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As intelligent human beings, we should all have a pretty good reason for why we believe in Torah min hashamayim. I’m just curious – what are the personal proof(s) you have?
Emuna Pshuta.
That should be good enough for anyone.
Emunah peshutah is what you are supposed to have in spite of NOT having proof. I have proof all around me, but the recognizable Hashgocha Protis in my life is really (for me, anyway), the best proof there is.
As intelligent human beings, we should all have a pretty good reason for why we believe in Torah min hashamayim. I’m just curious – what are the personal proof(s) you have?
I have none. Every “proof” that’s been presented to me for Torah MinHashamayim has not stood up to intellectual scrutiny.
And yet, despite that, I believe. I don’t need an ironclad proof.
The Wolf
b/c Hashem said to.
Proof: Unbroken chain of teaching Torah up to and including this generation and that it is impossible for anything to even exist without a maker our Maker Hashem, the One and Only.
(oLo)
It says so in the Torah.
If I had proof, then I would be a Malach. Fortunately, there is no proof.
the very fact that the torah testifies that it was given in the presence of 3,000,000 people by the RBS”O Himself.
no other religion in the history of mankind testifies that their founding moment began in the presence of more than one man.
this, for me, is the most rational, logical and undisputable proof.
Aish HaTorah’s Discovery Seminars are masterful at providing absolutely compelling proof for someone who is in the early stages of adopting a Torah lifestyle. For me, that was nearly 25 years ago. But since then I’ve been able to learn from the classic texts of Tanach, Mishnah, Gemara, Mishnah Breura, etc. from such publishers as Artscroll and Feldheim. Having done that, and continuing to learn daily I no longer need any proof of Hashem and His Torah. The fact that I exist, and that I’m a Jew — and particularly how the events of my life have come together to enable me to do the learning and become frum after an upbringing that made all that impossible by any natural standards — is all the proof I need. Beyond that, I don’t need any proof for Hashem and Torah. Just like I don’t need any proof that I have a mother and a father.
frummy, when you say “proof” you can refer to different things. You see, there is mathematical proof, scientific proof, proof based on the preponderance of the evidence, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, circumstantial proof, historical proof, etc.
so what kind of proof are YOU looking for?
Furthermore, when you say “torah min hashamayim” what do you mean? that too can mean different things to different people. for some, it means that gd actually wrote or dictated the tanach, for others, gd inspired others to write it, for others still, gd sanctioning its writing after the fact. what about torah shebe’al peh? that is also min hashamayim but means different things to different people.
in sum, your question is too vague to be answerable.
You mean you want proof that the Torah is true? You didn’t specify that.
You guys are going to make me cry. The rambam says you have to *know* Hashem. One can only know him when you can prove with an undeniable proof that Hashem exists. This is the first principle of the 13.
How did you people make it so far without being able to prove Hashem exists?
Proof #1 – The only religion in history to have had millions of people witness the giving of the Torah. Could you image millions of people all of a sudden claiming God came down to them and gave them the torah? No other religion can claim this. Could you image today – an entire nation suddenly saying they saw God? It’s ridiculous and would never happen – you would have at least a handful of people from that nation claiming it never happened and that everyone is lying!
Proof #2 – Back in the old days people were certain there were only a couple of thousand stars in the sky. Yet in the gemara it has a ridiculously large number with something like 18-ish digits. This is before Galileo and his discovery that there were in fact many more stars. How in the world could anyone have known this without seeing it? The only answer is obvious, it was given to us by Hashem.
Proof #3 – Bris milah. Modern day doctors have discovered that 1 day out of an entire persons life the body produces an extreme amount of vitamin K(this vitamin can only be created by your body). Vitamin K is the main cause of healing in your body. It it coincidence that this one day in your entire life is the very same day that we do a bris milah on? We didn’t have microscopes back then, there was no way of knowing about this. Doing this on any other day in a babies life would cause potential death from bleeding. You think anyone could have just guessed this out of the blue like this? Heck no. Without doubt this had to come from a divine being.
Proof #4 – The lunar cycle. Just a few years ago Nasa released the exact amount of times that each lunar cycle lasts. Down to something like 7-8 decimals past the seconds. It was something like .0000002 seconds different than the gemara states. Not too long after that some german research group released a revised number, it was .0000001 different than the gemara. It’s impossible to have been so accurate back when the gemara was written. Give or take a few more years and I bet it will be exactly like what the gemara says. Totally impossible to have known this without a divine being.
