Science vs Torah. And the winner is....

Motek

Tue, Aug 07 2007, 10:00 pm

amother wrote:

The Torah tells us (via the midrash) that the moon can generate it's own light -- just not as much as the sun.

I'd like to look it up, can you cite where in the medrash?

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"Science" tells us that men have walked on the moon.

It's not that "science" tells us. Those who were there, told us. And it doesn't contradict Torah.

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The Torah tells us that above the earth is the Yesod of Aish and that anything that passes through it would burn up.

source please

Quote:

"Science" tells us that certain species, such as the dodo, the passenger pigeon and the tasmanian tiger are extinct.

Who says these birds and animal are species?

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Yet, the Torah tells us that no species will ever go extinct (see Minchas HaChinuch).

source please

Quote:

"Science" tells us that the conquest of Canaan could not have happened when it did because of archaeological evidence.

Who is the "science" you are referring to? A particular archaeologist? So what? He or even they, are not "science." He, or they, are people who try to guess the past based on things they find. Not exactly scientific.

Quote:

the scientists are all athiests who are pushing a platform of atheism on the masses

except for all the religious scientists who believe in G-d

Motek

Tue, Aug 07 2007, 10:27 pm

amother wrote:

I'm actually kind of surprised that I haven't gotten more support in this thread.

Why are you surprised? If you read the Slifkin thread you will see that there is much opposition to your premise and conclusions.

Quote:

Does no one else admit that Torah is truer than science

I wouldn't put it that way. It's not that Torah is "truer" than science. It's that Torah is the blueprint of the world and Torah is emes.

Science is people examining the world and coming to conclusions based on their observations.

Two different realms.

Quote:

as I proved at the start of the thread?

You quoted and then gave examples of seeming contradictions between Torah and science. Some are right, some are wrong, some are not contradictions.

Motek

Tue, Aug 07 2007, 10:28 pm

TammyTammy wrote:

I have no doubt that soon a poster will come along (Motek, are you out there? Smile

) and tell me that none of my sources are Torah sources. Nonetheless, there is nothing that says that a non-Torah source cannot be true.

I'm not going to go through all your statements and show where Torah says differently than you. Of course non-Torah sources may be true. That sure doesn't mean what you wrote is true!

TammyTammy wrote:

Actually, the fact that every science textbook bases itself on it is a very telling point in it's favor.

Why?
And if in every Health class in America, children are taught that homosexuality is a fine, healthy, approach to s-x, you would say that's a very telling point in its favor?

Mrs.Norris wrote:

All these things are not part of the 13 principles of faith!! You do not HAVE to believe them

Go ahead, please tell us what other parts of the Gemara we don't have to believe. One of the 13 principles of faith is that you have to believe that everything in Torah, Written and Oral included, is true!

TammyTammy

Wed, Aug 08 2007, 1:22 pm

Motek wrote:

Mrs.Norris wrote:

All these things are not part of the 13 principles of faith!! You do not HAVE to believe them

So, you think that at the time of the Churban of Beitar there were 64 million children in the city?

At the time of the destruction of Tur Malka there were 360,001,800,000 people in the city? (Keep in mind -- that number is over 360 billion -- about sixty time the population of the world today.)

(Both of the above examples are from Gemara Gittin).

Do you really believe that over 300,000,000 Jews lived in Mitzrayim before the plague of darkness (as in some versions of the Tanchuma)? This is far more than the estimated population of the entire world at the time.

Obviously, none of these statements are literally true... and that is the point - I don't have to believe everything I see in the Gemara as literally true. Of course, that doesn't mean that it should be discarded outright -- I'm sure there is some lesson to be learned from it. But I don't have to believe that it's absolutely, literally true -- or even close to it.

Or, let me ask you this question. If the OP comes back and gives a source for her statement about no animal being extinct, and it's a valid source from the canon, will you then say "well, it must be true and there must be dodos, passenger pigeons, mastodons, et al all hiding somewhere?"

Tammy

Motek

Wed, Aug 08 2007, 9:24 pm

Quote:

To quote the following Rambam about how to regard divrei Chazal:

