[Avodah] How to teach emuna

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 01:27:06PM -0400, Yosef Gavriel Bechhofer wrote:
: Of course one can google and go to Wikipedia and find rebuttals. At
: that point, as RNW says, you (or your interlocutor) must be a judge,
: not a lawyer...

Yes, but RNW is playing lawyer for the emunah side, and he isn't allowing
the interlocuter a layer for the kefirah side, nor to play one himself.
A dayan cannot judge by only listening to one to'ein.

: Rebuttals of the KP and ID are a dime a dozen and worth about as
: much.

This gets to the issue of proof vs evidence / strong argument.

If you really want to present KP or ID, present them as arguments by
pre-emptively acknowleding one could poke holes in either. A proof is
all or nothing, which is why it's wrong to present arguments as proofs,
and in the age of the cynical -- counterproductive.

But as evidence.... It is valid to conclude that KP + ID + the beauty of a
good devar Torah + ... are all most easily explained by positing Hashem's
existence, to the point that the amount of evidence is a convincing
inductive argument. Albeit not proof, but still beyond reasonable doubt.

I still agree with R/Prof Shalom Carmy's 2007 post, though, in which
he eschews the entire deductive philosophical approach to emunah, whether we
speak of proof or of justification. Advocating the more experiential
approach we just saw RLJK attribute to RYBS. Evidence as actual evidence,
not as a description of an argument.

RSC wrote in Avodah v7n87:
> People who throw around big words on these subjects always seem to
> take for granted things that I don't.

> The people who keep insisting that it's necessary to prove things about
> G-d, including His existence, seem to take it for granted that devising
> these proofs is identical with knowing G-d.

> Now if I know a human being personally the last thing I'd do, except
> as a purely intellectual exercise, is prove his or her existence.


On Tue, Aug 09, 2016 at 11:06:46PM -0400, H Lampel via Avodah wrote:
: And the Doros HaRishonim, Tekufas HaMikreh, brings proof texts from
: Tanach for this in the eras of the Shoftim and Melachim. And I've
: come across additional ones. For one, Eliyahu's challenge to Bnei
: Yisroel to obey either the Baal or Hashem, and not both, as they had
: been doing...

But there was a Canaanite god named "El" (much as the Xian trinitarian
god is also named "God"). And many of the locals accepted Y-HV-H as
a name for their head god, but a name for a very pagan deity, someone
with a wife and children. Use of the sheim havayah doesn't mean they
were discussing the Borei.

Even if Eliyahu haNavi got them to worship one G-d named Y..., it was
only one step toward getting them to worship Hashem rather than some
pagan father god superhuman pagan thingy.

El as a pagan god was more common among the sinners of Malkhus Yisrael
(Elihau's audience) and Kenaanim, sometimes identified with Baal. Y... as
a pagan god was more common among Moav, Edom, the Keini (and since
Yisro was himself Keini, that's a connetion to Moav), and the sinners
of Malkhus Yehudah. (The the aforementioned potsherd written by someone
who thought Bayis Rishon was dedicated to Asheirah's husband.)


-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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