[Avodah] Rav Sharki on university students

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Sat, Apr 09, 2016 at 11:36:04PM IDT, R Ben Waxman posted
to Areivim:
: https://twitter.com/benwaxman/status/718898333075566592

: Translation of something Rav Sharki said in an article on dati
: students attending university:

: What should a student do when people ask him questions on emunah and
: he doesn't have an answer?

: RS: Teach your tongue to say "I don't know". That's fine. Afterwards
: he needs to search for the answer.

: And if he has questions about which he can't find an answer?

: RS: Then he should be a kofer, the Rav answered simply. If a student
: concludes that the Torah isn't true, why should he remain a
: believer?

This has to be a mistranslation.

After all, being unable to find an answer is FAR short of proving no
answer exists.

Simplest example, in https://youtu.be/9pRzyioUKp0 Dr Sally Haslanger
(of MIT) "proves" that an Omniscient Omnipotent Omnibenevolent (OOO)
G-d could not exist because an OOO Being could prevent all evil and
tragedy.

    1. If God exists, then he/she/it would be OOO
    2. If an OOO being exists, then there would be no evil
    3. God exists

First proposal. Therefore
    4. There is no evil

But observation will tell you:
    5. There is evil

We can't have a contradiction, so one of our givens must be false.
(1) is true by definition -- G-d is by definition OOO
(2) is not really an assumption, but a logical conclusion. (It hides a
prior formal proof.) A G-d who would know about any evil, doesn't want evil
to exist and can do anything would have eliminated that evil.

So really only 3 & 5 are plausible open to denial: either there is no G-d,
or there is no evil.

As I posted there:

    Theists consistently reject #2 "If an OOO Being exists, there would
    be no evil." That is given short shrift, and therefore the real
    argument is really swept under the rug.

    A world in which the OOO Being provides all the good might be worse
    than a world in which the OOO Being wants to provide others the
    opportunity to be provides of good themselves. The assumption is
    that a world of passive recipients is better (more good) than a
    world of contributors.

    This argument is kind of like saying that:
    1- A parent has the ability to see more obvious sources of pain in
       advance and help a child avoid them.
    2- A good parent would try to do so. Yet
    3- Good parents allow their toddlers to fall on their bums when
       learning to walk -- despite seeing it coming.
    Therefore,
    4- there are no good parents.

    The answer is -- #2 is false. There are better goods than preventing
    all pain.

But notice I didn't answer the question of theodicy, tzadiq vera lo.
Arguably the question is unanswerable to humans.

(Admittedly there are O Jews who deny #5, and assert that tragedy is an
illusion. My argument is more that the best universe is one that has the
lesser evil, that a paradox in the human condition makes a world with
no tragedy itself imperfect. The question of the reality of evil is a
tangent worth exploring, but not to go even further afield than my point.)

R' Sherky is NOT possibly arguing we should therefore accept Prof
Haslanger's argument, though.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

PS: While RUS's name appears around the web both as "Sharky" and "Sherky",
I'm going with the evidence of <http://ravsherki.org>.

-- 
Micha Berger             None of us will leave this place alive.
micha at aishdas.org        All that is left to us is
http://www.aishdas.org   to be as human as possible while we are here.
Fax: (270) 514-1507            - Anonymous MD, while a Nazi prisoner