[Avodah] proofs of G-d

[T613K at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/14/2007 8:23:49 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
eliturkel at gmail.com writes:

On the  best seller list


God Is Not Great: How Religion  Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
The God Delusion by Richard  Dawkins
God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Sh... by Victor J.  Stenger

These people are wrong but not stupid

I doubt if many  people have become baale teshuva (or geirim) based on
an intellectual  "proof" of any kind about G-d or Judaism. My personal 
observations are
that  many factors are more important than a preponderance of evidence.

--  
Eli Turkel
 
>>>>>
Yes, my experience confirms your personal  observations.  Most often, people 
do not become convinced that there is a  God -- or that there is no God -- 
because of intellectual arguments. 
 
Even the high IQ writers named above did not become atheists for  
intellectual reasons, and their books are rife with emotional arguments.   Most people 
become convinced of whatever they believe -- be it religion or  no-religion -- 
because of a long list of factors, experiential, emotional,  historical, 
intellectual and social.  Most often they apply intellectual  reasoning ex post 
facto to validate or rationalize whatever they have already  come to believe or 
not-believe for emotional reasons.
 
What I will say is that the Question of God is and will always be of  
critical importance and interest to intellectuals.    Hitchens,  Dawkins, Stenger et 
al don't waste their time and brainpower trying to disprove  the existence of 
leprechauns or of aliens from another galaxy who kidnap people  and experiment 
on them in their spaceships.
 
Interestingly, it has recently come to light that Hitchens is a halachic  Jew 
-- one of those many "social Marranoes" who still live among us -- like  
Madeline Albright and Virginia Senator George Allen.  
 

--Toby  Katz
=============




************************************** See what's new at http://www.aol.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20071114/47f33c7a/attachment-0001.htm>