As well as Shabbat.
As well as Yom Kippur.
Only in Judaism more holidays equal more restrictions more pain in the ass bull shit. Shabbat is the only rest day I ever heard of in which you can't do anything you want for fun, and you have to dress formally for it. The last I checked, a day like that is called a work day, not a rest day.
Yom Kippur is even better. Synagogues charge for seats in apparent violation of the rule against commerce and in my experience practitioners only bother to apologize to friends to whom they've done nothing wrong to.
However, this is about passover, the holiday that everyone wants to be over, because it's such a pain in the ass, and I myself have decided to take a pass. No cardboard matzah for SJ this year. No ten hour long hagadah reading for SJ this year, or any year for that matter.
Now would be a good time to mention the kuzari proof that orthodox jews use as apologetics where basically the argument is that you can't fool thousands of people at the exodus into believing something thus it must have happened.
The idea behind the kuzari "proof" is that a lie can be told by one person and everyone will know it's a lie, but not when it's thousands of people who allegedly saw the same national revelation.
- Hinduism did not have a founder.
- Ancient Egyptian religion has no stated founder.
- Ancient Greek religion has no stated founder.
- Japanese Shintoism has no stated founder.
- I highly doubt native American religion has a stated founder.
Basically the first flaw of the kuzari "proof" is a strawman argument that religions are either started by one person or started by national revalation. As per the historical record, this is not the case.
The second flaw of the kuzari is the total lack of contemporary documents and other archaeological evidence of the alleged time of the exodus saying that anything supernatural happened.
The third major knife in the heart of the kuzari proof is that an unbroken chain of traditon dating back to the alleged "national revalation" at Mount Sinai is in fact unsupported by the Old Testament itself. I learned the last two counterarguments from http://www.talkreason.org/articles/kuzariflaws.cfm.
And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died, being an hundred and ten years old. And they buried him in the border of his inheritance in Timnathheres, in the mount of Ephraim, on the north side of the hill Gaash. And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the people that were round about them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to anger. (Judges 2:8-12)
If Judaism has an unbroken chain of tradition, 1+1=5. (sarcasm).
It gets even better.
And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of the LORD ... And it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam the son of Shaphan, and Achbor the son of Michaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asahiah a servant of the king's, saying, Go ye, enquire of the LORD for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us. (2 Kings 22:8-13)
So, the high priest Hilkiah just magically "finds" the law book that everyone forgot. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Lastly I would like to say, the New Testament suggests that Jesus blessed 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish and Jesus fed 5,000 people. Next, Jesus is suggested to have fed 4,000 people with a small amount of food. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeding_the_multitude) Does this mean we should all become Christian as per the kuzari "proof?"
38 comments:
How sad. You're not a happy person at all.
On the contrary, I am happy. Nice ad hominem though.
Another ad hom. they love: your grandparents died for this!
Ok. Technically that might not be ad hominem, but it was person based, rather than idea based.
So what if grandparents die for something. Terrorists die for their interpretation of religion. Does that make it true? No.
There is a major flaw in your argument. Obviously you have never studied neveim with any sort of commentary or logic for that matter.
The Torah is exessively hard on the jewish people. If 10% of the population went "off the derech" the torah says "the entire nation went off the derech". Of course you will argue that it is just the rabbis making it up. Then I will ask you this...in ONE generation EVERYONE forgot about G-d? EVERYONE? Not a SINGLE person remembers???? Now who is being illogical. It all goes back to the idea of every jew being responsible for each other. Just like we are all responsible to bringing EVEN YOU back to torah. If the current state of judaism was written in the torah it would say "the entire jewish people attacked the torah" but that is clearly not the case.
Get your facts and logic straight before attacking something.
Also on the shabbat thing: who says it is the day of rest? You define the word menucha but a very incorrect translation in this case. On shabbat you can surely talk/eat and hang out with your friends, is that fun? I should say yes. ANd that is just one example. Is it not fun for you because you don't have friends? Then I understand your bitterness, but you are clearly wrong. The "day of rest" term is not what the torah says. Menucha is refering to G-D resting from creation and has NOTHING to do with the actual word "rest"
>> The Torah is exessively hard on the jewish people. If 10% of the population went "off the derech" the torah says "the entire nation went off the derech". Of course you will argue that it is just the rabbis.
hey factual bullcrap where in the Tanach do you derive this interpretation from? don't you think that everything in judaism has to have a textual basis in the scripture or you can just pull sophistry out of your ass?
>> Menucha is refering to G-D resting from creation and has NOTHING to do with the actual word "rest"
same point as above.
yep, it's just as Muse said. you don't fol shabbos? oh, that's so sad that you have no friends.
ok keep the nonsense assumptions rolling.
