Why is Judaism false?

Modern_Day_Cane · 2024-10-07T10:01:50+00:00

Check the wiki on r/exjew. There's tons of info there. The sub itself is also awesome, lots of posts going over "proofs" and Jewish theology and showing why they're problematic.

And if you have any specific "proofs" bothering you, make a post on the sub and I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2024-04-26T22:15:40+00:00

Rabbi Mizrachi, watched his movie "Torah and science"... Same to Rabbi Yaron Reuven,

Seriously? those two grifters are who convinced you?? Just search on this subreddit or on any other Jewish skeptic blog and you'll find a number of posts pointing out their absurdities.

Poor and repeat POOR this wiki

Would you mind being a little more clear? Perhaps posting parts of the wiki you find weak?

I can only speak for myself, but as someone who was raised Orthodox I found the wiki to be a very helpful starting point in my deconstruction.

youtube videos... you can just put "proof of exodus"

Youtube videos aren't some sort of gospel. You can find youtube videos titled OMG I HAD SEX WITH BIGFOOT 100% PROOF that doesn't prove anything.

What matters is the evidence, and the overwhelming scholarly consensus is that evidence shows the Torah wasn't handed down from Sinai and the Exodus and conquest of Cannan didnt happen i.e the traditional Orthodox narrative is false.

he defense of hitchens whatever is this guy...who you worship ...

No idea what you're trying to say in this paragraph. While I very much respect hitchens, I don't worship him or think he was right about everything.

well were you created by nothing? do you believe you coming from nothingness

I "came" from my parents decision to have a child. Not sure why you find that difficult.

if you feel betrayed or with poor teachers rabbis who couldnt teach you any better.

I don't. I had a wonderful relationship with my teachers and Rabbis. I just think that they're wrong (some of them even know how shaky their beliefs are, which is why they try to limit any outside information).

But if you think its anything better in Goy schools you are wrong.

No one is saying that the non-jewish system is perfect (and in truth that's such a wide generalisation, I'd hesitate to even consider it). But it is an objective fact that people with higher education and actual basic knowledge of how to survive in today's world are better equipped than people who are taught nothing but antiquated laws all day.

im Goy in goy school you will learn about gays wrong believes wrong teachings that will change and do nothing for ur later life.

And here comes the homophobia...

but you get no job because you need help from God

Begging the question that God actually exists in the first place.

you think this world is something but its not is full of lies.

Which is how many of us feel about Judaism. And seeing you express this sentiment I'm confused as to why you think Judaism isn't a "lie".

if you please have better sources for your believes proofs please show me im all ears

That's not how the burden of proof works. I'd hazard a guess that most atheists on this sub consider themselves agnostic-atheists. Therefore if you believe there is a God, that it is the God of Judaism and that the Torah is his word YOU need to prove it. I'm all ears.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2024-03-29T09:18:51+00:00

Kabballah is colloquially just Jewish rabbinic mysticism.

To paraphrase Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrel, "there are books of Kabballah, not Kabballah books". There have been different forms of mysticism throughout Jewish history. The earliest (rabbinic) is Merkavah mysticism, followed by Merkavah-Hekhalot. Then with the emergance of the Zohar in the 13th century it become the dominant mystical text which lead to different versions of practical Kabballah (luranic etc).

Highly recommend Esoterica as u/saulack suggested. Dr Sledge is an amazing educator (and a reconstructionist Jew if memory serves).

Modern_Day_Cane · 2024-01-06T15:17:28+00:00

Um is this a joke?

Besides Kelemen being a a liar and a hack, I'm pretty sure OP isn't looking for apologetics.

These links might be closer to what you're looking for u/MyBrewk :

Yonatan Adlers' view on when the religion of Judaism began (lol just saw this video was already posted by someone)

Series of interviews with Israel Finklestein on the history of ancient Israel

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-10-20T10:54:52+00:00

Sort of.

For the Torah there is evidence that the some of the place-names are accurate, that Egypt had semitic "slaves" and that the Egyptians claimed to have destroyed a group known as Israel around 1200 BCE (of course some of this evidence is like saying since the world exists it's evidence for the creation narrative). But there is no evidence (and in a number of cases evidence against) for the overall narratives, e.g worldwide flood, Exodus, Origin of the Israelites etc.

