There are various approaches I have heard over the years, such as Chazal were mistaken with faulty assumptions of the time, or Chazal were referring to different things despite similar names to things in our day, or Chazal were not wrong at all but said things that now seem wrong but at the time they were just trying to fit the modern day thought, among other explanations.
One thing I never heard anybody say in the form of an explanation, no rav or anybody else, was that today's science is wrong. It was always an attempt to explain why Chazal back then were not wrong despite the conflict with modern science.
Until today.
The following Letter to the Editor was printed in this week's Hamodia newspaper:
I don't even know what to say, but am impressed by how much emunas chachomim this guy has... Instead of trying to find ways to explain and make things fit, he just sticks with Chazal...
There is no spoon...
ReplyDeleteWell, from the Earth's frame of reference, it is true. You could say the same of a person in a train - that he and the train are stationary, and the entire world is moving past them at 80km/h...
ReplyDeleteAmnon Goldberg is a well known letter writer. Suffice it to say that he is, in my not so humble opinion, a complete ignoramus.
ReplyDeleteHe knows how to throw out a lot of names. He does not, apparently, know how to read what they've written.
Geocentrism is as scientific as Last Thursdayism [so yes, both could be true].
Actually, Shaul, that's not quite true. Rotation and linear translation are not exactly the same.
ReplyDeleteMuch longer post this evening iy"H if anyone's interested.
Mike, just for my edification, can you explain the difference please?
ReplyDelete(BTW, thanks for introducing me to the term "Last Thursdayism" - I knew the concept but I didn't know the label...)
no spoon?
ReplyDeletehe is well known? how frequently does he write letters? are they all in this fashion?
ReplyDeleteRafi - no spoon? You haven't seen the Matrix? Really.
ReplyDeleteRabbi RS - thank you, I was also missing the reference, but now I got it! :)
ReplyDeleteno spoon?
ReplyDeleteA quote from The Matrix...basically saying that reality is as you perceive it and not as is...
i can hardly remember things I read and saw last week. I am expected to remember a reference from a movie (one that I didnt even like - I think it gave me a headache) from so many years ago!!??
ReplyDeleteHe used to write a lot to Hamodia, Yated, even Mishpacha. To be honest, I haven't seen him in a while.
ReplyDeleteShaul -- I will explain more in depth later. Regarding Omphalos, I usually use that to refer to the idea that fossils etc. were put as a deliberate test. This is not necessarily wrong, just not scientific.
By Last Thursdayism, I wanted to take something even more extreme; what looks like a ellipse triggered by gravity is really a complicated motion where HKBH has to manipulate the position of the planets at every second, rather than relying on the constant motion explained by Newton's Laws.
[incidentally, my captcha was "motio" :)]
Shaul,
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, since the earth is rotating, it is a non-inertial frame of reference, and even if it was the only object in the entire universe, an observer on it would be able to detect its rotation (due to centripetal force, etc.).
Once you realize this, it lays waste to the whole "how could there have been 'days' before the creation of the sun?" paradox. A day is the rotation of the earth about its own axis. You don't need the sun to measure this. (Come to think if it, it supports the idea that the earth rotates about its own axis; otherwise, a literal interpretation of the first three days of creation would be impossible.)
I think more interesting, as it regards this post, than explaining the science which proves chazal wrong, is the admiration and/or acceptance people have for those who remain 'flat earthers.'
ReplyDeleteThere will always be crazy people who say crazy things. Its how the rest of us respond which defines whether or not it is reasonable behavior. How is it at all reasonable, let alone admirable that someone chooses to believe chazal in this case?
Way: I think you are misreading our reactions. This is not admiration; it's bemused fascination. So far, as I've read it, every single response has been of the form, "Well, this guy is totally wacked out - but let's have some fun trying to make him make sense."
ReplyDeleteIn this we follow the proud tradition of Rabbi Meir (IIRC) who came up with a whole bunch of proofs that a sheretz is tahor. For R' Meir it was a serious intellectual and philosophical exercise; for us it's more just kef :) - but either way, nobody seriously believes that a sheretz is tahor, any more than we believe in geostatism.
As far as I know, it is impossible to "prove" that Body A is rotating around Body B, or vice versa, since motion is relative.
ReplyDeleteAs for not being "scientific", this is true. However, science makes a tremendous assumption (leap of faith) that the laws that we perceive today were also true millions of years ago. There is simply no way to prove this. Is it more probable to believe this than to believe that the world was created some 7,000 years ago? I am not sure, but am (seriously) open to being enlightened
Anon 2:38 - I'm sorry, but that's seriously warped thinking.
