[Avodah] dinosaurs

[Micha Berger]

RNTK and RnISE addressed the chinukh question.

I saw a more fundamental question, involving emunas chakhamim and eilu
va'eilu...

Does one continue to follow a rav, say in our case the dinosaur denying
mechaneikh's rabbeim and their rabbeim, when you find that he labeled
you a kofeir for a belief you cannot (as well as don't want to) shake?

Eilu va'eilu works fine when it comes to yom tov sheini shel galiyos.
It gets messier WRT gittin, since a qulah my poseiq doesn't recognize
might mean children (from a second marriage) who my children may not
marry. Batei Hillel and Shammai got along because they kept track of such
things and forewarned each other. But today? The granddaughter could be
entirely unaware of the terms of her grandmother's divorce before she
married her grandfather.

EvE becomes a paradox altogether when dealing with someone labeling
something kefirah. Because it applies to ideas, one can close the
referential loop.

Shitah A: A and B are boh eilu va'eilu Shitah B: Shitah A is kefirah,
and thus outside eilu va'eilu

What does shitah A's acceptance of shitah B imply about A's belief
in itself?

RRW answered me privately that the proglem is only in Greek logic, as
the Torah is Eastern and thus doesn't have the same problems with paradox.

I'm not sure that's true. We have middle terms, neither fully yes nor
fully no, e.g. acknowledging that someone who isn't beautiful may not
be ugly either. But we do have the concept of tarta desasrei when not
dealing with those middle terms -- shitos do require self-consistency.

When it comes to bein hashemashos, we have no problem saying it's part of
both days WRT qedushas esrog. But when it comes to davening after pelag,
we do have a problem (resolvable on erev Shabbos) with davening both
minchah and maariv in the same window of time. It would seem that we
acknowlede when the meti'us is "overlap", but we do not simultaneously
follow contradictory shitos about the metzi'us.

So I think this poses a real question for adherents of shitah A. Can their
eilu va'eilu include shitah B and its exclusion of their own opinion? Do
we say palginan divura -- it's only on the points about which it's
kefirah that A-nikim reject B? What about the common methodology used
by B in reaching both that rejection and ome of their other pesaqim?

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             One doesn't learn mussar to be a tzaddik,
micha at aishdas.org        but to become a tzaddik.
http://www.aishdas.org                         - Rav Yisrael Salanter
Fax: (270) 514-1507