might be. But I really want to focus on is not so much her personal belief, but the way she would choose to express it to her son.

Her approach is to tell her son that the "goyims'" lives are so empty without Torah, so devoid of purpose, that they have to make up silly things like dinosaurs in order to give their lives meaning. The main problem with this approach, very simply, is that it is a big, fat lie. I wasn't aware that the prohibition of m'dvar sheker tirchak ended when talking about non-Jews.

Putting aside the aspect of the prohibition, there is another problem with this approach -- very simply, what happens when the child finds out that what his mother told him is simply not true. Lying to children in order to teach a lesson is always bad policy. From the rebbe who tells his students that foods taste better when you make a bracha on them to the parent who tells their kid that scientists are only interested in taking people away from serving HaShem, they spread lies and misinformation to children who, at that age, don't know better.

There is also the question of what happens when the child finds out that she or he has been lied to. No matter how insular your community, there is likely to come a day when you might actually have the opportunity to talk for five minutes with someone another faith, and you find out that they *don't* believe that dinosaurs were made up to give their hollow, empty lives meaning. They might even find out that some of them take their faith in Christianity or Islam or whatever religion seriously, and draw real strength and inspiration from it -- much as they do from the Torah. They may even realize that the non-Jew they are speaking to doesn't believe in dinosaurs either. :)

Even if they never meet Christian or Muslim or Hindu or whatever for a length of time long enough to start a conversation, there's even the danger that they may be able to piece it together for themselves. They may eventually reason "why would they make up something so silly as a dinosaur to give their lives meaning?" They may begin to wonder why billions of people would be willing to walk around in self-delusion about the existence of dinosaurs.

And you don't have to be an adult to reason that out -- heck, I did it in eighth grade. I had a classmate at the time who tried to tell me that all the Christians in the world *know* that Judaism is the true religion, and that they are all just faking it. Now, I didn't know a single non-Jew at the time -- and yet, I was able to instantly spot how ridiculous that sounded. I sometimes wonder if my classmate ever met a devout Christian at some point later in his life, and if he did, how he reconciled the man's faith with his own world view.

With children, however, I think it is very important to always tell the truth when trying to impart important life lessons about Yiddishkeit. Basing your lessons on lies is dangerous, because once the child learns the truth (and, in all likelihood, they *will* learn the truth), they will begin to realize that they've been sold a bill of goods, and they might not be able to distinguish between the lies that they were told, and the truth that they were told. And that road often leads to total rejection.

In short, if you don't want to tell your kids about dinosaurs, then by all means, don't say anything. But don't say something as ridiculous as that the "goyim" make it up because they don't have the Torah.

The Wolf

Science, from a Yated Reader

Oh, man, there are some weeks that the Yated is a gold mine of blog material. This week is one of them. I could probably spend the whole week blogging on this issue, but I’ll restrict myself (for now) to one letter to the editor. Here is a letter, titled “Science” (with the quotes) from yesterday’s edition. All typos are mine (with the exception of the misspelling of the word “pursue” at the end).

A. Stone was dead-on in his observation regarding the arrogance of weather reporters. This arrogance is not limited to weathermen, but extends to all scientists in all fields of science. This is a profession where most scientific data is disproved within a decade of their release, yet, in each generation, these people somehow delude themselves to believe that they are different, that their ideas stand at the pinnacle of science.

This cycle has been going on for thousands of years, yet none of these scientists have ever learned their lesson. They are constantly correcting their own mistakes. To realize this, all you have to do is open up any science publication and you will notice the phrase “Now we know….” Written over and over, year after year! If you look closely at science, most successful scientific discoveries are trial and error discoveries, or “recipe” discoveries. We took patient A who had disease B and gave him medicine C and he recovered; therefore substance C treats malady B. This prompted Paul Valery, a noted French essayist, to write that “science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. The rest is literature.”

When scientific theories are not based on trial-and-error techniques, they are almost always wrong. For example, if a scientist would have been asked exactly how medicine C would affect the patient, he would invariably be eventually proven wrong. Here are some of the predictions of this kind to look back on:

“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be attainable.” (Albert Einstein, 1932)

“A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth’s atmosphere.” (The New York Times, 1936)

“Scientists predict cure for allergies is near.” (Chicago Tribune, August 15, 1982)

“Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” (Yale University, 1929)

Sometimes, science goes a step farther and makes sweeping predictions about the future. These are the funniest to look back on. Of course, the scientists quickly forget these predictions, or give us an arrogant analysis. “Well, then we believed A and B, but now we know…”

Who remembers the prediction of the coming ice age in the ‘70s, which made the front cover of several national publications? Who remembers global famine, resource depletion, or overpopulation? And, of course, we have the following masterpieces from the great New York Times:

“Earthquakes may engulf all of Europe.” (April 8, 1906)

“Rats [!] may destroy the human race; man must drive out or be driven out.” (July 7, 1908)

“British experts say deaf age is coming; New Yorkers may be first to lose their hearing.” (July 26, 1928)

“Man’s war on disease sweeps on to victory; few [battles] remain to be won.” (June 15, 1927)

So, as we persue (sic) all the dire scientific data of our impending global barbeque, pardon me as I guffaw loudly.

