[Avodah] Must we agree with the Torah?

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Aug 11, 2013 at 01:10:41PM +0000, Kenneth Miller wrote:
: We often think of ourselves as intelligent creatures, but we are
: also emotional creatures. One of the effects of our emotional side is
: (as Rambam put it), "l'olam yhe daato shel adam m'ureves im habriyos -
: A person's personality will inevitably be influenced by those around him."

: This is one of my answers to the question of how Hashem can command
: an emotion such as emunah, and how that emotion can be obtained: Simply
: surround yourself with believers, and eventually it will rub off on you.

The Rambam expects yedi'ah to come from reason, but ahavah and yir'ah
which are also clearly commanded emotions to come from experience. In
Yesodei haTorah 2:2 he says they are products of things like spending
time admiring His handiwork.

Is that emotional, an aesthetic judgment? Or is it that which the person
is judging and finding beautiful?

As y'all must surely have noticed, my theme in the Farber Document Theory
contretemps has been that anyone who has had episodes of success when
living al pi halakhah would not take seriously anything that questions
the TSBP's self-description of its origins. Such theories don't fit
one's life experience. I recently had to post a parallel clarification
in a comment.

http://rechovot.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-orthodox-judaism-cannot-refute.html
(Don't let the URL scare you, it's not about document theories being right,
but the lack of common assumptions for dialog.)

    ...
    The Rebbetzin's Husband
    August 13, 2013 at 8:31 AM
    ...
    R' Micha-
    Lack of attractive religious experiences, perhaps, but also
    experiencing attractive things outside religion - which many of us
    have, particularly in the MO world.
    ...

    Joel-
    ...
[Reply to RJR deleted, but just letting the chevrah know he's in the
discussion too. -micha]



    Micha Berger
    August 13, 2013 at 10:59 AM
    ...
    I want to clarify something I feel our host misunderstood about my
    earlier comment. I am not saying that people are irrationally going
    with what they find attractive, as an aethetic judgment. Rather, I
    am discussing the properties of the religious experience themselves,
    the thing they are making the judgment about. E.g. a mathematician
    isn't convinced because he is attracted to the beauty of the
    proof. There are properties of the proof such as it being simple
    (once you know it), and having a broad explanatory power to a wide
    number of seemingly unrelated questions that exist beyond taste, the
    elements that may make a mathematician find it elegant and beautiful.

    Similarly, I could like or not like keeping Shabbos. But if I
    experience everyone once in a while a true menuchas hanefesh, if I
    have that redemptive experience and healing of the soul, then I am
    less likely to accept postulates that disconnect the laws of Shabbos
    from revelation. Even before I decide I like that feeling, it's part
    of the world I exist in. And postulates have to fit experience.


I would say this is a third approach which you are not considering.
Before we get to rational arguments, we get to the things we reason
about, the givens we accept as true. These come from experience, whether
first-hand or accepted from sources we consider reliable.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
micha at aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.