ReplyDeleteLet us take a few fairly simple facts. Like that the law of conservation of momentum; or the composition of a water molecule of two atoms of hydrogen and one oxygen; or the fact that 1+1=2. These facts are true today, you agree? And they were true yesterday, too? What about last year? What about the year 1900? Or the year 1500? What about the year dot, before the Bavli was published. Did those laws of physics, chemistry and mathematics hold true then? If not, then when, pray, did they change? And why?
The notion that natural physical, chemical or mathematical laws suddenly changed is utterly bizarre and out of this world. You have an enormous burden of proof to make any intelligent, thinking human being take you seriously when you say stuff like that. And I cannot even believe that you yourself take that notion seriously. Or do you?
as George Constanza said: if you believe it, its not a lie
ReplyDeleteThe Am Arotzus on this page is astonishing.
ReplyDeleteDon't you guys have the Internet?
http://www.genesis-creation-proof.com/Earth-is-stationary.html
http://www.fixedearth.com/
BTW, I suspect that the letter writer's intent is not to defend Chazal, but to defend his understanding of how the Lubavitcher Rebbe understood these things.
As far as I know, it is impossible to "prove" that Body A is rotating around Body B, or vice versa, since motion is relative.
ReplyDeleteThis only applies for *Linear* motion. In the case of orbital motion this is most definitely not the case. In the case of the Earth going around the Sun, which is what we are talking about here there are several things we can measure to show what is going on.
The first is Paralax. Go outside and look at something far away (Like a tree) now close one eye and cover it with your thumb. Now close that eye and open the other one. Your thumb is now offset from being in front of the tree. What I am describing here is just simple geometry.
Now we are going to scale this up. So we are going to look at the star Sirius (Alpha Canis Majoris) and measure its position in comparison to stars that are father away. Now if you do this you will find that it shifts by about 380mili-arc seconds against farther stars. Of course to make that measurement you will need a pretty good telescope and some other tools. I am not sure if it could be done with a back yard telescope but it can be measured to an accuracy of +/- 1.58mas. (From orbit)
The other thing you can do is take advantage of the fact that as you move from the equator to the poles your angular momentum changes. This is what causes cyclonic storms to happen, and also is what is behind the Foucalt Pendulum http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault_pendulum
As for not being "scientific", this is true. However, science makes a tremendous assumption (leap of faith) that the laws that we perceive today were also true millions of years ago. There is simply no way to prove this. Is it more probable to believe this than to believe that the world was created some 7,000 years ago? I am not sure, but am (seriously) open to being enlightened
As for why we thing that the laws of physics have not changed in millions of years is that with astronomy we can look out into space and therefore look back into time.
Light from distant galaxies takes millions of years to reach us. Now here is the thing each element on the periodic table of the elements emits light at very specific colors. You can measure this in a lab or compute it from Quantum Mechanics.
Now if we take hydrogen, which is about 90% of the atoms in the universe we will find that the brightest visible line which is called "H-Alpha" is a 656.4nm and is bright red. There are also lines 434nm and 410 nm. Each of these bright emission lines correspond to very specific transitions of electron energy levels in the atom. (In these cases it is 3->2 4->2 and 5->2)
Ok now that we know where these lines are we can point a very large telescope at a bright star in a different galaxy and measure where these lines are. If the laws of physics have changed they will have moved relative to each other as they very strongly depend on a number of fundamental physical constants including the speed of light and plank's constant.
I should also point out that the Hubble Space Telescope has several Spectroscopic instruments for doing exactly this work.
Eppur Si Muave
Anyway I hope that helps, I always like putting on my physics hat!
Make no mistake: The Lubavitcher Rebbe really believed in this stuff, and pushed it. I think he enlisted Prof. Branover in the cause to. And, of course, to a chasid, the rebbe is never wrong, so they fall in line.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.genesis-creation-proof.com/Earth-is-stationary.html
ReplyDeleteWow, that post was wrong in pretty much every thing he said! About half of it didn't even make sense
Eppur Si Muave
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeletelink to xkcd cartoon doesnt work
ReplyDeleteI think this cartoon from XKCD sums it up:
ReplyDeleteSomeone Is Wrong on the internet!
Eppur Si Muave
(Fixed the link)
What is the point of all this discussion? What does it matter, and what does it have to do with "Life in Israel?" Has it become part of the blog's raison d'etre to highlight differences of opinion between sectors of Jewish population, when we can get a laugh out of it?
ReplyDeleteahron,
ReplyDeletethis is a legitimate difference among Jews?
