Are Torah/Science Contradictions Possible?

Why the Bible Is Immune To Scientific Criticism

by Shlomo Moshe Scheinman

One of the fundamental beliefs of Judaism is that G-d does not have a body. According to Rambam (Maimonides) one who denies this belief has no portion in the World to Come (Hilchot Teshuva, chapter 3). Raavad agrees with Rambam that G-d has no body, but comments (to Hilchot Teshuva 3:7) that in his opinion, people who wrongly interpret Scripture and therefore believe that G-d has a body, will not lose their portion in the World to Come over this error.

Sometimes the Bible Prefers to Present the Subjective Outlook of Man Rather Than the Absolute Objective Reality

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, known popularly as the Chafetz Chaim (in Sefer Mitzvot Hakatzar, Mitzvah 2:} sums up the Jewish view about G-d in the following way.

“It is a positive precept to attribute to the G-d, may he be blessed, an absolute state of being one; to believe with complete faith that he is one without any partner…

One must believe with complete faith that he is simple with the utmost state of being one and an absolute unity and has no body, nor will the factors that affect  the body affect him, nor will occurrences of the body occur to him, and there is no second to him and outside of him, there is no L-rd; and we are obligated to believe this principle of faith at all times and at all moments and the commandment is a requirement both for males and females”.

Given this strong Jewish belief that G-d has no body and factors that affect the body do not affect him, nor do occurrences of the body occur to him, it is surprising that many verses of the Bible if interpreted literally imply otherwise.

Maharal of Prague, in his book, Tifferet Yisrael chapter 33, solves this difficulty in such a way that will also begin to remove our “Scientific Problems” with the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible). Regarding the verse, “And G-d descended on Mount Sinai” (Shmot/Exodus 19:20), and similar verses he explains, that this is talking from the perspective of a person, for thus was G-d subjectively perceived through man’s perspective as though he was descending from Heaven upon the Mountain. And therefore since since man thus perceived him, even though by objective reality, this was not indeed true, scripture will ascribe G-d as descending on the mountain. In other words Maharal is saying that although G-d did not really move from one position to another, Scripture ascribed movement to G-d at Sinai because that’s how things looked from a man’s perspective, who was experiencing the revelation.

Maharal in the same chapter of Tifferet Yisrael provides other examples, where G-d is described not by his true objective essence in the Bible, but rather by the way man perceives him. He brings what the Talmud (Sotah 48a) comments on  the Biblical verse where the Psalmist asks of G-d, “Awake, why do you sleep?” (Tehillim/Psalms 44:24). The Talmud poses a rhetorical question, “and is there sleep before the Holy One Blessed be He? Rather in the hour that Israel is not doing the will of the Omnipresent it appears to be as if, there is sleep associated with him (lit. before him). Behold it is called sleep, from the perspective of those experiencing G-d’s involvement (or seemingly lack of involvement) with the world at that period of time.

Other examples brought by Maharal are from the Midrash (Yalkut Yitro 286): “Rabbi Chiya Bar Ami said, according to each activity and each word did he appear to them. On the Red (or Reed) Sea, he appeared as a warrior engaged in battle and at Sinai, as a scribe who is teaching Torah and in the days of Shlomo (Solomon) according to their actions, his appearance was like Levanon (the name of a high quality forest area), excellent as Cedar Trees; while he appeared to them in the days of Daniel as an old man that was teaching Torah”. Behold it has become clarified to you that G-d, may he be blessed, is present (subjectively) in accordance to those that receive him and therefore when those present are due to obtain some great loss, such as what took place in the generation of the flood, it was stated, “and it grieved him at his heart” (Bereshit/Genesis 6:6). Or in the opposite way, when those that are present obtain perfection, G-d appears to them as happy, as it is stated, “Let G-d rejoice in his works” (Tehillim/Psalms 104:31).

Not just when describing G-d, does the Bible often prefer to present a subjective human view of events instead of the objective reality. The Talmud (Tamid 29a) specifically points to 2 Biblical verses that portray an exaggerated, subjective human view of reality, rather than an objective view. Namely, Dvarim/Deuteronomy 1:28, which states: “the cities are great and fortified up to heaven” and Melachim/Kings 1:40 which states: “so that the earth was split with the sound of them”.  And for those that need a more explicit source of my explanation for the Talmud see Rashi’s commentary to  Melachim/Kings 1:40 where he makes a similar claim to the one I raised above.

Similarly, when G-d started the Biblical flood in Breishit/Genesis 7:11, “the windows of heaven were opened”. Ibn Ezra, notes this term was also used by a man, who was skeptical of the prophet’s prediction of the complete end of a situation of starvation within the next day in II Melachim/Kings 7:2 and Ibn Ezra understood that both verses are not describing objective reality, but rather the subjective terminology that people use to describe the event.

