Wolf and 000646 please excuse the long wait for an answer as I have said before I written a wrong megillah and pressed a button which somehow deleted the contents of my post.
Fist of all, there is no question that we need emunah. Emunah is a tool we use in aquiring the truth. Without emunah we can discount the most logical of proofs. Emunah is a spiritual concept and obviously if we can only go by physical proofs, then logical proofs which are not in the physical realm will be discounted as well.
The answers to the following questions are complicated and I will answer them as soon as I am confident that with Hashem’s help I can do so in an articulate fashion.
But it doesn’t matter, because even if I grant you that it is, I don’t see how this proves the Torah is divine. All it proves is that a lot of people hate us for a long time.
from Wolf
The fact that many people hate Jews for no reason just proves that many people are bigots nothing more. from 000646
I will answer this as soon as I can.
Do you think that Jew hatred is the only illogical long-standing hatred in the world today?
Well, which different nation was hated for so long?
Why do you say that? There are several religions that are of the same approximate age as Judaism — and they, too, have rules and regulations about their lives.
Which religions are of approximate age as Judaism? Christianity became a religion approximately one thousand years after that and Islam even later. Now these two religions which together are practiced by a majority of the world’s inhabitants are man made copies of the divine original. Can I ask you why, over one thousand years later than the Torah was given, couldn’t people come up with something, different new and exciting to appeal to the masses?
In addition, as the Torah and consequently the halachas were given to Jews, the goyim could not keep the mitzvos of the Torah. The Christians do not have laws that they must follow daily, the Moslems have some, but certainly not the amount that Jews have to follow the minute they wake up until they go to sleep. Between washing negel vesser, brochos, davening, brochos on food, watching oneself from talking loshen hora, eating kosher, being b’tznius… a Jew is never done.
Frum Jews are already programmed to think and act in this manner, we don’t even realize that every action we do is because of the halachos we keep. But ask any baal teshuva what the difference is between the life a frum Jew and those not keeping the Torah.
The only way we can be voluntarily controlled like that with hundreds of laws is because the Torah is divine.
Also, while the the way all these laws are applied to our daily lives is different than in the midbar the core halachas are the same. Could we take anything as an example that is as old as the Torah, that is man made, not stuff Hashem made like air and water, but man made ideas and objects that is that old and has survived this long that we actually live with today?
Not only did the adherence to the Torah survive all these years, but it survived the most trying conditions, when the Jews who are the ones living the Torah laws were banished from their homeland,disperesed throughout the world, killed, persecuted , went through forced conversions, they went through conditions were any other nation gave up their religion when they went through all of that like the Moslems who gave up their former Christian religion when it was forced upon them by conquering Muslims.
Also, the Jews are dispersed throughout the world today for hundreds of years already. Throughout all these years that Jews lived in different in different countries, their cultures and minhugim are different wouldn’t you think the versions of halacha would change? The way it is applied may be different for each mokom as well as each generation, but the core halachas are unchanging with time and place and religious Jews practice the same version of the Torah since har Sinai.
Even the Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, the Jews who do not even beleive the Torah is from a divine source always quote the Torah when they want to as their sources, lets say for ethical treatment of animals and such. It’s true they only refer to it when they want to, but one would think with their view of Judaism they would not quote the Torah to support their opinions.
First of all, there are plenty of legends that are beleived by many thousands and even millions of people to have happened in front of thousands of people (some supposedly happened as recently as the early 1900s i.e. the story of the “miracle” of fatima)
If there are plenty of legends that happened in front of thousands of people why do you bring me only one example?
I’m not sure with the story of Fatima you mean the girl you was dragged by a horse because she didn’t want to marry an Arab. If it’s that story you’re reffering to, than I don’t see why you say it was a legend. This was witnessed by a lot of people, I’m not sure if it was hundreds or not, and there is no reason this story shouldn’t be believed that it really happend. It might have been embelsihed, like the fact that she stuck a pin into her leg to keep her dress in place, but the main story could have easily happened. We are not talking here avout ten, twenty meshegoyim who claimed that they saw a heavenly spirit coming down from heaven or such mythical stories where we don’t believe stam anyone. But this happened in a town where all the inhabitants witnessed that story. Witnesses are witnesses.
If we are going to refute stories that are witnessed we can refute all of American and world history and just stay with the archeological digs in Egypt and South America and maybe some journals and books here or there. History is complied by those who have witnessed events and it was passed down. What “happened” between two, or thirty people could be a legend, but not what was witnessed by masses of people.
I will answer the rest of your posts when I get a chance to.