Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are both brilliant people and master debaters. I am however, disappointed that they use their superior intellect and debating skills to hammer their opponents into submission rather than treat them with respect and patience. The latter would make their point far more convincing in the long run.
That aside, Hitchens said a few things in my recent perusal of his debates which I was convinced were wrong which turned out to be right.
1) Jewish Settlers are messianic in motivation. I always thought they were orthodox and patriotically motivated. No, it turns out Hitchens is right. The bulk majority are trying to annex land to bring about the messiah.
http://www.eurasiareview.com/23022012-israel-messianic-settlers-provoke-violence-and-seek-final-day-of-reckoning-oped/
2) According to Hitchens, Maimonides said that circumcision was performed to reduce sensation. I couldn’t believe that this would be the case. Indeed, Maimonides does make this claim.
http://www.jewsagainstcircumcision.org/jewish.htm#Maimonides
3) Why the Jews? I had satisfied myself that the answer was that Jews were an intellectual race, forced to be so by not being able to own land or be sovereign. As a corollary, Jews were historically forced to be money lenders for lack of any other legal profession open to them.
Hitchens claims two other sources:
i) The Jews rejected two messiahs, not just one: Jesus and Mohammed, making us enemies of 3 billion people straight off the bat and
ii) The charge of deicide open against us by the Catholic Church was only repudiated as late as 1965. Sure I knew they called Jews ‘Christ Killers’ but I didn’t realize there was an actual charge which was later repudiated.
I once watched his debate
I understand why Christians don’t win easily with him
reason being they lack the understanding of a god of the world to come
what kind of argument against the bible when God tells to kill amuliek etc etc
if you believe in a god then what’s the question?
if hitler would get incarcerated in a tiny cute baby can’t a god demand to kill it?
I mean u can say there is no God (u cant) but to say that if there is a God this and this makes no sense cause u don’t agree to a concept of a god is erroes and why Richard didn’t answer this or didn’t know how to answer aliens or Satan is just a lack of his knowledge of what a god what so many things mean
ps. the Rambam explains that any logical explination to a mitzvah can be “added” to any of many reasons
I don’t see this as a biggie compared to other commandments
bris is a symbol of our connection to god
our only physical connection on our body
being connected to god means leaving our materialistick desires and aiming it to the spiritual factor
that’s all
so removing of that forskin might remove a tiny bit of the enjoyment of the physical sexual enjoyment it symbolises in resemblence reason the goal we have a packt a bond a Bris with hashem to cut a bit of our materialistic desires and aim for spirituality
chazal tell us why is Mt sini called sini
sini means hate , from Mt sini they hate us, God chose us , no one likes chosen ones therfore it’s reasonable for hate
jealousy hate is huge
eisuv hated Jacob for this reason
when u are talking about settlers annexing kicking out others it’s a tiny group I think
most orthodox are not kicking anyone out before the messiah comes
God did us one favor he made his commandments limited to understanding situations and customs
we donter stone somone today that is michalil shabbat etc, when there is Devine presents he gave us Devine rule while we are in gulis we don’t have rules governing us like this or else we would look like Iran etc
It was interesting watching you try to derive my viewpoint and level of understanding. It will surprise you to know that I debunk the Kuzari proof for the BENEFIT of judaism and that I was once almost fully Orthodox (modern orthodox).
modern orthodoxy is greatly far from the real observance I think
and being all most that means u were REALLY far away
Martin give it a taste
what’s there to lose
try and experiment the real thing
I don’t know where to guide you too as I’m a simple chaseedisher guy with more then eanough flaws of myself
but seriously
maybe u fell out cause modern orthodoxy maybe made no sense to you
maybe being simple orthodox will
and then u will understand why we don’t need this BENIFIT of debunking something we believe is rational eanough
rational enough?
yes as I said we can’t prove we are not sleeping now or that we are not a blood cell in a giants toe!
that being said the Kuzari argument is proof beyond resonable doubt
we don’t need more
more won’t help (golden calf to prove it, or holocaust deniers)
and if u understand a god and if a god wants to implement a religion this is the exact formula to do it
Good, we’re coming to a consensus now. We agree, you have said so, that the Kuzari Proof is Kuzari Evidence. You now contend that this evidence is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Here are some arguments against the Kuzari Proof which cause it to be below reasonable doubt:
1) it assumes there were 3 million Israelites at Mount Sinai. Bollocks.
2) There were no external validators of this event.
3) The 9/11 report and the Warren Report (JFK) both are widely distributed texts which future historians, may infer, were almost entirely uncontested because history failed to record the dissenting opinion. History is rife with instances of loss of the dissenting opinion. “The victors write history in their favor”. How then do you know that there wasn’t a huge debate at the time and the winners obfuscated the dissenting opinion, notably that God DID NOT appear at Mt Sinai.
[Good, we’re coming to a consensus now.]
Not at all
[We agree, you have said so, that the Kuzari Proof is Kuzari Evidence.]
evidence leads to prove a point, that’s proof! I didnt and I won’t and no one will and there is no reason to back out from a simple history story
[You now contend that this evidence is evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.]
Yes and rational eanough even for those who don’t understand the deep argument just understand it on the face of it for them it’s rational proof eanough to require them to adhere to the result of this findings
[Here are some arguments against the Kuzari Proof which cause it to be below reasonable doubt:]
Abele answered you on all of them so I donto see reason why u keep repeating the same rubbish and misleading questions while he answered you quite clearley and wasn’t debunked
[1) it assumes there were 3 million Israelites at Mount Sinai. Bollocks.]
