[Avodah] infallibility of chazal

[Eli Turkel]

For some reason I can't cut and paste your post but I have to disagree
that believing that chazal were fallible is tantamount to heresy.>>

One has to be very careful what the phrase chazal means.
Does it refer to every individual rabbi that appears it the Talmud or
does it mean some consensus from the Talmud or perhaps decisions
of a sanhedrin?

It is clear that individual Tannaim and Amoraim can err. The Gemara itself
uses phrases like "he must have been sleeping when he said this"
or other phrases indicating that the idea is mistaken. When Rav Hillel states
that the Moshiach already came R. Yosef says he will need a kapparah.
The geamara indicates that some amoraim never saw the inwards of a cow
and so made halachic errors.
As many have mentioned (including the Chatam Sofer) the concept of a
par helem davar shel tzibbur implies that a Sanhedrin can err and there
are indications that this did indeed happen.
Even Dovid Hamelech make mistakes like counting the people.

In a slightly differenr vein I heard in the name of Rav Elyashiv
(from his s-i-l) that one needs to accept the opinion of modern medicine but
not of individual doctors
i.e. one distinguishes between universally accepted truths and individual
opinions and theories.

-- 
Eli Turkel