The Philosophical/Theological End of the Last Academic Hideouts of Christianity?

G-d is like the Swedish Chef of the Muppets. Don't ask me why He is the way He is. My understanding is that we don't get to judge Gd. G-d Does as He Does, all I can try is to serve Him and hope for Moshiach.

The Torah does not call people to believe in things that they find disagreeable. With Torah, if there is a problem; it can't last. I encountered Judaism by searching because I was looking for a religion I could agree with. In your thinking, should I have searched for a religion I couldn't agree with?

The science of pain is so much easier to believe in than a Gd that uses pain to His liking. I am glad you found Him

The Hasidic Jews virtually rebuilt me into a much better way of life, and it was as if I saw the Light. Good things started happening to me. I was no longer a kid that wished for his own death, plotting how, but always scared that doctors would revive me into an even worse condition. If I did not fear resuscitation, I probably would have committed suicide.

Torah speaks the dark language of a broken mind looking for love. For me, it wasn't, "Light" that attracted me. I was attracted to things in the dark part of the mind, such as throwing stones for the sake of justice.

Gd hates those who deny the wrath of Gd. Gd doesn't answer their prayers with reward.

The worst heresy of this age is that both the Jews, atheists, and the Xtains still provide no answer that I know of to, "The Problem of Pain." It is only the agnostic that has an answer, but it is a flimsy one; it is the easy way out of contemplation of Hashem. I am asking a question to something I feel like is a satisfactory answer (for me that is), and that is that Hashem is everything everywhere, pain, happiness, trees, rocks, depression, excrement, insects, food, men, woman, children, dogs. Everything is made by the design of Gd. However, though we may suffer, the Xtian says, Jesus relieves them from suffering because of the completely absurd and ineffectual claim that, "He (Jesus) died so that we don't have to." Xtians need the news, the death of Jesus and its magic accomplished nothing. A painful senseless death the story seems to tell; but, that means absolutely nothing, except one of millions of cruel, painful, and senseless deaths on this earth. Pain is a problem because chronic pain can be far worse than the pains claimed by the followers of Jesus. Retrospectively the pain of Jesus did not last that long making it a far less problem than chronic pain can be.

We live to be righteous in this world and to repair the world.

I never said the Tanya teaches animals reason, but regardless in my understanding it is not only humans that are capable of reason. Thus, in this thought, perhaps I am in subordination of the understanding of souls, especially from what I can remember in Tanya. I do believe that for at least some animal souls, like humans, animals can share a part in the Gdly soul, and accomplish some feats such as reason.

I don't separate nature from Gd.

Who invented death? Who invented pain? G-d is all powerful. Gd could stop suffering easy as snapping His fingers, but He does not. He, Himself, invented such things for His ways that I don't completely understand. I love Him as a child loves His parents, without fully comprehending anything of His nature.

"so man will not degrade Yehovah's Ways by changing them over time?" ~ That is absolutely correct. We are as G-d's agents to take care of the earth, not ruin it. Hashem calls us to be stewards of earth, as it says in the Genesis creation account, "Let them rule," and the agricultural Laws of Torah are strongly suggestive of maintaining the glory of planet earth.

degradation of the universe is not the rule. You are speaking of entropy. Entropy says things tend to disorder, but that is not the whole story. A greater equation, delta G, includes entropy, and even supercedes it, such that organization, such as cellular evolution can occur even in the presence of our universe’s entropy. Also, you are thinking of the universe as a closed system. I believe the universe is an open system, where Hashem has left Himself, an "In," as a way reign over and organize of the universe as His kingdom.

culture such as a Law is the product of nature, and culture is inclusive of DNA. Like the morphology of species predicted by DNA; culture can also morph, evolving such things as laws for the benefit of the continuation of groups.

Who knows the future? I don't. But, will say this, I think in the future there will be categories upon categories greater than reason, logic, and science. These are but three boxes. Because I believe in Hashem, I believe that there are greater categories than these.

