Foundation for the issue of the status of Mount Sinai

Hello S. Long questions and I will try to address them briefly. I will start by saying that I sent you a link to my notebooks, where I try to show the chain of reasoning that begins with evidence for the existence of God (the first four), and on their basis moves (in the fifth) to the status of Mount Sinai and commitment to the Torah. I explain there why it is not right to deal with each such stage separately. I suggest you read there. I don’t really understand what the meaning of Moses’ sorcery is? Do you know any sorcerers who can do such a thing? So why even assume that? Why is it more plausible than accepting that if someone showed up there and said he was God, then that’s probably what was there? Why assume some kind of mass forgery? What’s the point of doing that? Conspiracies need some indication to arouse suspicion. The fact that there is another hypothetical possibility is true for almost any fact you bring me, and I still don’t suspect unless I have good reasons for it. 1. I wasn’t there either. I wasn’t at the particle accelerator in Switzerland when the Higgs boson was discovered, or at the Battle of Cannae between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus, and I still accept what someone who was there says until proven otherwise. 2. One could equally ask how people who believe in something sin to this day. How do people eat fattening things even though they want to go on a diet? How do people steal? People are complex creatures, especially in times of distress, and such actions stem either from self-interest or some kind of compulsion. The sages themselves say that in the past there was an urge to worship idols like the urge to fornicate that we know today, and over the years it was “abolished” (meaning, in my opinion: dulled and sublimated). Just as today people can have relations with a man’s wife even though they themselves know that it is wrong, because they have a strong urge. Once upon a time, the urge to worship idols was strong. Today we do not know this urge (because it is dulled) and therefore it is difficult for us to understand it. But take an example from the urges that remain (like fornication). I don’t think there are many examples, if any, in history of an entire people believing in a series of events that they are told they have all experienced themselves. The examples that are usually cited for such “revelations” are never similar to our case. There is a discussion on my website with place-viewers and you can see it there. https://mikyab.net/%D7%A9%D7%95%D7%AA/%D7%94%D7%94%D7%91%D7%93%D7%9C-%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9F-%D7%9E%D7%A2%D7%9E%D7%93-%D7%94%D7%A8-%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99-%D7%9C%D7%A1%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99-%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%92%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%99%D7%95/ There is another thread on my site that deals with this and cites sources, and I can’t find it right now. You can contact Maor Ovadia, whose email I sent you, because he worked on this issue. To your last question about statistics. This is an argument that has been coming up recently (mainly in Nassim Taleb’s book The Black Swan about the stock market), and I mentioned it a bit in my post about the law of small numbers. I’ll give you an example that will illustrate this more than a theoretical discussion. Suppose you rolled a die several times and got a thousand consecutive 6s. Would you attribute this to chance? It could be a chance. If someone won the lottery 50 times in a row, you understand that the police would come to arrest them, although it could be. Why? Because it could be, but the chances of that happening are small. It’s more likely that it was intentional. Now think of another case. When you roll the dice, you get some arbitrary series of numbers. Of course, this doesn’t mean that a certain series of results must be obtained. But if someone had told you in advance that this is exactly what would happen, of course you would be very surprised and look for an explanation, wouldn’t you? (Although it could be coincidental) If the Torah says in advance that the people of Israel will discover and survive and return to their land, etc., etc., and Israel will never lie, despite persecution and harassment, then it is difficult to attribute this to chance because they said it in advance. And again, I will return to my first comment here. There are two hypotheses to explain the uniqueness of our history: 1. Coincidence. 2. Intentional. Indeed, both exist, but think about which one is more plausible. There is never certainty, but we must choose our position based on considerations of plausibility. I once again suggest you read the fifth notebook. Happy Holidays