Moving the goalposts
Hello Rabbi Michael
There is a common claim among atheists that all of the believers' treatment of the creation story as not being literal or not being a factual description has only been around since they discovered evolution and the Big Bang, that before that they did treat it as literal and as a factual description, and that after they discovered the above things they started saying that it was not literal (they call this "moving the title pages")
I know the Ramban who writes at the beginning of his commentary on the book of Genesis that there are great secrets in creation and that this is not as it seems, but immediately afterwards he writes there that the days of creation are literally days.
How do you respond to this claim?
thanks
I didn't understand the argument. Is it forbidden to learn and change positions in light of the knowledge we have learned? Indeed, they once thought it was simple, and now we understand that it is not. We have progressed. Are the secular world not willing to learn new things? I really can't understand this strange argument.
To the essence of the claim,
It is explained in the Mishnah Hagiga, 2:1, and at length in the Gemara Alia, that the "acts of creation" are secrets that are not taught to everyone. If this is true, then they learn it even in kindergarten.
The argument is that giving an interpretation to the scriptures sounds like an excuse, that people once did not understand the world and told stories to understand it, and when they discovered that the stories were not true, they gave them an explanation (saying that it is allegorical and not literal).
After all, in this way, every book written can be said to be different from its literal meaning and to describe something different.
But since the Mishnah and the Gemara already understood that these were secrets, you see that this understanding preceded the theories of the Big Bang and evolution. So these are not just excuses.
Well, you're repeating yourself. I don't understand the difficulty. You interpret this as an excuse, but I also say it's an excuse. Indeed, they once didn't understand it and now they do. What's the problem here?
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