If miracles as mentioned in torah can be explained through science and logic ~ that is the goal. Fundamentally, I believe that if it can be conceived of, then it can almost certain be built, such as through logic and science. "If it works use it," as the utilitarians say.

I see no difference studying nature with the purpose of gain. ~ For example, climate change, or lightning, rain, etc. (This is where science is headed), and it is in Torah, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy, first it would appear that religion is far ahead of science. Jews knew about the way the weather works thousands of years, through Torah, before scientists thought of it.

miracles, true or not, may give me insight to how the universe works. I makes me think, "I wonder if I could do that using what I know about religion and science." I have not shut the door on either.

Walking on water: I would call a frozen pond in Israel to be a miracle, especially when folks didn't live that long, such that often the adults were as children. If you are young and you have played on thin ice, I was brought this idea, reading about it in the NIV, it strikes me as children playing on a frozen pond, or even a frozen puddle.

the Electrochemist in me looks for unusual things to help understand and explain the universe.

I have seen a picture of snow in Israel.

Maybe that is why it is mentioned in the literature? It was so rare that someone recorded it.

Question for Christians: When Jesus reportedly walked on water, could that be a frozen pond or lake?

Jesus got angry when people questioned him (What kind of Moshiach would try to stop people from questioning him? - This makes me angry because of the importance of questioning to Judaism) Jesus also demanded his followers follow him extremely, demanding complete loyalty, as if he where a god. For instance, telling a rich man to give up all his money.

I thought Jesus came to bring a sword. Matthew 10:34

New International Version

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

Logic and Faith Meet

In geometry, consider the size of a point.  Mystically, the size of a point can’t be determined.  Tell me how big a point is, and I’ll reduce it by half.  Tell me again, and I will cut it in half again, and so on. Geometry does not tell us the size of a point, or even prove that a point exists.  Now consider two points, on the Cartesian plane, and draw a line between them.  Because you don’t know the exact size of the points, you can’t know the exact size of the connecting line, and so on. It can be said that it is important that the points are relatively the same size in order for calculations to become closer to an equality, but rarely are two points or two shapes, or even copies of points and shapes equal. The job of an engineer is to say, "Close enough." However, if one point is big, and one is small, in the real world, it can effect the size of a line.

Judaism has answers for this; the logistic size of points, and line on the Cartesian plane.  We assume a "yud" is a point. In the same way, we assume the existence of a point is possible , so too we are able to have faith in G-d without logistical proof.

This is a letter yud:

We just believe that a point can exist because of a mystical meaning of the Hebrew letter “yud.”  How big is a yud?  It is the size that it is.

Likewise, we can fill the Cartesian plane with lines and shapes because of the mystical meaning of the Hebrew letter “tes.” Tes is like a pregnant woman. In creation, tes was pregnant and gave birth to the universe, in the same way that a mother gives birth.

This is the letter tes:

Jesus, messiah-king of Edom

Looking to Genesis ch. 27, both Esau and Jacob were blessed to compete for royal positions by their father Isaac.  Isaac gave Israel a greater blessing than Edom, and thus it is such that we should not abhor Edomites.

I understand Jesus as a messiah-king of Edom, and those who were nobles in medieval Europe all had Edomite genealogies stemming from the Royal House of Troy.  Many agree that the followers of Judaism had terrible times then.  Things are different now.  Already many have said, "This is a good time to be a Jew."  I am hoping that the next 1,000yrs brings prosperous Jewish dynasties, like the reign of Solomon and David 3,000yrs ago.

Maybe there are 1,000yr Gregorian calendar cycles?  And, if there is a Jewish messiah-king, then it could spell the end of the myths of Jesus and his adamant followers.  Count me in!

Jerusalem to Win Israel’s Peace Battle

Israel needs to show the world how much she cares about the lives of all peoples, both Jew and non-Jew. If Israel doesn’t care, then she needs to study why she should care.