Proof #5 – The red cow. Few know but the only way of knowing if a red cow ever worked (which would make it unfit for a sacrifice in the bais hamikdash) was to check it’s eyes to see if they were cross eyed and if a 1 hair in their back was standing up straight. So if say the cows owned put something on the cow, like his bag for 2 seconds so that the cow would carry it. Immediately the eyes would be come crossed and the hair would straighten up. You could go on a stretch and say ok the cross eye thing we could catch, but who could possibly think to look for a single hair on the back???
Proof #6 – Torah codes. Stuff like aids, wars, dates, names, events all near each other in appropriate places in the torah that are relevant to those events. For example you can find the name of every fruit or vegetable in breishis via torah codes. Or stuff like the first person who discovered aids, name, year etc, in the torah. Many people say that yea sure anyone can take a giant book and find torah codes but the fact is that the chances of finding a “code” in other books without messing up the whole story in it is as likely as 1000 monkeys bashing a typewriter and eventually coming up with shakespear. Or a tornado coming over a house and restructuring it into an airplane. If the torah had only a handful of torah codes then you could say yes ok it was just chance. But to find thousands and thousands of them with the story still intact is impossible in any other book no matter how large it is.
There are so many other proofs that make it obvious that no simple man could have written the torah, not even the greatest genius(s) in history could do it without divine assistance.
May I suggest listening to the excellent lectures on this exact subject from Rabbi Dovid Sapirman – Ani Maamin Foundation http://animaamin.org/news/listen/
Sort of joking. Objectively speaking, the Torah as we know it is just a physical manifestation of God’s commandments. The real proof for the Torah is exemplified in the idea of “national revelation”. So in reality, yes: the ultimate proof to believe in the Torah is “God said to.”
There is no absolute proof. However there are indicators that are very compelling including the fact that it is near-impossible that practically ALL Jews would have the tradition (which was the case until the Reform movement took hold 200 years ago) that a particular event was witnessed by ALL Jews unless it actually did.
The key word above is ‘ALL’ Jews.
No other religion, out of the hundreds that exist, claims its beginnings by a mass revelation – it’s always, and without a single exception, one or a few people saying a miracle or revelation took place.
As Rabbi Keleman puts it – imagine if the Pope suddenly announced that God personally spoke to ALL Catholics at some point in history and this was revealed to him in a vision. However much respect and awe he inspires, he would soon be out of a job. Since not one Catholic has that tradition from his father or teacher, it would be clear he is lying.
We believe in Hashem because the Rambam says so and the Raavad doesnt argue.
An unbroken mesorah and thousands of witnesses. Now Joseph Smith found and lost his golden tablets all by himself and they were translated by an “angel” who no one else saw. And a presdential candidate beleives it.
You guys are going to make me cry. The rambam says you have to *know* Hashem. One can only know him when you can prove with an undeniable proof that Hashem exists.
Then I guess I’m in violation, because none of the proofs hold water, and yet I still believe.
Besides, I think you’re overplaying the word “know.” We all know things without having direct evidence. I know that water is composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, even though I’ve never looked at it under a microscope. I know that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address, even though I have no proof at all that his travelling secretary didn’t write it. To know something does not require absolute proof.
Heck, we put people to death on the basis of less than absolute proof. If I could be put to death under Bais Din for less than absolute proof, why shouldn’t I be able to accept HKBH’s existence on the same basis?
The Wolf
And yushke rising from the dead is more believable that Smith?
I second Wolf.
Frummy “If you know of R’ Keleman’s proof, which follows your line of reasoning, we can skip several steps and boil his ‘bomb’ down to the fact that no other religion has ever made such a claim as ‘national revelation’,”
No, I didn’t understand R’Kelerman in that way. National revelation itself is the proof. The fact that no other religion claims ‘national revelation’ is no *bomb*, nor proof. It’s a result of them being unable to make such a claim.
If anyone gets a opportunity a good read is “Waking Up Jewish” by Uri Zohar. It;s a good book for beginners (and not beginners) about emunah. Written by someone who had everything in gashmius and gave it up for ruchniyos because he saw the truth of Hashem and Torah.
frummy, if its torah shebichsav youre curious about then the first step you need to take is to find out who wrote it and under what circumstances. each book is different. for example, the circumstances under which moshe rabbeynu wrote devorim is vastly different than the circumstances under which bereishis was written which is in turn different than the circumstances under which megillas ester was written.
i suggest you begin by learning about the circumstances under which each seyfer was written. we can then have an intelligent discussion about whether mordechai wrote under ruach hakodesh or something else and who wrote what when and how. then you need to learn the canonization process by which ezra chose which books are torah and which are not. it appears to me that you lack the basic and fundamental understanding of what the torah actually is.
moreover, living a life as a torah jew is not really incumbent upon the literal words of the torah. it is torah shebeal peh that dictates the life of an observant jew notwithstanding anything it says in torah shebichsav. if youre questioning life as a frum jew, it is torah she beal peh you need to research not torah shebichsav.
