Historical Verification of the Torah - Part 6 - Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb

okay we're talking about you is survival and we were talking about whether or not there could be a natural explanation and we gave me a list of things that need to be explained and we considered persecution and a natural ability to create long lasting cultural products as possible explanations and we said they don't fit the facts what we're looking at today is probably the most popular most intuitive way of explaining to a survival and that is Judaism has in it elements that naturally promote the survival of the culture identity group in particular it has in it isolating laws and practices maybe even institutions which result in isolation even though they don't preach isolation so you have cassius which means you can't eat at the table of non-jews although you couldn't invite them for supper thank you within probably a one-way relationship unbalanced relationship is going to be inhibited and the Canada to Mary prayer requires a certain and minimum number of Jews and only Jews and then you have your own religion with its own language which is different from everybody else's language and customs that are different everybody else's customs dress and those things and actually go to isolates so the thought is Jews who has in it elements that naturally isolate Jews from their surroundings and that's why they've survived because they have these isolated as features built into their way of life there nothing's wrong with this thought number one we're trying to explain why Judaism survived and other cultures disappeared well then the first question to ask is did other cultures also have isolating features if this was a widespread quality of ancient cultures that they all had isolating features it will not do to say Judaism survived because that isolating features even though the other cultures also had isolating features they disappeared that's not going to work as an explanation now for example I saw one historian document that every ancient nation has food taboos and they all have different food doubles so if a food taboo has the effect of isolating people then every ancient nation had at least that element of isolation if you talk about having a religion with your language and a religion different River else's language every ancient nation had that because they had their own language the religion was in their language and they had customs which set themselves apart special types of dresses special holidays special texts so every ancient culture had in it isolating factors so that being the case just citing the fact that we have features that that serve to isolate doesn't explain why we survived and they will disappear no one who uses this argument the argument that we have natural isolating features even asks this question that's how poor the logical articulation of this of this study is no one asks the question what about other neck other than other cultures that disappeared if they have them in their soul what makes us different don't even ask that question I someone who study philosophy science and logic find this almost astonishing these people are purporting to this script to explain a great historical puzzle and they don't use the most elementary lots of methodology but that is another way in which they pursue this which i think is an example of something that's a little more subtle suppose someone says ok ok others didn't have others had food taboos but they didn't have our food Devils so maybe it's our food taboos that lead to survival and therefore doubles the dough I think there's a there's a fallacy here there's a logical fallacy illustrate it with a absurd extreme example and I'll show you how it works the first runner to break the four-minute mile was Roger Bannister great British runner until he did it there was a kind of myth among runners that it can't be done if you run the mile unless the four minutes you're going to drop dead he did it that year for five of other people did it it was like a psychological barrier that other people couldn't master and he missed now the question is why was he the first one why was he the first one why didn't anybody else do it what feature determined that fact that he was going to be the first one to break the four-minute mile I was suggestion he's the only runner whose name was Roger best I mean isn't it true that he's the first one to do it it's the only one with that name so if he's the one you tried to explain he's the only one with that name I hope you grew through that's costly stupid the fact that he's the one you're trying to explain and he has this unique feature doesn't mean that this unique feature explains what you want to explain there has to be a connection we normally think the name of a person has nothing to do with how fast he runs that might not have been that way maybe in the English school that he went to the name Roger was looked down upon and people made fun of him and persecuted it to run away so he learned to run fast okay if so but normally we think the fact that he alone broke it first and he alone has the name doesn't mean there's a connection okay that's what I call the Roger Bannister fallacy now which I'd like to explain why Judaism and Judaism alone survived as a culture from the ancient world somebody says let's see Judaism alone survived and Jew Thurman has Q so it must be the Q explains why Judas was arrived that's wrong that's wrong simply finding some unique feature Q that Judaism has even a candidate for an explanation survival there's to be some intuitive connection between an EQ that you find and the survival so now somebody says well isolating features will lead to survival that at least has an intuition I'm going to attack that into ash in a minute that sets you apart so you're different if you're different you're probably