Group think

To asherrgg

Beautifully said, but you’re wasting your time talking to this atheist. He has stated that G-d has no right to tell us how to live our lives because that’s an infringement on our personal freedom. You’re assuming that he’s young because he writes like a stupid spoiled brat, but he’s an adult who just went through a nasty divorce and he’s angry at Judaism because he blames his Rabbis for getting a bad settlement. Ignore this Kofer. If you read his posts you’ll see that he says anything that’s Torahdig.

Your literally talking about blind faith…in a person. Compelelty telling yourself you have no ability to critically think
Idolitry literally

@nevauh. You made a few assumptions in my words so they fit in to your argument. I doesn’t look like you paid attention to my point so I’ll try again, this time even clearer. We believe hashem gave us the torah at har sinai. Hashem giving us the torah means the torah is the TRUTH. Life is what we have to live the truth. We must look in to the torah to identify the truth, and, how to navigate out path toward the truth. Being that the torah is so great in size and depth, we follow those who studied big amounts and understand. Hashem gave humans the tools to learn the torah, understand it, it make decisions that put it into practice. I think I made it clear.
On another note, you say that “What was the Torah written for tho? To help us navigate life.” It sounds like you think that life has meaning in it of itself and the torah is just a guide how to navigate “life”, whatever that is. What’s the purpose of life according to you?

To ashergg

He’s a hardcore atheist and will never budge. As someone wrote in a different thread, he left the religion when his wife divorced him and his Rabbi sided with his wife. He thus blames G-d and Judaism for all his problems. I’ve been needling him to come clean and admit the truth, but he keeps offering his koferdig platitudes. I’ll follow this thread because I like you and your writing style, but he’s a lost cause, IMHO.

Ashergg. The Torah is the truth because it actually mirrors the truth. Not because it was given at har sinia and holds authority. It’s not about authority but how it guides us through reality.
it passes the scrutiny test of fitting exactly what truth is. Let’s differentiate sheeple speak from reality. You can look at life and it will mirror the Torah exactly the two are a symbiotic mirror of the other.
The Torah is a guide for life that means it must mirror life exactly. And it does when read in context. God gave tools to humans to navigate life and use the Torah as tool. Not the other way around

If I play chess. I don’t get stuck in the Manuel. I use it as a reference to guide me through the game but the Manuel has to mirror the actual game or it won’t help me navigate life

@nevuah The torah is the truth, we know that because it was given by hashem. In the torah (which is the truth), there are rules to live by, and ideas to be guided by. You keep circling back to authority and i’m not sure why it even comes in. In the torah which is the book of truth, there is a level of authority presented in. There are mitzvos we understand and mitzvos we don’t understand, but we keep all because the book of truth commands us to. In addition, the book of truth also tells us “על־פִּי הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר יוֹרוּךָ וְעַל־הַמִּשְׁפָּט אֲשֶׁר־יֹאמְרוּ לְךָ תַּעֲשֶׂה לֹא תָסוּר מִן־הַדָּבָר אֲשֶׁר־יַגִּידוּ לְךָ יָמִין וּשְׂמֹאל׃”, which is an element of authority by definition. People listen to daas torah not because they are authority, rather because they are closer to the truth. I’m not talking for everyone, I’m sure some people don’t know how to think and solely rely on authority, but most people contain consciousness and think for themselves.
Authority is not truth, but truth is authority. Not that one shall follow truth in a subserviently manor, rather because it’s the truth.

Again ashreg things are only true if they _are_ true.
Lol
Anyone of authority can say anything is true and you’ll fallow it cuz authority says so, that’s dangerous ground your stepping in because your not willing to use critical thinking we are not blind followers. And we were not destined to be. The reason being is even in the inherint way the Torah is written in parable form, third person, so a person can read it and gain wisdom and understanding not because they are “afraid” and feel compelled because they realize the wisdom therein and understand its moral direction.
There’s a fine line between blind fallowing and understanding wisdom and good sense.
Also its revealed in the way that God is hidden, meaning that people are not born into some form of a strict coded mindset but kind of have to find God on their journey of life.
This shows that a person was given the freedom to do so and find the truth as they live.
Otherwise God would probably make himself very clear to everyone, and there would be no arguments at all

