Why do you believe in Hashem ?

amother

Cobalt

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 2:21 am

If there were one shiur or one book that perfectly proved the existence of God, then everyone would be a believer already. Many of these "proofs" don't stand up to rigorous
examination. And that's ok. Hashem could have chosen to give us a world without doubts or questions. He didn't. Part of our job is to search, to ask, and ultimately to take that very private, individual leap of faith. The path to belief is different for different people.

amother

Cyan

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 4:01 am

cozyblanket wrote:

I only skimmed the thread. I started believing in Hashem when I was a teenager and I went to EY for the first time. My heart was so moved by the beauty of the country and it became clear to me that there is Hashem And that he loves us. I fee Hashem with me all the time, in all of the craziness and in all of the pain and in all of the joy. I can't imagine life any other way.

I talk to Him all day long And it is rare that I feel alone.

you are lucky (just like I am). It's a pity how some people don't know this feeling

amother

Cyan

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 4:56 am

amother wrote:

for those that are hurt by what hashem made you go through, listen to this song. It's in yiddish. I can translate it, but only later (when I have some more time). It's really beautiful and absolutely worth listening to.
https://jmusic.me/מיכאל-שניצלער-יא-דו-קענסט-michoel-shnitzler-yes-u-can/
It's song nr 10.

Here the translation (I tried my best)

A water Seller, very old
Fountains water he drags
The buckets on his shoulder he holds
In town to bring it

One bucket, however, had a hole
Water drops out
The other bucket it holds
All the water inside

A few years like this he wears it
one bucket only half water
His friends arrive full
Like him, he wants to walk around
He can not handle it anymore

One day he goes to his boss
Why do I have to walk with holes?
Fix the leakage
I also wanto hold it all
He answers him why...

From your holes I know
You do not have to be angry
You only need to be proud

Open your eyes
See your work
All the flowers that grow on your side

For years I go
On your side of the road
To sow seeds

Because I knew
From you will leak
You will water it faithfully....

blessedflower

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 5:38 am

amother wrote:

so not true. People just don't read the books. No not everything has answers but a lot can be explained. People that don't believe mostly don't wanto believe

PinkFridge

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 8:53 am

jerusalem90 wrote:

I read online where an atheist was finding "mistakes" in the bible. One of them was that it wouldn't take 40 years to walk from Egypt to Israel.

If you know absolutely nothing about Exodus other than it took them 40 years to walk from Egypt to Israel, and then you look at a map, then that seems like a genuine "mistake" in the bible. But even a Jew with the simplest Jewish education would know that a person who would ask that question was just very ignorant of Torah.

Other people take one verse in the Bible out of context, such as "I found one man among one thousand that I could respect, but no woman" and find that message so morally repugnant (so do I!) that they shut their mind off then and there and say "I don't care to learn more, I refuse to believe in a religion so hateful". But they don't realize that Gd didn't say that line, it was just one man's human, biased, ego-based opinion. A man who had 1,000 wives clearly wasn't looking for a partner to respect, just a body for a temporary thrill. Just because Gd chose to include it in his book doesn't mean he agrees with it -- he includes the arguments of Job's comforters too.

I am troubled by Shlomo Hamelech. I was looking forward to a recent class that was supposed to be about Shlomo but was rescheduled. I do want answers, and once I have a bit more time I'll start some of my own research.

Till then, here's my take: I don't know if he was looking for a partner to respect but chas v'shalom to say he was looking for temporary thrills. I would have to go to pasuk to see it exactly but it sounds to me that the pshat was, he had a reason for marrying so many women and had hoped to find that he would be able to respect the women he married. Sadly, it wasn't so. Perhaps it is possible, and not the height of hubris, for us to say that he realized that ego and biases were informing his decisions. But any pasuk written by Shlomo Hamelech is something for us to learn from with a takeaway lesson.

momnaturally

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 9:15 am

jerusalem90 wrote:

Shlomo Hamelech was a prophet and everything he wrote is prophecy from Hashem. We have no concept of the greatness of Shlomo he is way beyond our comprehesion and compared to even the greatest tzaddikim of today he is literally an angel.
The pasuk you quoted was misquoted. It never said "respect"
The pasuk can easily be explained that there was a very rare attribute he found only one in a thousand of men and he never found it in a woman or found it even less often than one in a thousand in a woman. Of course he respected women.
The reason he married so many women is discussed in the deeper more kabbalistic type of seforim. I have no knowledge of them but there are reasons for everything he did.