Like i said, if you REALLY believe that the ENTIRE jewish people didnt remember torah, not a SINGLE person, you are lacking in any form of logic. How can not ONE person remember after a generation? HOW?
The torah clearly cannot be talking literally in certain cases.
Also, merely because it is not said in the text doesn't mean it isnt true. If we are to base the entire religion on the written torah then there would be a lot of unanswer questions about mitzvot. Thats why we have the oral torah (which is the same books that talk about what i said).
Without the oral torah please explain to me what the torah means by "totafot", when G-d tells us to kill something in "the way he tells us" what does that mean? what are tzitzit?
None of these questions are answered in the straight up text yet we are commanded to do it, so there must be something to tell us. The oral torah.
The shabbat thing is even easier. If it meant the word rest, it would have been clear about what it meant. For some people playing b-ball is rest, for some its sleeping. How are we to define it as a nation? We have to all keep shabbat together, so it must have a common ground. The fact is merely because in english the word means rest doesnt mean thats what G-d meant. Want an example? The Constitution SPECIFICALLY forbids abortion. How do i know? Open a constitution and it says the laws are created for the "prodigy" which is define (websters) as unborn children. EXACTLY what abortion is, killing an unborn child. But we all know thats not true, and no one has ever argued that. Why? Because it doesn't mean unborn children in that context. So to here.
Factual Bullcrap, even the Talmud (oral law) tries to base its interpretations on what the scripture says. You aren't even doing that. You're just pulling sophistry out of your ass in the majority of your latest post.
Let me get something clarified for you, pulling sophistry from your ass = subjective.
Basing it on the text = objective.
Secondly, according to the biblical story, it took less than two months for a good percentage of the israelites after the exodus to forget who facilitated it, and then they perpetrated the golden calf incident. Maybe the Torah is wrong and illogical, how could the Israelites forget Elohem after less than two months?
It never says they forgot him where is YOUR textual source to that. The act does not mean they forgot G-d. Instead they were trying to find a go-between like moses to talk to G-d. THAT is in the text you hypocrate
I wanted going to applaud your well-written post.
After reading your comments here I am less inclined to do so . . . but the post stands on its own I suppose, so good job there.
>> THAT is in the text you hypocrate
Where?
Cause looks to me like they forgot Elohem cause Elohem sure wanted them dead.
No matter what you have to say about the rabbis or the hagaddah or whatever, its pretty clear in the torah that "you shall eat matzah for 7 days". So dont claim you are ignoring what the rabbis add on. You are ignoring the torah too
"and the people said to aaron, come let us build a ruler to go before us because we dont know what happened to moses the man who took us out of eygpt"
Its pretty clear the Jews never thought Moshe was G-d. In addtion E doesnt always mean G-d, time and again it refers to other nation's gods so it cannot always mean G-d. Here is CLEARLY means someone who rules over them (as is the exact definition of the word and we all know you love exact definitions). If they were trying to replace G-d why not say that they were doing it becuase they dont know what happened to G-d. Rather they say it is to replace Moshe bc they didnt know what happened to him.
Try reading with some intelligence.
Your Jesus vs Kuzari post is just flat out wrong.
The proof is that a multitude of people saw G-d, and no other nation makes that claim. Doing miracles does not make one G-d or messiah. Merely because Jesus did miracles does NOT make him G-d and therefore does not make his acts mass revelation. Kuzari holds up. Try using actual knowledge before making an argument.
What else you got?
1) Anonymous you are not being coherent.
2) http://orthoprax.blogspot.com/2007/06/aztecs-national-revelation.html
3) Is there that much of a difference between 5,000 people and more thousands of people?
anyone ever notice that when someone proves SJ wrong he says they are incoherent or not making sense?
GREAT ARGUMENT!!!
Factual Basis:
It doesn't say that they forgot it in one generation. It says "after them" another generation arose which didn't remember. Obviously, the text is implying that it occurred gradually, since it occurred "after" the entire generation with memories of the subject had disappeared (and nobody would claim that a generation disappears and then another one magically appears). The text is plain, and states as follows: 1) one generation knew something by experience; 2) all members of that generation died; 3) a subsequent generation eventually appeared which included nobody who knew anything on the subject in question. This doesn't strike me as much of a stretch. What does strike me as utterly ridiculous, is your insistence that the Torah is just lying about the generation in question because it likes to spread exaggerated anti-Semitic rumors. What possible basis could you have for this interpretation? Stormfront.org?
"The proof is that a multitude of people saw G-d, and no other nation makes that claim."
Wrong. The Aztecs also had a "national revelation." In any case, the Kuzari claims that you couldn't fool people into believing such a thing, but if an entire generation arose which didn't remember the national revelation (see Judges 2:8-12), then this pretty much proves that you can get people to believe in the concept of a national revelation without their having heard it from their parents.
