Torah Philosophy

The New Year for Trees

2012-02-07T17:09:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow is known in the Talmud as the New Year of Trees, on which it is customary to eat fruit. Therefore this is an appropriate time to note God's gift of the orange.

What a masterpiece of intelligent design! The fruit is sweet, delicious and nutritious. The peel is a beautiful wrapper, easily removed. The pits may be thrown on the ground and, in the right conditions, will each grow into a tree that will produce thousands of additional oranges. Imagine being able to break off part of a computer, throw it on the ground and see a computer factory grow from it.

Human breeding has improved upon the original wild citrus, however those are merely small finishing touches on a masterpiece.

To counter that this all appears to be designed, however in reality has been created by chance, is like saying I only imagine that I am a human, however I am in reality an earthworm dreaming that he is human. It is a denial of what our senses perceive bordering on madness.

Why We Should Be Orthodox

2012-01-26T18:10:00.012-05:00

(Sabbath table)

Believing, observant Jews are going to eternal paradise according to the Talmud Berakot 17a: In the World to Come there is no eating nor drinking nor propagation nor business nor jealousy nor hatred nor competition, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads feasting on the brightness of God's presence.

Nonbelievers are going to hell forever according to the Talmud Rosh haShanah 17a. The Talmud Berakoth 57b explains that the fire of hell is sixty times stronger than ordinary fire.

The evidence supporting this is clear beyond any reasonable doubt.

The Torah is validated by nature and history

by the descending levels of Jewish literature

by the wisdom of the Torah

by the honesty of the Torah

and by the Holocaust.

Atheists attempt to debunk the Torah using evolution

the documentary hypothesis

the suffering of the innocent

and all sorts of logical fallacies.

In fact, it's obvious that atheists do not really believe their own stated beliefs.

Food for Thought

2012-01-26T04:25:00.001-05:00

Malcolm Muggeridge, British journalist

a few interesting quotes.

“If God is dead, somebody is going to have to take his place. It will be megalomania or erotomania, the drive for power or the drive for pleasure, the clenched fist or the phallus, Hitler or Hugh Hefner.”

“Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream.”

"People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to."

Newt Is Onto Something

2012-01-23T07:12:00.004-05:00

Newt Gingrich speaking on 3/27/2011

"I have two grandchildren — Maggie is 11, Robert is 9," Gingrich said at Cornerstone Church here. "I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American."

Gingrich said he hadn't intended to fight another political battle, and was looking forward to relaxing in private life after leaving public office. But in 2002, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance was unconstitutional (the ruling was later overturned).

"I had been watching the courts grow steadily more secular and steadily more anti-religious starting with the 1963 school prayer decision," he said. "But for some reason this particular decision struck me as so blindingly stupid, so profoundly un-American."

"Bravery will come from our churches, our synagogues, everyday folks," Gingrich said. "It won't come from the elites. It won't [come from] those currently in power because if it could have come from them, it would have."

I'm starting to like this guy a little. I would add that bravery may come from a few bloggers too.

[Disclaimer: I do not know if Gingrich is God fearing. In fact he is probably not. However he is claiming to enthusiastically support God fearers, and that wins him a point with me.]

As a pessimist, I believe that the larger cultural battle has been lost many years ago. The United States in a decade will probably look very much like Ukraine does today, with it's poverty, alcoholism, crime and corruption. (Zbigniew Brzezinski published a new book this week in which he compares the US today to the USSR in 1988.) Nevertheless, within our own orthodox communities we will survive. We must emphasize a maximum of Torah study. We must emphasize kindness - and that begins at home, making peace with our spouses and children. We must use software to filter and monitor Internet usage in our homes. We must shun and expel drop outs from our communities.

A Rose with a New Name

2012-01-22T06:26:00.001-05:00

This blog's name is now Torah Philosophy and the domain name is torahphilosophy.com. All of your old links to jewishphilosopher.blogspot.com will continue to function.

I decided that acquiring a custom domain name would give an added impression of prestige and authority to this blog, however nothing else has changed.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" Shakespeare

Enjoy!

Comparative Chronology

2012-01-17T13:46:00.009-05:00

Jewish chronology of the Torah period

3760 BCE Adam & Eve created

c. 2500 BCE period of "mighty men that were of old, the men of renown" Genesis 6:4

2102 BCE The Flood

1765 BCE The Dispersion

1313 BCE Exodus from Egypt, Revelation at Mt Sinai

1272 BCE Joshua leads Jews into Israel

Gentile chronology of the Torah period

3300 BCE Bronze Age begins in the Middle East

3200 BCE writing begins in Egypt and Sumer

2600-2400 BCE Stonehenge constructed

2540-2560 BCE Giza Pyramid constructed

c. 2200 BCE A severe climatic event causes a cultural upheaval. It is very likely to have caused the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt as well as the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia.

c. 1700 BCE the written history of China begins

c. 1700 BCE Vedic culture begins in India

1550 BCE Jericho destroyed

1200 BCE Hazor destroyed

1200 BCE Egyptian inscription mentions Israel

1200 BCE Israelite highland settlements established

c. 1100 BCE oldest Hebrew inscription

Broadly, there is an agreement between archeology and the Torah and relatively minor differences I believe can be attributed to the inaccuracy of current archaeological knowledge. If the Torah was indeed fabricated by Ezra the Scribe as atheists believe, then he really made some lucky guesses. In contrast, the Book of Mormon for example is entirely baseless archeologically.

Regarding the prehistoric era, prior to the Bronze Age, the Torah is silent, however I have a theory about that.

The Atheist "Rabbi"

2012-01-13T14:57:00.008-05:00

[here's Jeff]

I came across this week a blog entitled The Atheist Rabbi. The blog is almost entirely devoted to denigrating anyone who believes in God. Comments are moderated. No critical comments will be posted by the "rabbi". Apparently criticism embarrasses him since he cannot respond to it intelligently.

It's written by a man named Jeffrey Falick. He is about 50. He writes that he was ordained by a Reform seminary in 1989 and is currently a member of the Society for Humanistic Judaism, a small sect which is even more secular than Reform.

He is openly homosexual and resides with his male partner.

Based on research that I have done, I happen to know that he was previously married to a woman and fathered a daughter in 1991. The daughter today is apparently orthodox.

He is currently employed as Assistant Executive Director for the Dave and Mary Alper Jewish Community Center in Miami, Florida.

I have never written a post about another blog before, however I am making an exception in this case. I believe that it is an incredible insult to the rabbinate for an individual like this to claim to be a rabbi. If he simply called himself "Mr" I wouldn't give him a second thought. The Internet is loaded with liars, lunatics, perverts, scumbags and so on of all stripes. That's nothing noteworthy. However I do feel the need to protest when one calls himself "rabbi". I really haven't seen something like that before, surely not such an extreme example. Even Reform Judaism officially accepts a belief in God. A militantly atheist "rabbi" is just absurd. How can a clergyman be openly antireligious? Can one imagine the harm done if some naive person were to approach this man for spiritual guidance? I feel it's as if someone like Ron Jeremy (also Jewish by the way) would start calling himself "rabbi". Imagine the storm of disgust and protest that would provoke. What's next - "The Neo-Nazi Rabbi"? "The Islamic Terrorist Rabbi"?

As publicly listed on the Internet, Falick resides at:
1621 Bay Rd, Apt 507
Miami Beach, FL 33139-3250
(305) 531-7720
jfalick@yahoo.com

He works at:
Dave and Mary Alper JCC on The Jay Morton-Levinthal Campus
11155 SW 112th Avenue Miami, FL 33176
Telephone: 305.271.9000 ext 239
Fax: 305.595.1902
rabbi@alperjcc.org

Joan Stern
Human Resource Director
305.271.9000 ext 347
jstern@alperjcc.org

the president of the Dave and Mary Alper JCC is:
Jorge Rawicz
office:
President, Terra Mortgage Bankers
1900 N Bayshore Drive, Unit 204-A
Miami, FL 33132
(305)921-0818
home:
20379 W Country Club Dr
Aventura, FL 33180-1666
(305) 931-7876

Does Egyptian History Contradict the Torah

2012-01-08T14:57:00.007-05:00

[Great Pyramid of Giza]

One apparent conflict between secular history and Judaism is that according to traditional Jewish chronology, the Deluge (Genesis 7) occurred in 2106 BCE. The Dispersion (Genesis 11) occurred in 1765 BCE. This means that between those two dates, for a period of 340 years, the earth was uninhabited outside of Mesopotamia. Also people after the Dispersion spoke different languages than they did before the Deluge. According to Tan. Buber, Noach 28, prior to the Dispersion all people spoke Hebrew.

Egyptians, however, supposedly the spoke the same language from 3400 BCE until 1700 CE. How can this be explained?

I would assume that the antediluvian Egyptians were among the “mighty men of old” (Genesis 6:4). They built the Great Pyramid and spoke Hebrew. They died in the Deluge. [I suspect that this early race of superior men also built the remarkable Stonehenge monument which dates from about the same period.]

Following the Dispersion, new settlers arrived in Egypt who wished to revive the culture of the earlier inhabitants. They never approached the architectural achievement of the original Egyptians, however they emulated Old Egyptian culture and claimed descent from them. (Many ancient dynasties claimed descent from ancient gods or heroes.)

Until about 1300 BCE, writing was pictographic. This means that each character represented a word, not a sound. This system is still used in eastern Asia today. Therefore, we cannot know what ancient Egyptian sounded like. For example, today, Japanese writing is derived partly from Chinese characters, although the two spoken languages are entirely different. The written language may have no connection to the spoken language in some cases. The antediluvian Egyptians may have spoken Hebrew while Egyptians after the Dispersion spoke Egyptian, but continued to use hieroglyphics.

This is to some extent similar to the Latin alphabet which continued to be used long after the destruction of Rome. In fact, this blog is being written in the Latin alphabet. Classical Greek and Roman architectures were also often revived. Most people today use a slightly modified Roman calendar. So the old Egyptian writing continued long after the original old Egyptians were gone.

Interestingly, the Egyptians are virtually the only ancient culture not possessing a flood legend, I would suppose because they wished to deny their lack of continuity with the pyramid builders.

The Fanatic Fringe

2012-01-01T06:46:00.002-05:00

[the orthodox terrorists]

It's come to my attention that there exists a group of Jews in the Jerusalem area known as Sikrikim. They have recently received a huge amount of attention as violent ultra-orthodox extremists.

I just want to make a few points.

In a world population of about two million orthodox Jews, these people amount to a few hundred.

Everyone else thinks they're crazy.

To the best of my knowledge they have caused no bodily injury to anyone beyond a few bruises. They have engaged in some property vandalism and some screaming.

Therefore it may be a little bit early to condemn orthodox Jews as being the next wave of religious terrorists. Comparing the Sikrikim to al-Qaeda or the Irish Republican Army is laughable. They are more on the level of Occupy Wall Street. These few unbalanced and pretty much harmless clowns merely provide some filler for the news media on slow days. Let's hope that after a few land in jail, the rest settle down.

The Real Analgesic

2011-12-30T06:03:00.003-05:00

[Amy Winehouse - there is a better way]

Many people suffer from severe emotional pain of some sort. They feel disappointed, insulted, rejected, poor, lonely, hopeless, worried about the future, miserable about growing uglier and weaker with age and so forth.

To cope with this pain, people turn to painkillers of many types: alcohol, heroin, prescription pain killers, marijuana, etc. These substances unfortunately all become less effective with use, which encourages the use of higher dosages and as a result leads eventually to very serious and possibly fatal side effects. They may be good short term solutions, however in the long term they are horrifically damaging. (One biographer of Ernest Hemingway, the brilliant but atheistic and alcoholic writer, mentions that after age 45 he became more insane each year [ Hemingway by Kenneth S. Lynn page 532], until his suicide at age 61.)

What is the solution? Why can't doctors invent a powerful analgesic to which we will not develop a tolerance?

Fortunately, orthodox Judaism has solved this problem thousands of years ago. When one is suffering, he need merely remember that everything is from God and everything God does is good. The Talmud teaches us "one must receive the evil with gladness". It is all for our good. Everything is an atonement for our sins and prepares us for paradise. Furthermore, if one is unhappy with anything material, he may recall the words of the ancient rabbis who taught "This world is [merely] like an entrance chamber before the World to Come. Prepare yourself in the entrance chamber so that you may enter the banquet hall." Numerous inspirational works are available which expand on these and similar themes.

How precious is Thy lovingkindness, O God! and the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Thy wings. Psalms (36:8)

This is the real analgesic.

Close to the Truth

2011-12-27T18:44:00.003-05:00

[the real Hitchens - a parody of the far left]

from the archives
APRIL 23, 2003 | ISSUE 39•15

SPARTA, TN–Noted author, social critic, and political gadfly Christopher Hitchens was once again the focus of controversy Monday, when he was forcibly removed from Happy Trails trailer park following a drunken confrontation with Noreen Bodell, 39, his common-law wife of 14 years.

Responding to a domestic-disturbance call, police arrived at the couple's double-wide trailer at approximately 2:15 p.m. to find Hitchens and Bodell throwing dishes at each other. When the officers attempted to remove Hitchens from the premises, the leftist intellectual became physically and verbally abusive toward the officers, calling them "shitkickers," "bitches," and "effete liberal apologists for the atrocities of late-stage capitalism."

An inebriated Hitchens is forcibly removed from the Happy Trails trailer park. Having consumed what sources described as "a substantial amount of single-malt scotch," Hitchens then burst into tears, yelling, "That woman never understood me for who I am. I want to talk to [Harper's editor Lewis] Lapham. Lapham's the only one who understands me."

Charged with disturbing the peace, Hitchens was taken to the Sparta police station at 3 p.m. and released four hours later.

Little is known about Bodell, a heavy-set blonde who has been known to use several different surnames. According to sources familiar with the couple, the incident marks the third time in as many weeks that police have been forced to intervene in their volatile relationship.

"We're down at the old Hitchens place probably twice a month at least," said Sgt. Wilson Vernon, the first of three officers to arrive at the scene. "Once his blood's up, old Hitch can get meaner than a three-legged coon hound. From what the neighbors told us about this latest incident, Noreen was all worked up, accusing him of drinking and womanizing. He was angry with her refusal to acknowledge that there is ample evidence to make a case for prosecuting Henry Kissinger as a war criminal. She just kept shouting, 'No, there ain't!'"

Police were initially summoned when neighbors reported hearing shouting and a loud crash, followed by a rambling polemic on Kissinger's alleged covert approval of Indonesia's illegal invasion of East Timor in 1975.

Though the belligerent Hitchens required three officers to subdue him, police do not consider the incident serious, calling it "business as usual" and describing Hitchens as a "hot-tempered but essentially harmless provocateur for the Far Left."

"Hitch is an all-right guy once he sobers up," Vernon said. "He just gets a little wound-up sometimes, like when his woman stays out all night down at Smokey Joe's Tavern, or he has a deadline looming for his Vanity Fair column."

Hitchens' run-ins with the law have not been restricted to Sparta city limits. In May 2002, he was arrested for drunkenly singing 1930s union songs while driving a stolen riding lawnmower through the streets of Boston, where he was attending an international women's-rights conference. Hitchens accused police of "atavistic, morally reprehensible Stalinist scare tactics" before being bailed out by conference organizers the following morning.

Sgt. Ed Poole of Boston's 11th Precinct said there was no love lost between Hitchens and his arresting officers.

"Word got around the station that this guy wrote a whole book claiming that Mother Teresa was a stooge of right-wing dictators," Poole recalled. "Supposedly, he said her hypocritical approach to charity for the poor of Calcutta, as well as her steadfast advocacy of the Catholic Church's doctrine prohibiting birth control, made her an essentially immoral individual undeserving of the mantle of sainthood. Well, a lot of the boys here are Irish-Catholic born and raised, and they don't take too kindly to people speaking ill of nuns."

Town officials in Sparta, where Hitchens has maintained an on-again, off-again residence for two decades, admit that he may be "a handful" at times, but they insist he is not a danger to himself or others.