I have no idea why you think there wernt billions upon billions of people in that day and age
it comes from this false perceived knowledge that only what we can prove can be , this is baloni there were certainly all kinds of ages for the reason of population changes in mass
it only takes 10 generations of people living long eanough and having hassidic size families and the world would be up to a few trillion
archilogical findings and those similar are not interesting at all do debunk I don’t find them more then a fairy tale
there were millions there and we know so by mere simple history
2) There were no external validators of this event.
Kuzari didn’t prove his point by outside observers written in such a book is proof
but that’s not true btw
all of the world knew and heard !
[3) The 9/11 report and the Warren Report (JFK) both are widely distributed texts which future historians, may infer, were almost entirely uncontested because history failed to record the dissenting opinion. History is rife with instances of loss of the dissenting opinion. “The victors write history in their favor”. How then do you know that there wasn’t a huge debate at the time and the winners obfuscated the dissenting opinion, notably that God DID NOT appear at Mt Sinai.]
the point is that the time of the impelmtation of this religion and rules it was in big mass
and it continually kept going in mass
therfore it’s impossible to enforce and implement such belives without knowing that the word of the book is true
we commemorate these events since it happend with rules rituals and holidays
maybe u don’t understand the importance of this fact, but these holidays enforce rituals very very hard to adhere to (for the unreliguous man) impossible to enforce to a nation that we tell them YOU SAW THERFORE DO THIS if they didnt see it
this is an mass enforcent if anyome put a candle on shabbat they would be killed therfore unrelistic to question who knows if it was read and there is no need for them to read the book while most Americans never read the constitution most religious jews know the bible the 5 books
and through the generations we had religious schools en mass again!
martin your “being” also answers this question
if there are :u” today there were you then
for 40 years there wasn’t much to do but to discuss the new law book food was fallen from the sky and the clothing were washed by the cloulds
and as we see the Jews took every opertunity to question and to rebIle
if the bibles story would be questionable no one including me would accept all these restrictions! and would leave moses all alone!
I don’t know why I need to repeat the argument of the Kuzari I don’t know if i added anything cause I don’t think u asked anything
but if you don’t understand I anewer to my ability to explain
if you still won’t understand I will copy and paste the kusri or the Rambam in Hebrew for u to read
Sorry, we have to stop right at go. We have a problem in definitions. You said “evidence leads to prove a point, that’s proof”
No. When I count an animals legs and count 4 legs that is evidence that perhaps this animal is a dog. Proof (beyond a reasonable doubt) in this case is a visual examination of the animal and the determination that it is indeed a dog. Proof (absolute) is a genetic sample comparing it to known dog samples. Evidence is not proof. The Kuzari Evidence is very poor evidence at that.
I don’t know why you focus on my Grammer rather then to the point
אבער אויב ווילסטו רעדען יידש זיי מיין גאסט
but talking of proof let me try to explain something
when you say proof you have no choice but to put it in a frame of reference
is there something so clear that no one can deny it ?
well there is nothing that will fill that shoe
as whatever u throw at me I can give you 15 throeries and hypotheses thar it’s not what u claim it to be
you can even contridict yourself and I can’t argue if you decide that contridiction isn’t logical, even if you do agree contridiction isn’t logical you can still claim there is no need of being logical and just bring time as manifestation of imagination to your rescue
so what are we searching for
what is our graph what is our frame of reference
for me the need of proof in religion is what would you in your every day life use as proof to do or not to do certain things
if you would have to kind of evidence conflicting to what rules would u adhere to in your daily life to judge which of those to evidence is something that will prove to you and decide your actions accordingly
religion only needs to prove that in order God should have the right to reward and punish
the Kuzari proves the Jewish religion much much much stronger then any other history story I’ve ever belived or heard!
Are you aware that Christian missionaries use a modified version of the Kuzari proof to prove their religion? 1) Jesus performed miracles in front of millions
2) It was reported commonly that these miracles had occurred and no one contested this wide publication.
3) Hence, Jesus performed the miracles ascribed to him and he is, indeed, the son of God.
modified version LOL
the Kuzari isn’t a basis which u can use and say we are close to that
or its proof or not close to it isn’t proof
Jesus did miricles? I do too!
and if I’ll have a devoted student he can go and tell anyone in let’s say 100 years from now the miricles I did
Will I be able was Christianity able to convince a generation of a nation that THEY say Jesus making miricles LET ALONE GOD
were they able to WERE THE MAYANS able to reference THEIR NATION TO A BOOK STATING IT WAS GIVEN BY GOD IN FRONT OF MILLIONS AND THEY ARE IT?
no
and no
never the less a book that demands 613 commandments and controls every aspect of your life in the extreme! extreme!
did you ever learn taharis hamishpucha do u know how complicated that was in those days of kudishim and that is
you know something Martin
all religions are one peice of joke compared to our holy thora, you go and again and again try to compare a thing here a thing there to disprove simple logic
you keep leaving out crutial points the Kuzari makes in short which those who know the thora know what his evidence proves for
there isn’t there wasn’t and there will never be a nation that claims that GOD HIMSELF appeared to them and gave them extreme detailed mitzvos to follow
you won’t find any nation that is a nation that have those books they have generation after generation and thier religion is just as it was 3000 years ago
any I say any of the above facts missing form any of your made up comparisons is not something worth mentioning here