A reason why Israel should care: Where I live, it is safer than Jerusalem!, safer than it is in the holy land! Sorry if the truth is humiliating, but I think the secret is that we don’t rely on the magic land factor in my town.

Peace requires effort on the parts of citizens! We, the people of my town, Sandwich, don’t complain much about galut. That would be silly. We don’t even have a synagogue in our town! In my town, I am aware of 1 shooting and no stabbings at all. I have lived in Sandwich for about 30yrs – roughly factoring in my years at college.

What I am getting at is not that Jews are bad. Wherever a Jew is, getting to work means less focus on complaining about galut, especially if they are outside of Israel’s boundaries, and more focus on trying to make the place of one’s being, wherever it may be, as how they imagine Israel should be.

Start today and wherever you are - think: What is something I can do to help bring about peace in Israel and in my hometown (or city)?  Israel is supposed to be a beacon of hope, but right now Israel is among the worst places to be on earth.  The world is upside down!

The ideal of peace is not just for Jews or Israelis because in order for a land to be a land of peace, its citizens need to make it that way. It takes work and care!

On The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Holocaust Understanding

Yanki Tauber writes of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s opinion on the Holocaust that “Only G-d Himself can answer for what He allowed to happen.”

Having spoken with Hashem, I imagine Hashem’s answer for the tremendous suffering of the Holocaust would most likely be something like, “I care very deeply.  That is why I made you suffer.  I was trying to reach you, but when I did you ran away.  I was scared that if I spoke to you, that you would leave Me and that you would run even further in the wrong direction.  I, Hashem, tried everything in my power, except suspend freewill, to get My precious Jews to hearken to my voice.”

What is my evidence that this would be Hashem's answer?

G-d answered me in my time of suffering by saying, “I never thought you would get this far (astray from an upright path. - Thus, I suggest that being "far" from the truth is why the Jews suffered during the Holocaust).”  Then, He told me, “I AM punishing you,” which was music to my ears because I thought that G-d not only did not exist, but that if He did exist that He must not care what is happening to me.  To find that G-d was punishing me to the extent of taking action in my well being meant that He cares indeed!  Thus, the next step was to find out what to do to get G-d to stop punishing me, through changing my heart and my actions primarily to that of love and good deeds.

G-d struggles with empathy for His created beings.  The infinite G=d and Founder of the Universe has no more of a clue what it is like to be human, than we have ability to see things from His perspective.

The article is entitled:  The Rebbe on the Holocaust:  What the Rebbe Said (and Didn't Say) 

About the Holocaust

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/64888/jewish/The-Rebbe-on-the-Holocaust.htm

Note:  This blog is an edit of a blog posted to the webpage Hamilton's Judaism.

Being Careful with the G-d's Name on The Computer

My Q:  How do Jews treat hard drive ROM if it contains permanently stored sacred information?  Should it ever be deleted?  Should a name of Gd be saved if it is encoded in data?  We are careful with languages other than Hebrew.  Why would the readable language a computer processes be any different?  Some software is more powerful than other software when it comes to file deletion, which opens up a similar question: If the computer code for a word such as “Gd” enters a computer, is it okay to delete any of its sacred contents at all?  Perhaps, computers should be made more sacred by programming them to remember every key stroke, or use picture recognition to save words such as Gd, such that Gd never ends up deleted.  Even images of words in the refresh rate of a monitor could be saved.  Why not?

Rabbi's A:  t's an interesting question that was raised right when various forms of media were coming out. The general consensus of the Halachic authorities was that electronic information that needs to be opened, played, etc is not considered holy texts to the extent they can not be thrown away or deleted. (Once opened, etc. it should not be read/listened to in bathroom or similar place in which Torah is not allowed(

DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) and Faith

In study of “Dialectical Behavioral Therapy,” I find that DBT is relevant to faithfulness.  DBT understands that our mind is a product of reason and emotions.  Where reason and emotions overlap, there is wisdom to be found.