"If I know Hitch, by the end of the week, he and Noreen'll be back together, cuddlin' and kissin', just as happy as two crawdads in a pond," Sparta Police Chief Buck Perkins said. "We don't get a lot of ultra-progressive agitators 'round these parts, but Hitch is okay. Plus, he earned a lot of points with the townsfolk for his vocal criticism of the anti-war movement. Even though he was attacking the war opponents from the left, folks around here don't necessarily understand the implications of that, so he's an all-right Joe in their book."

Added Perkins: "So long as Hitch can learn to keep his mouth shut about Christianity being symptomatic of the 'savage and ignorant prehistory of our species' and whatnot, I'm sure he'll cause no trouble that a few cups of black coffee and a night in the drunk tank can't solve."

The Crime of the Century

2011-12-21T05:41:00.015-05:00

[AIDS orphans - thanks a lot sodomy advocates!]

The Gay Liberation Front was organized in New York City in the summer of 1969. Afterwards states began repealing sodomy laws.

Having recently achieved equal rights for blacks (which Jews have nothing against by the way; the modern Western concept of "race" is unknown in the Talmud), atheists needed a new cause célèbre to make them feel good about themselves. Homosexual rights fit the bill. Furthermore, the gay rights movement had, for atheists, the added bonus of making traditional monotheists appear to be "racist" since they could now be portrayed as irrational persecutors of a helpless, pathetic "sexual minority".

The first cases of AIDS were reported in New York and California in 1981. It usually takes 10 years or more for an HIV infection to turn into AIDS. Therefore these homosexual men apparently became infected with HIV about 1971.

In 1984, AIDS was reported in Africa. (Just for the sake of comparison, AIDS was first reported in Brazil and England in 1982, in China in 1985 and in India in 1987. Thanks to modern jet travel, the plague spread quickly worldwide.)

In the 1990s, life expectancy in many parts of Africa dropped by about 10 years due to AIDS.

Today about 15 million children in Africa are AIDS orphans.

I just have a small question to ask gay rights activists: Was it worthwhile to cause this immense suffering, which far outweighs the Nazi Holocaust, for the sake of a few million American men being able to fully indulge themselves sexually? Or would it not have been far wiser and kinder to continue to outlaw sodomy, as the Torah commands? Rather than condemning the Torah's strict prohibition of sodomy as being "homophobic" and "genocidal" shouldn't it now be recognized as a remarkable sign of divine wisdom?

Have any gay rights activists even bothered to apologize? Or are such psychopaths incapable of regret?

Two Peas in a Pod

2011-12-20T18:30:00.011-05:00

psycho 1

psycho 2

Both died on almost the same day. (Hitchens December 15, Kim December 17).

Both were atheists.

Both admired Marx and Lenin.

Both were mean and selfish. Kim unfortunately had more opportunity to express it.

Both drank heavily.

Both were fat.

Both were heavy smokers, however Kim quit 12 years ago, perhaps because of that living to be 70 instead of Hitchens' 62. Hitchens apparently had less self control.

Another difference: Kim is scheduled to have big funeral next week. Hitchens, for all I know, has already landed in a dumpster behind the hospital.

(Update: Hitchins' body was donated at his request to medical research. Presumably, that would mean that medical students at the Texas Medical Center in Houston, Texas, where he died, will use his body to practice dissections. Afterwards, what remains will presumably be cremated and the ashes delivered to his widow. I find it however a little odd that this statement was made by Hitchens' literary agent, after being asked, rather than an announcement being made by his family and only nine days after his death, rather than at the time of death. Did his family simply abandon the body and tell the hospital to get rid of it? I don't know. For example, when the famous Anglo-American atheist Francis Crick died in 2004, he was cremated and a memorial service was held within a week.)

Biogeography - Love not Evolution

2011-12-19T12:47:00.005-05:00

[marsupials - only in Australia - well, almost only]

One of the major “proofs” of evolution is biogeography – the distribution of living things.

As far as I can tell, biogeography does not mean that animals are always most similar to other animals living near them and more different than animals that live far away. There are too many exceptions to this rule. Alligators, for example, occur only in Florida and eastern Asia. The opossum is a unique American marsupial. It also doesn’t mean that present day animals closely resemble extinct animals from the same area. The fauna of North America a million years ago resembled today’s Africa.

What it seems to mean is that, if God created life, then similar habitats should have been created with similar plants and animals. There would be no need for all the variety that we find in the modern world. Deserts should all have one standard desert flora and fauna, forests should have a standard forest type of life, the Polar Regions should be the same and so on. In fact, this is far from the case.

I would like to question this premise, however.

According to Judaism, the highest level of serving God is the love of God, and that love may best be attained by studying nature. The wisdom and beauty of nature instills within us a love of God. If a painter painted a thousand masterpieces he is clearly greater than if he painted only ten. So also, the diversity of nature is designed to fill us with a greater love of God. This is the correct explanation for biogeography.

Hitchens is Not Great

2011-12-16T04:09:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens, lunatic author of God is Not Great, is finally dead yesterday at age 62, a victim of his own debauched lifestyle.

Portrait of an Atheist

2011-12-08T19:26:00.005-05:00

"All thinking men are atheists."
- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, Chapter 2

Hemingway, a brilliant writer, but a lifelong alcoholic who married and discarded one wife after another until he finally fell into depression and blew his own head off at the age of 61.

If this is a "thinking man", it may be wiser to be thoughtless.

Science versus Atheism

2011-11-30T16:13:00.004-05:00

Atheism is a religion which became popular following the publication of its bible "Origin of Species" in 1859. Atheism teaches that the Biblical God, an intelligent, eternal, creator, does not exist and that life developed through the unguided, natural process of evolution.

Many recent advancements in science have seriously undermined the atheist faith. How long can they turn a blind eye to reason and evidence and continue to cling to their old, Victorian era myths?

Atheists rejected an eternal God and therefore were forced to assume that the universe has existed eternally. This has recently been proven to be false - the universe in fact was created about 13 billion years ago. If there is no God, where did it come from?

Recent research has demonstrated that the universe is fine tuned to make life possible. If there is no God, who fine tuned it?

If there is no God, how did life appear on earth and appear so suddenly?

If life evolved through small, gradual, trial and error changes, not divine creation, then why do the fossils indicate sudden dramatic changes?

If life developed through genetic mutations and natural selection, how could flatworms develop into humans in only 500 million years, while only one organism in countless trillions is born with a beneficial de novo genetic mutation?

Atheists may try to devise various tortured and complicated arguments to justify their beliefs.

Some have desperately suggested that space aliens have created the universe and created life.

But surely atheists, especially the younger generation who are more open minded and less dogmatic than their traditional parents, will eventually have to throw their hands up in despair and admit "God did it!"

The Miraculous Mouth

2011-11-24T18:17:00.003-05:00

Every day we use our mouths, but how often do we contemplate what a marvel of engineering it is, even on the most superficial level?

Notice how the nose is positioned directly over the mouth like a security guard. If you attempt to put something rotten into your mouth, the nose warns you to take it away.

Inside the mouth, the front teeth are sharp like knives. They are ready to chop off a small bite sized piece of a large chunk of food. The teeth further back in the mouth are very different - they are like millstones. The molars are broad and rough and grind the food into a fine pulp which is suitable for further digestion.

The tongue is covered with taste buds which further screen the safety of the food being put in the mouth. If something tastes bad, then it probably is bad for you and you will warned by the taste buds to spit it out.

The tongue is also covered with very sensitive nerves. The tongue is constantly moving around the mouth during chewing to check if the food is thoroughly chewed before swallowing. If some hard object in the food cannot be chewed, the tongue senses this and it is spat out.

If a person is missing part of his mouth as a result of a birth defect, cancer surgery or an accident, surgeons can replace it, but only to a limited degree and mainly by removing tissues from other parts of the body and using them to rebuild the mouth. Our mouths are truly priceless machines which we use constantly without a second thought. Let's remember to thank God every time we eat.

At the same time, what could be more insane than the idea that random mutations, even in hundreds of millions of generations, could create this clear example of purposefulness and complexity? Imagine a factory producing telegraphs which would occasionally make some random production error. Then customers would non-randomly select only those devices which are functional. (Non-functioning machines would not be purchased and would be discarded.) The factory would then continue to faithful reproduced those machines with a functional error while occasionally accidentally making some new random change to them as well. How much chance is there that a simple telegraph would evolve into a smart phone - with no intelligent designer, merely random accidental production errors and customer selection? This is exactly how atheists believe the primitive mouth of a flatworm turned into our mouths through 550 million years of random genetic mutations and natural selection. What massive blind faith is required to believe that; the Pope should be put to shame.

Are the Fossils a Diabolical Trick?

2011-11-18T13:51:00.003-05:00

[not really bones?]

Recently I took my family on a trip to the American Museum of Natural History. The dinosaur exhibits are amazing, however they do raise a question: from the point of view of Judaism, when did they live or did they indeed live at all?

The most recent Lubavitcher Rebbe wrote that we can readily accept the possibility that God created 6,000 years ago fossils, bones or skeletons (for reasons best known to Him), and this explains the existence of fossils.

In other words, the trilobite, dinosaur and mammoth fossils were never parts of actual animals but are rather natural formations created by God.

Some very conservative Christians have believed that the dinosaur bones were planted by God to test our faith.

I personally have difficulty accepting this. Isaiah 43:7 wrote "Every one that is called by My name, and whom I have created for My glory, I have formed him, yea, I have made him." I think that this implies that there is some positive purpose in everything God has created; it is all for His glory. It seems impossible to imagine a positive purpose in creating rocks which look like bones. Furthermore, the fossil strata, many of which include only extinct plants and animals and which therefore give an impression that other different ecological systems existed before the present one, have misled many people to believe that the Torah is false. It seems inconceivable that God would create anything solely for the negative purpose of testing and deceiving people.

It therefore seems to me more reasonable to suggest that the fossils are exactly what they appear to be - remnants of earlier worlds. These earlier worlds may well have existed to prepare the earth for our present existence.

Is Alcoholics Anonymous Compatible with Judaism?

2011-11-10T18:26:00.006-05:00

[a prophet?]

Orthodox Jewish alcoholics are rare, however they do exist. Some attend regular meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous in an effort to recover. Does Orthodox Judaism permit this, however?

My opinion is no, it does not. AA is a religion unto itself and to join AA means joining another religion, in addition to observing Judaism.

Here is my basis for saying so.

Alcoholics Anonymous is based on a document called the Big Book. AA members will tell you that if you wish to become and remain sober, then you must follow the teachings of the Big Book. If you do so, you are guaranteed to lead a life of sobriety; if you do not you are guaranteed to suffer and eventually die prematurely.

This belief is not based on science. Scientific research indicates that AA may be helpful, especially in conjunction with professional treatment, for many people who are addicted to alcohol, but it is not a unique, guaranteed cure.

Rather this is based on the belief that Bill Wilson wrote the Big Book with divine guidance. In other words, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous must accept that Bill Wilson was a prophet. This belief permeates all AA meetings and all advice from AA "sponsors" (spiritual guides). The Big Book cannot under any circumstances be questioned, amended or improved upon with the implication that it is infallible holy scripture. In AA to think critically is prohibited because "your best thinking got you here" (see slogan 389)

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 11a) states that Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi were the last prophets. Furthermore, Maimonides stated that the spirit of prophecy only rests upon the wise man who is distinguished by great wisdom and strong moral character, whose passions never overcome him in anything whatsoever, but who by his rational faculty always has his passions under control, and possesses a broad and sedate mind. Therefore, in my humble opinion, the idea that Mr Wilson, who apparently was not even a very nice person, was a prophet is ludicrous and even heretical.

Joining Alcoholics Anonymous involves accepting a false prophet. It is very similar seemingly to a Jew joining a mosque (Muslims also abstain from alcohol, incidentally).

If a Jew sadly has succumbed to the habit of habitual heavy drinking, I would urge him to wholeheartedly, enthusiastically commit himself to Judaism.

We don't need a Higher Power. We have God.
We don't need Bill Wilson. We have Moses.
We don't need the Twelve Steps. We have the Ten Commandments.
We don't need the Big Book. We have the Talmud.
We don't need meetings. We have a synagogue.
We don't need a sponsor. We have a rabbi.

In addition, making vows along the following lines may be helpful.

I hereby accept upon myself that if later this week or next week I knowingly and deliberately purchase any beverage containing alcohol, I will be required to fast 2 days sometime during this month of ------ or next month of -------.

I hereby accept upon myself that if later this week or next week I knowingly and deliberately consume any beverage containing alcohol, I will be required to fast 2 days sometime during this month of ------ or next month of -----.

If the drunkard is not helped by this, then sadly AA would probably work no better.

Science and Pseudo-science

2011-11-03T12:13:00.003-05:00

[oops]

Diederik Stapel (pictured above) was the dean of the social and behavioral sciences faculty of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands. He was fired this week for fabricating data which he used to support research papers which he published.

His general method towards the end of his career was to develop a complete experiment at the level of theory, hypotheses, methods, stimuli, questionnaires, and even participants' rewards and to then pretend to run the experiments at schools which only he had access to. Instead of doing so, he would make up the data and send these to colleagues for further analysis.

In other words, the scientific publications of a distinguished researcher were in fact purely works of fiction.

Some people will say that this event actually reinforces the validity of science, because it proves that "science is self correcting" and fakes are always quickly caught. However that isn't true. It just proves that this guy got caught, however we have no idea how many cleverer or luckier people are not.

The New York Times quotes Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara as saying “The big problem is that the culture is such that researchers spin their work in a way that tells a prettier story than what they really found. It's almost like everyone is on steroids, and to compete you have to take steroids as well.” In other words, like athletes, scientists have to cheat to succeed professionally. This is not encouraging.

I think that it would be more honest and accurate to be more careful with the word "science", a word which I believe has carried so much prestige since the 1870s and the life saving breakthroughs of Louis Pasteur.

Physics, chemistry and medicine are based on exact, repeatable laboratory experiments which make fraud unlikely. These fields win Nobel Prizes and have greatly enhanced and lengthened our lives. These fields should be called "science" and their practitioners called "scientists".

Astronomy, geology, paleontology and biology should be called "natural philosophy" and practitioners would be called "natural philosophers".

Psychology, sociology, archeology, literature, art, history and economics should be called "humanities" and practitioners would be called "human researchers".

The Coolidge Effect and How to Defeat It

2011-10-26T16:08:00.003-05:00

[thanks Calvin]

One instinct common to all mammals (including humans) is known as the Coolidge Effect. This refers to the tendency of the male to be significantly more sexually aroused by a female whom he has not yet had sex with than he is aroused by a female whom he has already had sex with.

For example if a male rat is placed into an enclosed large box with four or five female rats in estrus, he will immediately begin mating with all of the female rats repeatedly until eventually exhausted. Although the females will continue nudging and licking him to continue, he will not respond. However, if a novel female were introduced to the box, he would become alert and find the ability to mate once again with the new female. New is more arousing than used. Similar tendencies are found in all other mammals.

Today, thanks to Internet pornography, men are able to have "sex" (in their imaginations) with an endless stream of new women. This can lead to a complete lack of interest in real women, besides becoming a serious addiction similar to cocaine.

Orthodox Judaism prohibits any sexual stimulation outside of marriage. Therefore the Coolidge Effect presents an enormous challenge to Orthodox men in the modern, sexually promiscuous, Internet wired world. I would suggest that this may be the greatest challenge to Orthodox Judaism today.

Making vows can be a very powerful means of controlling oneself. Each week one can read a list of vows along the lines of:

I hereby accept upon myself that if later this week or next week I knowingly unblock any webpage from Net Nanny software I will be required to fast 1 day during this month of --------- or next month of -----------.

In some cases, medication may be helpful.

In addition, heartfelt prayer for divine assistance is very important.

Atheists Have a License to Kill

2011-10-25T03:46:00.002-05:00

[the "happy face" killer]

I know this because an atheist and a killer says so.

Keith Jesperson is a serial killer who brutally murdered eight random women between 1990 and 1995.

According to his biography I: the Creation of a Serial Killer page 92 he later explained that after he had dumped his third victim on a garbage pile, he realized "It looked like I would never be punished by God or Satan. I decided there was no God or Satan, and when we died our lives just flickered out. The sooner a person understands that there's no punishment after death and allows his own inner impulses to take over, the sooner they become an unstoppable serial killer. That's the point I'd reached. It was scary, but it was exciting too."

