The simpler belief system wins.

Steven Dutch suggested that the simpler belief system wins.
The more convoluted it gets,-- the less people go for it. This seems to me to make sense. After all, in Rome when there was competition between Christianity and the Roman gods, the simplest thing was to go with Christianity. Later on there was much effort put into showing how Christianity is reasonable --or at least defensible by some of the greatest minds of the Middle Ages. Later on Luther's ideas were also on the side of making things simple. Sola Scriptura is certainly on the side of making things reasonable and simple.

So what weakens Christianity today--if you go by this argument of Steven Dutch -is that it got to be too convoluted.

 

You need not that things should be easy. You also do not need to water things down. But you do need the belief system should make sense and not be self contradictory. It also should make moral sense.

It should not demand things that are prima facie [on the face of it] not moral. [In its origin Christianity succeeded, not because it was easy but because it was hard and demanding.]

Some of the weak points are the Trinity. If you hold by Sola Scriptura, then that is one thing that would have to be let go of. Paul himself is another example of a weak link in the whole chain. The prime opponent  of Peter and James all of a sudden becomes an authority? That is like having Karl Marx give lectures on the benefits of Capitalism.

Some of the positive points are Anselm and Aquinas and Hegel. That is to simplify the belief system does not mean it has to be without depth. Just that it should not be convoluted.

God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world.

"Thou shalt remember the Lord your God because it is He who gives you strength." (Deuteronomy)
The basic idea here is this: God made everything something from nothing. That is to say: He made the world and He is not the world. Thus space- time is also His creation.Thus he is not absent from space. But he is not in space either. The entire concept of space simply does not apply to Him. Trying to apply the concept of space to God is like mixing apple and oranges.

There is lot to go into about this but to be short I wanted to bring from the very important commentary with no named author on the first four chapters of the Mishne Torah. There he brings the contradiction in the verses. One says, "Do the commandments in order to fear and love God." The other says, "Fear and love God in order to do his commandments." He answers: There are two kind of fear. One is fear of punishment. The other is awe. Thus the verse intend to tell us to come to the lower fear in order to do His commandments;-- and to do his commandments in order to come to the higher awe of God. Thus the purpose of the commandments are to fear and love God.

This is a great Title D Minor This was written in my parent's home. As you can tell there is something otherworldly about it.


T61 D major [This piece is more recent]

T63

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders

The Jewish religious world is plagued by impious, insane, irreverent unholy leaders to whom there is no obligation of obedience. In other times and places, people that taught Torah deserved respect, but today they are all liars and thieves..
Today, whatever any teacher of Torah says in the name of Torah, it is most likely that the opposite is the case. The  "kollels" are not different. Dens of thieves. [They lie about Torah to gain money people's obedience.]

There are I should mention a few islands of Torah like Ponovitch and the great NY Litvak yeshivas, but these kinds of places are rare, and they do no ask or require any kind of authority. The "prime directive" is  simply this: "Whatever the Torah says, that is what we try to do." That is- there is no attempt to usurp authority from the Torah to themselves.


[This is relevant to the issue of representative government. That is the people in power ought to be people that have been elected by the people, not those who by other means have seized power. ]

In an ethical society it is simple to say what a man ought to do--obey the rules. This is how I thought of the religious world during my yeshiva days. Then it became clear that the religious world is highly unethical. In an unethical society it is also simple to say what a man ought to do--disobey the rules,  and to break the rules, to leave it, and to leave as much destruction in his wake as possible.

In an effort to live an ethical life, one has to take into account the society he lives in. Therefore once it is clear that the religious world is highly unethical (as is well known to everyone that exists inside it) it becomes an obligation to leave it. And to make known that their facade of keeping Torah is a ruse and a scam.

What would a society look like that actually kept Torah? I am not sure, but my impression is it would be close to what the Religious Zionist groups are like. Maybe that is not perfect, but the basic approach of the "Bnei Akiva" is about as good an approximation to Torah as I can tell.