And yushke rising from the dead is more believable that Smith?
Its just as beliveable as the valley of the Dry Bones (Not to compare the 2, but it is the dead rising and its possible they took the story from the Valley of the Dry Bones)
It’s impossible to have been so accurate back when the gemara was written
I blogged about this two years ago. To summarize:
1. If you can count days and lunar cycles, you can come up with a pretty good estimate for the lunar period. All you have to do is note the number of days and lunar months between solar or lunar eclipses and divide. The more data points you have (i.e. the more eclipses observed), the more exact your figure for the lunar cycle will be.
2. Secondly, this is presented in the Gemara as a tradition that Rabban Gamliel received from his father that the moon’s period is not less than 29 days, 12 hours, 40 minutes and 73 chalakim. Let’s assume, for the moment, that the statement is true (which, to the best of my knowledge, it is). What does it prove? It proves that Rabban Gamliel’s father knew the period of the moon, nothing more. Even if you posit that HKBH came to Rabban Gamiliel’s ancestors and told them “The period of the moon is not less…,” all it proves is that they knew it. It certainly doesn’t prove that everything (or even anything) is in the Torah is true.
Do we really know how much knowledge the Greeks and Romans garnered before the onset of the Dark Ages?
Forget the Greeks and Romans… it’s older than that. The Babylonian astronomer Naburimani calculated the synodic period of the moon several centuries before Rabban Gamliel.
The Wolf
P.S. By the way, it’s a common assumption/fallacy that the ancients (i.e. non-Jewish) astronomers/scientists couldn’t have known anything without watches, telescopes and the like. If you want to get a good idea of how much you can learn about the Earth from just a stick, stone and a rope, read Chapter 5 of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s excellent book “Death by Black Hole.”
The Wolf
oomis – I’m curious to know what your stories of hashgacha are…any specific ones come to mind?”
I posted them in the past, would not want to bore anyone here by rpeating the entire megillah, but VERY basically, my father O”H was zocheh to amazing H”P in the army, where he was in the Intelligence division and captured a Nazi whose villa was filled with paintings (of his family) that had been painted over klafim of Sifrei Torah. The first one that my father O”H found, was painted over the klaf containing his own bar-mitzvah Parsha, PArshas Shemini.
Parshas Shemini (Toras Hakohanim)has since that time been a recurring theme in my family, which is a family of Kohanim. All the male children in the family who had at least one grandparent on the other side who was a Holocaust survivor, were born either on Parshas Shemini or on one of the two other Parshios that my father found that day (Acharei Mos and Kedoshim), all from three separate Sifrei Torah. In addition, my mother O”H was herself born to one of those Parshios, and was nifteres on Shabbos Parshas Shemini. My daughter reached the age of bas mitzvah bo bayom on Shabbos Shemini a couple of years later.
There are other stories as well, but perhaps another time.
None of the proofs given are concrete. I don’t want to go around arguing against any of the proofs because I don’t C”V want to harm anyone’s Emunah. If you believe in these proofs, then great for you. Many of the classical proofs are very strong, they are just not absolute. (Actually, someone once gave me a T’shuvah Nitzchis against one of the classical proofs, but I won’t bring that up either.)
P.S. It doesn’t take long- maybe 2 seconds.
Proof that the Torah is from Heaven: Unbroken chain of teaching Torah up to and including this generation and that it is impossible for anything to even exist without a maker our Maker Hashem, the One and Only.
Proof that the Torah is from Heaven: Unbroken chain of teaching Torah up to and including this generation
Please elaborate. How is the fact that Torah is studied up to this day a proof that the Torah is from Heaven?
and that it is impossible for anything to even exist without a maker our Maker Hashem, the One and Only.
Please prove (or at least expand upon what you mean by) that it is impossible for anything to exist without a Maker (please use capitals when referring to HKBH), and, once you prove that, please explain how the existence of God proves that the Torah is from Heaven.
Once you make your case, I can properly respond.
The Wolf
The world would have ceased to exist if Torah was not being studied.
