What you wrote there, that you start from the assumption that miracles are possible—that is a very puzzling statement. A rational person starts from the assumption that miracles are not possible. Without that assumption, we would believe every legend about a revelation. When someone tells me about a miracle he saw, I don’t believe him!
The comparison between belief in miracles and belief in any unlikely event that happened runs into the fallacy hinted at in your own words: out of 64,000 people, one will have two crib deaths, but with miracles a normal person starts from the assumption that there aren’t any at all!
When we see that current scholarship supports “Jewish evolution,” showing that there were not necessarily many people at Sinai, that the book as we have it today was not written then [at any rate, not its miracles], along with the tribal split, the Documentary Hypothesis, etc., there is no reason to say there was a revelation.
Nur.

Nur,
1. If so, then you are begging the question. How do you create a scientific theory that way? It sounds from your words as though you already know the scientific theories. (As if you have perfect knowledge of the world.)
2. In any case, insofar as there is God (or at least the possibility that there is God), you can argue that the probability that He would perform one or more revelations is reasonable, and then your claim here is resolved.
3. In any case, it is not always good to look at probability the way I just did (to assume a priori what the probability is that event X will happen—even though that is how scientific theories are built, and then the question arises why they are true, since we didn’t learn them from nowhere). Rather, one should examine the level of evidence for event X and leave event X at the a priori level as unknown, or as unlikely so long as there is no evidence.

With all due respect, this is a childish dichotomy. I certainly do not rule out miracles, because they are possible. I just expect reasonable arguments in favor of claims that they occurred. So when someone comes and tells me that a miracle happened to him, I examine how plausible his claim is and whether there is another possible interpretation.
Someone who rules out the possibility of miracles a priori is anything but rational (more precisely, he is a rationalist, but not rational). See my fifth notebook and my book Truth and Stability about this.
By the way, your comparison to crib death is actually a counterexample. As I already wrote here in the past, this is exactly a case of a possible situation, even if rare, where someone who rules out its existence a priori reaches absurd conclusions.
I would add that someone who sees “current scholarship” as fact seems to me far less rational than someone who rules out the possibility of miracles. The amount of speculation on which “scholarly” conclusions in these fields are based is itself almost a miracle.

To Rabbi Michi,
Miracles are possible, but even you agree that they are not probable. Hand on heart, it is easier to believe in false testimony than in miracles.
Of course, the easiest thing is to be “without hand on heart,” and remain in the state in which I was born.
I do not rule out the existence of miracles with certainty, but just as I do not believe a virgin who appeared as a figure of light above a church, or someone who claims to me that he saw a miracle, even if he is very trustworthy in my eyes, I would prefer to assume that this time he is lying to me.
The studies are full of holes, and do not claim to be comprehensive, since they are trying to understand today what happened then. But we see that a not very large group left Egypt, not through miracles, and in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) we already see the tribal division, so there is a broad basis for development within Judaism.

To Kobi,
With your permission, I didn’t understand a word, except for point 2—that if there is a God there is a probability of revelation—and that is not correct, because the possibility indeed exists, but you also don’t think that all sorts of legends are true “because there is a God.”

In addition, I think that a Torah given by an omnipotent being ought to be given in an unequivocal way, not as a moral system that is not even certainly correct. If we see that the probability of the giving of the Torah is not high, that itself is proof that the Torah was not given.
I do not understand why, when we all hear about a miracle, or feel that there is no need even to think about the meaning of such fantasies, but when it comes to the realm of faith, philosophical arguments begin that “in general, the existence of a miracle is not improbable.”
Nur

Nur—there are no studies that refute the Exodus from Egypt, not even in large numbers. If there is such a study, you are welcome to present it here. Since I am somewhat familiar with the material, I’ll already tell you: there isn’t one. And there are even studies showing that the story of a large-scale exodus of the people is entirely plausible.

1. Nur, by the way, you do believe that people saw that there was a virgin above the church; you just disagree about the interpretation.