PinkFridge

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 9:23 am

momnaturally wrote:

I liked your post. I was debating editing mine, I have some reservations about some of what I wrote, but I'll let it stand.

seeker

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 9:28 am

I didn't grow up in a super-smothering community, but I did encounter the types of teachers and principals who didn't welcome questions. However I also think that someone with a little intelligence and a true desire to know will figure out the right people and the right time to ask. I'd rate my teenage/young adult social intelligence quite low and even I knew which teachers I could ask to pick an argument (and prove to myself/others how hostile they are), and which ones I could ask to gain insight. For those who are older or more adventurous, one can also reach out to authors or speakers that seem promising if the people in your personal life aren't. In this day and age, just as it is easier to access media/groups/individuals who will lead you away from Torah, it is likewise easier to access those who can help strengthen your Judaism. There are famous rabbis who answer their own emails personally. There are multitudes of publications that can expose you to people who may be able to help. There are organizations for this (never contacted one personally so I can't say just how helpful, but in terms of finding someone to reach out to - it was never that easy when I was a kid, not all that long ago.) And I'm seeing books from frum publishers advertised in frum publications with titles and topics that are edgier - right now on my to-read shelf I have a book about summarizing rational supports for Judaism, a book about reconciling Jewish historical chronology with differences in secular chronology, a book about the divine origin of the Torah (I think maybe not from a mainstream frum publisher? But definitely a frum approach) - I have read parts of all of these and they are all highly intelligent and thoroughly researched, and I'm seeing advertisements for more of the same genre. Not on my to-read shelf because I already read it is a slim little book "Encounters" by Aryeh Kaplan (unfortunately not available for follow-up contact as he passed away young) that succinctly addresses a number of core theological concepts in a very approachable way. R' Aryeh Kaplan was a highly regarded physicist.

momnaturally

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 9:50 am

I liked many reasons posters mentioned they believed in Hashem. It's very special and heart warming just to read just the way everyone described their feelings about Hashem.
One thing I don't think was mentioned was death. It is a bit morbid but thinking about what will happen to us after we die or what happened to loved ones that died definitely encourages belief in Hashem and that there is more than just this world.
I think the fact that even non Jews constantly commemorate people and have monuments seem to indicate that a person that died is not alive here but still in existence. Otherwise what is the point of commemorating non existing beings ?

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:12 am

seeker wrote:

Where do you get this idea from? I haven't researched this particular point but it seems to me that Atheism is a relatively unpopular, contrived idea. It seems to me that for at least the past 6000ish or more, depending on your understanding of the creation timeline, belief in a higher power has been the default. Whether you're sacrificing and praying to Hashem or another version of invisible omnipresent universe-force, a rock, the sun, a person-god, or a different thing for each of your needs; whether you serve with words, sacrifices, dances, or don't serve but just kind of believe that your life comes from somewhere, most people do it. On the contrary, those who promote atheism, such as Stalinist (IIRC?) Russia, had to work mighty hard to sell it - and even then there was eventually a lot of rebound.

Even for those who aren't into feelings and instincts, maybe almost the entire world is on to something...

ETA: my point is that it is probably very very rare for someone to be an atheist without even thinking about it just because they were never introduced to the concept of a deity. If you had to be introduced to the concept by someone else, then how do you explain the multitude of world religions since ancient times, as well as those non-atheists in foxholes?

first of all 'there are no atheists in foxholes' is a quote, not a fact.

estimates are that there are atleast 200M atheists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.....heism

The type of atheism that I described is "implicit atheism" To be fair - I have no reference to how many of the atleast 200M atheists are "implicit atheists" but given the many years of secularization in China I'm comfortable that there are millions of folks who never pondered the idea of a deity.

Optimystic

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:24 am

amother wrote:

There is no such thing as "implicit atheists" anymore than there are "implicit anti-gravity believers."

I don't know why you are so emotionally attached to atheism that you feel this need to push it on frum women. Maybe sometimes Hashem shows Himself separate to those nearest Him, or a righteous person falls seven times, and seven times he rises. Or maybe it is just that rejecting human ideas of deity is a necessary step to finding Hashem, and some people get stuck longer than others in this middle step. Many people never even reach this middle step, so if you think you are smarter than believers like me, maybe you are.

amother

Saddlebrown

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:30 am

Optimystic wrote:

I'm not an atheist.

I do however reject the idea that there are no atheists.

I also reject the idea that every person at some point in life ponders if there is a deity.

When I learned gravity in highschool physics - it certainly changed my understanding of why I'm not floating in the air.

Laiya

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:35 am

amother wrote:

Re China, China is actually having a revival of religion; a third of the country is religious, and by 2030, China will have more Christians than the US. Some believe that the Chinese do not respond to Western polls the way the questions are intended, so the current number of religious Chinese people is actually being under-stated.

I found it fascinating that, despite attempts to stamp out religion over the course of a generation, it is now resurging in China.

Also, it's relevant to note that Communism rejects religion for purposes of control, not out of a sense of theological conviction.

Last edited by Laiya on Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:47 am; edited 1 time in total

PinkFridge

Wed, Apr 25 2018, 10:39 am

amother wrote:

https://www.wpi.edu/people/faculty/gottlieb

And this is the speech I listened to
https://youtu.be/BORt53UWyeY

Thanks!
I'm not good about listening to long things on line but I did listen for a few minutes. Sounds interesting. It would be a trip to see the brothers Gottlieb together on a stage ;-D
From the few minutes, I couldn't help but think of Dr. Twerski's assertion that everyone can access the 12 Steps, even atheists, because everyone can get in tune with spirituality.