The world would have ceased to exist if Torah was not being studied. No world – no questions.
The additional proof is that many times the world has almost come to an end has v sholom, because of neglect of Torah study – e.g. people with real potential loitering in places like this particular thread in the Coffee Room asking or pretending to ask totally un-called for questions, inviting what comes.
Maybe – no – certainly now with the ongoing emergency for Jewish people we should put our heads into a Sefer and stop musing- but ALL of us. And this is a challange.
The world would have ceased to exist if Torah was not being studied.
Again, where’s the proof for this? Where is the proof that the world will end if everyone stops learning Torah?
I am sorry to have to say this Wolf, many idolators are amongst those who think that the world exists without a maker.
That’s not a proof. Because an idolator believes (or doesn’t believe) something does not affect whether it’s true or false.
The additional proof is that many times the world has almost come to an end has v sholom, because of neglect of Torah study – e.g. people with real potential loitering in places like this particular thread in the Coffee Room asking or pretending to ask totally un-called for questions, inviting what comes.
Are you suggesting that asking questions in the CR is going to cause the end of the world?
I’m beginning to think that you don’t fully understand the concept of a proof, so I’ll expand upon it.
You stated that the constant study of Torah is proof that it comes from HKBH. Again, how is that proven? You state that if it were not studied, the world would cease to exist — but, again, that’s an assertion, not a proof.
You stated that the fact that the world cannot exist without HKBH is proof that the Torah is from Heaven. When asked for proof, your rejoinder was “well, idolators think….” What idolators have to say on the matter is really beside the point and is not a proof at all to your position. So, again, I ask you the same two questions…. a. please prove that the world cannot exist without HKBH and b. if you can prove a, please show how this is a proof that the Torah is from Heaven.
To guide you, allow me to give you a piece of advise one of my professors in grad school told me:
A set of facts or evidence without a position is a summary.
A position without facts or evidence is an assertion.
A position with facts and/or evidence is an argument.
Please provide a cogent *argument* to prove your points.
Thanks,
The Wolf
I agree that people used to have a much better knowledge about nature, earth and stars.
But which human could have made predictions about list of non kosher animals, birds, and all the fish who have scales must have fins?
Or make such claims as shmita.
Frummy – I apologize, but I did not understand how you disproved national revelation. I also don’t know who Rabbi Keleman is.
That the Torah is from Heaven is just obvious because we established above that The Creator Hashem is able to and did communicate with all of us Jewish people here today and did so as we all stood at the foot of Har Sinai, at Matan Torah.
No more loitering in the Coffee room.
I’ll agree with Sam here. Those who have proof, great. I will not be the path for those who have proof to lose their emunah, since all proofs can be disproven.
Mods, I ask that you close the thread.
Where is the proof, that the definition of proof set by scientists, professors, etc. the correct way to determine proof?
I’m going to respond to ready now, but before I do so, I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I believe in Torah Min HaShamayim. Yes, I find all the proofs to be flawed, but that does not mean that the premise itself is flawed… merely the proof. I’d like to post something I wrote on my blog two years ago regarding this:
1. Lack of evidence does not equal evidence of lack.
I’m sure that many of you have heard this before and it is 100% valid. Just because I can’t prove that the Inivisible Pink Unicorn does not exist does not mean that it does not exist. Of course, each individual has to weigh for themselves how strongly consider the lack of evidence when making a determination — but it cannot be used as definitive proof that the object you are considering does not exist.
2. Demolishing a proof does not equal demolishing the underlying argument.
In each case, I will show how the proof being presented is flawed. I will not, however, be presenting any counter-arguments. I will make no statements of my own regarding the Divinity of the Torah (which, for the record, I do believe in), nor will I be making any arguments against it.
In short, don’t take the fact that I find the proofs to be flawed to be evidence that I don’t believe in Torah MinHashamayim, or that God exists, or any other such thing. It is perfectly valid to show that a flawed proof is, in fact, flawed.
The Wolf
If I’m not mistaken, in Malachim Beis, there was a period where the Torah was forgotten until it was rediscovered and reintroduced back into the nation. If that’s true, that means that the Mesorah was severed, and for all theological purposes, one would consider the Torah to have originated from that one person in history. What happened prior to its rediscovery (i.e. national revelation) is immaterial, seeing as there was a window where only ONE person knew of it, and then subsequently passed it on.
OK, ready now, I think I’ve got your argument. Needless to say, it has a bunch of flaws. I’ll go through them one by one.