Don't Trust High IQ

2011-10-22T21:15:00.002-05:00

[the genius in his prime]

I recently read a fascinating book about the famous chess champion, Bobby Fischer.

One point that struck me is that although Fischer's IQ was incredibly high, about 180, meaning he was one of a handful of the most intelligent people in the United States, many of his personal beliefs were very bizarre. As a teenager, he became devoted to the somewhat unusual Radio Church of God (renouncing it finally in his late 20's). In addition to that, he was a fanatic neo-Nazi although he was Jewish.

It's important to realize that a person may be extremely intelligent, yet never the less believe in a lot of silly nonsense. One must always look at facts and not be impressed by this or that authority, however brilliant or talented.

Suspect Your Spouse Is Keeping Secrets?

2011-10-17T10:01:00.003-05:00

[new "find my friends" app]

Suspect no more. The iPhone can tell you if your husband is at the local Talmud class or the local strip club.

Also great for tracking teenagers.

Near Death Experience

2011-10-16T12:03:00.003-05:00

An interesting proof of the afterlife is the phenomena of near death experiences.

I believe that NDEs are brief glimpses of the afterlife experienced by people who are physically dead (no pulse) and then are later revived. I believe that these experiences are basically accurate and authentic, although the experiencers tend to interpret them to some degree according to their own religious backgrounds.

Millions of Americans have reported these experiences. They confirm the existence of the soul, the afterlife and the existence of a loving God, all concepts taught by orthodox Judaism.

The idea that these experiences are merely hallucinations caused by some chemical reactions in the oxygen deprived brain seems implausible. Hallucinations never cause radical positive life changes. No one has ever woken up from a ketamine experience for example and decided to stop practicing law and devote his life to working in a homeless shelter. Radical improvements in behavior are however common after an NDE. This leads me to believe that these experiences are real contacts with a spiritual world, which confirm several basic Jewish beliefs, rather than merely hallucinations.

Our Amazing Scientists

2011-10-10T20:38:00.009-05:00

[alleged perv]

Kimberly Lindsey, Supervisory Health Scientist, serves as the Deputy Director for the Laboratory Science Policy and Practice Program Office (LSPPPO) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Dr. Lindsey received her doctoral degree in immunology and molecular pathogenesis from Emory University and her bachelor’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Central Florida.

The scientist was arrested yesterday for sex acts involving herself, her boyfriend, a six year old boy and an animal.

Of course these are the same type of scientists whose belief in evolution we mere laymen must accept without question.

Atheist "Ethics"

2011-09-27T09:50:00.002-05:00

[John Stuart Mill utilitarian and atheist]

A common ethical system claimed by atheists is "utilitarianism" - in essence the belief that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.

A recent psychological study seems to indicate that utilitarians were often psychopathic, Machiavellian or tended to view life as meaningless. I guess that's not very surprising, since they probably were often atheists as well.

An Interesting Comment

2011-09-23T03:27:00.005-05:00

[did he get it wrong?]

After hearing of the results of a recent experiment which seems to indicate that particles can travel faster than light, Alvaro de Rujula a theorist at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research commented "If it is true, then we truly haven't understood anything about anything."

An interesting comment, considering that atheists will insist that anyone denying evolution is ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked since most scientists endorse it. This is in spite of the obvious fallacies of evolution.

What if most scientists don't understand anything about anything?

God and the United Nations

2011-09-21T12:23:00.007-05:00

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights."

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Preamble Article 1.

How could an atheist say this?

First of all, if humans are merely soulless bags of chemicals created by mindless evolution, what rights and dignity do we have more so than a rat, a jellyfish or a rock?

Secondly, if we have no soul and are purely physical, in what way are all humans equal? Even identical twins have different experiences and therefore are different. Would anyone say all diamonds, stars or animals are equal?

One of the United Nations' founding documents seems to imply the existence of a God given human soul. It seems to have been inspired by the Bible, not Darwin.

Gaddafi and God

2011-09-16T10:21:00.004-05:00

[in big trouble]

These days, former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi isn't doing very well. His location is currently unknown and he is wanted for war crimes. Things aren't looking so good right now for the former tyrant and fashion icon.

There is an important message to learn from this: sooner or later, there is justice.

Gaddafi was an evil man who killed many innocent people. For many years he lived in great luxury, however ultimately justice caught up with him.

By the same token consider, Saddam Hussein, a brutal killer who finally met a bitter end. And of course recently Osama bin Laden. Jewish Communists, who persecuted rabbis without mercy in the early years of the Soviet Union, were themselves purged by Stalin a few years later. The same is true is many evil people - they may seem successful for a while, however then suddenly they're gone. Most bad people end up suffering greatly even in this world.

There are however some exceptions. I would suggest that Stalin and Mao, for example, were such monsters that no earthly punishment could begin to apply to them and their suffering was reserved only for the afterlife.

It's well known that many people in recent years who have converted from Orthodox Judaism to atheism have ended up having disastrous personal lives. I know of one man who grew up Orthodox in Brooklyn, dropped out about thirty years ago after being married with a daughter. He then married a Colombian woman, had children, had a good job however his sexual promiscuity caused him to lose his new family and career. I know of another woman who left her Orthodox husband for a non-Orthodox coworker. Today she is divorced, penniless and has three kids. I personally know of no apostates from Orthodoxy who seem to do too well personally and financially.

We must learn from this and use this to help us increase our belief in and fear of God.

Where is the Surgeon General?

2011-09-12T08:54:00.004-05:00

The British government just last week permitted gay men to donate blood - after one year of full celibacy.

Few nations allow sexual active gay men to donate blood.

Shouldn't this perhaps tell us something - that rather than issuing marriage certificates to gay men, the Surgeon General should issue a warning against men having sex with men? I'm not suggesting that anyone go so far as quoting the Bible, (although it's interesting how many Biblical ideas have immense therapeutic value - see the post prior to this one) however it's at least a matter of hygiene.

God Will Make You Sober

2011-09-11T13:23:00.005-05:00

[he's not "getting it"]

In 2001, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University published a study concerning the link between monotheism and sobriety.

The study found that God, religion, and spirituality were key factors for many in the prevention and treatment of their substance abuse and in continuing recovery.

Adults who did not consider religious beliefs important were more than one and one-half times likelier to use alcohol and cigarettes, more than three times likelier to binge drink, almost four times likelier to use an illicit drug other than marijuana, and more than six times likelier to use marijuana than adults who strongly believed that religion was important.

Teens who never attended religious services were twice as likely to drink, more than three times likelier to use marijuana and binge drink, and almost four times likelier to use illicit drugs than teens who attended religious services at least weekly.

In the context of treatment, individuals who attended spiritually based support programs, such as 12-Step programs of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, in addition to receiving treatment, were more likely to maintain sobriety.

The essence of addiction recovery and prevention seems to be to train people to find true solace in a belief in and trust in God during times of stress, rather than a self destructive false solace in substance abuse. (For example see A Natural History of Alcoholism page 193.)

Jellyfish - an Amazing Creation

2011-09-03T21:43:00.002-05:00

[a giant Nomura's jellyfish]

My daughter visited an aquarium last week and one thing which impressed her were the jellyfish.

Jellyfish are indeed remarkable and unique creatures. These are living, moving, reproducing animals which thrive in the oceans yet have almost no distinct organs.

Jellyfish do not have specialized digestive, osmoregulatory, central nervous, respiratory, or circulatory systems. They digest using the gastrodermal lining of the gastrovascular cavity, where nutrients are absorbed. They do not need a respiratory system since their skin is thin enough that the body is oxygenated by diffusion. They have limited control over movement, but can use their hydrostatic skeleton to accomplish movement through contraction-pulsations of the bell-like body; some species actively swim most of the time, while others are passive much of the time. Jellyfish are composed of more than 90% water; most of their umbrella mass is a gelatinous material — the jelly — called mesoglea which is surrounded by two layers of epithelial cells which form the umbrella (top surface) and subumbrella (bottom surface) of the bell, or body.

A jellyfish does not have a brain or central nervous system, but rather has a loose network of nerves, located in the epidermis, which is called a "nerve net". A jellyfish detects various stimuli including the touch of other animals via this nerve net, which then transmits impulses both throughout the nerve net and around a circular nerve ring, through the rhopalial lappet, located at the rim of the jellyfish body, to other nerve cells. Some jellyfish also have ocelli: light-sensitive organs that do not form images but which can detect light, and are used to determine up from down, responding to sunlight shining on the water's surface. These are generally pigment spot ocelli, which have some cells (not all) pigmented.

It's hard to imagine an animal so bizarre in comparison to most other life. It's truly awe inspiring to consider the variety of God's creatures.

The Eternal People

2011-08-21T18:55:00.003-05:00

[the Old Prague Synagogue]

I don’t believe that any culture or religion is as ancient or has been as stable as Judaism.

The name “Israel” is first found mentioned about 1210 BCE.

Israel Finkelstein, no friend of Orthodoxy, writes in his book “The Bible Unearthed” page 119 that from about 1150 BCE until 586 BCE, no pork was raised in the villages of the highlands of Palestine. (According to rabbinical tradition, the Israelite invasion of Palestine took place in 1273 BCE.) This is the earliest archeological evidence of Jewish observance.

Based upon the Mishnah, we know that a Jew living in Palestine 2,000 years ago could enter an Orthodox synagogue today and have virtually no difficulty joining in with the services. The phylacteries worn today and the Bible read from today are the same as some found in the Dead Sea caves.

Today the Orthodox Jewish population stands at about two million, and growing.

What’s truly incredible is that throughout this entire period, Jews have been constantly attacked and persecuted. The above-mentioned inscription from 1210 BCE tellingly reads “Israel is laid waste, its seed is not”. Jews have been hated since literally the first day of Jewish history and endless attempts have been made to annihilate the relatively small and helpless Jewish community. Why have these attempts always been unsuccessful? And, more surprisingly, why have the Jews bothered to be different?

In my humble opinion, the answer is quite simple.

There are an infinite possible number of false religions. There are 4,200 religions in the world today. Surely thousands more have existed in the past. More will exist in the future most probably. False religions come and go according to people’s preferences, whims and temperaments.

However, there can be only one true religion, and there will always be some honest people in the world who will embrace that religion in spite of all sacrifice. This is why Judaism is the eternal religion.

Gay Marriage

2011-08-17T08:20:00.003-05:00

The New York State government recently legalized gay marriage.

Male homosexuality is about as unhealthy as heroin usage. Nevertheless, our state government has decided to celebrate it, apparently for no other reason than to demonstrate their sympathy for a minority group and to emphasize their rejection of the Bible, which prohibits sodomy. If people die, that's just collateral damage.

Great work guys. This may lower costs for Social Security and Medicare, but then don't forget about the higher health care costs of male homosexuals.

God's Microhelicopter

2011-08-15T12:24:00.002-05:00

[the spinning maple seed; it may blow miles before finally landing]

When I got out of my car this morning on the way to pray, I noticed some maple seeds on the curb.

The simple little maple seed is one of God's open miracles. Each fall, a maple tree will produce thousands of tiny seeds, each one with a little wing on it to carry it away from the broad shade of its parent.

Their papery little wings keep them aloft so they can find a good place to germinate and make a new maple. But how they manage to fall so slowly has been a bit of a mystery—until recently.

Scientists filmed maple seeds as they wafted through a smoke-filled wind tunnel. And they found that a spiral of air develops on top of each falling seed’s wing. That vortex generates lift, and acts like a miniature tornado that sucks the seed up.

The design is so intelligent, Lockheed’s Intelligent Robotics Laboratories in New Jersey has just announced the creation of a tiny drone aircraft based on the maple seed.

Even this seemingly simple little chip of fiber bears witness to the existence of God.

The Ultimate Pleasure

2011-08-07T16:10:00.010-05:00

[From High School Confidential 1958; the voice of the Beat Generation]

Since the 1950s, the trend in American society seems to be moving more and more toward selfish, short term pleasure and enjoyment and more away from being concerned with long term consequences, the welfare of others and the afterlife.

Pornography became somewhat socially acceptable with the publication of Playboy magazine in December, 1953. Marilyn Monroe, the first Playboy model, and Elvis Presley, known for his suggestive movements, became superstars in the mid-1950's.

In 1964, the Beatles became the first true "rock stars". In 1967, the Summer of Love popularized the hippie movement.

About 1970, it became socially acceptable for women to have sex before marriage. Abortion was legalized in 1973. Divorce also became much easier legally at that time and divorce became commonplace rather than a rarity. Young people commonly smoked marijuana by about 1970. Also, at about that time, sodomy became legalized in many states. In the 1970's, the term "serial killer" was coined, generally referring to people who kill many strangers for pleasure. Child abduction and murder began becoming a national problem in 1981.

Today, probably almost every man, woman and child in America is regularly exposed to hard core pornography thanks to the Internet. Many men report losing interest in sex due to pornography being better than sex. For women between age 15 and 25, casual sex with virtual strangers is normal. About half of all children are born to single women. Marijuana is basically legal in California and becoming legal in other states. Many states have legalized same sex marriage. Stranger homicide is becoming more and more common. Programs like Intervention and Celebrity Rehab give insight into the horrifying world of hard core addicts. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people, primarily drug addicts and alcoholics, litter city sidewalks, something which blossomed in the 1980s.

Beginning slowing in the 1950's, gathering speed in the 60's and really taking off in the 70's, self indulgence and pleasure seeking has become more and more "cool", smart and fashionable. What is this leading to ultimately? What would the ultimate in hedonism look like? How cool can we actually get?

I can imagine society eventually allowing the opening of what I would call Total Pleasure Centers. These centers would allow Godless hedonists to indulge themselves at no cost to society and to then disappear, without endlessly filling up prisons, rehab centers, hospitals, homeless shelters, etc. Just do it and get it over with.

The Total Pleasure Centers, which would be heavily advertised in the most attractive terms, would work simply like this:

The client must be 18 or older and have at least $10,000.

If the client has custody of children, that custody must be completely surrendered and the children made available for adoption.

The client will surrender all his money and assets to the Total Pleasure Center when arriving.

He will be stripped naked, shaved and placed in a cell.

The cell will include a very comfortable recliner and a large screen computer monitor and desk with a mouse and keyboard. The monitor will also be attached to cable television. There will be a funnel attached to a tube to collect urine.

The client will have an IV line inserted, which will deliver nutrition.

The client will be groomed by aides (sponge baths; hair will be shaved periodically; he will be turned every two hours if need be to avoid bed sores) and nurses will make sure that the IV line remains open and uninfected. The urine collection bag will be changed daily as well.

The client will have a hand held device which will control the delivery of either heroin or cocaine through his IV line. The client will also have access to, but outside easy reach, a button which will administer a dose sodium thiopental, causing death.

The client’s account will be debited based on the cost of his basic care, the drugs he uses and the websites and cable programs he accesses if they require payment. The client will never be allowed to leave his cell. If necessary, he will be restrained to his chair.

Finally when the client’s account approaches zero, the IV will automatically administer a dose sodium thiopental, causing death. The client will them be cremated and his ashes disposed of in a refuse bin.

Baby Killer - and Secret Atheist

2011-08-04T13:06:00.012-05:00

Levi Aron is a Brooklyn resident who has confessed to murdering on July 12, 2011 an eight year old boy whom he had just recently met on the street. Prior to his arrest, Aron was a member of an Orthodox synagogue and had once studied in a yeshiva. Was he, however, a true believer or a secret atheist?

Here is a photo of Aron from Facebook, pre-arrest:

Here he is the day following his arrest:

Here he appears in court for the first time, later that same day:

Here he is in court for the second time, today:

Had he appeared to his victim, Leiby Kletzky, a Hasidic child, as he appears now, with no distinctive Jewish clothing, would Leiby have gotten into his car?

Furthermore, according to news reports, police offered Aron food at some point the evening of his arrest. Aron said that he did not eat kosher and when detectives suggested he get Burger King or McDonald's, he said McDonald's. He wound up eating Chinese food.

