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m effectively sacrifice his son why because this was the way par excellence for a person in the ancient world to demonstrate their unequivocal devotion to their god and if mere laypeople of other nations were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to give their most prized possession their own flesh and blood how is it that abraham the father of many peoples the leader and progenitor of the israelites could not also give on this level if he had not it may have looked as if he lacked adequate credentials for leadership to be god s ever willing agent and selfless servant it would have been beneath our national dignity beneath god s dignity to appear lesser than the nations in this regard moving forward in time prayer eventually eclipsed sacrifice as the jewish mode of worship indeed part of this owed to the destruction of the second temple however the institution of prayer had already been established well before the destruction clearly just as the original israelites wished to worship in the manner of the nations by offering sacrifices so too did later generations desire to utilize prayer which presumably became a mode of worship in common use by other nations such as the greeks when the temple was destroyed prayer by default became the only mode of worship allowed but in all probability once sacrifice was all but rooted out of civilized religion and was looked upon as a vestige of paganism of primitive religion the notion that sacrifice could no longer be performed would have come as a welcome relief to most jews that is to say prayer was now the proper mode of worship and just as with sacrifices it would have been below the dignity of the jewish religion not to honor its god with prayer this transition was most certainly connected with the increasing appeal of christianity with the advent of a new testament which resonated with the higher moral sensibilities of people at the time i t became beneath the dignity of a religion to have a wrathful god in earlier times such a god was magnificent powerful respected an honor for a people to have no longer but rather than add to god s word the jewish methodology was to reinterpret it mold it into something acceptable midrash in essence saved us from the ignominy of a wrathful god in the biblical view an affront to god s honor was worthy of wholesale slaughter innocents and children alike as much as it may be difficult for us to comprehend this was not considered to be morally problematic at the time in talmudic times however and in the midrash such cruel or unjustifiably harsh punishment on the part of god would be totally unacceptable so the midrash adds detail to the story justifications and qualifications to soften the blow as it were so as to bring god in line with a more dignified conception likewise the torah extends the death penalty rather liberally according to the text in rabbinic interpretation however capital punishment in the torah serves largely as a warning which only very rarely and under the most extreme circumstances would actually be carried out fast forward once again to the post enlightenment post scientific revolution modern era whereas religion once served as the beacon of light to the world offered answers which could be fully digested by the intellectual mind science and secular scholarship now began to command far greater attention and respect at the early stages it would have been beneath the dignity of most anyone to call themselves an atheist per se however the theological dogma became softened among many intellectuals who were attracted to more to deistic ideas a more naturalistic conception of god rather than traditional theism with its belief in divine oversight and judgment heaven and hell miracles and so forth it would be beneath the dignity of an enlightened thinker to entertain fundamentalist beliefs however it would also be unseemly to profess in public the denial of a god creator altogether nowadays throughout the non fundamentalist world it is perfectly acceptable to call oneself an agnostic or an atheist however there is still a certain level stigma attached to non belief as evidenced by politicians who commonly pander to religious groups by professing their belief in god and jesus christ evangelical or otherwise fundamentalist christians certainly do not see it as beneath the dignity of jews to take the bible literally yet in more secular circles which includes the vast majority of academic and scholarship circles torah and orthodoxy are grouped with all other forms of religious fundamentalism being at best quaint naive and sorely deluded and at worst a danger to free society torah jews are seen as blind followers of religious doctrine denying basic facts about the origin and age of the universe and the development of life on earth they are seen as teaching their children to believe in myth and superstition holding fast to antiquated notions about women and gays and to varying degrees as rejecting the value of secular knowledge and studies and they would be correct in this it is contrary to the honor and dignity of torah and of jewish civilization for such beliefs and attitudes and in some cases practices to be perpetuated it should be beneath the dignity of any people who seeks truth who eschews the worship of falseness to carry on professing myth to be reality and reality be the product of a secular agenda it will eventually be beneath our dignity to walk into synagogue with the intent of worshiping a god all this is a chilul hashem a blight on the name of torah and judaism that in brief is another example of what is wrong with god posted by atheodox jew at 3 52 pm 3 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels atheist orthodox prayer sacrifice tuesday april 3 2012 problem 1 god defies reasonability discussions about whether or not to believe in god generally come from either the truth angle or the utilitarian angle truth arguments relate to whether or not it is reasonable to postulate god s existence utilitarian arguments relate not to the fact of god s existence but to whether belief in god is a constructive positive force in the world or whether it is a destructive force the previous section outlined in brief some of the utilitarian arguments for belief in god particularly as it pertains to jews living in the religious community this section will briefly address the question of the truth of god s existence it must be understood from the outset that it is in no way possible to demonstrate or prove conclusively whether god does or does not exist the question relates to the reasonability of postulating one way or the other to examine this it is important that we first make the distinction between god the creator and god of the torah i maintain that belief in a creator of the universe is perfectly reasonable we do not understand how existence came to be what it is and it is reasonable to speculate that there is an intelligence behind it this is not to be clear an argument for intelligent design which claims to offer evidence for god s existence based on gaps in nature especially in evolution that it proposes could not have been bridged were it not for divine intervention the consensus at this time in the scientific community is that intelligent design is a pseudo scientific enterprise whose arguments do not comprise anything on the order of evidence of the supernatural when i say that belief in a creator is reasonable