To ashergg

You almost have it, but I’ll fill in what you’re missing. When Nevuah showed up about three or four months ago he called himself rescue. At that time his Kefirah was blatant. What he said is that G-d doesn’t want “sheeple” who blindly follow what they’re told in the Torah, rather He wants people to use their free will and only keep those Mitzvahs that make sense. I then challenged him to explain the logic of one being put to death for carrying his keys in the public domain on Shabbos. He refused to answer which likely means that he does so. When he says that he isn’t an atheist he means that he accepts the concept of a G-d, but not a G-d who commands us to follow the Torah. That’s why he danced around the words Har Sinai in his last post. He probably accepts that G-d gave the Torah to Moshe, but now he thinks it’s our job to interpret the Torah according to our logic. Clearly, he’s a Kofer and so there’s no point trying to continue this discussion. He’s also a total idiot and so he’ll probably play the Qwerty take your meds game. My suspicion is that he’s been diagnosed with serious mental disabilities and so he’s projecting his infirmity on me.

@nevuah. If you want, we could get into a conversation about defining truth, but i think you keep dodging my main point. I’ll assume that you agree that hashem exists, and that he gave us the torah, which means that the torah is true. In the torah there are rules and ideas that are true. Humans shall look in the book of truth and live by those rules and ideas for a truthful life. One of those ideas mentioned in the torah is to follow the torah, which is in fact repeated many times in devarim. If the book of truth tells you to obey the rules, by definition that’s the truth.

Tell me where i’m wrong. be specific. You keep avoiding this point. please be clear on what you disagree.

Thank you.

To Nevuah

Everyone thinks about you as I do including your family. What sets me apart is that I’m speaking out because I want you to get lost. Despite what you would like to believe a Jew doesn’t have the right to create his own G-d.

משה קבל תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע ויהושע לזקנים וזקנים לנביאים ונביאים מסרוה לאנשי כנסת הגדולה

From there it continued to the תנאים and אמוראים and the rest is history. We don’t learn hal
achos from pesukim anymore. We learn the translation of the words and we look to Rashi to understand what it means. Rashi didn’t make anything up. He used all the knowledge up to his time to explain the passuk. Everything we follow today is a continuation. There are many “flavors” of Rabbanim today. Find one that fits for you.

@rescue

@qwert613 I hear what you’re saying but your method is not effective, evidently.

@nevuah I take it that you agree to what i wrote above.

Pekak I understand where you are coming from but like broken telephone if the actual message gets watered down to the point that it becomes agenda driven and doesn’t respect the actual translation anymore maybe it’s time we go back to the original intent.
Also I don’t think when they were “passing it down through that shurah of people the message was meant to get watered down to the point it doesn’t respect the actual text?

Sorry ashreg didn’t see that you answered me. Again. Truth is only true if it passes the scrutiny of truth.
God says to be mindful of fallowing _moral code_ cuz there are great consequences in not doing so.
The rules are only by definition the truth because they _are_ true not because they are written in the book. Or any book.
The book codafies morality and other rules, not the other way around. That means it’s mirror of reality, not because it says so because it is.
Your coming from an authority perspective. It is written therefore it must be true
I’m coming from the opposite way, it mirrors reality by being true therefore it is true.
These are two different starting points.
The reason why it was given not at the creation of the world’s is because humanity needed a guide. Thus its not about authority but about guidance
Everything written there in is good sense to fallow.
The Torah is a mirror of reality. Exactly.
For example…. it says the sins of the father will be passed down 7 generations, this is not only because God will punish you but also because things are passed down geneticly and metaphysically for 7 generations sometimes 4.
The Torah codafies what reality already is. And also gives much more in depth guidance to those who do listen.
Also. It doesn’t say “listen” it says “hearken”
Which means something much deeper then listen. hearken is a word used for “you shall hearken to my words because they are good for you”
There is a huge difference between listen and hearken.
Everything written in the Torah still respects the will of the person. And uses moral guidence sense and wisdom to guide a person’s nature.
It does not force. It confirms.
Literally definitions without wisdom misses the intent behind the words.

@rescue

The Torah isn’t written to a biblical people of the past. It’s written to us. It isn’t parables. When we read Krias Shema every day, in the second parsha we are mekabel the Ol Mitzvos that Hashem commands us every single day.