רמב"ם פירוש המשניות - מסכת סנהדרין פרק י משנה א
הכת השניה הם רבים ג"כ, והם אותם שראו דברי החכמים או שמעום והבינו אותם כפי פשוטם וחשבו שלא כיוונו חכמים בו זולתי מה שמורה עליו פשט הדבר, והם באים לסכל אותם ולגנותם ומוציאין דיבה על מה שאין בו דיבה וילעגו על דברי חכמים ושכלם יותר זך מהם, ושהם עמי הארץ נפתים גרועי השכל סכלים בכלל המציאות עד שלא היו משיגים דבר חכמה בשום פנים, ורוב הנכשלים בזה השיבוש המתיחסים לחכמת הרפואות והמהבילים בגזרת הכוכבים, לפי שהם במחשבתם נבונים וחכמים בעיניהם ומחודדים ופילוסופים וכמה הם רחוקים מן האנושית אצל אותם שהם חכמים ופילוסופים על האמת, אבל הם סכלים יותר מן הכת הראשונה והרבה מהם פתיות, והוא כת ארורה לפי שהם משיבים על אנשים גדולים ונשיאים אשר נתבררה חכמתם לחכמים ואלו הפתאים אילו היה עמלם בחכמות עד שיהיו יודעים היאך ראוי לסדר ולכתוב הדברים בחכמת האלהות והדומה להן מן הדברים אצל ההמון ואצל החכמים ויבינו החלק המעשיי מן הפילוסופיה, אז היו מבינים אם החכמים ז"ל חכמים אם לא, והיה מתבאר להם ענין דבריהם

Quote:

Obviously, none of these statements are literally true... and that is the point - I don't have to believe everything I see in the Gemara as literally true.

I never said that one must believe that everything is literally true. One must believe that on whatever level Chazal intended their words to be understood on, it is true. Which is precisely the point: if Chazal based a halachic decision on the assumption that certain lice spontaneously generate, they meant it on a literal level (as literal as the halacha) and we likewise must believe it to be 'literally' true.

Likewise in regarding Midrashim, we look at the commentators who are qualified to decide what Chachamim meant, and if they say Chazal meant it literally (or otherwise), than we must believe that it is so.

Quote:

Or, let me ask you this question. If the OP comes back and gives a source for her statement about no animal being extinct, and it's a valid source from the canon, will you then say "well, it must be true and there must be dodos, passenger pigeons, mastodons, et al all hiding somewhere?"

a) I see no point in this what-if question.

b) I already pointed out that dodo birds etc. don't constitute a (Torah) species &

c) I don't think the Dodo Bird's existence nor its extinction is "scientific". I don't believe that one could prove scientifically anything about the past, and there is definitly no scientific method to prove that something is extinct, so this example is not relevant to this thread.

TzenaRena

Wed, Aug 08 2007, 9:50 pm

I hope none minds if I enlarge motek's quote from the Rambam for easier readability

Quote:

רמב"ם פירוש המשניות - מסכת סנהדרין פרק י משנה א
הכת השניה הם רבים ג"כ, והם אותם שראו דברי החכמים או שמעום והבינו אותם כפי פשוטם וחשבו שלא כיוונו חכמים בו זולתי מה שמורה עליו פשט הדבר, והם באים לסכל אותם ולגנותם ומוציאין דיבה על מה שאין בו דיבה וילעגו על דברי חכמים ושכלם יותר זך מהם, ושהם עמי הארץ נפתים גרועי השכל סכלים בכלל המציאות עד שלא היו משיגים דבר חכמה בשום פנים, ורוב הנכשלים בזה השיבוש המתיחסים לחכמת הרפואות והמהבילים בגזרת הכוכבים, לפי שהם במחשבתם נבונים וחכמים בעיניהם ומחודדים ופילוסופים וכמה הם רחוקים מן האנושית אצל אותם שהם חכמים ופילוסופים על האמת, אבל הם סכלים יותר מן הכת הראשונה והרבה מהם פתיות, והוא כת ארורה לפי שהם משיבים על אנשים גדולים ונשיאים אשר נתבררה חכמתם לחכמים ואלו הפתאים אילו היה עמלם בחכמות עד שיהיו יודעים היאך ראוי לסדר ולכתוב הדברים בחכמת האלהות והדומה להן מן הדברים אצל ההמון ואצל החכמים ויבינו החלק המעשיי מן הפילוסופיה, אז היו מבינים אם החכמים ז"ל חכמים אם לא, והיה מתבאר להם ענין דבריהם[size=18]

Motek

Sun, Aug 12 2007, 5:34 pm

TammyTammy wrote:

Gemara in Bava Basra 75a. “Rabbi Yochanan taught: ‘I will make your cornerstones of kadkod, and your gates of beryl.’ In the future, Hashem will stand up gemstones at the height of twenty amah by ten amah in the gates of Yerushalayim. They will be precious stones and pearls. A certain student mocked Rabbi Yochanan: If a gem the size of the egg of a tziltzala (the smallest bird) is rare, then there cannot be such enormous stones!

That student went traveling by sea. He almost drowned. He saw the angels on high sawing away at stones that were thirty by thirty amah and cutting them to a size of twenty by ten amah. [About ten meters by five meters.] He asked: For whom are you doing this? They said, for the Holy One, so that He can stand them up in the gates of Yerushalayim.

