So while it is admirable the attempt of Rabbi Avigdor Miller to defend Torah, still his books are not good arguments

World view issues and ethics are hard subjects to address.  The best books that deal with these as far as I can tell are from the Middle Ages. That is there is a set of books from the Middle Ages that deal with world view issues. Mainly that is Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, Crescas, Joseph Albo, and Abravenal. There are also books that deal with ethics. That started with the Obligations of the Heart (Chovot Levavot). After that there were  a few more. Shaari Teshuva by Rabbainu Yona, Orchot Tzadikim, and a few others. These all seem to me to be the best. 

After the Middle Ages logical thinking in these subjects went out the window. People that were good at logic then went into math and physics and the natural sciences. 

So while the natural sciences benefited, ethics and world view issues suffered.

So while it is admirable the attempt of  Avigdor Miller to defend Torah, still his books are not good arguments. If you want to defend Torah you really have to go to the Middle Ages when people were thinking clearly in these matters.

With due respect, Rav Miller did not understand evolution. Genesis and the Big Bang is full of errors in both Torah and Physics. [But in terms of presenting the idea that Torah and Physics are complementary it is an inspiring book. He gets a A for effort.]  No book that has been written in the frum world about ethics or world view rises above comic book level. The mystics are even worse.
 Not one of them has the slightest idea of what the Ari was talking about.

So while defending Torah is a noble and worthwhile task, it does not help the cause to have idiots and schizos doing the work. They damage the cause by means of their support. And they change the Torah to fit their delusions. 

However I should mention the Chafetz Chaim and the Musar books of the disciples of Israel Salanter are excellent.
Shimshon Refael Hisrch is excellent and so are Rav Cook's books.

universals as modes of necessity.morality is a kind of modes of necessity-not the normal type of F=ma. But "ought"

The point is this related to Maimonides. To see universals as modes of necessity hails back to Aristotle. It is a tantalizing prospect to think if there is a Rambam connection with this idea of modes of necessity. It is known the Rambam was neo Platonic leaning towards Aristotle --but not completely.

Music for the glory of God

r25 r22

authentic Torah

There is little idea of authentic Torah nowadays. People think authentic Torah is rituals. This gives power to schizo personalities to dominate. After all if Torah is mainly about rituals, then who better to be  a leader that someone who does long hard rituals? That is the nature of the schizo personality.
They love love hard rituals.

Or perhaps an idiot savant who can memorize  a whole library of books without understanding a word? Or who can write tons of religious fanaticism? Hyper-graphia  also being a characteristic of schizo personalities.

Believe me these are all examples of what is considered an authentic Tzadik {saint} nowadays.

Authentic Torah is found only in Litvak yeshivas. And what is that. It is a hybrid. The original idea of a yeshiva was begun by Reb Chaim from Voloshin [disciple of the Gra] . This was a radical departure from anything that had come before. It was an institution independent of the city it was located in. It was in no way subject to the home owners nor the Rav of the city. Its job was to learn Talmud , the Oral Law.
Independently  began the Musar movement [Ethics movement]. The idea there was to learn Musar Ethics. That idea did not take off at all for home owners. But it was by certain yeshivas. Thus certain yeshivas became all about ethics. So at that point we have two kinds of yeshivas. The Gra type for Talmud alone and the Musar type for mainly Ethics and some Talmud. The Modern Litvak Yeshiva is a hybrid of these two types.  Good examples are Ponovitch, Brisk, Mirrer in NY, Chaim Berlin, Torah VeDaat.

If you are near a Litvak place, then learn there. It does not have to be all day. In fact, when I was in Netivot I went to Rav Montag's place for an hour in the morning and an hour at night and Thanks to God made some good progress even in that short time. [Rav Montag is a disciple of Issachar Meir the friend of Bava Sali]
If you are an organized person you could learn a fast session for one hour  and another slow in depth session another hour and that would only take two hours per day and the rest of the day you could go surfing.
[If I had not gone to yeshiva in NY would not know how to learn. It would not make any difference how smart I am. I would have thought all the false paths were OK. ]

The typical spoiled brats of the cult that the Gra signed the excommunication on

Schizo type personalities. Meta magical thinking. Appropriate context. Hearing voices at the right time makes one  a "tzadik" (saint); hearing them at the wrong type one gets called "insane."
Cleanliness over done.
All human societies have great need for schizo type personality. They need the shaman. The basis for Torah to the Rambam is objective morality. The cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on turns it into the main thing being ritual;-- especially ritual cleanliness.

Obsessive rituals is the core of the cult that the Gra signed the  excommunication on. But what makes the leaders "tzadikim" is the do it at the "right" times. They have enough control over it to make sure it conforms to the social norms that will get them accepted as true tzadikm, and thus get reproductive success and financial security.

Hyper-graphia. Reb Natan was a classic case of  the need to write obsessively and an uncontrollable interest in religious matters.


The problem is that every area of value has an opposite area of value that mimics it. So talent can take one only half way. For example; for every science where good work is being done, there is pseudo science. But people in pseudo science are easily able to fool the public because they are talented. But they can't fool the experts. So it is in every area of value,- including Torah. That is why  some people emphasize the rituals. That is  to be able to fool the public.


So it is important to come to authentic Torah and to avoid fake Torah which mimics it. The schizo personality types of hasidut are never good people. They are not decent people. They are rather good at doing the rituals. That is not authentic Torah.

Hasidim generally are Pre-schizoid personalities. These individuals have visions at the appropriate place and time. The visions are especially effective in the time of uncertainty and crisis. Mild form of OCD. These people follow rituals (in cleaning, eating to allay anxiety.    Epilepsy (temporal lobes). These people have keen interest in philosophy and in writing. They also have little or no sense of humor (hm...), stern. Hypocampus damage/development. These people are hypersensitive to dopamine spikes due to random rewards; prone to see agency behind random events.  Humans are social apes. Peer pressure, group thinking, and sense of belonging all contribute to development of religiosity.

WE LOVE GUYS THAT LEARN TORAH

Every area of value has close to it an area of opposite value that looks externally like a part of the area of positive value. You can see this in science where there is good work being done but also you can see crackpots that know enough to sound credible to fool the layman, but are just confused. So this is the case in every area of value.--including Torah. That is why it is important to use common sense to discern. 

That is why I am thrilled when I see people  that can discern the great authentic Torah quality in the Chafetz Chaim and Musar [ethics].

In "lumdanut" or "Lumdus" [learning deeply] there is also this aspect. But here it is harder for people to tell the real thing from the fake  when they are not themselves good learners. Concerning Rav Shach's book the Avi Ezri, of all books that introduce one to the idea of how to learn, I found it the most powerful and deep.  

WE LOVE GUYS THAT LEARN TORAH

Kelley Ross

Modes of possibility follow modes of necessity 

Modes of possibility and modes of necessity. This seems to me to be central to metaphysics. 

It seems to me there are different levels of unconditioned reality. 

What I mean to say in plain English is that I think the Kant Fries modification of Platonic thought really includes a very important ingredient from Aristotle. And to me this shows an important result that the Rambam was right all along in his combined metaphysics that made a synthesis between Aristotle and Plato. 
Sometimes the Rambam  says outrageous things  that seem utterly silly on the surface, but if you think deeply about what it, you can see how on a deeper level he was right.


What I am saying is here in Dr Kelley Ross's essay