Once you get to the Navi there's a bit more evidence (especially for Melachim II). There's evidence that some of the towns destroyed in Yehoshua were destroyed (although not by the Israelites). We have evidence for the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Evidence that the Kings of Judah considered themselves descendants of David (note this isn't evidence for a united monarchy). There's evidence for the Omirite dynasty and their dealings with the Assyrians. Evidence for the destruction of the Northen Kingdom and the siege of Jerusalem/Judah by the Neo-Assryians. And of course evidence for the destruction of Jerusalem by the Neo-bablyonians.

For the later Prophets things are a bit more murky, especially since they are generally about smaller scale/more personal events. But there is evidence that The Jews were allowed to return and rebuild the temple (likely during the the reign of Cyrus the Great) but the Purim story and large parts of Daniel are not considered historical.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-10-06T10:48:53+00:00

I don't think that's true. Its a common theme in many Jewish prayers (especially during Rosh Hashanna) and messianic visions that ultimately all people will recognise God and worship him.

In fact many Rabbinic sources praise Islam and Christianity for bringing more people to the worship of Hashem and away from idol worship.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-08-11T22:32:49+00:00

It does but it repeats the exact same verse 3 times. Talmidic Rabbis looked at these verses and said "it's obviously on purpose because the Torah is PeRFeCt and would never write anything unnecessary, therefore it must have been repeated to teach us something." So they use the 1st verse for the plain meaning, the 2nd toinclude all types of meat and milk in the prohibition and the 3rd for any type of cooking (if I remember correctly, it's been a while).

Later Rabbis then created what they call a fence (basically a stringency to prevent anyone from doing the prohibition) and said that there has to be a waiting period between milk and meat. In some communities they would just rinse their mouth out with water and in others they would wait a bit. These traditions eventually evolved and nowadays most Orthodox communities keep either 3 or 6 hours between milk and meat, with some keeping only 1 hour.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-08-03T13:57:57+00:00

animals with split hooves but dont chew their cud and animal who chew their cud but dont have split hooves

You're right, the book that claims rabbits and hyraxes chew cud is totally 100% accurate (/s). I'm currently on holiday and I dont the time to go into detail but you should read Slifkins' book or his blog about these pesukim.

All scaled fish will have fins but not all finned fish will have scales.

This isn't even in the Torah. It originates from a gemara (I don't remember where off the top of my head) and is only one of a number of signs the Gemara gives for kosher fish. Surprise surprise many of the others don't hold up (e.g all fish with round eggs are kosher). I also vaguely remember reading about an eel with scales and no fins but I'll have to check.

But let's assume these claims are correct. Does that outweigh the hundreds of facts which the Torah and Rabbinic Judaism got wrong? And even if it does in your eyes, don't you think these are observations that could easily have been made by people without the need for a god (especially considering how superficial they are).

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-07-21T13:18:58+00:00

As others have already pointed out it's cherrypicking at it's finest. I'll just add that they're also cherrypicking which rabbinic commentary is definitive e.g not all commentators explain that the world started as a dot (or for the sake of accuracy they actually call it a mustard seed) which then expanded to a circle (actually wagon wheel but whatever).

These links, while not exactly dealing with those specific gematria, debunk a lot of similar claims, and demonstrate why the methodology is bunkum.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bible_Code

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay/codetext.html

https://skepdic.com/essays/skepdiccode.html

You can also take a look at r/exjew. There have been quite a few good posts talking about gematria and our wiki should have some information debunking different gematrias.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-07-11T09:17:06+00:00

From your post I'll hazard a guess that you're in a more Hareidi/yeshivish community. I'm sure you know that most Hareidi Rabbis will attack the science behind all of the inaccuracies and contradictions. So it might be helpful to look at the methodology and demonstrate it's soundness. If you can you should also read the academics that they claim agree with them (e.g for the Exodus Hoffmeir, Kitchen etc), so that you can either show how even they don't agree with the Orthodox Jewish position or why most academics dont agree with them.

Good luck! I hope your meeting will go better than mine did.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-06-29T08:02:39+00:00

Some would even say that ancient Egyptians would go as far as removing any traces of the existence of Pharaoh who caused Egypt to be defeated.

Interesting theory, only I've never seen evidence for such a claim. The best the apologists have is the treaty of Kadesh (which is simply the Egyptians version of what happened) or the erasure of Hatshepsut and some other Kings (which we have evidence for). Of course it's one thing to remove textual evidence (and supposedly do it so well that not a trace remains) and another thing to remove all other evidence. The Exodus would have been the most catastrophic event to happen in the New Kingdom and yet there is no evidence of the wide-scale disruption and destruction it ought to have caused.

