The Belief System Of The Kofrim

I believe that our basic belief in the authenticity of our tradition comes down to the following question: Where the Rabbi's [and/or our ancestors] a bunch of duplicitous, fraudulent, deceptive conniving murderers or were they an honest, sincere bunch. If one believes the former then he will not accept the Torah as binding and if he believes the latter then he will fully accept the Torah.

Let me explain: The Torah claims that millions of people witnessed G-d's revelation to His people. If this didn't happen that means that at some point in history a group of [most likely] Rabbis presented the people with a book that claimed that all of their forefathers witnessed this world-changing event. Now, convincing people that this actually happened when they never heard about it until then would be quite a challenge, especially given the notorious Jewish stubborness not to accept anything from anybody. What compounds the difficulty is that we have to believe that these falsifiers mandated capital punishment in quite a few cases, claiming that G-d is behind it when He really isn't. That would make them murderers [or aiding and abetting murder] because they decreed a death penalty when someone lights a match on Saturday, when G-d never said such a thing.

Why they would want to impose such a prohibitive lifestyle on a whole nation of people is one strong question. What do they get out of it? So now every eight day old baby is going to have surgery performed on his most delicate organ?? Were they sick? Now all of the farmers are going to be forced to take a year off every seven years and allow the land to lie fallow. Were they suicidal [or homicidal if they weren't farmers]? They then put themselves in a rougher spot by promising a more abundant crop in the sixth year. Why would they set themselves up to be disproven??

Why would they write in their book that in the future the Jews would sin, be scattered to all four corners of the earth and come back? That is so dumb. Maybe they wouldn't sin, stay in the land and the whole thing would be proven bogus.

Why did they say that the event was witnessed by millions of people when the people would have great reason to doubt that such an event ever happened when they never heard about it. 500 years [let's say] after Matan Torah purportedly happened they are hearing about it for the first time?? Why don't they start the religion the way other religions started - by claiming a small number of people witnessed a miracle. Try denying that what you were never supposed to have witnessed never happened. If I tell you that last night I had a chavrusa with Eliyahu Hanavi you could never disprove it [although you could ask me if I have been taking my meds:-)].

In conclusion according to the deniers you have to concoct a crazy conspiracy theory and then assume the gullibility of the entire Jewish people, men, women and children. Although we have records of the Jews doing really rotten things, we have no record of the Jews [with the exception of Korach according to some medrashim] ever denying that Har Sinai happened.

To add to this conspiracy theory we have to believe that the Rabbis also made up all of the miracles in the Navi and once again convinced the Jews to believe them.

So you see - deniers are really big believers. They believe in that the rabbis are a bunch of duplicitous etc. etc. the conspiracy etc. and the gullibility of the Jews etc.

Believers also believe. We just believe that rabbis didn't lie [see the Ramban Vaeschanan on the pasuk והודעתם], they claim that millions of people were present at Har Sinai because they really were, that the Torah mandates capital punishment because G-d said so etc. We believe that the Torah makes almost impossible promises to keep [that the Jews will be dispersed but come back, that land will be especially productive in the sixth year, that when all of the Jews visit the Beis Hamikdash three times a year, the goyim won't take their homes when they are gone etc. etc.] because Hashem has the power to make miraculous things happen. We believe that the Jews have had an undeniably miraculous history because He is behind us.

So it is our belief system against the beliefs of the kofrim. Which belief system makes more sense? I believe strongly that ours does. But even if one argues that it doesn't and accepts the arguments of the kofrim - there are some very serious problems with their theory that leave great reason for doubt. So how are kofrim so sure of themselves? If they are intellectually honest they should be having serious crises of disbelief.

Like people who believe that the world was created by accident. To see the vast universe in all of its infinite complexity [of which science has barely scratched the surface] and then to claim that it was all created by accident after a big bang [without explaining how the dynamite that made the big bang got there] is a difficult proposition to accept and requires a HUUUUUUUGE leap of blind, and quite foolish and farflung is you ask me, faith. 

Reminds me of an old blog post from Cross-Currents:

Dancing this past Simchas Torah to Toras Hashem Temimah, we arrived at the words “eidus Hashem ne’emanah, machkimas pesi” and the following occurred to me:

Elsewhere, chazal define a pesi as a “ma’amin l’chol davar,” one who’ll believe anything. Now, it was G.K. Chesterton who famously observed that when one stops believing in G-d, it’s not that henceforth he believes in nothing, but rather that he’ll now believe in anything.

This, then, is Dovid HaMelech’s paean to the Torah — it wises up the pesi. That is to say, Hashem’s testimony teaches the pesi, whose standards of truth are so low and whose inability to think subtly is so great that he’ll believe anything so long as it suits his physical and ego drives, to search for and believe in only that which proves itself to be the truth.

For a living, breathing example of how this works in practice, consider this gem from an interview last week in the Guardian of Dick Dawkins, who, for those thankfully unfamiliar with him, makes a living writing atheistic best-sellers and does a little teaching on the side:


"When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told — religious Jews anyway — than atheists and [yet they] more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

So there you have it, folks. Meet Richard Dawkins, Oxford don, evolutionary biologist, militant atheist, raving conspiracy theorist. And now, confirmed pesi.