By the way, if scientists told you they had found the inscription “Hello world” on the planet Mars, would you accept the reality of aliens? But they do not operate by a deterministic law of nature of the type familiar to us (rather, even if they are deterministic, they operate in a much more complex way)… Yet you would still be willing to accept the reality of aliens. And the problem is that until you do the simple calculation—given that there are aliens, what is the probability that they would write “Hello world”? (After all, they could write an “infinite” number of other inscriptions, use five other ways to reach our world, not write at all, do an “infinite” number of other things while not making themselves known to us, etc. etc.)
But still, because if there are aliens it is possible that they would make such an inscription, we are willing to accept testimony about them.
————————————–
Now think that insofar as there is God, it is not far-fetched that there would be a revelation, and here it is even more plausible, as Rabbi Michi tries to show at the beginning of the fifth notebook. And likewise.
———–
Here the issue of the virgin does not help you for exactly those two reasons. First, the likelihood of her revelation specifically above Zeitoun is low, and you have no a priori reason to think it would be דווקא there (and therefore it is similar to the aliens case). Second, you have a priori motives not to believe in the Christian religion and in the existence of such a virgin at all (and that is even worse than the aliens case).
And likewise, the content of the testimony about the virgin can bear other interpretations. Though there is no doubt that all those Christians saw something, unless you are really a conspiracy theorist of the flat-earth type….

2. You can always be among those who claim that miracles are part of nature in both senses, or that you are a Hasid and claim there is no nature at all :), or that you are among those medieval philosophical authorities (Rishonim) who claim that it was embedded within nature itself from the six days of Creation that such-and-such would happen, and if so every miracle is nature…. And I would be happy if, in order to refute what I said, you would show who moved the graviton.

It is true that there is no study that “refutes” the Exodus from Egypt, but the very probability that there may not have been miracles raises the question. True, if I measure probability statistically, statistics cannot tell me that a revelation of God is impossible. In any case, hand on heart, David Hume is right that such a probability should not lead one to believe someone who goes against healthy common sense.
“If there is a God, there is no probability to say He did not reveal Himself”—we do not believe every person who tells a story that goes against the laws of nature. Why not? “If there is a God, what problem would He have in doing wondrous things?”
If healthy common sense says to believe in revelation because there is some probability of revelation [or because there is no strong probability against revelation], then one should also believe in the revelation of Jesus. Christianity is more moral and more suited to the times. But without sufficient evidence for the event, it does not help that it seems to me that this is what God ought to do now.

If so, then you agree that I am right in terms of the dry data, and you are only raising the claim that this leads to absurdities (that we would trust everyone). If so, it is proper to try to understand how to reconcile the statistical calculation with that intuition, and that is what the Rabbi discussed at length.
Rabbi Michael Abraham resolves this by saying that one must give known knowledge a certain weight, but there is no reason to turn it into the only interpretation. As I understand it, everything depends on the strength of the *evidence*, as I mentioned above. But one should not beg the question at the a priori level about what will certainly be….
In any case, if you come to this view on a more mature level, and with a more open mind than a dogmatic approach, I am sure we can arrive at more interesting insights.

{As an aside, it may be that you, as a materialist (presumably), are actually a covert denier of the principle of induction and do not find a proper basis for it, and in that case you will not be able to speak about statistical calculations, as I mentioned above in rescue of the Hasidim who say there is no nature in the world at all…}

I already addressed the third paragraph at length regarding the virgin, so take it from there. In any case, if you are persuaded by Christian miracles on the basis of testimony by distant individuals, then be persuaded also by the miracles of the Baba Sali on the basis of testimony from close associates.

And if I am a materialist, do I have no way to believe?

Regarding the witness argument, Rashba undermines it. After all, we were raised person to person on the story of Og and the mountain he uprooted, which happened before all Israel, and then Rashba comes in his novellae on aggadah and says that it did not really happen. So yes, it is possible to plant a story that never happened, and millions of people will tell it and pass it on to their children?

First of all, why do you think I am bound by Rashba? Second, he explains that way a fact that was transmitted in the tradition. In his view, the tradition itself says that this is not a fact. Third, the witness argument does not say that this cannot happen, but that it is not likely—especially if the tradition itself does not say that it is a myth. And fourth, in my view too, the witness argument does not stand on its own. See the stories told about all kinds of people in tales of saints.

That itself is the point: if Rashba had a tradition that it did not happen, while we had a different one, that proves the rolling-myth theory.

Rashba had no tradition about this at all. He interprets the tradition that way based on his own reasoning. I’ve exhausted the point.

Obviously, if he had received a tradition that this was literal—or in any case had not received that it was non-literal—he would not have dared change it. He isn’t Maimonides; he’s Rashba.
And why has your patience run short? In any case, I do appreciate the effort.