i mean from the standpoint of human psychology i e it is a natural thing for us to believe if we are conscious beings with the ability to create who is to say there is not a consciousness greater than ourselves which is responsible for the universe does that mean that god s existence is therefore likely no does it say anything as to the nature of god or for that matter how many gods are involved no might there be a race of aliens who spawned life on earth there may well be point being the idea of god is pure speculation reasonable coming from the human being but speculation nonetheless however the more specificity one attaches to god the creator often the less reasonable the speculation becomes and the more complex theological argumentation one must formulate in order to support that belief for instance the notion of a benevolent god is one which is difficult to support positing such inevitably leads to the theological paradox often brought between god s omnipotence and god s benevolence i e the question as to why an all powerful god does not intervene to curtail suffering it is precisely theological questions such as these which appear contrived needless and frankly irksome which draw many people to an atheistic position after all why enter into such a paradox when there is a far more straightforward way out much ink has already been spilled on arguments for god s existence cosmological teleological unmoved mover jewish historical etc and i do not intend to elaborate on these here suffice it to say such arguments may highlight lapses in our knowledge or phenomena that are unique and highly intriguing but they in no way require that we fill in those spaces with god as opposed to any other natural explanation in any case my focus here is not on god in the abstract ineffable sense but on god as the giver of the torah god the commander maker of miracles we spoke about specificity in regards to god as being inversely related to reasonability on that count the god of the torah is another level of specificity altogether to believe in this god one has to accept that he came to abraham isaac and jacob to joseph and moses spoke to them took the children of israel out of egypt with wonders and miracles and commanded the mitzvot of the torah all of which took place approximately between 3800 and 3300 bce in traditional orthodox terms one also would have to believe despite it not saying so it the torah that god dictated the entire torah letter by letter to moses again one cannot prove that this did or did not happen the question is one of reasonability to that end let us ask two simple questions 1 where is god now stated bluntly show me the miracles if a sea can split on command if the voice of god can be heard on the top of a mountain giving over instructions to a nation if a column of fire cloud can follow a people s path in the desert if manna can fall from the sky why is it that we do not see and experience these things or anything remotely similar today to one who says that some individuals do indeed hear the word of god i say that if you examine closely there will invariably be a more reasonable explanation it will be accountable to some combination of self delusion fakery mistaken attribution dream trance hypnosis or hallucination to one who cites real life miracles chance meetings synchronous events miraculous healings rescues etc to which hundreds of thousands of individuals regularly attest once again there will always be a more plausible explanation such as statistical eventuality that is with the countless events and decisions a person encounters every day it is to be expected that once in a while one of those would have a serendipitous character what happens is that such an event is taken not only with great surprise and joy but as also portending supernatural involvement i e god s hand in the world but for every one of those events are countless others which were decidedly less than astonishing there were all the times you turned a corner just a split second before running into a friend from childhood similarly for every person who makes a miraculous recovery there are thousands more who do not and their stories generally remain untold understandably we prefer to relate the miraculous happy endings and therefore we lose sight of the fact of their statistical inevitability moreover even if one were to posit supernatural explanations to things such as chance encounters they are still miracles on a different order of magnitude than say water standing up like a wall or all the firstborn males of egypt dying overnight one argument made by believers is that god s appearance in biblical times was due to its being a special era whose specific needs required a more direct divine engagement with humanity now that the revelation has taken place god s face as it were has been hidden no longer given to open miracles prophecy and other fantastic encounters ours is now a test of faith granted this is an explanation and a rather convenient one at that but the far more reasonable explanation is that such miracles and other direct encounters with god never in fact occurred at all and that is why we never see them today it should be especially obvious given the fact that at the time that torah came onto the scene all peoples had their gods and the powerful acts of these gods and their interrelations with humans are likewise interwoven as part of the national story should the israelite story be any exception 2 are the mitzvot divine it follows from the belief in a divine torah wherein the mitzvot are commanded by god himself that such commandments are invested with an eternal quality their laws and principles are etched into the very fabric of the cosmos as part of the divine will for creation yet with only a cursory examination of history it is clear that the mitzvot far be it from being timeless are in fact a clear reflection of bronze age civilization israelite civil law bears a close resemblance to other codes of law from the ancient near east other peoples gave tithes to their priests and gave food and incense offerings to their gods some in temples strikingly similar to the structure of the mishkan some including the egyptian priesthood performed circumcision exercised dietary limitations and immersed in ritual baths i ask then what is more likely that everyone was closer to the divine will at the time that bronze age mesopotamia just happened to strike upon the perfect cosmic cocktail such that all subsequent generations must now follow its particular set of rituals and norms as the living word of god or that the ancient israelites were simply a product of their time and place albeit with their own unique spin on it all would moses were he to first come on the scene today possibly make us painstakingly and at great cost write out the torah letter by letter on strips of animal hide attached together with sinews because there is something godly or holy to this specific set of materials and processes or was that simply the technology available at the time these questions are obviously rhetorical as it is certain that torah is no more and no less than a product of its time yes we have adapted it in many ways which make it timeless but to say that the torah is god s eternal law is completely untenable therefore the biblical god commander of mitzvot is completely untenable people looking for proofs may wish to draw your attention to the millions who stood at sinai and watched the revelation w...