This student came to Rabbi Yochanan and said to him: It is fitting that you teach/interpret. That is just what I saw.

[Rabbi Yochanan said:] If you didn’t see it, you wouldn’t have believed it. You are a mocker of the words of the Sages.

Rabbi Yochanan gazed at this student and reduced him to a heap of bones.

mali

Mon, Aug 13 2007, 6:17 am

OP, your first post is rather funny.

When I was learning Taharas Mishpacha as a Kallah, we read about the different shades that have to be taken to a Rav. I remember the teacher pointing out that anything that doesn't look like fresh blood should be taken to one. When I told her, "but it says straight out here that black is problematic and some colors aren't..." she gave me this example:

The Torah tells us about the Psil T'cheles in Tzitzis. Ask any person who knows Hebrew what T'cheles is and they'll all say it's light blue. Now, look up the commentaries there:
Rashi (Bamidbar 15, 38) blue The green-blue dye obtained from the chillazon [See Aruch Hashalem under חִלָּזוֹן, Yehudah Feliks, Nature & Man in the Bible (New York: Soncino Press, 1981, pp. 18-20].
and another Rashi (verse 41) a thread of sky-blue [wool] Heb. פְּתִיל תְּכֵלֶת, so called because of the bereavement [suffered by the Egyptians] over the loss of their firstborn. The Aramaic translation of שִׁכּוּל, bereavement, is תִּכְלָא [a word similar to תְּכֵלֶת]. Moreover, the plague struck them at night, and the color of תְּכֵלֶת is similar to the color of the sky, which blackens at dusk; its eight threads symbolize the eight days that Israel waited from when they left Egypt until they sang the song at the [Red] Sea. - [Mid. Aggadah]
Bottom line is, the words of the Torah are all true (duh) but we have to understand them properly. For that we have our sages and rabbis who explain the general terms.

For example, you've discussed lice. There are many species of כינים, and obviously the one our sages discuss is not the one we're familiar with. One doesn't contradict the other.

Some of the things you quoted as coming from Torah have no backup as well as some things you based on science. Where did you find all that? Can you bring sources?

BTW, Yam Hagadol is the term used by all people back then because it was the largest sea they were familiar with. Nowhere (that I know of) do the sages write that there's no sea larger than it.

TzenaRena

Mon, Aug 13 2007, 10:26 am

Isn't the Mediteranean Sea connected to the Atlantic, and Indian oceans, through the straits of Dardenelles and similar places? It actually is a part of the ocean, and the Atlantic and Pacific are also connected, so essentially it's all one big ocean (called ukyanus in Chazal), on the one hand.

On the other hand, smaller seas which are surrounded by land, are also called "Yam", such as the Black sea, the Great Lakes, Sea of Azor, Yam Kineres, the Yam haMelach.. So of course, the Yam haGadol (Mediteranean), which shares a designation of sea and ocean is the largest Yam. It's by far larger than all those seas within the various continents, and is actually an extension of the one big Ocean.

Motek

Wed, Aug 15 2007, 8:48 pm

TammyTammy wrote:

In reality, EY has *never* stretched to the Euphrates.

So what? Rashi (citing the Gemara) says that the reason it's called "ha'gadol" is because it is associated with Eretz Yisrael.

[size=18](1-2) ספר בראשית פרק טו
(יח) ביום ההוא כרת יהוה את אברם ברית לאמר לזרעך נתתי את הארץ הזאת מנהר מצרים עד הנהר הגדל נהר

רש"י על בראשית פרק טו פסוק יח
הנהר הגדול נהר פרת - לפי שהוא דבוק לא"י קוראהו גדול אע"פ שהוא מאוחר בד' נהרות היוצאים מעדן שנאמר והנהר הרביעי הוא פרת משל הדיוט עבד מלך מלך הדבק לשחוור וישתחוו לך:

----
(3-4) ספר דברים פרק א
(ז) פנו וסעו לכם ובאו הר האמרי ואל כל שכניו בערבה בהר ובשפלה ובנגב ובחוף הים ארץ הכנעני והלבנון עד הנהר הגדל נהר

רש"י על דברים פרק א פסוק ז
עד הנהר הגדול - מפני שנזכר עם א"י קוראו גדול משל הדיוט אומר עבד מלך מלך. הדבק לשחוור וישתחוו לך קרב לגבי דהינא ואידהן:

TammyTammy

Thu, Aug 16 2007, 10:51 am

Motek wrote:

TammyTammy wrote:

In reality, EY has *never* stretched to the Euphrates.

Fair enough. Although seems to contradict what we discussed in the other thread about Rashi needing to repeat himself.

Tammy