What is the essential problem in the Jewish religious world? Reb Nachman, as is well known, attributed the problem to Torah scholars that are demonic. That is they are possessed by the forces of evil. That  is one possibility. Another is more concrete--the usurpation of power. The ruling mafia who pretend to know Torah simply have grabbed power. They award each other credentials--none of which have any validity. Not only is their "ordination" a complete scam and against halacha in which the only authentic ordination ceased to exist in the middle of the Talmud period. But they do not even know what they pretend to know.

t59 music file

T59 D Major

In a deeper sense what you see is that the realm of the "dinge an sich" (the thing in itself) (non phenomenal reality. Reality beyond appearance.) is as hidden as Kant thought it was. Thus what parades as holiness is often the opposite and what looks to be from the Dark Side is sometimes from the Realm of the Divine. Outward appearances not withstanding. Doctrines as also no indication at all. Purity of doctrine and depth of teachings can disguise evil and wicked hearts as we see in the Jewish religious world so often.

If things would have gone  according to plan, I would be finding arguments to support the idea of simply trusting in God and learning Torah. The reason I am not avidly advocating this is I found a surprising thing. (I still advocate trusting in God and learning Torah, but with the reservation and knowledge that this does not always seem to be on the inside what it is on the outside.) It was this. When I was in the Mir yeshiva in NY, every day came a different person from Israel asking for charity to support his yeshiva in Israel where he was doing all he could so that anyone who wants to learn Torah would have a place to do so. But not just there. The Lakewood Kollel in Los Angeles were asking me the exact same thing when I was living in Beverly Hills.
Much to my chagrin  and dismay, when I returned to Los Angeles--but this time without money, they did everything they could to convince my wife to leave me. So I figured at that point maybe Lakewood is just not so great. So I returned to Israel. And there I figured I would just sit an learn Torah in any Beith Midrash without asking for anything. That was after all exactly what every single person from Israel was saying anyone could do--just walk in and learn Torah and that was the entire purpose according to them for the very existence of their yeshivas. To my utter amazement every single yeshiva that had made this claim of being open for the public for anyone who wanted to learn Torah threw me out from the top of the staircase down into the alley.

It is not that I disagree with the importance of sitting and learning. After all God did not abandon me and even granted to me to learn Torah even after all that. But one thing I did see. The religious world is highly anti-Torah and wicked.

I did also have to make some modifications in my world view after seeing the astounding hypocrisy of the religious world and frankly straight forward sadistic people dressed in religious garb claiming to be keeping Torah.

But since this blog is about world view issues I do not have a lot to add, but just for public information in what ways have I changed my world view to correspond to the facts and reality?
The main difference is I have had to go with the explicit opinion of the Rambam and the implicit opinion of my parents concerning the importance of  Physics, and Metaphysics.  These bring to fear and love of God to the Rambam, and are in themselves the fulfillment of those commandments so  I think without those two aspects of Torah, people go astray.
In any case, there is some deep seated wickedness in the religious world which causes them some kind of evil inclination to hurt others and then to look for excuses to blame the people they hurt.
The major source of wickedness however I did not see in Litvak place but rather the cults that the Gra put into cherem excommunication. It is just the sickness of those cults seems to have deeply infected the Litvak world also
As bad as the Lakewood group was, it still did not come anywhere near the shear sadistic wickedness I saw the the groups the Gra excommunicated. Little in the world can compare to the shear amount of Sadism I saw in those groups. All in the meantime making a song and dance about how they keep Torah. Frankly I think there are few groups in the world that present the astounding amount of sadism that I saw in the religious world. Hurting people from the shear delight of doing so.
So in short, despite their claims, I do not think they are keeping the holy Torah.

I believe this problem was actually seen by the Rambam himself who also wrote that using Torah to make money or as a means to making a living causes one to lose his portion in the next world and in Heaven, plus he was not shy about his advocacy of Physics and Metaphysics. I can not help but wonder if perhaps he linked these two issues in the same way I have here--that is in seeing the learning of Physics and Metaphysics as a kind of cure for the problem of people using Torah for money and thus losing their menschlichkeit human decency?



In any case I do not see the religious world as keeping the Torah at all. Rather I think Reform and Conservative Judaism are much closer to the path of Torah. Fanatic rituals do not make one righteous in the eyes of God.