I have never heard of any statement made by Mr Aron concerning his beliefs. I would very much like to visit him at some point and question him personally. However, I believe this does this emphasize the importance of ridding our community of the phonydox.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of identifying these imposters, expelling them from our homes, schools and synagogues and creating an Internet database tracking them. It's a matter of life and death.

The Miracle of the Sun

2011-07-31T15:54:00.006-05:00

[our privileged planet]

Yesterday morning as I was walking to my synagogue, I felt the warmth of the sunlight falling on my face. It suddenly occurred to me how seldom I appreciate this miraculous gift from God.

Without the sun, obviously all life on earth would instantly die. The temperature of earth's surface would quickly go down to a few degrees above absolute zero, about 450 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

There is more to the story however. If the earth would be any closer to the sun or further from the sun, or if the sun were any hotter or colder, liquid water and therefore life would not exist on earth.

Furthermore, the earth's atmosphere contains a small amount of a gas called ozone. Ozone is vitally important to life because it absorbs biologically harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation coming from the sun. Without this God given shield, created by a process called the ozone-oxygen cycle, we would all be dead.

And there's more involved than that. The sun produces a solar wind, a stream of charged particles ejected from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. The earth's magnetic field saves us from being killed by the solar wind. The magnetic field is caused by the special composition of earth's outer core. Mars, for example, does not presently have a global magnetic field. (The outer planets do have magnetic fields, however are lifeless for other reasons, such as low temperature.)

So when we enjoy the beautiful life giving light of the sun, we should be aware that this is the result of many fortunate factors: the existence of the sun, the size of the sun, the distance of the sun from the earth, the presence of the ozone layer and the magnetosphere. If anything was changed, we wouldn't be here to marvel at it.

We should remember all this every morning when we say the Yotzer ohr which states "the blessed God, great in understanding, prepared and brought about the rays of the sun". [emphasis mine]

Counter Atheism Activity

2011-07-26T15:03:00.006-05:00

[it's not OK]

One thing which I think has raised the most eyebrows about my blogging is that not only have I written articles supporting and promoting Judaism, however I have also done a lot of writing critiquing atheism and sometimes even leaving very critical comments on atheist blogs. Not only am I trying to advocate Judaism, however I am also doing everything possible to discredit atheism.

This has sometimes come at great personal cost. I have, for example, been fired from my job and expelled from nursing school.

This is, however, hardly unprecedented.

In Israel, the Yad L'achim organization for decades has done counter missionary work, trying to diminish the influence of Christian missionaries in Israel. Activists have sometimes been beaten, sued and complaints have been made to the US State Department. When doing anti-intermarriage work, Yad L'achim members even risk their lives to save Jews.

All this work is done apparently with full ultra-orthodox rabbinical support.

Every "Jewish skeptic" writing on the Internet is no different than a "Messianic Jew" handing out pamphlets at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Surely, everything possible must be done to discourage these scoundrels who seek to corrupt their fellow Jews.

Two Proofs That Atheists Are Lying

2011-07-20T21:36:00.008-05:00

[if he lies, his nose gets longer]

Proof #1: Atheists do not suggest replacing law enforcement with animal control.

According to atheism people are animals who are in no way exceptional in comparison to other animals. Therefore atheists should logically suggest that animal control officers be used to capture and destroy nuisance people in the same way they are used to control nuisance animals. People are not merely like animals, we are animals. Animal control is far more effective and less expensive than law enforcement. About thirty people per year in the US are killed by dogs; about 20,000 are murdered by other humans. Furthermore the cost of police, courts and prisons is astronomical; dog catchers and animals shelters, not so much. The elaborate and expensive criminal justice system is based on the superstitious, pre-Darwinian notion that people are different; we have souls and were created in the image of God.

However no atheist suggests this because no atheist sincerely believes that we are merely animals, not better or worse than a dog or a rat.

Proof #2: Atheists do not advocate global warming.

According to atheism, microbes developed into people through the process of evolution. Mass extinctions have accelerated evolution in the past. Global warming is now causing a mass extinction. Global warming should therefore be a positive thing in the long run which should be encouraged.

However no atheist suggests this because no atheist sincerely believes in evolution.

I Want to Create a New Word

2011-07-14T15:59:00.003-05:00

What should you call someone who acts like an orthodox Jew but rejects some or all of the beliefs of orthodox Judaism?

He could be called a hypocrite, fake or impostor. These words however are very general and have nothing specifically to do with religion. These people like to call themselves "orthoprax", however I feel that this seems to emphasize the positive excessively - practicing Orthodox Judaism, at least publicly.

I would like to use the word "phonydox", short for "phony Orthodox Jew". I believe that rooting out the phonydox and expelling them from our homes, schools and synagogues should be an urgent priority.

Quote of the Day

2011-07-14T15:39:00.004-05:00

"Kids. They're not easy. But there has to be some penalty for sex."

Said by Bill Maher, atheist and winner of the 2009 Atheist Alliance International Richard Dawkins Award.

Practicing what he preaches, Mr Maher has never married or fathered a child nor does he intend to.

If atheists succeed in converting all of humanity to their beliefs, how long will humanity survive? At best a couple of centuries?

What I Fight Against

2011-07-12T04:35:00.003-05:00

From a life of truth and happiness to a one of falsehood and disappointment.

Now I'm Really Convinced

2011-07-12T04:23:00.004-05:00

[how science works]

Converting from Judaism to atheism is all about Science, nothing to do with promiscuity.

Animal House

2011-07-11T12:55:00.009-05:00

[our true home?]

Darwin wrote in Descent of Man Chapter VI

"Some naturalists, from being deeply impressed with the mental and spiritual powers of man, have divided the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the Human, the Animal, and the Vegetable, thus giving to man a separate kingdom. (1. Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire gives a detailed account of the position assigned to man by various naturalists in their classifications: 'Hist. Nat. Gen.' tom. ii. 1859, pp. 170-189.) Spiritual powers cannot be compared or classed by the naturalist: but he may endeavour to shew, as I have done, that the mental faculties of man and the lower animals do not differ in kind, although immensely in degree. A difference in degree, however great, does not justify us in placing man in a distinct kingdom"

This is a cornerstone of atheism. Man is not central to the universe, he is not in any way special nor was he created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), but rather man is merely another animal. Human exceptionalism is anathema to the true atheist.

Taken to it's logical conclusion, this would seemingly mean a huge cost saving to the criminal justice system.

There are a total of about 160 million cats and dogs alone owned by people in the United States. This is in comparison to 311 million people in the United States. Regarding people, we spend about $70 billion per year locking up about 2.5 million people. We have close to a million sworn law enforcement officers in the United States as well as thousands of judges, prosecutors and civilian workers on all levels at an incalculable cost. However regarding cats and dogs, we seem to make do with a handful of inexpensive animal control officers and a small number of shelters plus the liberal use of lethal injections. And this very low cost system seems to work quite well. Thirty four people were killed by dogs in the United States in 2007 while about 19,000 people were killed by other people that year. According to atheists, we should apply the same methods of animal control to people because people ARE animals.

Additionally, human reproduction should be supervised by the state and federal departments of agriculture. Someone like Casey Anthony, for example, from an atheistic perspective should probably just have been quickly spayed and released once her lack of fitness as a mother became obvious (which was from day one), no three year long carnival needed.

I wonder why atheists don't argue more passionately for social reforms based on Darwin, reason and science? Are they afraid to reveal how insane their beliefs really are?

Know What to Answer a Heretic (Avos 2:19)

2011-07-03T20:08:00.008-05:00

[the Jonestown victims - don't drink the Kool Aid]

In my experience, there are two primary arguments which atheists use to support their belief that the Biblical God does not exist and evolution created us.

The first, more logical however lesser known, is an argument from facts.

The fact is a something known as biostratigraphy. This is the discovery, about 1840, that fossils in sedimentary rock present themselves in distinct assemblages. There are for example fossil assemblages which include trilobites, other assemblages which include dinosaurs and so on. This seems to contradict the creation story in Genesis, which seems to imply that all life was created six thousand years ago and while some species have surely become extinct since then, any fossil strata should include modern day living species as well as any extinct ones. In fact, many strata, perhaps most, contain only extinct species of plants and animals.

The correct explanation for this is that these fossils represent remnants of earlier eras in earth's history, prior to Adam, as I have explained here. The facts therefore do not contradict the Torah.

The second, and more popular, argument for atheism is an argument from authority.

This argument states that if a vast majority of eminent, let's say Nobel prize winning, scientists, believe that a certain concept is true, then it is true beyond reasonable doubt and any rational person should be willing to literally bet his life, his afterlife, his family's lives, everything in this world and in any other worlds, on the truth of that concept. This applies even if the concept appears to be absurd, even if the scientists are not able to provide convincing evidence supporting the concept to a layman and even if there is a clear self serving reason for the scientists to promote the concept. Therefore evolution must be accepted as a fact and the Bible rejected as a myth, even though evolution is clearly nonsense and even though scientists clearly have a strong interest in discrediting the Bible and endorsing evolution, because by doing so they negate the influence of the clergy and promote themselves as being society's most important intellectuals. They are no longer merely studying God's handiwork while the theologians study God Himself; rather now scientists are unraveling the secrets of the universe while the clergy are simply liars or idiots.

Of course, if someone is willing to set aside his own critical thinking and blindly embrace anything taught by the "great leaders", he could just as well have followed Jim Jones into his suicide pact.

Don't Trust the Anonymous Bloggers

2011-06-26T10:48:00.006-05:00

[a lesbian blogger - exposed]

One key point to constantly remember is that we know absolutely nothing about anyone writing on the Internet and not providing clear, verifiable, identifying information.

This was brought out recently with the case of Bill Graber, a married, heterosexual man who blogged as "Lez Get Real", posing as a a deaf, lesbian, mother of two.

Also a couple of weeks ago it was revealed that "Amina Arraf", the blogger who wrote "A Gay Girl in Damascus" was in fact not gay, not a girl and not in Damascus but actually turned out to be Tom MacMaster, a married, heterosexual American student at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

So bear this in mind when a Jewish skeptic blogger claims to be a nuclear scientist or a rabbi or sexual abuse victim or whatever. Anything they write about themselves to increase their credibility may be complete fiction. In fact, I would guarantee it is. Furthermore, five different Jewish skeptic bloggers may all be the same person.

The Miracle of the Butterfly

2011-06-20T03:17:00.006-05:00

[perfect beauty]

On Saturday morning, while walking home from my local synagogue, I noticed a butterfly floating around my neighborhood.

I began to consider for a moment what a beautiful miracle this tiny creature is.

A monarch butterfly, for example, has six legs and four beautiful wings. It has two compound eyes and is about 1.3 inches long and 0.15 inches wide and weighs about 0.41 grams.

In man made technology, the state of the art today is the microdrone. It weights about a kilogram and must be recharged every 30 minutes and guided constantly by human operators and of course it cannot reproduce itself. Although quite remarkable (see demo), it is still laughably primitive compared to the beautiful, tiny butterfly, which guides itself, feeds itself and reproduces itself all in a tiny package weighing half as much as a dollar bill. (I will admit however that the microdrone will send you some interesting videos of what's going on in your neighbor's backyard, if you really need that and don't mind the $40,000 price tag.)

We must stand in awe of God's simple, commonplace creation - the tiny butterfly flitting about at this time of year. All of mankind's combined wisdom does not even approach it's sophistication.

[The atheist will respond: The butterfly merely appears to be exquisitely designed by a superhuman intelligence. However actually blind chance could have done it. A monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type the complete works of William Shakespeare. To this I respond with the duck test: If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Absent very strong evidence to the contrary, things are what they appear to be.]

The Atheism Myth

2011-06-13T09:05:00.011-05:00

[Read it!]

This morning I was watching The Atheism Tapes, a collection of six video taped interviews with prominent atheists conducted in 2003 by the BBC. Specifically, I listened to lecture #2, which was with Steven Weinberg, a physicist, Nobel laureate and the only distinguished scientist interviewed. (Richard Dawkins is a popular science writer, however he has done very little original research in his field of animal behavior.)

Now, why exactly is this eminent scientist, Nobel prize winning physicist, undoubtedly a brilliant man far more intelligent than myself I assume, an atheist? Well, he says why:

"What happened was that much of the early basis for religious belief was dissolved by science. It wasn't that scientific discoveries made religion impossible... it's that they made irreligion possible. It became possible to understand how things worked without the religious explanation and particularly, I think, more important than anything any physicist did, was what Darwin did, Darwin and Wallis."

That's it - evolution did it, no God needed.

However, taking the question one step further, how do we know that evolution did it?

In my opinion, it seems very clear that evolution could not have done anything. It is impossibly improbable and the fossils indicate sudden, not gradual, changes.

The proofs from homologies, embryology and vestigial organs have already been discredited by books like Evolution a Theory in Crisis by Michael Denton and Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells and by websites like trueorigin.org.

Nevertheless, atheists are unperturbed. Atheists remind me very much of Christians who insist that Jesus fulfilled numerous Biblical prophesies, although any objective person sees this is clearly nonsense. Christians want to believe something, have grasped an excuse to believe it and will not be discouraged by anything.

In recent years, one of the new arguments for evolution is "junk DNA" - the portions of a genome sequence for which no discernible function had been identified. In a nutshell, Michael Shermer explains in "Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design" page 74 "We have to wonder why the Intelligent Designer added to our genome junk DNA" .

Well, we need wonder no longer. Jonathan Wells has just published a new book "The Myth of Junk DNA". He explains how as time goes by, more and more "junk" has been discovered to be quite useful. Just as an example, endogenous retroviruses were regarded as clearly junk, inherited from some ancient viral infection. Two years ago, biologists discovered that this alleged junk may be essential to human life: "These results demonstrate that syncytin-A is essential for trophoblast cell differentiation and syncytiotrophoblast morphogenesis during placenta development, and they provide evidence that genes captured from ancestral retroviruses have been pivotal in the acquisition of new, important functions in mammalian evolution."

"Genes captured from ancestral retroviruses" is of course the atheist interpretation. Why not genes designed by God?

Zombies and Atheism

2011-06-05T05:37:00.005-05:00

[We just aren't aware of it, but this is what we really are.]

According to Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained, p. 406, "We are all zombies."

What I believe he is saying is that from an atheistic point of view, humans are merely soulless bags of chemicals controlled entirely by the laws of nature. Any sense of having free will or that we inhabit our bodies but we are not only our bodies is merely delusional. We are really all zombies imagining ourselves to be humans.

This is one atheistic belief which I think even few atheists are able to fully accept due to it's incredibility.

The Amish: A Refutation of Evolution

2011-05-30T11:19:00.006-05:00

[are they evolving or not?]

One popular version of evolution is punctuated equilibrium.

Punctuated equilibrium (also called punctuated equilibria) is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most sexually reproducing species will exhibit little evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis. When evolutionary change occurs, the theory proposes that it is localized in rare and rapid events of branching speciation.

This theory was proposed by paleontologists Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould, basically as a way of explaining why the fossils seem to indicate catastrophism, or sudden changes, not evolution, or gradual change.

The theoretical mechanism behind punctuated equilibrium is geographic speciation: that species with large central populations are stabilized by their large volume and the process gene flow. New and even beneficial mutations are diluted by the population's large size and are unable to reach fixation, due to such factors as constantly changing environments. If this is the case, then the transformation of whole lineages should be rare, as the fossil record indicates. Smaller populations on the other hand, which are isolated from the parental stock, are decoupled from the homogenizing effects of gene flow. In addition, pressure from natural selection is especially intense, as peripheral isolated populations exist at the outer edges of ecological tolerance. If most evolution happens in these rare instances of geographic speciation then evidence of gradual evolution should be rare.

One immediately apparent problem with this theory, is that actually, genetically isolated populations tend to degenerate rather than improve.

The Amish, for example, suffer from higher incidences of particular genetic disorders, including dwarfism (Ellis-van Creveld syndrome) and various metabolic disorders because almost all Amish descend from about 200 18th century founders.

Likewise, in Appalachia, inbreeding in isolated communities, particularly prior to the advent of the railroad, apparently lowered intelligence.

This seems to refute the entire basis for punctuated equilibrium - rather than evolve, genetically isolated and inbred populations get sick.

