Belief in God is rational. Everything has a cause. So unless there is a first cause, then you would have an infinite regress. And then nothing could exist. Therefore there must be a first cause. Therefore God, the first cause, exists. QED.
16.10.20
I would say the words or every page of my Physics texts forwards and backwards. This helped a lot in the short term for me to pass tests. But it was too slow for an over all understanding.
15.10.20
Kant-Fries school
https://www.friesian.com/ross/#curse
The curse of the Friesian school: "Nevertheless, I have not met a single contemporary academic colleague whop was the least interested in the Friesian School, or my work, or who, upon acquaintance, barely took the trouble to give me the time of day. If that."
I am on board with Leonard Nelson of the Kant-Fries school. Faith there is contained in an area of knowledge which is known, but not by sensory perception nor by reason.
So this seems to strike the right balance between Enlightenment Reason and Faith. Kant had tried the same balance but his solution seems a bit lacking.
So reason applies to experience.. Beyond that there is a kind of non intuitive immediate knowledge. [Hegel also tried to find this same kind of balance, but the Leonard Nelson Kelley Ross seems a bit better to me.]
Someone asked me then how do we know natural law?
I answered: "I guess you must mean Natural law known by reason. But reason might have limits. That was the point of Hume. The point was weak in one way in that he never showed the limits of reason. [And so you get G.E Moore and Dr Huemer because of that.] But still it does seem clear that knowing things true by definition is different [analytic a priori ] than knowing things you have to put together [synthetic a priori] . And even in that area of things you need to put together it seems there is a kind of limit about things that you can sense, [conditions of possible experience]. Once you get into moral law it does look that a different kind of knowledge is used to understand things.[un-condioned realities]"
[The well known proponent of Kant-Fries is Kelley Ross, but Robert Hanna goes into more detail in showing the attacks against Kant in the "Analytic school" are wrong. Dr. Ross does bring Jerold Katz, but Robert Hanna goes into much more detail.]
Georg Hamann was I think the best of those pointing out flaws in the Enlightenment, Still I think a balance is the best. Kind of like the mediaeval synthesis of faith and reason.
14.10.20
God knows that not all Litvish yeshivot [based on the Gra] are all of the same caliber. Especially the places that are shiduch yeshivot. [That is people are there for the name of the place in order to get a good shiduch,] This becomes apparent in the approach of people that come from there to use Torah to make money. Often this is not limited to Shiduch yeshivot but places that people and out there just for the name.
But you have to ask yourself what the alternative is? No other kinds of places have authentic Torah.
And there issue is not just authentic Torah which one could learn on one's own. I mean one could learn Tosphot, R Akiva Eiger , the Ketzot etc in order to see and understand a drop of the depths of authentic Torah on one's own. But the way I see it that this is very difficult to do without an environment of Torah learning.
And almost no one stands against the Sitra Achra [the Dark Side] that has penetrated into the Torah world except for Litvak yeshivas. Most of the religious world is highly highly compromised by the Dark Side. At least the Litvak yeshiva based on the Gra provide a kind of shield.
The two places I was at were both great: Shar Yashuv and the Mir in NY. But from what I can tell most Litvak yeshivas are great. Probably the best is Ponovitch in Bnei Brak. [Or off-shoots of Ponovitch.]
If only there would be a straight Gra type of Litvak yeshiva in my area I would rejoice.
But there is not. So all I can do is to try to learn the one single volume of Rav Shach's Avi Ezri that I do have. [It is the only Torah book that I have.]
13.10.20
The unpatriotic academia has been putting down anything that even slightly has a hint of American patriotism. Robert E Lee was a patriot to the USA but also of his state of Virginia. When there was a conflict he choose Virginia--so as not to be fighting against his own flesh and blood. Nowadays the ties that once bound Americans together are gone as a result of this constant attack against the USA within Academia.
See the paper by Robert Hanna that shows an example of sheer pure hatred of the USA has been a part of academia for about 70 years. [https://againstprofphil.org/2020/10/05/how-not-to-live-a-double-life-the-ballad-of-donald-kalish-and-angela-davis/]
