[Avodah] Abiogenesis

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Dec 28, 2007 at 05:08:56AM +0200, Michael Makovi wrote:
: Sorry about the repetition, but what you are arguing, still makes no
: sense to me. Just because they couldn't see the eggs, you pretend they
: spontaneously generate? Couldn't I argue that since I didn't see the
: guy touch a sheretz, he isn't tamei? Or what if I touch a sheretz with
: my eyes closed?

Something you can't experience doesn't touch your psyche the same.
Something you could have experienced but didn't leaves you with
uncertainty, and therefore we can talk about how to pasqen about the
state of meat whose reality is uncertain. But something that I can't
experience has very little impact on who I become. In the task of
his-haleikh lefanai veheyei tamim, knowing the eggs exist or thinking
they don't doesn't change things much.

It's not "pretending" to ignore something that doesn't matter. What
matters is what hits me on the gut level. Not what I know from microscopes
or books. Ha'adam nif'al lefi pe'ulosav is true of how I perceive what
I'm doing.

If you feel the sheretz, your eyes being closed is irrelevent.

If you could have felt the sheretz but didn't, you are culpable for
criminal negligence. Knowing I should have been careful enough to be
sure is enough to change who I am.

As for the existential attitude WRT uncertainty.... If a person confuses
2 chatichos shuman with one of cheilev in a manner such that the cheilev
isn't qavu'ah, he can eat all three pieces of fat. The rishonim argue
about whether he could eat a stew containing all three, but if were to
eat one after the other, hakol modim it is permitted.

Once he ate all the fat we /know/ he must have eaten something that was
ontologically cheilev. However, it's irrelevent. What matters is that when
eating each peice, he ate something he related to as probably shuman. The
halachic state is in how he thinks about the fat, not determining what
the fat is.

Give up this assumption that it's ontology, that what's really out there
that is relevent rather than how we experience what's there and thus how
it changes us and thus how we accomplish our life's goal. Then it's not
about "pretending" anything.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             A person lives with himself for seventy years,
micha at aishdas.org        and after it is all over, he still does not
http://www.aishdas.org   know himself.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                            - Rav Yisrael Salanter