You started with:
I’m assuming your argument here is that abiogenesis is impossible and, therefore, God must exist. I’m not so certain that that’s true. Perhaps it *is* possible for things to come into being by themselves. Can you prove that they can’t? In short, you’re making an assumption here — that the one and only way that things can come into existence is via God. You’ve not proven that assumption.
You then continue with:
I’d like to break this down further:
So we have established the world has a Creator The Holy One Of Israel.
You have established no such thing. Even if I were to grant you your previous premise (that things don’t just make themselves), you certainly haven’t proven that the Being that we worship is the being who created the world.
You then go on to:
That means He would be able and willing to communicate with us if He so wished – and He did,
This is one of the worst flaws in your argument. You are engaging in circular reasoning. How do you know that He communicated with us — because it says so in the Torah. But if you’re trying to prove Torah Min HaShamayim, you can’t use the text of the Torah as that proof.
since no-one else did, we can safely acknowledge Him as The Sole Communicator to the Jewish people
I fail to see how you’ve proven that there is only one deity. You’re just asserting it. Perhaps there are two or more.
In short, you’ve failed to prove the point. You have failed to prove that God exists. Even if I grant you that the world was created by a god, it is certainly not proven that he is still around (lower case letters used on purpose).
You’ve also failed to prove Torah MinHaShamayim. In fact, the only attempt you’ve made to prove it is from the Torah itself — an example of circular reasoning.
Furthermore, as a result, you’ve also failed to prove your premise that if everyone were to stop learning Torah that the world would be destroyed. You’ve still presented no evidence to this assertion.
That the Torah is from Heaven is just obvious because we established above that The Creator Hashem is able to and did communicate with all of us Jewish people here today and did so as we all stood at the foot of Har Sinai, at Matan Torah.
No more loitering in the Coffee room.
Proof, please?
The Wolf
WolfishMusings- “I have none. Every “proof” that’s been presented to me for Torah MinHashamayim has not stood up to intellectual scrutiny.”
how can you say that? what then do you call proof? a picture from a camera? A video? is that the only “proof” for you? why can’t you use logic, and your brain to assess a situation such as Ma’amid Har Sinai which was given in front of 3,000,000 people, to be iron-clad proof enough for you??? It boggles my mind! Here you have 3 million witnesses to G-d’s revelation and they all pass this down to their children. Does this not stand up high enough for “intellectual scrutiny”??? 3 million witnesses…..
what WOULD be “proof” according to you? what would YOU say that would be undisputable evidence? I can not provide proof to you, if you do not DEFINE what YOU consider to be proof.
My proof is that everything within the Torah is brilliant. All the mitzvot make such beautiful, perfect sense. I know with certanity that if I managed to keep all the mitzvot perfectly and I lived in a society that did as well, I would live the absolute happiest life possible.
I went off for a few years because the BY education I was given would twist and manipulate the Torah using this random perush and skipping that concept to make it more fluffy and appealing. I came back because I discovered the Torah in it’s naked truth and I recognize that there is nothing more genius than the Torah.
1) Every other religion begins with a man. Mohammed, Yoshke, Budda… the list goes on. One man had visions and revelations from ‘God’ and from there persuaded others. Never has there been a religion where 3.5 million people at once received the religion. You can date back every religion to the beginning. Jews have tradition up to Sinai [as a nation]. One cannot deny that there is a Torah, because if it was man-made, there would be no way of hoodwinking 3,000,000 people about it. They were all there.
2) Open up a Chumash. Learn through the Ramban and other rishonim and see the depth of their scientific knowledge – it was incredibly accurate. Books have been written about Science and the Gemoro — absolutely loads of proofs.
But have a look then at the Ba’al Haturim. There are some UNBELIEVEABLE surprises there. He goes through and finds the numerical values of words and matches them with others. The words of the verses and the numerical values of the interpretation is totally fantastic. How often does ??”?’s simple explanation fit word for word with the Ba’al Haturim? It is really fantastic.
No human could have done this. Every single letter and word in the Torah is calculated. There is absolutely NO WAY that it could have been conceived by mortal brain.
3) Read the Parsha about Shmitta, and the promises that were made to those who keep it. Then have a look at the videos about Kommemiyus — a huge locust plague ravaged the entire country, SKIPPING OVER the fields of those who kept SHMITA. Tens of irreligious who witnessed the miracles first hand returned to the religious path. That was no coincidence.
4) Torah Codes have been mentioned above.