Ethics from Empathy

2011-05-23T11:35:00.015-05:00

["Haven't murdered anybody since breakfast?"- quote from "Inherit the Wind"; ridiculing the idea that evolution would corrupt morals]

One question frequently asked of atheists is: Since you don't believe in God, doesn't that mean you can kill people?

This is indeed not an idle question. No one disputes the fact that the greatest mass murders in history have been performed by avowed atheists, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the man made famine in the Ukraine. I would argue that the Holocaust as well was engineered by atheists. And then there have been a number of small scale, but still quite horrific, atheistic murderers such as Jeff Dahmer and Jim Jones. Sadly, as I write these words, about 200,000 innocent men, women and children are being tortured to death in atheist operated prison camps in North Korea. Just that atrocity alone makes the toughest Spanish Inquisitor or the most hardened Islamic jihadi sound like a big softy by comparison.

[By the way, atheists earnestly insist: no one has been killed "in the name of atheism". True enough. Atheism doesn't ask anyone to do anything. However atheism removes all barriers which would prevent murder; from that point, raw human nature takes over. This is similar to arguing that blowing up a dam would not be murder. The dam breaking does no harm. It's all that water behind the dam which is killing thousands of people and the bomber had nothing to do with that! Of course, such a ridiculous argument would not hold water in any courtroom.]

Clearly, atheists do have some explaining to do, and what they often explain is the following: Naturally, I love myself. Likewise, I naturally love creatures similar to myself. Therefore, I love other people. I feel a natural empathy for all humans. Even though, true, I do not believe in God, I do not believe that God commanded us not to harm others, I do not believe that I will suffer any adverse consequences from harming others provided that I can evade law enforcement (which is not an issue of course if the government itself is ordering the murders), nevertheless, I would not hurt an innocent person because I would empathize with the victim.

The basic problem with this argument is that it seems to provide little if any real deterrent to violence.

An atheist can easily calculate that in certain cases the gains from murder are so great that it's worth it to ignore feelings of natural brotherly love. He may also decide that for some reason the victim deserves to be hurt, and therefore he need feel no empathy. The victim somehow brought it upon himself.

An additional problem is that empathy, like all emotions, may vary widely from one person to the next. Many people seem to see anyone outside their particular nationality, race, religion, tribe, family, etc as being "not like me" and therefore having little if any value. Since the dawn of time, tribes attacked and killed each other constantly. In the present day United States, the government confers entirely different rights and privileges upon people who have a piece of paper proving "citizenship" - meaning somehow they are "one of us".

Bottom line: Humans, like all meat eating mammals, are naturally pretty nasty and without God everything is permitted.

Why Being an Orthodox Jew Will Make You Happier

2011-05-15T21:47:00.006-05:00

[dancing for joy]

There are several reasons why being an Orthodox Jew will make you happier than being an atheist would:

First of all, a Jew believes that when he dies, he is not losing anything. In fact, life begins with death. Following a righteous life, when a person dies he enters eternal paradise. The Talmud teaches: This world is like a hallway to the future world. Prepare yourself in the hallway that you may enter into the banquet hall. (Avot 4:21)

Additionally, whenever a Jew suffers in this world, he rejoices, as the Talmud Berakoth 60b states "one must receive the evil with gladness". This is because the Jew realizes that suffering is an atonement for his sins and he is grateful for this.

The Torah also guides a Jew to enjoy this world, but in healthy moderation. We drink alcoholic beverages, but at home, with friends, in moderation. We have sex, but only with our spouses and only with mutual consent and there are certain periods of abstinence. We have a holiday each week – the Sabbath and many other holidays throughout the year, but we work hard too.

Finally, the Jew finds himself living in a basically peaceful and caring community, in comparison to the atheistic world.

I have been able to find only one confirmed case of an Orthodox Jew ever convicted of homicide in the United States; a man in Cleveland who over twenty years ago shot his ex-wife’s father during a dispute. The perpetrator was modern Orthodox and had become Orthodox as an adult. In the United States as a whole, 8,400 Americans were convicted of murder in 2004 from a population of about 300 million. There are about 600,000 Orthodox Jews in the United States. Proportionally, there would be 17 homicide convictions per year in the Orthodox community. I would suggest that a very low rate of homicide is an indicator of a very low level of violence in general since assault often escalates, intentionally or otherwise, to homicide. This applies to child abuse and spousal abuse as well.

In regards to kindness, one well documented example is the network of volunteer ambulance corps in Jewish communities known as Hatzolah - “rescue” in Hebrew. Thousands of men volunteer their time to participate in saving lives. Together, the combined New York State branches have grown to become the largest all-volunteer ambulance system in the United States. The work these people do is incredible. Their response time is lightning fast and the work is done with genuine concern and caring.

In consideration of all this, it is clear that on the average Orthodox Jews will be significantly happier than atheists.

Why Not?

2011-05-06T18:49:00.003-05:00

Predator Drone Court-Martialed For Afghani Civilian Deaths

According to atheists, who believe that people are merely meat machines with no free will, why not put predator drones on trial as well?

YES!!

2011-05-02T03:59:00.009-05:00

[he's dead]

I was in Manhattan that day. From my office window I personally saw the towers burning and I knew I was watching thousands of people dying while I stood by helplessly.

I only wish I could have danced on the carcass of that worthless pig.

President Obama, you have just made my day.

"So perish all Thine enemies, O LORD; but they that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might." Judges 5:31

[Incidentally, at this time, 5/10/2011, I feel that there is substantial evidence that bin Laden was killed on 5/1/2011 by American soldiers. However I am amazed by the bizarre decision to immediately bury bin Laden at sea. Logically, the remains should have been frozen for several months, allowing numerous experts to examine them and confirm their identity beyond doubt. After that they could have been cremated and the ashes dumped at sea. While deliberately mutilating the body might have been barbaric, bin Laden should not have been shown any more dignity or respect than was shown to Nazi war criminals.]

The Death Penalty and Me

2011-04-28T04:19:00.004-05:00

[Senator Coburn - Republican, Oklahoma. He tells it like it is.]

A number of months ago I was expelled from a nursing school because of a my opinion that male to male anal intercourse should be punished by death. Looking at comments on several posts I have written on this subject, I have been compared to a Nazi war criminal by some people, along with various unprintable other names. Gays are glamorized today as a "sexual minority" while sodomy is a "human right", ideas most people would never dream of applying to pedophiles, for example.

I came across today a statement made a few years ago by Tom Coburn, currently United States Senator from Oklahoma. In a 2004 interview he declared that he favors the death penalty for "abortionists and other people who take life."

It's interesting that when a southern Christian politician makes a statement condemning to death thousands of licensed American physicians, he can be elected to one of the highest offices in the country by a wide margin. If a Jewish blogger in New York makes a similar statement, he won't be allowed to change a bedpan.

Monotheism: The Genius of Judaism

2011-04-21T21:58:00.005-05:00

[proclaiming God's unity]

Perhaps the most striking and original concept of Judaism is monotheism – the belief in one God.

Looking at the world around us, there seem to be endless separate and even conflicting forces – rain, wind, fire, the sun, the moon, plants, animals, disease, birth, death, etc. The conclusion drawn by most people in earlier times was that each of these forces was controlled by a superhuman, but not supremely powerful, being and these beings were constantly interacting with each other and even fighting with each other. Humans might hope to appease these gods through sacrificial offerings or various rituals. This was the early paganism still practiced in some places today.

Modern man laughs at this; however actually, modern science is not much different. The modern scientist still believes that the universe is controlled by laws of nature. If you ask a scientist, what causes lightening, he will not reply “Thor did it”, but rather he will reply that, although we still don't quite know how, the laws of physics cause a lighting flash. Nevertheless, he will be at a loss to explain where these laws came from and why they exist. Some laws of nature seem to be contradictory, such as the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity. The attempt to create one theory of everything is still very elusive. So instead of gods who must be appeased with sacrifices, we have today laws of nature, which we must simply try to understand and cope with as best we can. That may be a step in the right direction, however it still has its limits.

Judaism from day one has taken an entirely different approach: “Know this day, and lay it to thy heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath; there is none else.” Deuteronomy 4:39. We are not at the hands of bizarre superheroes or mysterious forces of nature. Rather, behind the scenes, there is one lord and master who is orchestrating everything. Furthermore, he is a judge and a lawgiver. Mere sacrifice is not enough; he demands obedience, as the next verse states “And thou shalt keep His statutes, and His commandments, which I command thee this day, that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days upon the land, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, for ever.”

This is truly the theory of everything and it greatly simplifies our understanding of the universe. Yes, there are many forces of nature, however one Creator made them and one divine Ruler established them and manipulates them according to His wishes. He is the one God whom we must serve and the one Lawgiver whom we must obey. This is an amazing example of Occam’s Razor. This idea is so sensible, that the majority of mankind now accepts it. But it all began with a few Jews in the Middle East several thousand years ago.

Are Orthodox Jews Missing the Fun?

2011-04-14T22:15:00.006-05:00

[Firearms: the American preference]

A sign that atheists are disproportionately unhappy: they kill themselves far more frequently than other people. And I think it's reasonable to assume that for each person completing suicide, far more attempt it, think about it or are just very sad. In contrast, Jews have a low rate of suicide and I suspect that Orthodox Jews have very low levels although it does occur rarely.

The high level of suicide among gay men may be related to the high level of atheism. (Note that African Americans, although also having a difficult socio-economic situation, have a low suicide rate. Obese people, although shunned and ridiculed, also have a below average rate. Practicing gay men however have an elevated rate, which may be consistent with atheists in general.)

Arnold J. Toynbee noted "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." Is this why the Jews are the eternal people?

A Contradiction in the Torah

2011-04-10T18:09:00.008-05:00

Exodus 12:40 states “The habitation of the Children of Israel during which they dwelled in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years.”

This verse clearly contradicts Exodus 6:18-20 which states that Kohath lived 133 years and Amram lived 137 years. Kohath came to Egypt with Jacob (Genesis 46:11). Moses, the son of Amram, died at the age of 120 (Deut. 34:7), which was 40 years after the Exodus, making Moses 80 years old at the time of Exodus. Therefore the Egyptian exile could not have lasted more than 350 years. (In fact, according to the Talmudic tradition, it lasted only 210 years.)

This contradiction has been addressed by many Biblical commentaries, from ancient times to the present. Personally, I have not yet found an explanation which I, with my tiny intellect, feel is very plausible. (I believe the ibn Ezra comes the closest by stating that the verse means that there were 430 years from Abraham's departure from Ur his birthplace until the departure of the Jews from Egypt. However that's entirely different than what the verse actually says.) Needless to say, critics of Judaism have used this verse as proof that the Torah was not written by God, since obviously God would not have made a mistake and the number 430 is clearly a mistake.

I believe, however, such a conclusion is unwarranted.

The evidence in favor of the divine origin of the Torah is overwhelming. Exodus 12:40 is a single verse which I don’t understand. In my opinion, this does not outweigh the evidence in favor Judaism.

This same type of logic is commonly applied in any other area of research.

Take for example the discovery of DNA in dinosaur bones. This would seem to contradict the well established fact that dinosaurs lived tens of millions of years ago, because soft tissues can never survive that long. However rather than contradict the massive evidence of the age of dinosaurs, scientists must simply accept the fact that somehow in this case soft tissue did survive 70 million years, although we don’t understand how.

Only when the preponderance of evidence would favor a much younger age for dinosaurs, something almost inconceivable, would that conclusion be accepted. By the same token, in regarding Judaism, only when the preponderance of evidence would shift to a human authorship of the Torah, something almost inconceivable, could that conclusion be accepted.

In other words, as the old Yiddish saying goes, “Fun a kasha shtorbt man nischt”. “You don’t die from a contradiction.”

Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?

2011-04-05T05:29:00.009-05:00

[global warming - are they ready for it?]

The New York Times today noted:

Over the past 540 million years, life on Earth has passed through five great mass extinctions. In each of those catastrophes, an estimated 75 percent or more of all species disappeared in a few million years or less.

For decades, scientists have warned that humans may be ushering in a sixth mass extinction, and recently a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, tested the hypothesis. They applied new statistical methods to a new generation of fossil databases. As they reported last month in the journal Nature, the current rate of extinctions is far above normal. If endangered species continue to disappear, we will indeed experience a sixth extinction, over just the next few centuries or millennia.

The above is all correct, however what the Times fails to mention is that each mass extinction has allegedly accelerated evolution. Therefore, a true believer in evolution should applaud current events.

Are there perhaps fewer true believers than we would think? I wonder if an atheist can be "Orthoprax" - preaching the orthodox point of view while privately knowing it is nonsense?

Whose Fault Is It?

2011-04-05T05:17:00.005-05:00

[Muslims burn stuff too.]

The New York Times today noted:

So Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who organized a Koran burning on March 20, wanted “to stir the pot.” Mission accomplished. Perhaps he’d care to explain himself to the family of Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede slaughtered at the U.N. mission in Mazar-i-Sharif by Afghans whipped into frenzy through Jones’s folly.

I wonder if the Times holds all crime victims responsible for the behavior of the perpetrators - are rapists whipped into a frenzy by the sight of young women walking in the street, are robbers whipped into a frenzy by the sight of fur coats and jewelry, should the victims be punished instead of or along with the criminals?

I'm not a supporter of Pastor Jones; I wouldn't waste my money buying and burning a Koran. However the attitude of the Times implies that we must rush to appease murderers. I don't think that's a wise strategy. Ultimately, there is no end to it and the criminals themselves must bear sole responsibility.

The Soul is Real

2011-04-01T07:48:00.008-05:00

[trailer for Source Code; released today]

This movie's plot is based on Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) waking up in the body of an unknown man.

What's interesting is that among all the reviews, no one to my knowledge is baffled by the basic premise that a person could theoretically inhabit someone else's body. No reviewer has objected "I don't understand what this is talking about. A person does not 'inhabit' a body. A person is his body. So what does this mean?"

No one would make a movie about an iPad waking up in a PC; it makes no sense. The iPad and PC are different machines and each is what it is.

This shows that we intuitively see ourselves as inhabiting our bodies but we don't identify ourselves by it. Therefore it is at least conceivable that "we" could "wake up" in a different body. We don't identify ourselves with our bodies but rather we are an incorporeal essence which could conceivably move to another body.

In other words: We are not merely a bag of chemicals produced by mindless natural forces. We have a soul.

Why We're Doomed

2011-03-30T06:34:00.016-05:00

[This received "Honorably Mention" in the Comedy/Novelty category of the International Songwriting Competition 2009. Seemingly it was written in all seriousness, praising not parodying drug users. Of course we all know how much fun drugs are.]

In 1962, prayer was banned from public schools. In 1963 Bible reading, was banned.

In the 1960's evolution became widely taught in America's high schools.

The large scale hippie movement began in summer, 1967.

Eventually the hippies grew older and became yuppies. The yuppie drug of choice was shopping.

Since the 1980's, the government debt has been growing, personal debt has been growing, savings have been dropping. The balance of trade began falling rapidly in the mid-1990s. We have now been hit by a financial crisis, which I suspect will eventually lead to a United States sovereign default, with consequences I'd rather not think about.

Basically, the Protestant work ethic has been exchanged for the mindless selfishness and instant gratification of atheism, with unfortunately predictable results. Twelve Step programs have tried to reinvent the church, however with limited success. We are quickly becoming Third World America.

I can only say, rephrasing the song: God save America, land that I love.

RIP My Little Friend

2011-03-25T05:41:00.010-05:00

Almost a year ago, we adopted a dog. Last night, he died.

He was a good friend to myself and my two oldest children. Prince was gentle, intelligent and fiercely protective. Unfortunately, like many dogs, Prince loved to run away and explore the world. He probably escaped about once a month since we adopted him. Last night was the first time he escaped at night. Being black, he was not visible to drivers at night and he soon met his end on a busy road near our home. A police officer called me. I came and took away his lifeless body. He now rests buried in a nearby forest, next to a little stream.

