[Avodah] Religion and Falsifiability

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' David Riceman asked:
> Suppose, however, that someone asked you for an example
> of evil behavior, and then produced a survey showing that
> observant Jews were evil in that way more than <picture
> your favorite control group here>. Would that affect you?

When I was first becoming a baal teshuva, I encountered many people who were supposedly frum, yet did things that I considered objectionable. For a while I simply considered them to be a negligible minority, but eventually it bothered me to the point where I could no longer consider them negligible. 

At that point I changed tactics, and decided that the behavior of a religion's adherents has no bearing on the truth of that religion itself. The truth of the religion can be judged only on evidence such as the types of revelation which are claimed, and the internal contradictions which it might have. Judge the religion by its beliefs, not by its believers.

Intellectual honesty forces me to accept this approach for non-Jewish religions too, and so I cannot write off Religion X simply on account of some awful things done by people of that religion. (In fact, I cringe when I hear other people doing so. Glass houses and all that, y' know?) Baruch HaShem, Torah triumphs again, for its truth is evident to me without needing to rely on stories of our tzadikim, which frees me also from needing to rely on stories of *their* reshaim.

Akiva Miller