Q&A: Response to the Debate with Yaron Yadan
Response to the Debate with Yaron Yadan
Question
I saw this comment on YouTube; that’s also how I felt during it. I don’t completely identify with the person who wrote the comment, but it’s a voice that should be heard.
Here are two central claims of Yaron: 1. The Torah contains errors. 2. The Torah mostly contains unimportant things. The assumption behind these claims is: God does not make mistakes; He is all-knowing and exalted in wisdom by definition. The conclusion Yaron reaches is: given that the Torah contains errors and nonsense, and given that God is free of error and full of wisdom, then it is unlikely that the Torah was written by God on the one hand, and very likely that it was written by people from a primitive era on the other.
By contrast, all of Michael Abraham’s discourse is made up of a chain of "if-then" claims. So from his side, no concrete claim was actually put on the table, only a hypothesis. Michael’s answer to Yaron is based on the anthropomorphic assumption that "God expects religious obligations from me," and also on the assumption that "my tradition is truer than other traditions," and alongside that also on a set of disputed arguments (the physico-theological argument and the moral argument, which in my view are invalid). In the end, Michael’s claim is that given that it is reasonable to assume the Torah was given by God, then it doesn’t matter what its content is; the conclusion, in his view, has already been decided.
This conclusion—that the Torah was written by God—puts Michael into a paradox containing the following three assumptions simultaneously: 1. The Torah is full of errors and nonsense. 2. God is free of errors and His wisdom is exalted. 3. The Torah was written by God. To hold a cluster of assumptions that do not fit together leads to what Yaron calls "absurdity." In the end, in order to escape the paradox, Michael drops assumption 1: "The Torah is full of errors and nonsense," and in order to defend his conclusion that: "The Torah was written by God," Michael is willing to do any interpretive acrobatics possible in order to reconcile the errors and nonsense in the Torah with the assumption that the Torah was written by God. And here he is basically entering a closed loop, in Yaron’s words, because it no longer matters what is written in the Torah, or how wrong or unimportant it is; Michael’s starting point is that it is "true" and "important," and in that way he has trapped himself in a closed loop, and all that remains for him is to go around inside it in circles.
What do you think of what he says?
Answer
If you have a concrete question, ask it. I see no point in responding to this collection of nonsense.
Discussion on Answer
I do not accept assumption 1, mainly because of assumptions 2 and 3. If there is something that seems problematic to you, then presumably it is your interpretive mistake (you did not understand the verses correctly), or you were mistaken in your assumptions (that is, that these things are nonsense).
I sharpened the point that my assumptions 2 and 3 are not based on the content of the book, and therefore they precede the formation of my position regarding 1. Beyond that, in the examples Yaron himself brought, I showed him that he was wrong. So assumption 1, even on his own view, is simply arbitrary. As stated, in my view it is false.
If so, would there ever be an error so stupid that it would cause you not to accept conclusion 3?
Also, we do not have certainty regarding assumption 3, so given assumption 1 it would greatly weaken 3. (Obviously, if you are certain about 3, that is the reasonable conclusion.)
Don’t you see any difficulty in that?!? It’s simple probability.
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Another question: you said there that the distinction between Torah and morality is not your own, unlike the Hazon Ish, who identifies Jewish law with morality. (I think Rabbi Kook does too.) And that is the view that, as I understand it, most religious people hold.
Do you have sources for this?
In principle that is possible. Something that is obviously complete nonsense on its face (though even then I would assume it is a later addition). But I do not know of anything like that.
If I reached conclusion 3, it would take very well-established nonsense to reject it. There is no such thing.
As for Jewish law and morality, you can search the site’s columns, and I also have lecture series in which the sources were discussed as well. By the way, you are mistaken in your understanding of the Hazon Ish. On the contrary: the plain sense is that he completely disconnects them and does not recognize morality, but when you read carefully you see that he does recognize it.
The distinction between Jewish law and morality is a simple fact, and anyone who denies it (like Rabbi Kook in quite a few sources) is astonishing. There are many laws that are unrelated to morality in any way. I argued that there is complete independence, even in the moral laws.
But I am not really interested in who thinks this way and who does not, or whether most religious people think this or that. I say what I think, not what others think.
As for the first part, let’s say we take the creation of the world: the myth in Genesis clashes with physics.
From here, either it undermines the Torah’s reliability, or we say that the Torah is not intended as a science book.
If, in the tradition, the Torah’s reliability is not certain and is in doubt for us, we could use that piece of nonsense to decide that the Torah is not divine.
In this way, if you add up enough nonsense, you will have a serious challenge. And that is exactly what Yaron explained to you.
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Obviously there are commandments that are not related to morality, but there are commandments that seem moral; we understand that these are immoral things, apart from immoral commandments. The accepted view is that in both cases this is the true morality.
The religious assumption accepted by most religious people is very relevant, because it is the tradition. If you challenge the tradition, there is no reason not to challenge the giving of the Torah as well.
You do not need to be a rocket scientist (I don’t know why the Americans use דווקא that profession) to understand this. It’s obvious. And I already answered it.
Assuming you accept the following three assumptions:
"1. The Torah is full of errors and nonsense. 2. God is free of errors and His wisdom is exalted. 3. The Torah was written by God."
do you see a difficulty in your position? Even if the source of trust is external to what is written in the book. (Tradition and the argument from testimony.)