What's interesting is how different this response was in comparison to a human, God forbid, being struck by a car. In that case, not just one police car, but several would have been called. A small truck, fitted out with medical equipment and containing several paramedics and emergency medical technicians, would have rushed to the scene within minutes. The victim's mouth would have been cleared, an oxygen mask would have been applied, CPR might have been performed and the patient would have been totally immobilized on a board before transport to prevent spinal damage. In the hospital, teams of doctors and nurses would have rushed to provide further intervention. Every person involved with the victim would have extensive training and licensing. Very likely, the outcome would have been the same. The body would then have been moved to the hospital morgue to await removal by a licensed funeral director for respectful burial or cremation. Many thousands of dollars would have been spent all to do anything possible to, first of all, save the victim and, failing that, to respectfully dispose of his remains. Boxes of paperwork would be generated as well to document every tiny detail. This might be in addition to a lawsuit being brought against the driver involved, a large settlement being paid to the victim's survivors, again huge expenses, legal fees, mountains of paperwork, etc. The process could extend for years and involve dozens if not hundreds of highly trained and educated professionals.

Why is there such a massively different response to a car running over a four year old dog or a four year old child? Surely, today, 150 years after the publication of Origin of Species, everyone except a few religious lunatics must know that man is merely an animal, and not even a very nice one.

The fact is, amazingly, not everyone's mind has become entirely poisoned by such nonsense. Most Americans still believe whole heartedly that man is fundamentally NOT an animal, but rather he is an image of God. A dog, however intelligent, kind, beloved and beautiful, is not.

Were the Nazis Atheists?

2011-03-21T05:55:00.005-05:00

This question is a little bit complicated. The Nazi government did not aggressively promote atheism in the way that most Communist governments did and still do. The Nazi party preferred to persuade the churches to cooperate with the government when possible, rather than to outlaw the churches.

I also have a feeling that many Nazis harbored a soft spot for Christianity, since Nazi antisemitism was clearly rooted in Christian antisemitism.

On the other hand, the Nazis certainly promoted Darwinism. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote

"In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development."

This is a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy and is merely a statement of the Darwinian concept of natural selection. Nazism and evolution are both based on the same fundamental belief.

At the same time, Nazism certainly discouraged the concept of a personal, Biblical God. The Waffen SS did not seem to possess an official chaplaincy of any sort, at least not in the earlier years when recruitment could be more selective.

To the best of my knowledge, there is no record of any Nazi official in Hitler's bunker praying even during the final days of the war.

If we therefore define atheism, as I do, as a belief in evolution and a disbelief in the Biblical God, I believe that we can describe Nazism as being a fundamentally atheistic movement.

Sex and the Drop Outs

2011-03-11T13:18:00.004-05:00

[a gathering place of the evil]

Some people think that I'm being a little bit harsh when I claim that the primary motive of Orthodox Jews who convert to atheism is greater sexual freedom.

However, when I read articles like this, it sounds like I'm probably about on target. The covert apostate in this article seems to have no interest in discussing philosophy and science however he does have a desperate need to be introduced to secular women whom he's certain will be impressed by his handsome appearance. (Sure, man, the girls will be all over you.)

I've noticed a great similarity between White Supremacists and ex-Orthodox. Compare for example Failed Messiah and Stormfront. Both spend a lot of time bashing Jews. (There is actually a film depicted an ex-Orthodox Jew becoming a neo-Nazi - not far from the truth.) However I give the White Supremacists more credit on one point. However perverted their beliefs are, they do believe in something, and are not merely mindless hedonists.

A Pity on the Sluts

2011-03-07T04:00:00.004-05:00

[an unhappy camper?]

According to an op-ed article in today's New York Times, Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, in their recent book, “Premarital Sex in America” have published research, which looks at sexual behavior among contemporary young adults and finds a significant correlation between sexual restraint and emotional well-being, between monogamy and happiness — and between promiscuity and depression.

This correlation is much stronger for women than for men. Female emotional well-being seems to be tightly bound to sexual stability — which may help explain why overall female happiness has actually drifted downward since the sexual revolution.

Among the young people Regnerus and Uecker studied, the happiest women were those with a current sexual partner and only one or two partners in their lifetime. Virgins were almost as happy, though not quite, and then a young woman’s likelihood of depression rose steadily as her number of partners climbed and the present stability of her sex life diminished.

In other words, by engaging in casual, promiscuous sex, men are selfishly hurting women and women are foolishly hurting themselves.

I don't mean to sound flippant, but "Duh".

Who was Darwin?

2011-03-06T14:22:00.012-05:00

[the messiah of science]

Charles Darwin was the founder of a popular modern religion known as atheism. While it is true that atheists existed before Darwin, however Darwin made atheism respectable and popular. Richard Dawkins has written "atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist".

Who exactly was this man?

Charles Darwin was born in 1809 into a wealthy English family. He lived his entire life as an idle gentleman and never worked. Regarding his personality, he was polite, loyal and honest. He was a quiet man who was often sick with some unidentifiable digestive illness. He was married to his wife Emma from age 30 until his death 43 years later. They parented ten children, three of whom died in childhood or infancy. His only known vice seems to have been an obsession with shooting birds in his late teens and early twenties.

As far as education is concerned, Darwin received an ordinary degree from Cambridge University in 1831. This seems to have been something equivalent to a modern day American high school diploma. In 1853 Darwin was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal for two of his works: Geological Observations and A monograph on the fossil Lepadidæ. These were not earth shattering publications, however I believe that this medal for original research would qualify as the equivalent of a PhD in paleontology today.

As far as intelligence is concerned, I don't know of any evidence that Darwin was above average.

The reason why anyone today has heard of Darwin is because of a tragedy which occurred in 1851 - Darwin's ten year old daughter Anne died. Darwin until then had been basically a liberal Protestant. After this tragedy, the most painful in Darwin's life, he came to hate God. "What a book a Devil’s chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low & horridly cruel works of nature!" he would write in 1856. At last, in 1859, Darwin published the Origin of Species, the first book ever published by someone with real scientific credentials which suggested (although he still dared not state it explicitly) that life could, in essence, just create itself, no God needed.

In my humble opinion his arguments for evolution are no more or less convincing than arguments made by other men, just as bright and educated, for Christianity, Islam or Communism for example. Darwin's substitution of evolution for the Biblical God is grasped by scientists and hedonists for obvious self serving reasons. For the scientist, evolution meant that scientists are no longer merely studying God's handiwork while the clergy studies God Himself, making scientists naturally inferior to the clergy. Now scientists are of supreme importance. For the hedonist, evolution was (pardon the expression) a godsend. Without the Biblical God or an afterlife, everything is permitted.

Why I Choose Judaism

2011-02-27T04:39:00.018-05:00

First of all Judaism makes more sense than atheism.

Second of all, Orthodox Jews are on the average happier than atheists. (The sadness of atheists is understandable. Atheism means that after all the pain and disappointments of the typical life, one loses everything forever at death. Judaism, on the contrary, teaches that death is merely the beginning of eternal paradise.)

Thirdly, Orthodox Jews are on the average nicer people than atheists.

It's an obvious choice, except for one thing - Orthodox Judaism is much harder than atheism. It requires a high level of sacrifice and self discipline. It may be in fact the world's most burdensome religion.

On the other hand, atheism requires nothing. (This is famously explained by Fyodor Dostoyevsky who in The Brothers Karamazov Chapter VI wrote "Ivan Fyodorovitch added in parenthesis that the whole natural law lies in that faith, and that if you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism. That's not all. He ended by asserting that for every individual, like ourselves, who does not believe in God or immortality, the moral law of nature must immediately be changed into the exact contrary of the former religious law, and that egoism, even to crime, must become not only lawful but even recognized as the inevitable, the most rational, even honorable outcome of his position." This is often paraphrased as "If God does not exist, everything is permitted.")

We know that given unlimited access to food, most adults will not control their eating even though they know that excessive food is making them ugly and will probably make them eventually very sick. We also know that few adults bother to exercise even 30 minutes a day although they know that it will make them look and feel better. We know that about one in five Americans smoke even though it makes them smell badly and will probably make them very sick.

Therefore, considering human nature, how much chance does Judaism have compared to atheism, when atheism is so much easier? Laziness, lust, peer pressure, etc are much more important decision making factors for most people than any long term benefits - unless you are highly disciplined and very honest.

In that case: Welcome!

In the Beginning

2011-02-22T04:57:00.006-05:00

[a rock with bugs - no God needed?]

According to today's New York Times, scientists are still thrashing around trying to figure out how life started without having to involve God.

The rapid appearance of complex life in some accounts — “like Athena springing from the head of Zeus,” in the words of Dr. McKay — has rekindled interest recently in a theory fancied by Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the double helix, that life originated elsewhere and floated here through space.

But whatever you do, just don't mention the "G" word. Belief in God would mean that the clergy would be more important than scientists, something taken for granted before Darwin published Origin of Species (150 years ago, all universities were extremely Christian, if not primarily theological seminaries), and that must be avoided at all cost.

Why Risk Hell?

2011-02-22T04:35:00.001-05:00

[“Fire is one-sixtieth part of Gehinnom” Talmud Berakoth 57b]

I think it’s obvious that it is worthwhile to be an observant Jew even if one is not certain that Judaism is true – provided one condition is met: one is convinced that Judaism is more likely to be true than any other religion.

The reason is as follows. Let’s say someone would give you a hamburger but then explain to you that there is a 1% chance that there is fatal dose of cyanide in the sandwich. Would you eat it? I definitely wouldn’t. Therefore how can someone eat pork if there is even a 1% chance of burning in hell if he eats it?

The only logical reason I can imagine for ignoring Judaism would be a situation where someone believes that another religion which threatens damnation makes more sense, and therefore he is embracing that instead, however actually no other religion comes close to having the logical basis Judaism does.

Alternatively, one could argue that although there is some chance that Judaism is true, however the cost of being a Jew is too great to make being observant worthwhile. This is surely untrue, since actually Judaism does so much to enhance the lives of those who observe it.

What amazes me are the skeptics who seem to view religious discussions as some sort of court case where they are the accused and I, the Jew, am the prosecutor. I must “convict” them. I must bring evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that Orthodox Judaism is true before they can be “condemned” to a life of observance. So long as they can raise some doubt, they are free. This is just delusional nonsense. The truth is precisely the opposite. They must bring evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that Orthodox Judaism is false before they can be “freed” from a life of observance.

[Incidentally, I have heard of “Pascal’s Wager” , however I believe that my argument avoids all the major objections to it.]

A Rational Approach To The Divine Origin Of Judaism

2011-02-15T08:10:00.003-05:00

An interesting lecture by Lawrence Kelemen.

The Lame Duck - Why Atheism Fails

2011-02-09T15:13:00.015-05:00

[Would he approve of atheism?]

The primary problem I have with atheism is that atheism consistently fails the duck test:

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

The universe seems to have been created from nothing. This implies that universe is the creation of a transcendent supreme being.

Additionally, the universe appears to be fine tuned to make life possible. This implies that the creator designed the universe having in mind to make it habitable.

Atheists will claim that actually our universe is one bubble in a multiverse. Therefore, the entire multiverse actually has existed eternally (which by the way violates the laws of thermodynamics) and by sheer chance one multiverse turned out to be fine tuned for life.

Even the simplest living things are complex beyond human comprehension. A complex and purposeful machine, such as a pump, is obviously the work of an intelligent designer. Therefore surely the human heart, for example, is clearly the work of a supremely intelligent being.

Atheists will insist that regardless of how unlikely it may seem, life originated by chance. It then continued to develop through random chance variation and natural selection.

The fossils indicate sudden changes not gradual trial and error evolution.

Atheists insist that evolution did happen, however the fossils clearly demonstrating that gradual trial and error process are always lost.

It would seem to be clear from Jewish history that the Torah was revealed before millions of people and was not merely the work of one charlatan.

Atheists generally suggest that Ezra wrote the Torah.

We see ourselves as inhabiting our bodies but we don't identify ourselves by it. This feeling begins with the smallest children and is universal culturally. Also, we all feel the freedom to make choices that are not determined by prior causes. Therefore, we hold people responsible for their behavior and either reward or punish them accordingly. These perceptions imply the existence of an incorporeal essence.

Atheists insist that these feelings are merely illusions.

So in other words, again and again, atheists insist that something appears to be one thing but is actually something else entirely different. It looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, but it's really a goldfish wearing a duck costume. This is implausible. I don't think that we are constantly deceiving ourselves; I think atheism just doesn't make sense.

Is Science Evil?

2011-02-07T17:50:00.003-05:00

Science is the study of creation. Religion is our knowledge of the Creator. Therefore there is no conflict between science and religion. They are two entirely separate fields of knowledge, like let’s say plumbing and medicine.

There is only one generally accepted scientific theory, which I believe Judaism has a conflict with, and that is the concept of universal descent from a common ancestor. Judaism teaches that each kind was created separately. Scientists assume that since fossils show that different, more primitive forms of life have existed in the past, we must be descended from them. I have a different interpretation.

The only problem arises when scientists become carried away with their own importance and claim that nature is all there is. This is not science, but rather scientism. Let’s say a plumber would claim that medicine is bogus and all illnesses can be treated using wrenches and pipes - this is the absurdity of scientism. According to scientism, there is not and never will be a convincing explanation for the origin of the universe or the origin of life. There can also be no free will. We are all in reality robots, which is absurd.

Scientists have done a great deal of good. They have put man on the moon. They have also killed a few astronauts. But to say they know everything is like saying your plumber, since he did such a great job on the kitchen sink, knows everything so let’s use him for brain surgery too. Any sane person can see that science is not the whole story.

Rebellion in the Classroom

2011-01-30T07:17:00.009-05:00

[a book that poisoned millions]

A recent survey has indicated that the majority of public high school biology teachers are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists.

How remarkable that so many people have not yet lost their minds.

Evolutionists are outraged that these teachers are hindering "scientific literacy" (meaning the spread of atheism) in the United States.

What's interesting to me is how scientific progress seems to have slowed almost to a halt since since evolution was first widely taught in American public schools in the 1960s.

Between 1910 and 1960, the United States progressed from what would now be considered a primitive, agricultural way of life, with horse drawn wagons and outhouses, to the age of automobiles, televisions and passenger jets. Life expectancy increased from 50 to 67 years (25%). From 1960 to 2010, the only major changes are that land line telephones have been replaced by cell phones and television has been replaced by the Internet. Life expectancy has increased from 67 to 75 years (10%). Much of our (now crumbling) infrastructure has been in place since the 1960's, if not far earlier. The US manned spaced program, once the pride of American science, is now dead.

Can it be that indoctrinating children into believing that they are monkeys (naked apes), rather than sparking scientific genius, has had the opposite effect, convincing them to simply "turn on, tune in, drop out" (Timothy Leary 1966)?

After Five Years - Why Do I Blog?

2011-01-25T06:32:00.013-05:00

I was watching a movie yesterday called American Meth, a 2008 documentary concerning the usage of methamphetamine in rural America.

The movie mentions the reactions of teenagers to advertisements like the one above. The most common reaction is apparently laughter (from 17:37 to 18:07); they don't believe it because they have never seen anyone like that. They want to have fun; they aren't worried.

So why does anyone bother to make advertisements like this? In the hope that perhaps one person will refuse to use meth as a result (from 7:07 to 7:33).

Generally, this is the reaction which atheists have toward my blog. It's a joke. They laugh. "Come on, God is going to send me to hell for eating pork or driving to the mall on Saturday? I've never seen anyone struck by lightening when they did things like that. This is just a joke." They want to have fun; they aren't worried. I have even developed a list of illogical excuses used by readers of this blog.

So why do I bother? Because I hope that one person will refuse to become an atheist as a result.

My blog, by the way, is this month 5 years old. I believe that I have helped quite a few individuals and this is one of my life's most important accomplishments. In fact even if I have influenced only one person it would all be worthwhile. Even if that one person is myself.

As the ancient Chinese proverb states "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness."

Does Ezra = Jesus?

2011-01-18T13:39:00.017-05:00

[Jesus walks on water as Peter approaches Matthew 14:29 - is the Torah more credible?]

This coming Saturday morning, Orthodox Jews will read in their synagogues the story of the Ten Commandments being revealed at Mount Sinai. This event was the most momentous in world history since it was the public revelation of God's identity and His instructions to mankind, known as the "Torah" or "instruction" in Hebrew.

What is dismaying is that atheists tend to dismiss the Torah by claiming it's just a bunch of nonsense, no different than the New Testament or the Koran.

