Since too much stuff is falsely called Torah it occurs to me to make a short list of what counts as authentic Torah. [As the Rambam wrote Just like there is no adding or subtracting from the Written Law so there is no adding or subtracting from the Oral Law. The Rambam goes into this in his letters. 

So the list is the two Talmuds and the Halachic midrashim and agadic midrashim. 

Mechilta, Sifra, Sifrei, Midrash Raba, Midrash Tanhuma, Eliyahu Raba, Eliyahu Zutra, Tosephta, the shor mesechtot printed in the end of the Villna Shas.

But I would have to include in the commandment to learn Torah the commentaries, though not actually "Torah" still they are a part of "learning Torah."

But even in later commentaries, there is some point where things cease to be Torah and start to be Fraud.[Of course that was the reason for the signature of the Gra on the letter of excommunication.]

messiah son of joseph

 

The whole subject messiah son of joseph does not seem important to me. That is to say: Torah is about good character. 

But for information: the idea of messiah son of joseph can best be seen in the book of the Gra called "Kol HaTor" קול התור

At any rate, Torah is not a cult of personality. It is devotion to God. No one else. See tehilim 18 verse 2.You see there that King David  was putting his hopes in God, not people.

 The Gra explained that every word of Torah is worth as much as all the other commandments put together. He brings this from the Yerushalmi.The Yerushalmi says the mishna תלמוד תורה כנגד כולם refers to every word of Torah.

[You can ask if the same idea applies to Mathematics and Physics according to the opinions that Math and Physics are included in the commandment to learn Torah. See Rambam laws of Learning Torah where he divides the learning time into the Oral Written Law and Gemara and adds the things called Pardes are included in Gemara. We see  in the beginning of the Mishna Torah that Pardes refers to the subjects of Physics and Metaphysics. And in the Guide he says so openly in the introduction

But this group of Rishonim [Ibn Pakuda, Binyamin the Doctors, Rambam etc] include Metaphysics and I do not know what that would mean for today. In their time this meant Plato Aristotle Plotinus. Al Kindi, and Ibn Rushd. But today? I guess this would include Kant, Fries, Hegel, Leonard Nelson. 

[The main thing in Torah and Metaphysics is to know what to exclude. In philosophy I would exclude everything after Kant, Fries and Hegel. In Torah I would exclude everything after the end of the Talmudic period --as the Gemara says itself "Ravina and Rav Ashi are the end of the time when one can decide a halacha" רבינא ורב אשי סןף הוראה

So it is not a surprise to me when one midrash contradicts another.

Someone asked me about difficult issues in faith issues. You might have noticed these yourself. My answer to this has been the "dinge an sich [Things in themselves]. That means this: There are areas where reason can venture into, even without empirical evidence.  These are areas of possible experience. [For example Math.]But there are also areas where reason tries to venture into that it has no access to. and when it tries to get in, it comes up with self contradictions. [e.g. Is the universe infinite? If yes how can any length not have an end? And if it is finite then what limits it?] So that is my general approach to spiritual issues. They are all dinge an sich, and thus outside the realm of human or even pure reason. So it is not a surprise to me when one midrash contradicts another. I say that is to be expected. And if there would not be contradictions, that in itself would be a problem, Trying to insert Reason into spirit is a mistake, and thinking about these things makes people insane.

 Reason integrated with Faith --Athens and Jerusalem was a great achievement of the Middle Ages.

So you can see how faith without philosophy leads to absurd results. But philosophy without faith also tends to lunacy.

So the question is how to get the right balance. I think that Kant, Kelley Ross [based on the Jacob Fries and Leonard Nelson] and Hegel are the best when it comes to philosophy.

That is to say: people that came before Kant all seem to have some sort of difficulties with either pure reason or empirical evidence.  Spinoza and Leibniz were great, so were John Locke and Hume. But each system has problems. To me it seems the best solutions are in Kant, Leonard Nelson and Hegel.

But philosophy after these three took a nose dive. To show this I recommend Robert Hanna's books showing how Analytic Philosophy misunderstood Kant and went off into directions not very well thought out. As for Continental philosophy the same goes. As John Searle puts it : "Twentieth century philosophy is clearly false". 

The point of philosophy is to see the big picture. What is it all about? But the idea that Natural Science needs philosophy is not so absurd as it sounds. After all there are tons of pseudo sciences nowadays tha masquerade as legitimate science. E.g. Psychology.  It is by definition pseudo science since there is no conceivable observation that could falsify it. Climate science is another doozy.  

 In the religious world, it is thought that if you can change the words, then you can change the reality. How do you see this? Well, one example is idolatry. If you can call worshipping dead people "going to kivrei tzadikim (graves of  tzadikim) that somehow changes the reality.

Magic to force God to do your will, you no longer call it "magic" rather "yichudim" unifications. And that is somehow supposed to change the reality.

But this is not confined to the religious. In California you call prisons "houses of corrections." They are not houses of corrections. Nobody gets corrected. They get imprisoned. And usually come out much worse. So perhaps we should call them houses that take mild criminals and turn them into hardened criminals.

mobile phone and wireless radiation"

 The truth about mobile phone and wireless radiation"