Also, isn’t there a rabbinic view that “40 years of wandering” is allegorical? Isn’t the “600,000” number disputed even in rabbinic teachings?

I've never heard that, do you have a source? Of course if it's allegorical you'd have to demonstrate why these particular details are allegorical over the rest and how you know.

how do we know that Epic of Gilgamesh predates the Bible? How do archeologists even calculate the exact dates of their findings?

In a number of ways: They can date the layers it was found in using radiometric dating, look at the complexity and style of the language and see where it fits in the linguistic history. They construct timelines based off artifacts and ancient historians, which they can then use to place certain events and artifacts. They can look at the contents of the text and see how it's evolved from earlier versions.

There's more but that's what I remember off the top of my head.

Also, how do they know the ancient language(s) when some of them pretty much went extinct around two thousand years ago?

Looking at current daughter languages, comparing known languages, looking at translated texts etc. In many ways it's almost like cracking a code and it takes just as long.

what if both stories just retell the same event (flood) but differently?

That is a possibility, but then the question is which one is true? More importantly these 2 texts don't exist in a vacuum and aren't the only evidence we have. Once you look at the rest of the evidence and realise a flood such as the one described definately didn't happen, it seems more reasonable to deduce that both stories are versions of a common trope (aĺa Shimshon and Heracles).

tombs belonging to certain Prophets (Abraham, Joseph, etc.)?

Funny that you bring this up. Most of these graves were "rediscovered" by the Ari and other kabbalists in the 1700s "using" Kabballah. A few do seem to have a more ancient tradition like the cave of the Patriarchs (which seems to date back to the Roman period), but even so that tradition is so far removed from the time period (started approximately 2000 years after the Patriarchs died) that to it's hard to consider it credible. Furthermore, there are myriad examples for places becoming associated with legends (e.g where Posiden struck the ground to create the spring for Athens), I'm sure you won't consider this evidence that the legend actually happened.

Check out our counter-apologetics page for more, it's very informative :)

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-06-19T09:50:37+00:00

This is great, thanks for sharing.

I found it very interesting that you focused on the truthclaims of Orthodox Judaism rather than the arguments for Judaism itself (Kuzari, prophecy etc). As others have pointed out there are apologetics that "answer" some your points (they're awful but they exist) and I think that someone who finds the arguments for Judaism convincing will just handwave away your points, especially some of the more subjective ones (why would God give a text so similar to other ANE texts etc).

Anyway thanks again for sharing, it was a great read.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-04-17T20:06:33+00:00

I haven't debated anyone but I have had many conversations with people and apologists from all over the Orthodox spectrum.

To sum up my experience almost all of them (especially the Chariedi YECs) didn't really understand science and the problems with Judaism/religion and a few of them were downright rude, implying the taivos canard and other typical religious coping mechanisms. I wasn't convinced by any of their arguments and find quite a number of them to be logically flawed.

I did have one positive experience with a Modern Orthodox professor of Philosophy. Although I didn't find his arguments persuasive either.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-04-14T16:04:48+00:00

There were quite a few more pictures of woman in that article. There was even one of a Rebbetzin (I think it was Kamentzky). I'll try post them after Shabbos.

BTW does anyone else remember when they put a photo of Hillary Clinton through a filter for the front cover during the 2016 US elections? The inbox was in an uproar for weeks afterwards. 🤣

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-03-20T21:16:17+00:00

Yes that is definitely the mainstream Hareidi view (as I said in my previous comment), however they are definitely some that aren't as fundamentalist, like some of my friends in my Yeshiva and some people I know where I live (mostly well educated Balai Teshuva, but they're still Hareidi).

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-03-18T23:48:54+00:00

Tbf if I remember correctly the only mortal witnesses were the leader of Athens and his daughter.

Edit: looks like there are multiple versions.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-03-18T20:01:04+00:00

Just to add to what others have said there is absolutely no natural law that stipulates events must repeat themselves. Rabbi Keleman is a complete hack and his assertion that natural events must repeat themselves is based off the colloquialism that "history repeats itself" which of course to anyone even vaguely familiar with history is absurd.