In reality, however, there are clearly fundamental differences.

The author of the Koran, Muhammad, and the subject of the New Testament, Jesus, were both individuals who merely claimed that God spoke to them (or, in the case of Jesus, he may have claimed he was actually God). The Torah however was revealed to an audience of millions.

The atheist rebuttal is that the Torah is also in fact merely the fabrication of a single person, most probably Ezra.

The most plausible scenario according to atheists might be something like this:

A group of a few thousand Semitic slaves escaped from Egypt about 3,300 years ago under the leadership of an Egyptian nobleman named Moses. After they settled in the highlands of Palestine, these Israelites as they called themselves, began retelling and embellishing the story of their escape. [Which is in itself a little bizarre – wouldn’t escaped slaves rather not advertise that fact?] Numerous different versions arose. Other Canaanites joined the Israelite community. The community grew. Versions of the story became more and more fantastic. Moses became a great lawgiver and miracle worker. Ten Plagues struck the Egyptians. Ten Commandments were given at a mountain in Sinai. Finally Ezra the Scribe wrote the Torah based on these legends, which was then universally accepted by Jews (Nehemiah 8:1). Ezra had the power (Ezra 7:26) to punish all those who disagreed with him. The Samaritans as well, enemies of Jews (Ezra 4:1), for some reason also decided to accept the Pentateuch.

There are, however, a couple of problems with the "Ezra was our Jesus" theory:

First of all, it implies that the acceptance of the Torah was uniquely instantaneous and unanimous - there is no record of any dispute and struggle concerning it. Regarding Jesus, his fellow Jews killed him and to this day deny him. Only over centuries did European gentiles accept him. Regarding Muhammad, he was opposed by many Arabs and he won them over through armed conflict - jihad, an Islamic tradition unfortunately still practiced today. Joseph Smith as well, the founder of Mormonism, was murdered by his fellow Christians. Starting new religions tends to be a very high risk business. The new founder is of course an arch-heretic in eyes of the existing orthodoxy. Regarding Ezra presumably, other Jewish leaders, dispersed throughout the Persian empire, would have had their own texts and would have fought tooth and nail against Ezra's scroll for centuries, however history records nothing of the kind.

Secondly, Jews and Samaritans never credited Ezra with founding their religion. He is not credited with discovering any new text. In fact, I don't believe the Samaritans revere him in any way. A devout Christian could spend all day talking about Jesus, as a devout Muslim could about Muhammad. However the average devout Jew could probably tell you perhaps three sentences about Ezra.

Therefore, the atheistic theory of Judaism's origin is clearly incorrect and Ezra was nothing like Jesus or Muhammad, singlehandedly founding a new fake religion by mixing and modifying earlier traditions. Rather, the Torah clearly originated exactly as Jews have always claimed it did, as it's explained in this week's synagogue reading.

The Atheism Bias

2011-01-11T13:44:00.005-05:00

[the crystal ball at work]

Daryl J. Bem, an emeritus professor at Cornell University, has written a paper claiming that people may be capable of intuitively sensing future events.

Apparently, most other scientists are outraged.

What's interesting to me is not the topic of psychic abilities in themselves. What I find interesting is the anger that this paper is arousing in other scientists. Why the emotion? What is it so horrifying? There is plenty of bad science being done (think of Margret Mead for example, or Freud) without any immediate, great outrage.

My impression is that scientists realize that psychic powers would imply the existence of a soul. A soul would imply the existence of a God who created it. God would imply that possibly God has spoken to people, that He wants something from us, that prophesy may be valid, that the clergy could therefore be more important than scientists. This article therefore strikes at the entire foundation of scientific prestige and power. Belief in God and the Bible, for example, would reduce scientists to being mere plumbers and mechanics, not the most prestigious intellectuals in society. (Consider how Charles Darwin, whose father was a freethinker, studied for the clergy in 1827 not because he had any particular interest in the subject, but his father felt that this would be at least an honorable vocation for him, thus avoiding the scandal of becoming an idle rake.)

It's a bit reminiscent of the horror that the Big Bang aroused for many years until the evidence could no longer be ignored.

The Disease of Anonymous Bloggers

2011-01-04T04:11:00.002-05:00

[the hidden bloggers]

From this morning's New York Times:

Anonymity, Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago observes, allows Internet bloggers “to create for themselves a shame-free zone in which they can inflict shame on others.” The power of the bloggers, she continues, “depends on their ability to insulate their Internet selves from responsibility in the real world, while ensuring real-world consequences” for those they injure.

Paradoxes

2010-12-30T05:14:00.019-05:00

Today Moshe Katzav, ex-president of Israel and a product of the secular Zionist indoctrination of religious immigrants, was convicted of rape.

No Orthodox Jew has ever been convicted of forcible rape.

However the most hated group in Israeli society is the ultra-orthodox.

This seems rather odd. One would think that the ultra-orthodox should be the most admired.

On the other hand Russian President Vladimir Putin has been quoted as saying, "He [Katzav] really surprised us... turned out to be quite a mighty man. He raped 10 women. I never expected it from him. He surprised all of us. We all envy him."

Different cultures have different values. Perhaps the ultra-orthodox are not "manly" enough for some people's taste. Judaism teaches "who is strong one who conquers his desires". Maybe we're not real men.

Researching the Family Tree

2010-12-24T13:51:00.009-05:00

[human migration - the DNA picture]

I have recently been reading about the descent of modern humans from Neanderthals, Denisovans and Africans who lived tens of thousands of years ago. This would seem to contradict the Bible, according to which we are all descended from one man who, according to rabbinical tradition, was created 5771 years ago.

Apparently this is based on the following concept.

Let's say someone wrote a book. Afterwards, copies of the book were made by scribes who were illiterate and could not understand the book however they simply copied whatever they saw. Once in a while a spelling error would be made in the text. Later scribes using that erroneous copy would copy that error. As copies of the book are spread around the world, new errors would be made here and there. Based upon examining which spelling errors appeared in which part of the world, it would be possible to estimate how this book spread around the world. If error #1 appears in German copies and error #1 and error #2 appear in Russian copies, we could guess that the Russian copies were made based on the German copy. Furthermore, if we could estimate about how often a copiest error is made, we could estimate how far back different copies diverged and how long ago the original copy was made. For example, if present day copies contain 1,000 errors and we estimate 1 error per year, then we can assume that the book is 1,000 years old.

Human genetics is a little more complicated because each person is a combinations of genes from his father and mother. This would be similar to each scribe making a new copy based on pages mixed together from two older copies.

There are some problems with all of this however.

First of all it assumes that genetic mutations occur at a certain fairly predictable pace. Secondly, it assumes that certain DNA "spelling errors" will occur only once in history.

In general, I believe that our understanding of DNA is still in its early stages. Cases have been discovered where children did not have DNA matching their mothers' DNA. On the other hand, innocent people have been sent to prison based on false DNA matches.

It's seems questionable to me whether the new DNA studies actually reveal much more than the earlier physical anthropology, anthropometry and craniometry did. There is probably something to it but it's far from infallible.

Our Passion for God

2010-12-22T05:05:00.008-05:00

People don’t usually associate God with sex, and to some this might even seem blasphemous, however interestingly Judaism does make this connection.

The Song of Songs is a dialogue of passionate love between a man and a woman, which appears superficially to be entirely secular. God is unmentioned in it.

Nevertheless, in the Mishnah Tractate Yadaim 3:6, Rabbi Akiva states “all of the [inspired] writings are holy, however the Song of Songs is the holy of holies”. This is because, according to the Midrash, the Song of Songs is an allegory of the love between God and the Jewish people.

Therefore, according to Judaism, the love between God and man can be compared to the intense, passionate love between and a man and a woman. In fact, Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance 10:5 writes “What type of love should one have for God? One should love God with a tremendously powerful and fierce love, to the point of being constantly obsessed with it, like a man who is in love with a woman and thinks of her constantly, whether active, resting, eating or drinking. In fact, man’s love for God should be even greater than this as it is stated in Deut. 6:5 ‘with all ones heart and soul’ and as Solomon wrote in the Song of Songs 2:5 ‘I am sick with love’. The entire Song of Songs is an allegory for this.”

Based upon this concept, I think it becomes easier to understand why God has implanted in man a preoccupation with sex. In animals, the female goes into “heat” when she ovulates, the male and female copulate and it’s over. Purely practicle. Humans, on the contrary, are constantly active in this area. This is because the obsession with sex is actually an allegory for the obsession that we should have with the love of God. Just like a geography teacher will point to a globe and say, “This is a miniature model of the earth”, so God has given us sexual passion and, in the Song of Songs, He inspired Solomon to say “This is a miniature model of the love which should be between us.”

The End of Hitchens

2010-12-21T03:29:00.005-05:00

I just heard yesterday - Christopher Hitchens, outspoken advocate for atheism, is dying of cancer at the age of 61. Many years of smoking and drinking finally killed him.

How fitting that the man who poisoned millions of minds must now poison himself with chemotherapy.

So perish all Thine enemies, O LORD; but they that love Him be as the sun when he goeth forth in his might. Judges 5:31.

Israeli Archeology - a Mess of Biblical Proportions?

2010-12-16T05:12:00.007-05:00

[David - will the archaeologists get off his back?]

This month National Geographic magazine has published an interesting article about the heated disputes going on in Israeli archeology today.

In the beginning, there was William Albright and his pupil Yigael Yadin. Through the 1950s, 60s and 70s they defended the Bible as being basically historically accurate.

Next came Israel Finkelstein in the 1990's and 2000's. He regards the Bible as basically fictional.

Now a new generation of archaeologists are attacking him. People like Eilat Mazar, Thomas Levy and Yosef Garfinkel are claiming that significant parts of the Bible, regarding David and Solomon, are indeed historically accurate.

These discussions can be quite emotional. Finkelstein is described as "having a highly visceral manner—leaning his tall, bearded frame into a visitor's face, waving his large hands, modulating his baritone with Shakespearean agility." Likewise, when a passing tour guide contradicts her opinions, Mazar "jumps up from her bench and marches over to the tour guide. She chews him out in a staccato of Hebrew, while he stares passively at her. The gaping tourists watch her stalk off". Garfinkel says of Finkelstein's recent receipt of a four-million-dollar research grant, "He doesn't even use science—that's the irony. It's like giving Saddam Hussein the Nobel Peace Prize." Whatever.

Keep in mind as well that all archaeologists interpret their evidence with an atheistic bias, since that is the preferred religion of scientists.

The take home message for Orthodox Jews should be - ancient Palestinian archeology can prove anything or nothing. Very, very little has been preserved intact in Palestine over the past 3,000 years. Carbon 14 dating can be tricky, as this article mentions. Imaginary worlds are, in the minds of archaeologists, built and destroyed based on a few olive pits or a pottery fragment.

The fact is that because archaeology employs a wide range of different procedures, it can be considered to be both a science and a humanity. I would describe it as a "soft science" to the max.

Thank God for Trilobites

2010-12-09T07:56:00.006-05:00

I bought this on the web for $30 and I keep it near my desk. It’s a rock that contains an imprint of an animal that lived in Utah about 500 million years ago. I think the symmetry and detail are beautiful.

Personally, this doesn’t disturb my faith in the truth of Genesis in any way, and in fact it increases my love for God and my appreciation of the glory of His creation. About 60% of the minerals on earth were created by life. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere was created by living things. Most of our electricity is generated by coal, coal that was created by extinct plants. Our vehicles are powered by gasoline and our homes are heated by natural gas. These fuels were created by ancient marine life.

It would therefore seem to be clear that these earlier eras of life on earth were all part of God’s wonderful plan to prepare the earth for us. Thank God for the trilobites!

And actually, the sudden appearance of trilobites is one of the greatest proofs that evolution is false.

Evolution Undermined - Again

2010-12-03T01:38:00.008-05:00

[the arsenic lake bacteria from California]

According to evolutionists, the evolutionary view of a single (and very ancient) origin of life is supported at the deepest level imaginable: the very nature of the DNA code in which the instructions of genes and chromosomes are written. In all living organisms, the instructions for reproducing and operating the individual is encoded in a chemical language with four letters -- A, C, T, and G, the initials of four chemicals. Combinations of three of these letters specify each of the amino acids that the cell uses in building proteins.

Biologically and chemically, there is no reason why this particular genetic code, rather than any of millions or billions of others, should exist, scientists assert. Yet every species on Earth carries a genetic code that is, for all intents and purposes, identical and universal. The only scientific explanation for this situation is that the genetic code was the result of a single historic accident. That is, this code was the one carried by the single ancestor of life and all of its descendants, including us.

Well, now we know that this isn't completely true. Certain bacteria have a different type of DNA using arsenic instead of phosphorus to connect the amino acids.

So while scientists are still holding on to the "DNA proves one universal common ancestor" claim, that idea is starting to look more shaky. There has now been discovered another significantly different type of DNA.

Of course, the entire argument to begin with is false in any case: "The only scientific explanation for this situation is that the genetic code was the result of a single historic accident." No accident created the enormous complexity and purposefulness of DNA, any more than monkeys typing at random could write Shakespeare. Actually, the only explanation for this situation is that the genetic code was the result of an act of divine creation.

Down with the Trolls!

2010-11-30T04:42:00.006-05:00

[perhaps a drop exaggerated]

The New York Times today denounced anonymous Internet writers.

I can only see "Amen!" to that. Clearly we would find much less nasty, hateful nonsense on the Internet and more thoughtful dialogue if anonymity were prohibited. As the Times Op-ed piece points out "most trolls wouldn’t have the gall to say to another person’s face half the things they anonymously post on the Internet".

Now, I know that there are those who will claim "I cannot reveal my identity on the Internet because if I did I would not be able to write honest, important things without quickly being assassinated." Right. Authors are assassinated every day on the streets of New York. In reality, these people are just obnoxious cowards who are probably afraid to reveal what failures they actually are.

"Morality, Plato argues, comes from full disclosure; without accountability for our actions we would all behave unjustly." This is so true it hardly needs to be stated and I think it explains why nearly all Internet atheists refuse to identify themselves. They don't want to be held accountable for the garbage they write.

The Talmud - the Lifeblood of Judaism

2010-11-25T11:23:00.013-05:00

[the first page of a lifelong journey]

The essense of Judaism is the Talmud. The basis of all Jewish law is the Talmud and these laws govern every aspect of a Jew's life. An Orthodox Jew's greatest aspiration is to be an expert in the Talmud and most adult Orthodox Jews study the Talmud daily. An Orthodox Jewish woman's highest aspiration is to marry a Talmudic scholar and to encourage her husband's study.

Studying the Talmud can however be daunting to modern students.

First of all, I believe that the Talmud is not a complete book. What happened is that the rabbinical law was originally passed down orally from generation to generation. Jews would spend every spare moment reviewing and repeating the laws of the Torah as it is stated "thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up" (Deut. 6:7).

Eventually, however, a brief summary of the rabbinical law had to be recorded in order to prevent the loss of legal details. This was the Talmud, compiled in what is now Iraq about 500 CE. The Talmud is therefore not an encyclopedia of Jewish law - it is a memory aid for people who are already fluent in Jewish law. Even after mastering the languages (a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic) the modern reader is often lost and hopelessly confused when attempting to study the Talmud. The commentaries of Rashi and Tosofos help to some degree, however they were also written for an audience which already had a high level of Talmudic knowledge.

Thank God, a new edition of the Talmud has now been published which solves this problem - the Schottenstein edition from Artscroll publishers. This edition includes a translation with a commentary embedded in it and lengthy footnotes, which makes the Talmud intelligable to the modern English speaking reader. With 72 volumes, it dwarfs the Encyclopedia Brittanica at 32 volumes.

Nevertheless, the style of the Talmud is unique. The earlier Talmudic sages were experts in finding meaning in tiny nuances of Scripture, an art which was afterwards lost. The later Talmudic sages were experts in finding meaning in tiny nuances of the comments of the earlier sages. Today we no longer have the insight and expertise to understand the criteria used by the Talmudic sages for their analysis and therefore we must simply accept their conclusions as facts, even if the reasoning behind their conclusions may be obscure. The validity of the Talmud rests upon the assumption that earlier generations, being closer to the revelation at Mount Sinai, were on a proportionally higher level of spirituality and scholarship.