Faith that comes from the gut, loving-kindness, causes our hearts to ache for those without faith, as victory comes to those with faith.

Faith may also be rational, connecting to the Mind.  Faith explains why some live blessed and why some don’t.  Undersized, malnourished children, with bellies full of worms, AIDS, and malaria; such persons are charged with having to respect their ancestors, even though their ancestors are to blame.  Torah explains this horror.

Yet, my reality is such that when I experience something good, I give thanks.  I thank Gd for not making me like the other man.  Time, reason, tells me my reality will unfold according to Hashem’s blessings, because as though I am puffed up, the righteous will live by my kind of faith (Habakkuk 2:4), both Jew and gentile.

Beautiful Observance: I can’t claim Jewishness, but it makes me glad to be included by chabad.org

To those that are choosing observance; that is beautiful.  I encourage everyone who wants to observe to observe, while not trying to fit people into boxes, such as Jew and gentile.  I believe that everyone has a certain level of comfortable observance that if they choose to embrace confers a certain level of beauty.  As it is such that those proclaiming what it is that they do for the sake of observance, Hashem grants to them greatness due.  So, it is not that I seek a Jewish wife, but it is that I seek for folks, including my wife to embrace Judaism, if that is what their heart desires.

Folks know I like religion a lot and I try to encourage those that I know to a level of observance that feels comfortable for their souls, encouraging rather than discouraging.  Folks get enough challenges to their religion without intentional discouragement.

1st Shelah: Originally not Frum from Birth

1:1  Genesis 10(24) “And Arpachshad begot Shelah; and Shelah begot Eber.”  This is a part of the Semitic line from Shem to Abraham.
1:2  The word for Eber translates to English as Hebrew.  Thus, it is such that Eber is the father of the Hebrews.
1:3  In the same way, Shem is the patriarch of the Semites because he is the son of Noah, and Abraham is his descendent.  Genesis 10:(1) “Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and unto them were sons born after the flood.”
1:4  The first time Shelah appears in the text is as a Semite, meaning that the nation of Shelah at sometimes predates the Hebrews, and is a fully fledged gentile nation.  This is thought to be one of the reasons why the Jews are sometimes able to fall so low, only to pick themselves up in the righteous ways described by Moses.
1:5  Genesis 38:(5) “And she yet again bore a son, and called his name Shelah; and he was at Chezib, when she bore him.”  As I have discussed previously with the name Zerah, Shelah also had other origins, as I mentioned above.  Judah took Shelah in, well aged and fathered him in the ways of the Jews.  “She” refers to Judah’s Canaanite wife.  Thus, it is such that Shelah studied Torah with Judah as a Rabbi.
1:6  Numbers26:(20) “And the sons of Judah after their families were: of Shelah, the family of the Shelanites; of Perez, the family of the Perezites; of Zerah, the family of the Zerahites.”  Thus, it is such that the families counted in the book of Numbers tend to be good at Numbers.  However, there are different ways of being good at numbers.  Strictly, the Shalanites here, who elsewhere are called the Shelahites, are financially good with money.
1:7  The sign of a good Jew is that He, at the Passover Seder speaks out about the tyrannies of wealth for he has known them as a gentile, and also repented of them.
1:8  I theorize that one of the reasons that the Ashkenazi Jews have suffered so much is that the mother of Shelah was a Canaanite, where the Canaanites where cursed sons of Ham the son of Noah.
1:9  Shelah’s Canaanite mother is the reason that the Ashkenazi Jews have an inheritance with respect to the land of Israel, as formerly it was the land of Canaan.  Thus, due to ancestry, as there are no known Canaanites, for they fell by the sword, which the Book of Joshua describes.
1:10  The only remnant of the Canaanites is in the genes of white folk, where in modernity, Canaan is termed Neanderthal and the Neanderthals are long extinct though their DNA is still present in white people, primarily Jewish DNA in fact, which should come as no surprise.  Thus, it is such that due to Canaan, the Jews have a right to their land, where hopefully Jews observe not as Canaanites, but as sons of Judah.

