[Avodah] skeptics

[Saul.Z.Newman at kp.org]

does everyone agree with the claims of this skeptic blogger [ i can supply 
the source], that
: 'proving' the tenets of Orthodoxy is essentially not doable ie the
: 'proofs' don't hold up when put to the EXPERT's eye?  [excerpt]
: Some Frum Skeptics however, are still struggling to make sense out of
: life
: and religion.they still hope to meet the Rabbi in Shining Beckishe,
: who
: can prove to them once and for all that Orthodox Judaism is the one
: true
: religion. Of course this is never going to happen, and the more they
: search for this the worse the pain gets.
: I see this playing out all the time. I pinned my hopes on Rabbi Joshua
: Maroof, who, coming from the Chaitian sect, firmly believes that
: Judaism
: is 100% provable (at least to any reasonable non biased person). But
: the
: more I debated with RJM, and the more I found him unconvincing (to me
: personally)
:
:  Someone had convinced x that the answer to Life, the Universe and
: Orthodox Judaism was contained in Reb Elchonon Wasserman's kovetz
: maamarim. x got all excited, but then his hopes were dashed as he saw
: what
: a load of nonsense it all was, at least from an evidentialist
: perspective.
: 
:
: The problem with this, of course, is that the proofs for Orthodoxy
: don't
: exist, at least not from an evidentialist perspective. From a
: rational,
: objective, perspective these proofs do not convince anyone not already
: convinced. Even more importantly, the people promoting the proofs
: wouldn't
: themselves find the proofs convincing, were it not for the powerful,
: personal subjective feelings that they already have that Orthodoxy is
: true.
:
: Occasionally, the proofs do make an impact on someone, but this is
: usually
: due to shock value. In the same way that reading 'Who wrote the Bible'
: can
: be so shocking that a frum person can turn skeptic overnite, likewise
: having an uninformed skeptic sudddenly be exposed to a full range of
: Aish
: style proofs can equally provide a shock in the opposite direction.
: Apparently Anthiny Flew, famous lifelong atheist, had such an
: experience
: when exposed to Gerald Schroeder's theories of Breishis.


NOTICE TO RECIPIENT:  If you are not the intended recipient of this 
e-mail, you are prohibited from sharing, copying, or otherwise using or 
disclosing its contents.  If you have received this e-mail in error, 
please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and permanently 
delete this e-mail and any attachments without reading, forwarding or 
saving them.  Thank you.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20071113/72b22555/attachment.htm>