For the sincere Orthodox Jew, the Talmud is his lifelong love, his mobile holy sanctuary, his refuge from all sadness and persecution, his source of all inspiration. Other religions have their huge cathedrals, mosques or temples. For the Jew, exiled and persecuted, with everything physical taken from him, the Talmud is his monument to spirituality.

The Extraordinary History of the Jews

2010-11-18T11:15:00.000-05:00

[from the Washington Haggadah, written in Bonn, Germany 1478]

"Who is like Your people Israel, a unique nation on earth" (Sam. II 7:23)

From a careful and unbiased study of Jewish history, it is clear that the Jewish people were, indeed, raised to an extraordinary spiritual level 3300 years ago at Mt. Sinai.

It is no exaggeration to say that the survival of the Jewish people as one of the oldest continuous cultures in the world is an open miracle. Where are the ancient Moabites, Hittites and Philistines today? How many thousands of years ago did they disappear, absorbed by other, more dominant cultures, changing completely their language and religion time and again according to political and social pressures? This is natural and normal and a constant process in world history, as one culture is absorbed or destroyed by another. Why have the Jews been so strangely, uniquely immune to this, at least up until the last century?

Note the physical situation of the Jewish people. They are not a huge nation living in total isolation like, for example, the Chinese or the Hindus. They began as a small nation in the eastern Mediterranean, easy prey for neighboring empires. Two thousand four hundred years ago they were conquered and dispersed. Almost invariably they were forced to live as a minority among other nations; constantly in contact with and completely at the mercy of the dominant majority. To remain distinctive and preserve such a radically different life-style, inviting almost constant ostracism, financial sacrifice as well as outright massacre for so many centuries is incomprehensible, psychologically as well as historically. Why did few choose to assimilate, right down to modern times? To be sentimental about ones ancestral traditions is understandable. For an entire nation to calmly face martyrdom for over 2000 years for their traditions is inexplicable.

Important to note as well is the amazing vitality of the Jewish people. One would logically have expected the Jews to be reduced long ago to a few isolated, primitive villages in the mountains of Iraq (if they survived at all). Instead they have created flourishing, vigorous communities throughout Europe and the Middle East. Their piety, kindness and intellectualism have been extraordinary. They published libraries of sacred literature (they had no other type) during centuries of poverty and persecution. When few gentiles were literate, an illiterate Jew was a rarity. Jews generally made up the middle class of craftsmen, physicians, merchants and bankers and therefore were (reluctantly) tolerated by the surrounding gentiles. It is known that in medieval Europe many Christian noblemen demanded Jewish doctors and treasurers in spite of how much they were despised. Even following secularization this vitality has been clearly apparent, at least for several generations until assimilation is total. Witness the fact that approximately 20% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jews, although Jews make up merely .2% of the world population, and in spite of the fact that in the first half of this century the Jewish people were largely devastated by the chaos and genocide of World War I and World War II. In the cases of Jesus, Marx, Freud and Einstein we see how even Jews who were far removed from authentic Judaism achieved tremendous recognition in world history. Witness as well the creation of Israel, which demonstrates how even more or less secularized Jews, after over 2000 years of exile, retained such a strong attachment to the ancient Jewish homeland and language. (Can anyone imagine the ancient Hittites, for example, reestablishing in the 20th century an independent state, complete with their ancient language?)

All the above was nicely summarized by Mark Twain in an essay entitled "Concerning the Jews", published 1898:

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded into dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?

Consider also the tremendous unity of Judaism throughout the centuries. The Jews were scattered in thousands of independent and, to some extant, isolated communities from Afghanistan to Morocco and from Lithuania to Yemen. It would have been natural for them all to remain unanimous on certain basic principles (e.g. the Scriptures, monotheism, not eating pork, Sabbath observance) while diverging in everything else, adapting and changing the tradition to fit in with their needs and situation. We would expect to find very distinct and independent Yemenite Judaism, Polish Judaism, Persian Judaism, Moroccan Judaism, German Judaism, etc. each with its own ritual and theology. This is taken for granted in other religions (e.g. an Episcopalian Christian has very little in common with an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian). Jews however, until very recently never disagreed on anything significant. Two hundred years ago a Jew from Amsterdam could have married a Jew from Baghdad with no change in theology, no important change in ritual and certainly no feeling of converting to a different sect for either of them. (It should be noted as well that deviant Jewish, or psuedo-Jewish, sects such as the Karaites, Sadducces or Samaritans never, as far as anyone knows, constituted more than a very small minority compared to mainstream, rabbinical Judaism). This extraordinary unity testifies to the incredible loyalty of the Jews to their traditions. [The phylacteries found with the Dead Sea scrolls also give us an idea of the authenticity of Jewish tradition - not only did they conform to the specifications written in the Talmud 500 years later but they even conformed to the opinions of Talmudic commentaries written over 1000 years later in far-away France!]

Consider also the five levels of Jewish sacred literature. The authors of the Mishnah never contradicted the prophets. The authors of the Talmud likewise stood in awe of the authors of the Mishnah. The early Talmudic commentators would never contradict the Talmud. The later commentators with very rare exception never contradict the earlier ones. This phenomenon clearly indicates the gradual decline of the Jewish people from a great original spiritual level.

All this points to the reality of the Mt. Sinai revelation, which lifted the Jews far above the rest of mankind. It also demonstrates the integrity of the Torah tradition - since the Jewish people were raised to such a high level it is clear that until recently none except a few of the most ignorant would have deviated from the genuine tradition.

Stop the Hatred. All of It.

2010-11-09T13:21:00.014-05:00

[why do we keep persecuting them?]

Lately, I have received a number of comments from people accusing me of hatred, mass murder, Fascism, etc because of my condemnation of homosexuality. I was even expelled from nursing school thanks to having expressed my opinion about this. I guess homosexuals believe I don't deserve to live.

So, having had a little time to think, I agree. People should be free to do whatever they like, provided that they don't hurt anyone else. Whatever works. Whatever turns you on.

However, to my horror, I now see that many of my new gay and atheist friends are guilty of the SAME EXACT SIN which I committed!!

Hatred!

Bigotry!

I'm talking about adults who love children. I mean really love children.

They include about 5% of the population, roughly the same as gays.

And they are hated. Pursued. Imprisoned. Branded for life. Like gays were back in the dark ages before Stonewall. (I walked through the village last week believe it or not, crying bitter tears of repentance.)

When will we have a Childlovers' Stonewall? How long will these precious men suffer horrible persecution because of meaningless superstition and bigotry? Many commit suicide. These men are an innocent, beautiful sexual minority. There is nothing wrong with them and they can't change how God made them.

We have major works of literature portraying childlovers, for example Lolita and also the Dutch movie For a Lost Soldier.

Psychiatrists have proven that pedophilia is not an illness. There is no reason why older men cannot engage in respectful, loving, safe relationships with little boys and girls. Even marriage should not be discouraged. Whatever works.

I hope we will soon see churches and temples for childlovers where adults and their little friends can worship openly together. Childlovers in the military could give out candy and toys to children in other countries and spread more democratic, American love.

To the pedophile haters out there, I can only beg you - don't make the mistake I did of trying to impose your beliefs and fears on others. Let freedom reign! Peace! Rainbows! And if you dare disagree with me I'll hunt you down and make sure you end up homeless, or better, dead because you don't deserve to live you scum.

The Awesome Wisdom of God

2010-11-07T12:09:00.005-05:00

[optimized to the limits of physics]

The New York Times recently published an article pointing out some new insights which physicists have discovered regarding the perfection and efficiency of living things.

For example, scientists have learned that the fundamental units of vision, the photoreceptor cells that carpet the retinal tissue of the eye and respond to light, are not just good or great or phabulous at their job. They are not merely exceptionally impressive by the standards of biology, with whatever slop and wiggle room the animate category implies. Photoreceptors operate at the outermost boundary allowed by the laws of physics, which means they are as good as they can be, period. Each one is designed to detect and respond to single photons of light — the smallest possible packages in which light comes wrapped.

Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them the superb efficiency with which bacterial cells will close in on a food source; the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head; and the way a shark can find its prey by measuring micro-fluxes of electricity in the water a tremulous millionth of a volt strong — which, as Douglas Fields observed in Scientific American, is like detecting an electrical field generated by a standard AA battery “with one pole dipped in the Long Island Sound and the other pole in waters of Jacksonville, Fla.” In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.

Researchers have shown that an E. coli microbe navigating its way through a chemically chaotic environment and over to food relies on an algorithm of compare-contrast-act, the note-trading taking place between surface receptors on the bacterium’s front and aft. “The reliability of its decision-making is so high,” said Dr. Bialek, “that it couldn’t do much better if it counted every single molecule in its environment.”

As science expands our knowledge of creation, we can only stand in overwhelming awe and love for our infinitely wise Creator.

The Gay Liberation Scam

2010-11-01T03:27:00.001-05:00

[can we trust them?]

The idea behind the Gay Liberation movement, which began about 1960 in New York, is that homosexuals are a race, similar to Negros and therefore to discriminate against them in any way is merely a form of racism - irrational hatred of someone who has different physical characteristics. They argue that just like blacks they were born the way they are and cannot change even if they wanted to and they just want to be respected and accepted like everyone else is.

The fact is that scientifically this is nonsense. There is no homosexual race and homosexuality is caused by cultural influences and childhood experiences as well as by genetics. There have been many societies in which homosexuality was rare or unknown. In addition to that the Torah merely prohibits male to male anal intercourse, which in any case is clearly an unhygienic and unhealthy practice.

Claiming homosexuals to be a race is basically equivalent to claiming that alcoholics are a race. Men having anal intercourse with other men is a vice not a race.

The fact is that since 1960, every type of sexual behavior (except regular, married sex) has become more common in the US - sex before marriage, adultery, masturbation, sex with children, sado-masochism, sex with the same sex, sex for money, sex during or after murder, oral sex, anal sex, etc. This trend is continuing. This has created a wave of abortions, fatherless children, grisly serial killings, pedophilia and disease, but not much else unfortunately.

Finding the Secret Atheist Care of Apple!

2010-10-31T12:51:00.004-05:00

Apple offers a new service for the iPhone and iPad called Find My iPhone. This will allow you to track the location of your iPhone or iPad.

So let's say you're suspicious about what a member of your family is up to. Just get them an iPhone and enable Mobile Me. You can then track exactly where they are 24/7.

The Joy of Talmudic Minutiae

2010-10-29T12:05:00.002-05:00

[Child with Lulav by Isidor Kaufmann]

One of my fellow bloggers wrote an article, in which he comments:

I'm pretty sure I don't have the personality type to find such absurd rules [certain minor Talmudic customs] meaningful even if I did believe in God. ("Does God really care how I tie my shoes?" I asked as a kid when I first learned that rule.)

What he seems to be saying is that if religious rules are not clearly spiritual, relating to belief for example, then they are absurd. Laws about diet, dress, etc. are unnecessary and even sacrilegious. This attitude is a basic part of modern American Protestantism, and therefore it isn’t surprising that someone raised in American society might feel this way.

One could look at this from a different perspective, however.

First of all, all pre-modern religions tended to be legalistic. Muslims have Sharia. The Catholic Church has Canon Law. The Hindus have a caste system.

Judaism, however, may be the most extremely legalistic. We revel in Talmudic law. The greater an expert a young man was in the fine points of almost totally irrelevant Talmudic laws, the greater a hero he was in the Eastern European shtetl and the more prized he was as a husband. This is still true in many ultra-Orthodox circles. Can one imagine even the most law abiding American citizen fanatically pushing his children to become experts in all of American law, even the most rarely, marginally applicable details? I think it could be correct to call traditional Jews not merely legalistic but hyper-legalistic.

The reasoning seems to be as follows. We see each additional law as being an additional sign of God’s love for us. The Mishnah Tractate Makkos 3:16 states “God wished to increase the Jews’ merits, therefore He increased the number of their commandments.” God in His great love for us wants our entire lives to be dedicated to serving Him and increasing His glory. Therefore He has created the huge body of Torah law to make it possible for us to do just that. In the blessings which we say before the Shema each morning and evening, we ecstatically praise God for the great love He has shown us by choosing us and teaching us His laws. We beg Him to help us understand and observe those laws. We see this as the highest honor; the exact opposite of absurdity.This is a life dedicated to the service of God and therefore eternally, cosmically important.

The absurd life is the life of an atheist, unfortunately. He eats so that has strength to work. He works so that he has food to eat. He continues this cycle until his body no long functions, then his remains may be thrown into a dumpster. A life lived like that is truly illogical and nonsensical. Absurd, in other words.

Changing Nature

2010-10-24T11:58:00.004-05:00

[are the rules a little shaky?]

There are many cases where the Talmud prescribes a medical treatment however we see today that this treatment is no longer effective. One explanation for this is that "nature has changed" (Tosafos s.v.kavra to Moed Katan 11a for example).

Atheists have long ridiculed such statements because laws of nature were assumed to be universal and invariable facts of the physical world.

Interestingly, scientists are now discovering that certain supposed "constants" of nature may vary from one time and place to another.

Certainly, from a theistic view this is hardly surprising. The laws of nature are merely whatever is most frequently the will of God, however that need not be the same every place and all the time.

Got Water?

2010-10-10T11:06:00.005-05:00

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) or the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) is a hormone system that regulates blood pressure and water (fluid) balance.

When blood volume is low, the kidneys secrete renin. Renin stimulates the production of angiotensin. Angiotensin causes blood vessels to constrict, resulting in increased blood pressure. Angiotensin also stimulates the secretion of the hormone aldosterone from the adrenal cortex. Aldosterone causes the tubules of the kidneys to increase the reabsorption of sodium and water into the blood. This increases the volume of fluid in the body, which also increases blood pressure.

Among other things, angiotensin has a variety of effects on the body including the release of anti-diuretic hormone (ADH), also called vasopressin -- ADH is made in the hypothalamus and released from the posterior pituitary gland. As its name suggests, it also exhibits vaso-constrictive properties, but its main course of action is to stimulate reabsorption of water in the kidneys. ADH also acts on the central nervous system to increase an individual's appetite for salt, and to stimulate the sensation of thirst.

The above description is only the barest sketch. The complex chemical steps which control the fluid balance in our bodies and make life possible are beyond comprehension. To us, it appears that if "we don't drink enough, we get thirsty" however in fact there is an immense network of divinely designed chemical engineering working in the background which scientists are only now beginning to reveal to us. The next time we feel that need to drink, we have so much to thank God for.

Straight Rights

2010-10-03T09:51:00.008-05:00

[Tyler Clementi, committed suicide 9/22/2010]

Thousands of people are mourning the death of Mr Clementi, an 18 year old college student who committed suicide after being taunted about his homosexuality.

I wonder how many people are mourning the deaths of straight people infected with HIV by homosexual men.

Imagine for a moment that you had a twenty eight year old daughter. She is diagnosed with AIDS and tuberculosis and is expected to soon die. Her husband and her two small children, have tested HIV positive. Researching into this, it turns out that when she was 18, your daughter had unprotected sex with an 18 year old boy. That boy unknown to her was HIV positive after having had unprotected anal sex with a man who, unknown to the boy, was HIV positive. Such tragedies can and do happen in America and Europe today.

If we would follow the Torah's commandment to put to death any man who has anal sex with another man, those tradegies could be prevented.

The Mighty Mitochondria

2010-09-26T14:32:00.006-05:00

[a mitochondrion]

The mitochondrion is an organelle, or in other words a tiny machine, found in every one of our cells. They range from 0.5 to 10 micrometers (μm) in diameter. Mitochondria are sometimes described as "cellular power plants" because they generate most of the cell's supply of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), used as a source of chemical energy.

The method used by the mitochondria to produce energy from oxygen, carbohydrates, fats and protein is called the citric acid cycle. This was discovered primarily by Hans Krebs in 1937.

Below is a diagram describing the cycle.

It's mind-boggling to consider that hundreds of trillions of these incredibly complex, incredibly tiny machines are working in our bodies each moment of our lives, making all other functioning possible. Thanks to modern science, we are able to appreciate even more deeply the infinite wisdom of our Creator. Our hearts should burst with love for Him.