Never Again!

If you think having oodles of people is just grand, go to China where there are so many people that there isn’t even clean drinking water.  All seven of its major rivers are polluted.  What you are saying is that a large population is ideal.  Your records record Jews have at times been obedient, but sometimes they have also rebelled.  Was the Holocaust really the last time?  “Never again!” really?  Yeah right!  It was probably said that the Golden Calf incident that that  would be the last time too!  Is it a Jewish tradition to say, “Never again!” in each generation?  Would Gd never allow a Jewish pig sty?  Don’t be naïve!   If Gd allowed the Jews to be as pigs in a sty, it wouldn’t be the first time.  Read your history books.  Put a gun to many-a-Jew’s head and he will toss the cyanide into the gas chamber, just like before.  Wake up!  The more people that there are the more difficult it becomes to keep the sty clean.  Your idealism realized is a dystopia of filth.

On the Parting of the Red Sea: Another look at the Israelite’s crossing of the Red Sea.

Some have said that this passage, the parting and crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus, lacks archeological authentication.  The most scholarly claim made is that the Israelite’s crossed the Sea of Reeds.  There is much imagery of the way this is done.  Most of it depicts a sea that has parted, water standing high on end, as the Israelites pass, and then once they are out of the way the sea collapses.  This is a rather uniformed way of looking at the way things happened.

In another blog, I have mentioned that there is evidence for crossing into the Arabian Peninsula from Africa at two different times, but that each of these times does not match the date given by the “Hebrew” calendar.  

Archaeology suggest that the two exoduses from Africa happened at a much earlier date than is suggested by the Hebrew calendar.  As I am writing this, the Hebrew calendar says that the world is yet to be 6,000 years old.  Yet, as I am writing this scholarly folk have think they have disproved this as the actual date.  What is certain is that the Hebrew calendar is Kabbalistically correct with some world events, but I think that it is possible that neither the Bible scholars nor the scientists have the correct answer.

I accept that the two exoduses where by Jews, where the exodus of Abraham, the first Jew, and his company represents one exodus, 

 and the exodus of Moses with the Israelites from Africa represents a second exodus.

Thus, I am deriving the word Jew from the word Abraham here, and not Judah.

The first exodus - Abraham's exodus - occurs in the book of Genesis.  The second exodus occurs in the book of Exodus.

The reason I am writing this is mainly to correct the imagery that is common to paintings.  I specifically remember traveling to Canada as a youth.  More importantly, during my journey I encountered tides that fluctuated many more feet than they do on Cape Cod.  If I remember correctly, it was said that of one area that I was in that the tide regularly fluctuated 40ft.

This is probably more than double the amount of fluctuation in my area.  This amount of fluctuation is enough that it is possible to consider that the part of the Red Sea did occur for Moses and the Israelites, but that it was a tidal fluctuation.  It is conceivable that tidal patterns change.

Thus the Israelites crossing of the Red Sea, may have possibly been due to irregularities of tidal fluctuation.  For example, tidal fluctuations in my area, predicted well in advance, are available for purchase, and it is even predictable when moon tides will occur.  A moon tide is a tidal change that is more extreme than is normal.  Thus, Moses only needed to be familiar with tidal regularities in order to cross the Red Sea at best time, in order to escape from Pharaoh’s men. 

However, I suggest, something even greater than a moon tide.  Think bigger: a great tidal wave generated by an earthquake may have been involved.  Their is  6th sense some people have when it comes to creatures activities with respect to natural disasters.  I suggest, Moses had that same sense.

Thus, I accept that it was not a sea of reeds that parted for the Israelites.  It was that the area to either side was water, and that there was an extensive stretch of sand that made it possible for Israelites to walk across at low tide, and that this was due to an earthquake.  However, by the time the Israelites had crossed, the tides were changing such that Pharaoh’s men were unable to cross, and may have drowned or been forced to swim.