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From 60 Ribo, here.

Torah Study Would Cease without the Welfare State?!

Religious Group That Survived Self-Sufficient For Centuries Warns Of Collapse Without Generous Gov’t Subsidies

“We cannot focus on the words of ancient great men such as Rabbi Yitzhak the Blacksmith, Rabbi Yohanan the Shoemaker, or Rabbi Elazar the Pitch-Maker, if we must devote our days to earning a living.”

Jerusalem, March 17 – Legislators representing the Haredi sector of the Israeli Jewish community railed today against impending proposals in the Knesset to curtail financial assistance to large families, to limit exemptions from the military draft, and to cut back on welfare payments to able-bodied adults, arguing that such moves will undercut the Torah-study-centered lifestyle of the Haredi world, which somehow thrived for hundreds of years before the advent of welfare, child subsidies, and publicly-funded avoidance of working for a living.

MKs from the United Torah Judaism alliance’s Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael factions held a press conference Wednesday to criticize several pieces of impending legislation that several Coalition lawmakers intend to introduce in the coming weeks, laws that would expand military service to all but several hundred yeshiva students, instead of the tens of thousands who currently study instead of train or fight; that would slash spending on monthly stipends to parents with more than four children; and that would deny financial support to those capable of gainful employment but who choose instead to devote themselves to full-time Torah study. The MKs predicted disaster for the Torah-observant world if such policies become law, as they would restore the status quo ante of early statehood and before, when, for more than two thousand years, Torah scholars and students labored to support their families in addition to mastering Jewish lore, a clearly unsustainable model.

“It’s impossible to maintain a Torah-true society if everyone is forced to find a job,” lamented MK Moshe Gafni. “We cannot focus on the words of ancient great men such as Rabbi Yitzhak the Blacksmith, Rabbi Yohanan the Shoemaker, or Rabbi Elazar the Pitch-Maker, if we must devote our days to earning a living. The People of the Book must study the Book and not become mired in earthly pursuits such as making good on the commitment in every Jewish marriage contract that the husband will support his wife financially.”

An agreement between then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Haredi groups during the State of Israel’s infancy allowed draft exemptions for full-time Torah scholars, who, by the criteria in place at the time, numbered in the hundreds. High birthrates and generous government welfare programs have facilitated exponential growth of the Haredi sector in the ensuing decades, creating a drain on the state’s resources as the rosters of eligible yeshiva programs have swelled more than a hundredfold. Haredi leaders continue to sound the alarm over attempts to limit the phenomenon, citing the thousands of years of Jewish life in which only the most select few advanced and gifted enjoyed communal financial support.

From PreOccuupied Territory, here.

Antidepressant Suicidality in ADULTS by Peter Breggin, MD

How FDA Avoided Finding Adult Antidepressant Suicidality

By  – May 24, 2017

Doctors often tell patients that antidepressants can only cause suicidal behavior in children and not in adults. Many publications also make the same claim. The false claim is based on the FDA-approved Black Box Warning for antidepressants that warns about an increased rate of suicidality in children, youth and young adults taking antidepressants, but not in adults over age 24. The Black Box Warning specifically summarizes, “Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24.”

The studies that the FDA relied upon for adults over age 24 were dismally flawed and untrustworthy compared to the ones used for children. According to the FDA at the 2006 hearings:

“Due to the large number of subjects in the adult analysis, almost 100,000 patients, the adjudication process was left as the responsibility of the sponsors [the drug companies] and was not overseen or otherwise verified by the FDA. This is in contrast to the pediatric suicidality analysis in which the FDA was actively involved in the adjudication (p. 14).”

In addition, the FDA also announced at the 2006 hearings on antidepressant-induced adult suicidality that it did not require a uniform method of analysis by each drug company and an independent evaluator as required with the pediatric sample.

Thus, the FDA was comparing somewhat good apples (the pediatric studies) to rotten apples (the adult studies), while making them seem comparable. The child studies showed that antidepressants can cause suicidality — the adult studies (after age 24) showed nothing other than FDA collusion with the self-serving drug companies. As I have described in my books and scientific articles, drug companies routinely manipulate their data on suicide to avoid any causal connection to their drug (see for example my 2006 paper about GSK and Paxil).

In the case of Eli Lilly, here are two memos by employee Claude Bouchey (pages 2 & 3 of document) written to the hierarchy of the company in which he expresses guilt and shame about changing official investigator reports of Prozac-induced suicide attempt to misleading terms like “overdose” or “depression.”

Ironically, the FDA controlled and monitored the original pediatric studies precisely because the drug companies on their own failed to find any risk of antidepressant-induced suicidality in any age group. Why would the FDA assume these same self-serving drug companies, left on their own again, would spontaneously begin for the first time to conduct honest studies on the capacity of their products to cause adult suicidality?

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From Mad In America, here.