Professor J. Sherman
Psychopharmaceutical Development Specialist,
GlaxoSmithKline Inc.

I found the letter mildly amusing until I saw the signature at the end. That was when I burst into laughter. If this fellow is a “Psychopharmaceutical Development Specialist” at GlaxoSmithKline, you may want to reconsider some using of their products. In any event, I’m fairly certain that “Professor” is an academic title, not a personal one (such as “doctor.”). GSK doesn’t hire people to be professors, only colleges do.

In any event, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this letter. It sounds like a poorly written kiruv primer. The Professor makes the assumption that if a scientist says something, then that’s the opinion of “science” (by which I suppose he means the scientific community) and when it’s disproved, then that proves that all of science must be wrong. He puts up the straw man of science claiming to be all-knowing and infallible when it never makes such a claim – indeed, one of the principles of the scientific method is that any scientific hypothesis *must* be falsifiable.

He goes on to state that when science doesn’t rely on trial-and-error, it almost always is “proven wrong.” In reality, however, all scientific inquiry (by definition) is done through trial and error and/or observation. If not, then it is not scientific.

In addition, the Professor seems to be making the same mistake that Rav Uren Reich made a few years back when he disparaged science. At the height of the controversy surrounding Rabbi Slifkin, Rav Reich said:

These same scientists who tell you with such clarity what happened sixty-five million years ago – ask them what the weather will be like in New York in two weeks’ time! “Possibly, probably, it could be, maybe” – ain itam hadavar, they don’t know.

In short, he says that because they can’t predict the future, then anything they say must be suspect. It’s kind of like a person saying that the computer I’m using to type this post on can’t possibly exist because Bill Gates said that no one would ever need more than 640K of RAM. Since Bill Gates was wrong, certainly nothing the computer engineers tell us can be believed.

Interestingly, even some of the quotes that Professor Sherman uses are suspect. Take the quote about earthquakes engulfing Europe. If you go to the actual New York Times article, you’ll find that his quote is only half the title. Here’s the complete title:

Earthquake May Ingulf (sic) all Europe, Says German Scientist; Berlin Professor Finds in French Mine Disaster a Symptom of the Approaching Cataclysm --- American Geologists Not Quite So Alarmist in Their Views.

So, it was the opinion of one scientist, not the opinion of “science.” Furthermore, if you actually read the first two paragraphs of the article, you’ll find that the scientist who made the prediction was an astronomer, not a geologist. So, what you have is a scientist that is making a prediction outside of his field; and his opinion is disputed by other scientists who *are* experts in the field.
In addition, you have to keep in mind that the New York Times of 1906 was not the New York Times of a century later. Journalistic standards of 1906 were much lower than they are today. Just because the New York Times chose to print something hardly makes it the scientific equivalent of Torah MiSinai.

Another of his quotes is the 1936 quote from the Times that rockets will never leave the Earth’s atmosphere. This quote is referenced often on the web, yet, when I searched the Times archive from 1900 to 1949, I could not find the quote that he attributes to the Times. My guess is that it’s an urban legend (or else it’s a misstatement of the famous editorial against Goddard in 1920 – but that wasn’t written by a scientist, it was written by an editorial writer).

What is highly comical, I suppose, about this letter is that is written by someone who purports to be scientist, and yet claims that “all scientists in all fields of science” are arrogant. And what's utterly sad about it is that there are thousands of people who are going to read his letter and, because they don't know any better, will say to themselves, "yep, science is just a load of horse-hockey." And yet, these same people will go on with their lives, living into their seventies and eighties (and possibly beyond) on average, they probably won't die of scarlet fever, whooping cough, malaria or smallpox, they will be able to store food for longer than a day in their refrigerators, get where they are going in planes, trains and automobiles, be able to communicate with each other via telephone and the Internet, and, in general, benefit from the many good things that God has provided for us through science and the scientific method.

The Wolf