https://www.dovidgottlieb.com/comments/Kuzari_Principle_Intro.htm
One of the foundations of Judaism is the revelation at Sinai. In this chapter we will see that belief in Sinai is reasonable. There is enough evidence in favor of the revelation to make it reasonable to accept. The evidence is of a very special sort, and that requires a long introduction
from the same page:
ReplyDelete"Suppose A invents a story about a national event that occurred
to B and his nation, and suppose the story describes an event that would
be forgotten only very rarely. Suppose A tries to convince B that it
happened. Suppose further that B and his nation do not remember the
event, and A gives no explanation why the event would not be remembered.
Then B will not believe the story."
The whole argument is hinged on B not believing or not believeing a story. According to Kuzari theories, if "B" belives anything, timust be true, since if it was false, he would not believe it! It is complete nonsense. It is a completely false argument.
B belived it many times, repeatedly throughout the course of history, from the time Chava believes the serpent, through the golden calf(s), the idolatry of the 1st temple, the Prophet sent to Jereboam and deceived by the old prophet, Yashke, Muhammed, Shabbetai zvi, 9/11 theories (the Muslim world know that Jews did it).
https://ohr.edu/explore_judaism/living_up_to_the_truth/living_up_to_the_truth/2054
ReplyDelete"Let E be a possible event which, had it really occurred, would have left behind enormous, easily available evidence of its occurrence. If the evidence does not exist, people will not believe that E occurred."
This is the central core of the Kuzari principle (KP) .
He is firstly making up the above theory, then trying to derive from it that event E happened because people did believe it!
But this is simply a nonsense claim. If this theory held any validty it would be valid for everything that happened . The Children of Israel said regarding the Golden Calf - look , this is the god that took us out of egypt! Now, according to your friends, it must have happened, because people would not have believed it if it did not happen!
So the example of the Calf disproves the entire KP.
Nope!
ReplyDeleteNope? Niet! Niet!
ReplyDeleteSaying "no" doesn't change Kal being right.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing if they'd said "These are your gods now that Moshe's gone" but they didn't. They changed the narrative of a history that was only a couple of months old. Everyone they said it to had been at Yetzias Mitzrayim, yet thousands shrugged their shoulders and said "Sure, whatever, pass the brisket"
Having read and listened to a bunch of Gottleib's stuff, it's clear (a) he lectures only to people that don't know how to ask hard questions (b) he dismisses hard questions as irrelevant in order to avoid admitting he doesn't have the answers.
ReplyDeleteYou you clearly have have never
ReplyDeleteI was there in its heyday, the leading intellectual rabbis included rav milevsky ztl, rabbi Cardozo shlita and rabbi gottlieb shlita.
ReplyDeleteUndergrads are not yet fully trained. Post graduates would be better equipped to dissect arguments.
Problem is denial. He won't accept refutations from a long haired undergrad. If a professor offers an opinion, he has less ability to shout him down, .
When I first heard the series of lectures by Rabbi Gottlien on this subject, which he called the "Historical Verification of the Torah", I used a phrase whcih I had heard from Prof Carl Sagan.
ReplyDelete"Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence."
this article elaborates on the topic:
https://bigthink.com/hard-science/how-the-sagan-standard-can-help-you-make-better-decisions/
Unfortunately, Prof. Gottlieb did not appreciate that kind of argument, despite it coming from an eminent astronomer an one of America's leading intellectuals of the time.
His response was that the same decision making you use as to what kind of clothes you buy in the department store should be applied to what religion you follow.