It should be laughed at so we are not tarred with the same brush.
I don't want anyone thinking Jews believe this, what a chillul hashem that would be, to be the idiots of all nations instead of a light.
Not sure if anyone is still answering this post, but ..
ReplyDeleteAs for the fact that scientific laws could have changed, 2 points
1. I think a basic belief in the truth of the written Torah comes close to requiring this belief. For instance, the fact that many people lived until over the age of 900 not so long ago. We know that the average life expectancy around 500 years ago was under 40. When did it change? How? To say that Hashem made a series of "miracles" to allow these people to live longer is very muck akin to saying the the "laws" of science were permanently suspended for around 1000 years.
2. I find your objections to be a bit irrational (not scientific). "How can you say that? Do you really believe it" The fact is that there either was or was not a change in the laws governing nature sometime in the past ~7000 years. Assuming there was, there is no possible way to know about it now. There is very simply put NO WAY to decide on the truth or falsehood of this proposition. If you know someone who lived 6000 years ago, maybe they could help ...
Anon - OK, you're right. Likewise, there is no way to prove whether or not the Earth was created last Thursday (or 1 second ago for that matter), and we've all just got a bunch of implanted memories that make us think we're older than that.
ReplyDeleteOn your other point: The age to which people live is not a scientific or mathematical fact. I accept that average life expectancies can (and do) change over time. I do not, however, accept that the law of conservation of momentum, the composition of the water molecule, or the fact that 1+1=2 could change over time. And suggesting that they do is wildly (not just "a bit") irrational.
people lived to be over 900?
ReplyDeleteand you expect your beliefs or anything else you say to be taken as rational?
you're right, science is fake.
Let's not fool ourselves: believing that people lived over 900 years before the advent of any type of medicine requires a belief in the alteration of physical laws as we know them
ReplyDeleteAs for changing of scientific laws, I suggest you look into Big Bang theory a bit. Scientists currently hypothesize that some of the equations/laws we now see WERE NOT TRUE during the Big Bang, and this is used to explain certain discrepancies.
As an aside, if the universe is 13 billion years old, then to say that what we have observed to be true for the last 200 years or so was also true 13 BILLION years ago is the height of hubris and irrationality.
Anon -
ReplyDelete1) Without taking any position on whether or not people actually did live to over 900 years, there is a world of difference between life expectancies and physical laws. The age to which organisms live is not based on any physical laws that I know of. All we have is a vague life expectancy, which is based on empirical data, and we have absolutely no idea why people age, or why aging happens at the rate it does. Sequoia trees can live up to 1,500 years, so it's not inconceivable that other organisms could do the same. Maybe there were climatic changes that affected people's life expectancy? Could be anything, because we have no way of predicting reliably how the process of aging will operate in any given individual. The law of conservation of momentum OTOH is a hard and fast law that is repeatable and inviolable, and no amount of climate change will alter it.
2) As for laws breaking down at the time of the Big Bang, that's called a singularity. It's not that the physical laws changed; it's that the formulae we use to describe physical laws do not adequately describe what happens under extreme situations like the Big Bang.
3) You keep accusing me of irrationality, when you keep countering my ברי with שמא. I have evidence; you have none. All you are doing is trying to find the 0.00001% chance (and I'm being generous) that something is wrong with the manifest evidence, and presenting the 2 possibilities as equally likely. That is irrational.
Anon-
ReplyDeleteI think this is the only rational statement of yours: "As for the fact that scientific laws could have changed, think a basic belief in the truth of the written Torah comes close to requiring this belief."
In order to believe in the torah you must believe that the laws of reality as they exist today are fundamentally different than the reality in the torah. So if you believe, you must believe that between the time the torah was written/given and the time accurate record keeping began, the fundamental laws of the universe were changed.
I agree. To believe in the torah that is exactly what you must believe.
Anon-
ReplyDeleteI think this is the only rational statement of yours: "As for the fact that scientific laws could have changed, think a basic belief in the truth of the written Torah comes close to requiring this belief."
In order to believe in the torah you must believe that the laws of reality as they exist today are fundamentally different than the reality in the torah. So if you believe, you must believe that between the time the torah was written/given and the time accurate record keeping began, the fundamental laws of the universe were changed.
I agree. To believe in the torah that is exactly what you must believe.
Gosh, I just have to step back and admire the irony of a True Believer and a True Nonbeliever finding common cause in proving that the Torah requires you to be irrational.
ReplyDeleteWell done, Anon, that's a big Kiddush Hashem under your belt.... not.