[Avodah] how do you teach emuna?

[Marty Bluke via Avodah]

This is exactly the kind of thinking that R' Benovitz was talking about.
When you make absolute statements like "there are no cogent arguments
against intelligent design" it can easily have the reverse effect and turn
people off. Imagine the following. Someone comes to you and asks how does
Judaism deal with evolution etc. and you answer intelligent design and
explain it. He asked a question you answered it, great. He may accept your
answer he may not, but at least he will see that you addressed his question
in a reasonable manner and gave him an answer. However, if you take that
extra step of adding on an absolute statement like "there are no cogent
arguments against intelligent design", it will probably backfire. 5 minutes
after your conversation he will google "arguments against intelligent
design" and he will see that there are over 2.5 million results. Just from
that alone he may conclude that since you stated definitively that there
are no cogent arguments against it and google provides 2.5 million results
that you are wrong and not trustworthy. Even if he actually reads some of
the results, he will probably find arguments that at least at first glance
seem like cogent arguments and will again conclude that you are not
trustworthy and are deceiving him and that Judaism has no real answers. So
your absolute statement which you used to show how strongly you believe in
something will turn out to be cause of his not believing you.

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 12:03 AM, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer <rygb at aishdas.org>
wrote:

> There are no cogent arguments against intelligent design properly
> understood. Conversely, while this is not a popular position to take in our
> day, there are no cogent arguments for abiogenesis. Yahadus qua Yahadus is,
> indeed, more complicated - but possesses ample arguments as well.
>
> KT,
> YGB
>
>
>
> On 8/4/2016 7:00 AM, Marty Bluke via Avodah wrote:
>
> Another important comment from Slifkin's blog:
>
> "Steve Savitsky interviewed Rabbi Moshe Benovitz of the NCSY( Savitsky
> Talks, "Technology and Social Media: How Are They Affecting the Post-High
> School Year in Israel?", 8/1/12, 14:00 in mp3, linked below):
>
> R. Benovitz: ...In the kiruv community, for example, they are coming to
> grips with the fact that some of the arguments-- historical arguments,
> philosophical arguments-- that like I said a charismatic educator could
> tell a person off the street and who would know better, is checked
> instantly on a hand held device that’s pulled out of a pocket. If those
> arguments do not hold water, then we've done more damage than good. We need
> to adjust to that, and we should adjust to that.
>
> Steve Savitsky: Do you have an example of that?
>
> R. Benovitz: ...This is probably beyond the scope of this limited
> discussion because there are obviously complexities and layers here. But
> examples like mass revelation at Sinai being the only way possible, when
> you have challenges from other sources, the fact that Torah seems to have
> been forgotten in certain periods explicitly in the Navi and the like. The
> chain of the Mesorah-- there is certain reason to believe that were times
> where it was if not broken, but then it was down to a precious few; that’s
> a challenge, just to use one example, [to that] mass revelation argument of
> sorts. [Similarly there are challenges] in the scientific realm, and in the
> archaeological realm.
>
> We need to be able to know that there is information at the fingertips of
> our students that of course we have answers to, and of course we have ways
> of responding to, but to just throw arguments out there, they’re not going
> to, nor should they simply accept at face value.
>
> Interview is available here:
>
> https://www.ou.org/life/parenting/technology-social-
> media-affecting-year-israel-stephen-savitsky/"
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Avodah mailing listAvodah at lists.aishdas.orghttp://lists.aishdas.org/listinfo.cgi/avodah-aishdas.org
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20160808/5fc26bb0/attachment-0008.html>