David -
If you truely believe that after one generation not a SINGLE person didnt know about the torah is unbelievable then there is no convincing you. It is totally illogical to believe that after only a generation everyone had forgotten. By you logic not a SINGLE person followed the torah.
Even in the USSR where people were killed for following religion some people still kept the torah.
Check out MANY bible scholars and you will find find a discussion of the harshness of G-d on the jews. Check out Ken Spiro for example. They explain the concept that the torah is harsher on the entire people to show the concept of everyone being responsible for one another. If everyone had forgotten the torah why was there even a high priest of the temple to be excavating? The torah says the entire jewish people were worshiping the golden calf although it is clear the women and priests weren't. Your believe just doesn't hold water
The Aztek story of mass revelation has one big problem. Itself claims it is a legend. No Jew who believes in the Jewish mass revilation believes it to be legend, but fact. While many others find the story of Sinai unhistorical or unverifiable the people who believe it insist that the unbroken chain of the story itself to be the verification.
The Azteks on the other hand openly admit that the story is unverifiable and unhistorical.
So many we just need to change the wording of our unique mass revelation.
We are the only nation to claim a Mass Revelation actually took place.
>> If you truely believe that after one generation not a SINGLE person didnt know about the torah is unbelievable then there is no convincing you.
Is that so hard to believe bearing in mind the total lack of physical evidence from the time period?
Secondly all we know for sure is what the Old Testament says, not what the writers meant, not what the writers knew, not what the writers saw.
>> We are the only nation to claim a Mass Revelation actually took place.
I would refer readers to http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2006/02/demolishing-dumb-arguments-mass.html for excellent counterpoints on this matter.
"If you truely believe that after one generation not a SINGLE person didnt know about the torah is unbelievable then there is no convincing you. It is totally illogical to believe that after only a generation everyone had forgotten. By you logic not a SINGLE person followed the torah."
You didn't read what I wrote. Who said anything about a "single" generation? I merely said a "subsequent" generation. Moreover, your argument is predicated on the assumption that the text means something other than what it says, which is something you would need to prove, not assume.
"Check out MANY bible scholars and you will find find a discussion of the harshness of G-d on the jews."
That's not an argument, it's merely an assertion that other people believe something. In fact, most bible scholars accept the idea of multiple authors. Do you accept that? If not, why not? "Bible scholars" believe it!
"If everyone had forgotten the torah why was there even a high priest of the temple to be excavating? The torah says the entire jewish people were worshiping the golden calf although it is clear the women and priests weren't. Your believe just doesn't hold water"
No, your belief (not "believe"-- learn to spell) doesn't hold water. Why is it so clear that the women and priests didn't worship the calf? After all, a priest made the calf, right? And what does that have to do with anything?
"The Aztek story of mass revelation has one big problem. Itself claims it is a legend."
Really? What's your source for that?
"While many others find the story of Sinai unhistorical or unverifiable the people who believe it insist that the unbroken chain of the story itself to be the verification."
Except that it's not unbroken, Richard. We just proved that. At a minimum, many people forgot it. Some came back after having ceased belief, which means you can't prove any "mass revelation," because it is pretty clear that there was a time when many-- perhaps not all, but clearly most-- people didn't buy into it. Like now, for instance-- 90% of Jews don't believe in it.
David my friend my source on The Azteks is you. Read your own posting http://orthoprax.blogspot.com/2007/06/aztecs-national-revelation.html
YOu quote calls it a legend. Either you are misrepresenting or I am right.
Yuntif is coming so i will address the other points afterwards
Richard lay off the pot. That it is called a legend means that -we- in 2009 understand it as legend, not the aztecs.
How do you know that SJ? I'm quoting what proof do you have to your point?
How come you cant be an intellectual and disagree with someone without saying something like "lay off the pot". Ultimately it will turn people off reading your blog if you cant be civil to those who disagree with you
Richard, please be turned off. You are a crackhead.
Again you insult rather then bring up a proof. You claim religious people aren't intellectual, but you are will your insult rather than response technique?
I'm not gonna explain to you why the burden of proof is on religion. that's 5 year old shit.
You guys are reading the wrong version. The accurate one is the other post, if memory serves me correctly.
I brought my proof. I showed a quote that called it a legend. Now the burden of rebuttal is on you, that's how it works in the real world. Its called shifting the burden. Once one side proves their point they win unless the other side can counter. So far your own counters have been personal insults rather than hard facts
Ok Richard you win. XD
Richard, in honor of your nonsense, my next post on this blog will reiterate on the censorship that occurs in the orthodox community.
So two wrongs make a right? What are you four?
The shmuck probably isn't using the website correctly. I don't erase posts.
i see what he is talking about, some of his posts appear then disappear randomly
The only thing that Secular Jew would not pass over is a free subscription to Teens for Cash.com
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