It is mainly in Religious Zionist places that you find a combination of learning Torah and natural sciences. In the insane religious world  places you don't see this much. And when the the insane religious world  engage in secular activity it is never in the natural sciences. If they go into science at all, it is always pseudo science. And pseudo sciences are attractive, compelling, and false.
It is hard to balance natural sciences with learning Torah. The tendency is to lose the balance between the two. Or to denigrate one at the expense of the other.
But to ignore one or the other requires a enormous hubris.

Does the collective wisdom of the ages in the Old Testament and Talmud and books of Musar have nothing to tell us today? It requires a large degree of stupidity to think so. But on the other hand can you dismiss the natural sciences as false inventions of man? That seems to require even a greater degree of lunacy and stupidity than the first type.

These are not my considerations alone and they are not idea spun out of thin air.

The most compelling argument for what I am saying is a resort to authority, Moshe ben Maimon. The Rambam. He placed the natural sciences on  a plane higher than Talmud,  but required the Oral Law as proper preparation and foundation.

The easiest way to see this is in the son of the Rambam, Avraham. For the Rambam himself is a bit of a mystery. No one can seem to figure out the right kind of interface between the Mishne Torah {the legal book of the Rambam} and his Guide for the Perplexed [his philosophical work.]

The son of the Rambam provided that interface in his Musar book  מספיק לעובדי השם Enough for the servants of God. There you see in the same characteristic clarity of the Rambam the actual practical implication of what it means to live according to the ideas of the Rambam.

Music for the glory of God,

j12   j17   j16

But from the books of Musar we can that there are kinds of joy that are bad. rrect.
As Steven Dutch writes God's Grandchildren : Some will adhere to the established religion out of sincere conviction but will disagree with important tenets. They will attempt to recast the religion in more personally palatable terms, or possibly work to redirect the religion itself into more agreeable lines. The changes may be real reforms or merely redefinition into something more palatable.

That is a recasting to redirect things  is honest in itself as long as the basic principles of the religion are preserved. That is Steven Dutch's opinion and it makes sense to me.

j12

If the  Confederate Flag is a reminder of slavery that ought to be banned, then are not blacks also a If the  Confederate Flag is a reminder of slavery that ought to be banned, then are not blacks also a reminder of slavery?


Nothing is wrong with slavery. It is just how you treat people is the issue. Whether a person is a slave or not everyone deserves a certain amount of respect-- when they act as decent people.
And when people do bad things they don't deserve respect--no matter if they are slaves or not.

And no one thinks slavery is bad. No one objects to making white people work for black people without getting paid. That is white people are forced to give black people free food  [food stamps] and free health care etc. White people in the USA are however not exactly slaves to black people. They are more like serfs that have to work  several days a week for their black bosses. That is if they work a whole years several months are spent working for black people with no compensation.
Some divorced women have no problem in using their children as tools to make their husbands into slaves.
As Steven Dutch put it: The Issue is never the issue.

j10

The Sages of the Talmud said that every group of people has a very specific evil inclination that applies to that group much more than other groups. When you are part of some particular group it is hard to see this in your own group but it is easy to see in other groups.
These are not stereotypes but actual patterns of behaviors that are easily predicative. A certain group I know has theft embedded deep into its DNA. It is not that they don't see anything wrong with theft. It is that they cant have a good day without it. Another group I know of are bullies. They can't think in any other way but that they ought to control everyone else. Another group I am all too familiar with are insane. Everyone has a different kind of insanity but you can't be part of that group unless you have some kind of mental problem. I could go on and on.
The truth is we are all social creatures and need to be part of some group, and then when we join some group the evil inclination of that group invariably affects us.



See review of lucifer principle by bloom

See also Lucifer Principle

I have trouble reading things on line. If you can buy Howard Blooms Lucifer Principle and Allen Bloom's Closing of the American Mind and that is the best option. Both these books are worth their weight in gold.


the-closing-of-the-american-mind


What I am saying here is built upon the idea of Howard Bloom's super organism. I am saying not just that the super-organism is built upon  units of social information [memes] as he says but that in each group there is a hidden יצר הרע evil inclination.
And I agree with him that not all groups are equal in value. some groups have more than a hidden evil inclination. Their basic social meme is founded on some evil principle.
To make this more concrete:
There are yeshivas where people learn Musar [Classical Jewish Ethics]. That is a good social meme. But there is still a hidden evil inclination as I mentioned in other essays. But in itself learning Musar is a great idea. [These yeshivas go by a nickname of "Litvak Yeshivas" or more properly Lithuania Yeshivas.] They are in general good groups and  in fact it is almost impossible to get an idea of what Torah is about without going to one for at least some period.]

On teh other hand there are social groups that are founded on  social meme of murder. That is their core thesis is that it is good to murder infidels. This group might also have hidden evil inclination but it is more likely that the evil is apparent and the good is hidden.