God is the First Cause.

The way I conceive of God is the First Cause. The general way this is attacked is "Then what caused the first cause?" The way to answer this objection is this: if you always need a cause of a cause [an infinite series] that would defeat the entire concept of causality. For you would never get to any cause if you would have to go an infinite number of steps back. So, if you accept causality at all, you have to accept the First Cause. The First Cause does not say anything else. {Thinking of God as the First Cause does not say anything about His Nature. If you want to get to that you need to show that by rigorous logic.

The problem with people's conception of "Hashem " is it is like a personal "god" that they can command to do what they want.

And "all religions” are not connected with God. For example, the Aztec religion was a religion and has very little to do with God.

The proof of Godel about the existence of God is important, but that is not the issue I want to address here. But I might as well mention I had away of sealing up his proof with an idea I saw in a Mathematical Logic Book.In Mathematical Logic there are two  principles which answer the objection of Kant.

(Completeness Theorem)(Compactness Theorem).
I am not at present involved in this subject but I thought to write it down just for a reminder to look at this later.
The place I learned about these two theorems was from Stefan Bilaniuk's book  A Problem Course in Mathematical Logic Chapter 4. [http://euclid.trentu.ca/math/sb/pcml/pcml-16.pdf][From the finite to the infinite. Perhaps the simplest use of the Compactness Theorem is to show that if there exist arbitrarily large finite objects of some type, then there must also be an infinite object of this type.]

the first place that did everything according to the Gra.

 I knew the rosh yeshiva of Aderet Eliyahu in Jerusalem and his father who founded that yeshiva. That was a first of its kind. There were and are great Litvak yeshivot, but this was the first place that did everything according to the Gra. And while I am far from that vision, still I can see the greatness of it. I wish that there should be many such places.[And I wish that I myself would merit to walk in the path of the Gra.]     

[Mainly that is learning Torah in depth, Muar (learning  Musar in order to gain good character traits), and last but not least his signature on the letter of excommunication.

The issue of state's rights

I see the present state off the "woke" [that that the USA is founded upon black labor and that whites are inherently evil] as a result of the Civil War. I mean to say that there is such a thing as group actions. So while individual people may be great, still the general direction of the slaves has been to destroy the USA. The fact that it has taken a long time does not mean that the effort has nor been real.

The Talmud says, "One who does a favor for one who does not have gratitude is as one who worships an idol [throws as one at Mercury]."How many do you know who have gratitude towards the USA for freeing them?

The issue of state's rights is thus: The Constitution was written to give to the Federal government certain rights--powers-. For example :to collect taxes. Without that the states were almost at war one with the other and certainly not paying the war debt of the War of Independence.  So the Constitution gave powers to the Federal government. But in the Bill of Rights it was stated that any powers not reserved for the Federal government belong to the states or individuals. [That is the ninth and tenth ammendment]. It removes itself from the question of what rights states or individuals have. It says "WE do not know". Maybe (it holds) in the future more rights or less rights might be found for states or individuals. We do not know. All we are doing is to give to the Federal government certain rights. Maybe all individuals including slaves have a right to be free? Maybe nor. We do not know. This Constitution does not deal with questions we do not know."

["Whosoever accepts on himself the yoke of Torah, the yoke of government and the yoke of the way of the earth (work) is removed from him."

   In a time when there is so much stuff going on, you might ask what to do? I discussed this with David Bronson a few times (over a few issues) and his answer was always along the lines of,  "Let's sit and learn Gemara".  Or one time I was asking such questions, and he brought up the mishna  כל המקבל עליו עול תורה מעבירים ממנו עול מלכות ועול דרך ארץ. ["Whosoever accepts on himself the yoke of Torah, the yoke of government and the yoke of the way of the earth (work) is removed from him." [That does not mean to be begging  for money.]

  When I asked a question, "What can a father do for his children to guide them?" he brought this idea of Rav Nahman that when a father repents on his sins, thoughts of repentance enter into his children.

  Another time I brought up this subject and he brought an event mentioned in the Gemara. There was an extreme tax brought on the city where  Judah HaNasi lived. He said, "All problems come from people ignorant of Torah." [You can ask on this from the Gemara in Shabat that says all problems come into the world because of "judges of Israel"] There is no contradiction as we see in Hulin. perek 7 that  all problems in the world come from תלמידי חכמים שדיים יהודאיים Torah scholars that are demons.[Le.M I:12 and I:28]

So how do you tell?  By the criteria of "Lishma" [those that learn Torah for its own sake]. Some people accept money to learn Torah, but their intension is to learn. They only accept money because that is the only way they can spend their days learning Torah. These  are the true good  Torah scholars. They are the Litvaks. [Those that walk in the path of the Gra.]--(However I admit that even in the Litvak world there can be phonies. But the general type--the group characteristic is that of Torah for its own sake.]

there are things that are not worth the trouble to argue with people about.

 David Bronson explained to me that there are things that are  not worth the trouble to argue with people about. It is that certain things are set in their DNA. {I was asking about the conflict between Israel and the Muslims.] But this can be applied across along long lines of issues.

It is best just to learn Torah and see what the Law of God has to tell us and to recommend to others to do the same.

Stll, with all that there is an "inyan" [a thing] about to "object". That is even if no one will listen, still one must object to wrong--at least to make one's position clear. [That is from the event of the Concubine of Giva. What I mean is on the second day of the war, (end of Book of Judges) God was asked if to continue to make war on Binyamin, and He agreed. Why? Because no one in Binyamin objected to the murder of the concubine. To punish the evil doers was not the issue. The issue was to punish the whole tribe because they did not object to evil.

However, I still think this is a one time event. You object and make your stance known and then get back to learning Torah.]   

authentic Torah and Gra [Eliyahu of Villna]

 The importance of the Gra [Eliyahu of Villna] is that he defines  pure straight authentic Torah with no additions or subtractions. This is very different from the religious world which worships dead people; but does it with religious clothing so that it looks authentic 

the religious world is idolatry.

 One of the not so minor problems with the religious world is idolatry. This may not be obvious at first to people that are sunk into it, but if you think about it you can see that worship of graves of tzadikim is a problem. I am not saying this is easy to be gotten rid of. You really need someone like king Yoshiyahu that went all over Israel destroying every last remnant of idolatry. And of course the problem with fighting evil is that one suffers for it.  Somehow after that, he got a dumb idea in his head to fight the king of Egypt and lost. And his kingship was pretty much the end of kings of the house of David. His children were the ones that the king of Babylon killed and destroyed the Temple, and the glory of that Temple has never returned.

That shows how powerful the kelipa of idolatry is. Still if the Torah stands for anything, at very least it stands for not doing idolatry. There is no choice but to fight it, no matter what the consequences are. 

My parents definitely saw the evil of the religious world, but I did not understand what they were saying. I wanted to go to an authentic Litvak yeshiva based on the Gra, but did not see how the religious counterfeit religiosity that the Gra us against, had seeped into it.