Re: Round earth in judaism


Micha Berger wrote:
On Fri, 5 May 2006 11:52:15 +0000 (UTC), q_q_anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx <q_q_anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
: Further, I don't rule out that perhaps , for whatever reason, the
: miracle of the flood included restoration of the earth as if the flood
: never happened. One poss reason to justify that might havee been that
: the earth would've been in such a shambles that G-d included restoring
: the earth in the mriacle.

Or, that miracles inherently are only experience by some people (my
suggestion). I gave a "how" of sorts in the last post, now the "why".

Here's a reprint from 1999:
...
R' Chanina ben Dosa was a tanna about whom there are numerous miracle
stories. One, I think, illustrates my point.

He sees one Friday that his daughter is depress. So, R' Chanina
asks why, and she answers that she accidentally poured vinegar into
the Shabbos lamp instead of oil. R' Chanina's reaction was "He who
ordered oil to burn could tell vinegar to burn". And so it did,
until it was time for havdalah. (Taanis 25a)

I don't believe that an aggadta of that sort can be reasonably compared
to the Mabul. We know (not think, but *know*) that not all stories of
this sort are to be taken literally.

Similarly, Abraham, Moses and Joshua weren't shown anything by the
miracles they saw that they didn't already believe to the core of
their hearts.

I have to imagine that the Egyptians who drowned in the sea were a bit
less frum than Abraham, Moses and Joshua. It probably didn't help when
the sea water forced the oxygen out of their lungs.

If you or I would have proof of the flood, we would be unduly influenced
to believe.

I don't think that's the case at all. It certainly didn't stop Bnei
Yisrael from bellyaching continuously. And speaking as someone who
left observance for almost a year at one point and never for one moment
felt one bit less convinced that the Torah is true, I think your
imagination is lacking. Perhaps if Hashem tapped you on the shoulder,
your bechirah would vaporize, but I assure you, not everyone is like
that.

It's one thing to say that Hashem's obvious presence 24/7 would make it
easier for people to choose correctly, and thereby take away a bit from
the value of that choice, and quite another to extend that idea to
physical evidence that the Torah isn't lying.

If archaeologists had never discovered anything that referred to any
people or events from Tanakh, you would probably be making precisely
the same argument about that. And yet I don't see how the existence of
Assyrian and Babylonian records referring to Ahab, Yehu, Hezekiah, etc.
has damaged anyone's free will.

:> I disagree vehemently with the idea (and more vehemently with the
:> reasoning behind it), but I wouldn't argue that those who hold of it
:> aren't O.
...
: O Prof Natan Aviezer also says the flood was local. He does not say
: it's not as the bible describes.

So? What if someone said that G-d wrote a metaphor, and didn't mean the
flood as a historical event? It's unorthodox among Orthodox, but does
it take him out of the category of being Orthodox altogether?

Yes. It's kefirah.

I would argue he's still O, since belief in the historicity of the flood
isn't part of the definition of O.

Belief in the Torah is. And what you're suggesting is anything but
that. I've related here on numerous occasions how Steve Greenberg, the
self-described "first openly gay Orthodox rabbi" [sic] tried to
convince me that Matan Torah never literally happened. According to
what you're saying, his view could be encompassed as well. We could
merely say that Matan Torah was only a metaphor.

What's your red line, Micha? I just don't see it.

: well, I don't know much about quantum blahblah. And I don't think
: scientists do either. I think it doesn't apply here anyway.

You're focusing on an example. I listed a few logic systems that don't
have a law of contradiction. If you don't want to read up on them, then
how can you make an informed decision about what is a necessary part of
logic, and what is specific to the given system?

I have, and I disagree. They absolutely do have a law of
contradiction. You take fuzzy language and infer fuzzy logic from it.
Yes, if I say a ball is red, and you incrementally add blue to it,
there comes a point when it's purple. But prior to that, you could
keep calling it red. But that doesn't say anything about actual
values. It only means that you haven't rigorously defined "red". If
you use the word loosely, then sure. But at that point, all you've
established is that loose language is loosely defined. I don't see any
chiddush there.

Lisa

.

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