I was reading a book written by a [secular] professor of anthropology who researched the phenomenon of "double lifers" - people who are outwardly religious but secretly are not. They stopped believing in Hashem and Torah and stopped keeping mitzvos in private while keeping up the show on the outside.
Here is a passage: "The 2011 Ami Magazine article “Imposters Among Us” popularized the concept of Orthopraxy, where despite life-changing doubt a person continues to observe all the commandments. One of the central figures in that article, which upset many readers who wrote in to complain about its publication, was an Ortho-prax posek, a respected rabbi responsible for religious rulings, who had become a secret atheist. A mutual friend introduced me to him, Dovid, a Yeshivish (non- Hasidic) double lifer. He was a shy, awkward man, with a short beard and side curls tucked behind his ears, common for many Yeshivish. Dovid’s story was similar to many other Hasidic Jews with life-changing doubt, but his wife Shoshana’s response was distinctive from the Hasidic wives I heard about, given that she herself had more access to media and education.
Like many others, Dovid had always had unanswered questions. When he got married he tried to repress his doubts, to start again. But as his marriage eventually foundered under the stress of having six young children in six years, and his own growing depression, his doubts resurfaced. After a few years of online reading, which was less restricted in Yeshivish communities than Hasidic ones, he attended a Richard Dawkins lecture at the New York Society for Ethical Culture. There he realized, with growing despair, that atheism was the only philosophy that finally answered all of his questions."
WOW!!!! THAT is the answer. Atheism. NO MORE DOUBT!!! What a relief. Thank you Richard שר"י for your wisdom!!!! The only question atheism doesn't answer is EVERYTHING!!!! How did the world get here?? Atheism has the answer: Absolutely NOTHING created absolutely EVERYTHING!!! SO CONVINCING!!! And where did the first molecule before the [alleged] Big Bang come from??? Ahhhh - even atheists [who have ALL the answers] have no other answer than "one day we will find out". Or maybe not....
What is DNA??
DNA or deoxyribonucleic acid is a long molecule that contains our unique genetic code. Like a recipe book it holds the instructions for making all the proteins in our bodies.
- Your genome is made of a chemical called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA for short.
- DNA contains four basic building blocks or bases: adenine? (A), cytosine? (C), guanine? (G) and thymine? (T).
- The order, or sequence, of these bases form the instructions in the genome.
- DNA is a two-stranded molecule.
- DNA has a unique ‘double helix’ shape, like a twisted ladder.
An illustration to show the double helix structure of DNA.
Image credit: Genome Research Limited
- Each strand is composed of long sequences of the four bases, A, C, G and T.
- The bases on one strand of the DNA molecule pair together with complementary bases on the opposite strand of DNA to form the ‘rungs’ of the DNA ‘ladder’.
- The bases always pair together in the same way, A with T, C with G.
- Each base pair is joined together by hydrogen bonds.
- Each strand of DNA has a beginning and an end, called 5’ (five prime) and 3’ (three prime) respectively.
- The two strands run in the opposite direction (antiparallel) to each other so that one runs 5’ to 3’ and one runs 3’ to 5’, they are called the sense strand and the antisense strand, respectively.
- The strands are separated during DNA replication.
There are about 3 billion nucleotides in human DNA. The average length of a human nucleotide is 0.6 nanometers, or 0.0000000006 meters, so human DNA is about 1.8 meters (5 feet) long. This doesn't sound that impressive, but keep in mind that 5 feet of DNA is being packed into each cell in your body, and the average diameter of the a nucleus in a human cell is only 10 microns, or 0.00001 meters. Clearly, DNA is packaged (twisted, wrapped and folded) so that it is very compact. Another question might be how is this DNA replicated if it's packaged so tightly?
There are about 50 to 75 trillion cells in a human body, so if the DNA from each cell were placed end to end, the chain would be from 90 to 135 trillion meters long. מה רבו מעשיך השםםםםםםםםםם!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😀😃😄😎
So how do we have this complex DNA? Atheism has THE answer!!!! BY MISTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😲😲
Every time -- in every human being!!!!!!
DNA is one of BILLIONS of examples of incredibly complex things going on in our world. Hashem would explain all of that. Nothing else does.
We are all intelligent beings. Where did all of this intelligence come from? Atheists have the answer!!! From nothing intelligent. So non-intelligence created massive intelligence. To believe THAT one has to be VERY unintelligent or taking heavy drugs. Doesn't the notion that an All Intelligent Being created all this intelligence make a TAD BIT more sense to make the understatement of the millennium?
So "Dovid" whoever you are and everyone else -- remember: Being religious invites questions. No thinking religious person is completely devoid of questions. But denying anything and everything supernatural answers just about nothing and brings up countless more questions, such that belief in Hashem is far more plausible.
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Another thing that struck me reading the book is that none of these double lifers became better human beings after dropping their faith and observance. They all actually became far worse human beings [despite atheistic lectures delivered at the New York Society For Ethical Culture] .
We religious people understand that we are comprised of good and evil. We engage in a DAILY minute by minute battle against the evil side of us. The people featured in the book stopped battling. Their focus is on doing whatever their animal instincts dictate without getting caught. Their whole lives are filled with lies and duplicity. They have affairs with each other [one married chasidish women to her married boyfriend after a מעשה זנות: "You just had relations (she used a different lashon) with a niddah"] and with outsiders. The author described a wild party of these forlorn souls she attended that was filled with loud music and dancing, drugs, alcohol, men fooling around with women, men fooling around with men [!!!] and women with women [!!!]. The proverbial "---, drugs n' rock and roll" all in one.
So inspiring!!! Drop Torah and become an unrestrained animal.
Thanks - but no thanks.
