Thursday, June 25, 2009

E-man's (http://www.markset565.blogspot.com/) Done it Again.

In E-man's latest post, he explains the Maharal's disagreement towards Jewish philosophers, you know, "believers of Israel that try to explain the wonders and miracles that happen in this world with their minds and their knowledge," as opposed to like, imaginations, and circular fundamentalist reasoning.

The Maharal continues "The reason they use their own knowledge to explain the miracles is because the miracles do not make sense to them according to their understanding of the natural world." Oh no!!!! Someone using their head!!!!! The horror!!!!!!!!!!!!

The orthodox rabbis may lose their abilities to control the beliefs of their followers! We can't let that happen now can we? Hmmm, oh yes we can. XD


E-man then said that it looks like the Maharal said that jewish philosophers were saying that the bible is more allegorical when the Maharal said the jewish philosophers were looking for natural causes for biblical events.


"Now, returning to our original intent for mentioning the philosophers that we have not properly addressed, that we need to know how to answer a heretic," the Maharal wrote. Oooooooooh so respectful. Why not use the word skeptic? Or dissenter? Did the Maharal really have to use the word heretic?

Thus sayth the Maharal "This is referring to the philosophers that say that everything comes from the intelligent order that emanates from the eternality of the world. This means that nothing deviates from this natural order and everything has its nature that it is accustomed to follow." Whether or not the world is eternal and whether or not the natural order can change seems to me to be two different unrelated things.

Maharal: "This means that even a fly's wing cannot be elongated!" Depends on whatever turn evolution goes.

The Maharal then asks this profound question "Furthermore, according to the philosopher, how can it be that anything can come from anything? Nature dictates that anything can not come from anything, but rather only one thing can come from a specific thing. If this is true, then how could blood come from water?" I can't imagine anyone of the jewish philosophers who are supposedly more rationalist saying that the blood came from the water, even in the Maharal's time. And if a random nut claiming to search for natural reasons said the blood came from the water, is he really worth the response of a high statured religious leader??

The Maharal then gave this beauty "There is a difference between them (the natural actions vs the spiritual actions). Natural actions occur in time and therefore every natural action needs to occur in a certain amount of time. However, an action that is not from nature does not need to occur in time. This difference is because of the fact that nature uses physical power and all physical power needs to occur in a certain amount of time. However, spiritual actions occur without taking up time, because these actions do not use physical power and therefore do not take up time." It looks to me like biblical events including miracles, are alleged to have occurred within a span of TIME. The Maharal appears to be just ranting here.

E-man said that the Maharal said (I feel like i'm being like the Talmud with all that he said this he said that yada yada) "Philosophers, who go after nature, disregard the miracles because of this (that through nature one form can not accept another form). This we (the Maharal) admit, that through nature the miracles are impossible. However, through the spiritual actions all the miracles are possible. This is because the lower world that is governed by nature also has a connection to the world that is governed by spirituality and it is from this connection that miracles occur. This causes miracles to occur through what connects this world and the spiritual world. Therefore, miracles only occur through the Jewish people like we will explain later. All of this is because of the connection that the Jewish people have with the spiritual world and therefore miracles occur for them." I guess the Maharal had a special telescope to detect all this.


7 comments:

SJ said...

Location to E-man's post: http://markset565.blogspot.com/2009/06/maharal-against-philosophers-continued.html

Read about the Maharal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharal

Garnel Ironheart said...

1) At the bottom of your post is a list of books. Check your formatting. Is it supposed to be there?

2) The Maharal was very much a purist in terms of his approach to Torah. He rejected most philosophy, disagreed strongly with the rationalist theories of the Rambam and generally supported himself purely through the Talmud and Midrash.

3) All the stuff you quotes is his reply to secular philosophers who deny God, the spiritual and its influence in the world, not to people who are prepared to believe that a combination of natural and miraculous exist.

SJ said...

>> 1) At the bottom of your post is a list of books. Check your formatting. Is it supposed to be there?

Yes. Amazon's associates program.


>> generally supported himself purely through the Talmud and Midrash.

Sounds more to me like he was high.

>> All the stuff you quotes is his reply to secular philosophers who deny God

If you read what E-man said that the Maharal said, it didn't look like the Maharal was accusing the jewish philosophers of atheism.

Garnel Ironheart said...

Really? Does Amazon pay well?

SJ said...

http://askville.amazon.com/Amazon-Associate-make-commission-product-link-buys/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=8040097

joshwaxman said...

you clearly do not understand maharal, and you clearly do not understand his opponents.

there are good points to be made, and it is informative to derive ideas from this dispute to current disputes.

maharal's point is that they try to modify miraculous descriptions to accord as much as possible with the natural order. which is fine if one's assumption is that miracles must operate within the natural order.

as a matter of good peshat, i think he makes a valid point. where a text speaks of divine intervention, who says that this intervention must operate within the natural order? it is not a matter of orthodox rabbis trying to suppress thinking, despite your own apparent bad experiences with rabbis suppressing you. it is not all about you, and not all thinkers who are rabbis fit into your preconceived notions.

"Whether or not the world is eternal and whether or not the natural order can change seems to me to be two different unrelated things."
"Depends on whatever turn evolution goes."
but are you familiar with what the philosophers were saying? he is not arguing with SJ. he is arguing with philosophers of his time. this was before Darwin. Aristotle *did* indeed maintain the immutability of species. See here, for example:
http://books.google.com/books?id=NFr2MXHFxZQC&pg=PA36&lpg=PA36&dq=aristotle+species+immutable&source=bl&ots=zGFOIAUG76&sig=DnUvDN3wgOTzTZmKY4EZzNuo6Uc&hl=en&ei=3kdESr7UKdrEmQegtbmuAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

I say all this, btw, as a rationalist. You can see some of my recent disputes in this regard. My impression of E-man also would be different than what you seem to imagine him as. But part of an intelligent discourse is understanding the various positions in play.

kt,
josh

SJ said...

>> maharal's point is that they try to modify miraculous descriptions to accord as much as possible with the natural order. which is fine if one's assumption is that miracles must operate within the natural order.

The Maharal said, "believers of Israel that try to explain the wonders and miracles that happen in this world with their minds and their knowledge"



E-man said, "The Maharal here is telling us where the philosophers got it wrong. It seems like he is explaining the philosophers as believing in an allegorical explanation of the text of the Bible."

What the Maharal said really don't look like what you are saying the Maharal said, Josh. WTF, who is changing miraculous descriptions? O.o It seems they're either looking for natural reasons or dismissing it as allegory alltogether.

>> "Whether or not the world is eternal and whether or not the natural order can change seems to me to be two different unrelated things." "Depends on whatever turn evolution goes." but are you familiar with what the philosophers were saying? he is not arguing with SJ. he is arguing with philosophers of his time. this was before Darwin. Aristotle *did* indeed maintain the immutability of species.

* Yawn * you are misreading the Maharal. The Maharal is fallaciously suggesting that the idea that everything follows the natural order means that the fly's wing can't be elongated and what I'm saying is that the Maharal had minimal knowledge of evolution cause the theory as Darwin put it wasn't around at the Maharal's time, though there was always naturalists.


By the way, nice to know you are a rationalist.