Torah codes. Stuff like aids, wars, dates, names, events all near each other in appropriate places in the torah that are relevant to those events. For example you can find the name of every fruit or vegetable in breishis via torah codes. Or stuff like the first person who discovered aids, name, year etc, in the torah. Many people say that “yea sure anyone can take a giant book and find torah codes but the fact is that the chances of finding a “code” in other books without messing up the whole story in it is as likely as 1000 monkeys bashing a typewriter and eventually coming up with shakespear. Or a tornado coming over a house and restructuring it into an airplane. If the torah had only a handful of torah codes then you could say yes ok it was just chance. But to find thousands and thousands of them with the story still intact is impossible in any other book no matter how large it is.
Google ‘Torah Codes’, and have a look at a few of the examples.
5) Speak to anybody who has been learning in a Yeshiva – ‘Iyun’ seder – where yeshiva bochurim learn into the depth of the Gemara. There is no better proof than finishing ten blatt (pages) of Gemara properly, with the Rishonim and Achronim.
But which human could have made predictions about list of non kosher animals, birds, and all the fish who have scales must have fins?
I blogged about some of these points as well.
I’m assuming your referring to the “proof” of the four non-kosher animals with only one kosher sign and the proof fins and scales. I’m not aware of any proof involving kosher/non-kosher birds — if there is one, please present it.
As to the rebuttal of this proof, I’ll simply quote what I wrote two years ago. The argument deals with the fins/scales proof, but it applies just as equally to the four animals proof.
This time, the author brings a Gemara in Niddah which tells us that all fish that have scales also have fins. Only a Divine Being, the argument tells us, with knowledge of every fish species in the world could possibly have made such a statement. After all, the ancients certainly didn’t know of every species of fish on their own. Heck, we’re still discovering new species of fish today. Hence, such a definitive statement could only have come from an all-knowing God. No non-omniscient man could possibly have made such a statement.
To the best of my knowledge, the statement is correct. Although I am not a marine biologist, I am not aware of any species of fish that has a fin but no scales. Pretty convincing, no?
Again, however, the author is making the leap from asserting that if one statement of the Torah is true, it must all be true. There is simply no basis for such an assertion. As with the period of the moon, the *most* that it can prove is that God told the ancients secrets of marine biology that they could not have otherwise known.
But it doesn’t even prove that. This is yet another case of begging-the-question and assuming that a Divine authorship before proving it. To illustrate, let me give you an example. I’m going to make a statement right now: Every star (barring collapsed, dead stars) conducts nuclear fusion in it’s core. Now, fast forward 1000 years, a million years or even a billion years and suppose we find that, indeed, every star that they’ve ever found fuses atoms in its core. Does the fact that I made that successful prediction make me Divine? After all, I certainly didn’t examine every star in the universe. How could I possibly know that there are no stars that don’t fuse atoms?
The answer, of course, is that I simply extrapolated from what I do know and made a general rule. Since I know that every star we’ve found so far fuses atoms, it’s not too hard to make a rule that all stars conduct nuclear fusion. Similarly, an ancient, examining the fish around him, could easily notice that every fish that has scales also has fins and make such a rule.
“Ah, ” the true believer will counter, “but wouldn’t he be afraid of being caught? Wouldn’t he be afraid to make such a statement if there was even a possibility that someone in the future might disprove him? Surely someone making such a statement would have to be 100% sure, or else face the possibility of being disproven.”
This, however, is another example of begging the question. The believer is assuming that the person making the statement would be afraid of “being caught.” But is that the only possibility? Perhaps he wasn’t concerned about being incorrect. Perhaps he simply thought he was correct just as I think I am about stars. Perhaps he was simply making a general rule without regard for exceptions. In short, you can’t prove that this statement came from a Divine source and you certainly can’t prove from this that the entire Torah is Divine in origin
As to your last statement:
Or make such claims as shmita.
I’m assuming your argument goes something like this: Only a Divine Being could make a promise that you won’t starve if you don’t plant crops for a year. And, furthermore, if the Torah were written by man, wouldn’t the people have rebelled once the first shmittah passed and they were starving? The fact that there is no record of such a thing happening indicates that the promises were kept — hence the Torah was written by God.
The problem with this argument is that, again, you’re making unwarranted assumptions. If you posit that the Torah wasn’t written until much later, then it doesn’t matter what the Torah promises, does it? The “proof” only works if you assume that it was written at Mt. Sinai (or, perhaps, before they entered Eretz Yisroel). Once you toss away that assumption, the “proof” falls apart.
The Wolf
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