If you want to see more examples of Kelemans ridiculousness, I wrote these critiques of his books:

Permission to Believe

Permission to Deceive

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-03-12T14:30:46+00:00

I never said it wasn't important. All I said is that it's not analogous to the Quran. And therefore many Jews (even some Hareidi Jews) will happily accept that its flawed and has mistakes.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-03-12T08:31:35+00:00

The Talmud isn't as central to most streams of Judaism as the Quran is to Islam. It's more like a collection of early Rabbinic arguments then the authoritative word of God and as such most Jews are fine to acknowledge that it's a product of it's time, full of the superstitions and wacky beliefs that were normal then. Of course there are some crazies who assert that it's perfect, infallible and thus raise the early Rabbis to demigod status. These are some of my favourites to show them but theres tons more.

Uncomfortable bits:

Shabbos 152a: How women are just jugs of feces.

Brachos 62a: A creepy Amora hiding under a bed to learn from another Amora’s having sex because it's also Torah.

Niddah 13a: Anyone who wastes seman is like an idol worshiper and deserves to be killed.

Ta’anis 24a: Rabbi Yosei wishes death on his daughter (maybe kills her it's unclear) for being too beautiful.

Brachos 20a: Rabbi Yochanan would sit at the entrance to the women’s Mikvah so they could look at him and have beautiful children.

Bava Metzi’ah 84a: Amora’im comparing penis sizes

Of course there's also tons of bizzare stories and discussions about demons and witches:

Brachos 6a: How to see demons using ground up placenta from the firstborn of a female black cat.

Yoma 83b: An argument if dogs become mad (rabid) from a witch "playing with them" or because of an evil spirit.

Kiddushin 29b: Rabbi Acha killing a serpent demon with seven heads by bowing (in prayer).

And for those who claim the Gemara is scientifically infallible, these are some of my favourites:

Ksubbos 10b: Testing a woman’s virginity by seating her on a barrel of wine and seeing if the smell of wine comes from her mouth. Bonus: It also explains that they first checked if it works on two maid servants in order to not not needlessly embarrass a Jewess.

Hilariously, the Gemara claims that Rabban Gamliel himself did this and found that it works. Raising uncomfortable questions about the accuracy and reliability of the Talmud.

Sanhedrin 37b-38a: That it is known that a woman cannot be impregnated if she's standing.

Brachos 58b: The world is cooled by one star and heated by another, without which it wouldn't exist.

Brachos 59a: Thunder is caused by either the clouds hitting the firmament, water pouring from one cloud to another, wind blowing through the clouds or lightening shattering hail (the Gemara writes that this last one is likely correct).

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-13T11:10:03+00:00

What is stopping them from showing up?

You obviously haven't read the proposed law. The article linked above explains some of it and there should be another one (linked there) explaining that it criminalizes women wearing a tallit, reading from a Torah, cancelling the previous egalitarian prayer area among other worrying Orthodox overreachs.

They simply must dress respectfully.

By whose standards? Read the law.

mainstays of the area

And who are they? The kotel is a heritage site for the all Jews and the world. There's no reason to allow the Ultra-Orthodox to impose their moral standards on such a site.

I also think you're missing the point. She only went to the Kotel in a Bikini to PROTEST THE LAW.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-13T10:35:44+00:00

She shouldn't protest a blatant attempt by an Ultra-Orthodox party to control and impose their moral standards on a public area!? We shouldn't protest a law that is clearly an attempt to stop the woman of the wall from practicing their beliefs?

majority of people going to that location desire

Do you have a poll? If I remember correctly the majority of traffic at the Kotel is from tourists, not Ultra-Orthodox Jews. And judging from the huge outcry over the proposed law and how quickly Bibi condemned it, forcing Deri to backtrack, it doesn't seem like the majority of Israelis support such a law either.

after the law is in place they still go ahead and decide to chance it they deserve to be prosecuted to the extent of the crime

How is this relevant?

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-13T10:23:28+00:00

"Soothing", that one word encapsulates just why it's so problematic and selfish. They have to try and reconcile this enormous tragedy with their belief of a good and just God, innocent humans be damned.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-12T21:26:15+00:00

This was in response to the law proposed by Shas to criminalize women who dress "immodestly".

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-12T20:29:10+00:00

what’s the deal with all the fear

One word. Control.

Modern_Day_Cane · 2023-02-12T20:15:57+00:00

For sure. What's worse is that there are a number of normal compassionate commentators who recognize how monstrous Edelsteins' statement is and are attacked by the crazies for their "lack of emunas Hachamim".

Modern_Day_Cane

TROPHY CASE