going to keep keep your identity but now you say well they all had food taboo Farwell taboos maybe it's the Jewish food taboo that leads to survival the other do other food taboos don't that has absolutely no no intuitive backing this group doesn't eat snails and that group doesn't eat cows oh not eating snails will preserve you but not eating cows won't preserve you but there's nothing that's just Roger Bannister it's a unique feature and you're just throwing in it because it's unique that's not a candidate for an explanation I need at least some intuition some experiential understanding of how it works to suggest that this is a candidate for explaining how we survive and of course you're gonna break down and talk about differences and in detail you're not gonna have that every country had a religion based on its own language different from all the other languages somebody says yeah that's true but they didn't have Hebrew didn't have Hebrew only Judaism as Hebrew so maybe it's Hebrew that keeps you alive that's ridiculous there's no reason why Hebrew rather than Sanskrit should maintain the existence of a culture and the other what the culture should disappear there's gotta be some reason intuition some experience would lead you to think that this feature will promote survival and others that don't have it are going to be inferior in survival that's the second problem the third problem is that even with the isolating features it's not obvious although we do have an intuition it will isolate us set us apart it's not obvious that that intuition is accurate in reality I'll explain to you why let's take Cassius let's think of the people who emigrated the United States and from Europe Jews from 1880 through 1930 hundreds of thousands maybe more came over those decades now the vast majority of them grew up in religious homes and had religious practices know this identity come to New York New York is a melting pot there are Greeks and poles and Italians Irish and all sorts of immigrants coming from a starving Europe and they're all trying to do the best they can now let's imagine the following scenario that you arrives doesn't speak the language has no obvious saleable skills there are the jews around willing to help them as best they can but and it's rough lots of immigrants there some of them anti-semites imagine a local Italian takes this Jew under his wing they said you're new here and you'd be oriented you need some job training so on account of me I'm your friend I hope he does help get someplace to be trained and help some learn the language stuff of the song and of course the Jew is very grateful now after a period of time the Italian says you know we become friendly and I like you glad I'm able to help you come for dinner we're having veal parmesan if you know if your parmesan is is veal cooked in cheese it's now the Jews in a pickle because it straight so what's it gonna do go over dinner I need to trade meat trade food not go for dinner risk offending his Italian patron is Italian protector and friend you imagine its crisis like that I think you could see that some people do it one way and some people do the other way some people say no stick to their principles and take the risk of losing the Italian friend and some would say no I can't do it I can't afford to take that risk and that being the case I'm gonna get I'm gonna go of course if he goes he's broken a Jewish rule says he's broken a Jewish rule his connection to Judaism becomes weaker now I want you to imagine an alternative scenario the same fact the Italian friend to help the gratitude just changed Judaism into Judaism star Judaism - Cassius there's no dietary laws now when the Italian says company for dinner meals parmigiana terrific I'll be there with bells and he goes that he eats and he enjoys and there's no weakening of his connection to the Jewish religion at all I think you could see that having a rule of cashiers creates a conflict for him that a Judaism without conscious wouldn't create it creates a temptation and it creates a situation in which some Jews are going to fail the test and they're going to be distanced from their Judaism the rule of Cassius is going to work against Jewish identity now every Jewish group in the world is an immigrant group even the Jews in Israel immigrants to Israel I know there's one tenth of 1% will go back 17 generations but all the news soby every immigrant group every Jewish group experienced this kind of conflict this kind of tension this kind of crisis that means sometimes cashiers is going to work against Jewish survive now what we need is a bottom-line calculation take all of the negative effects of cashiers and all the positive effects of Cassius and make a bottom-line evaluation that is it on the whole beneficial or on the whole destructive of Jewish identity no one has even attempted this because no one has thought of the problem I'll give you another example of this say hello W Barone one of the celebrated historians of the 20th Jewish story in the 20th century I say celebrated in those terms because I don't think he's so great at story but nobody cares what I think but in in secular terms he's thought of as when he put out a 20 volume being called the social and religious history of the Jews you know from Abraham on he says that we have a law against intermarriage in the end of the Second Temple period in the Land of Israel there were so many non-jews living together with Jews that was hard to find marriage partners and there was widespread intermarriage so then the rule against intermarriage works against the survival of this group because many are going to intermarry no matter what and what's the intermarry they're cut off and once they're cut off they're gonna lose their Jewish identities whereas if you had like certain group that I'm going to talk about in a minute if you had no no restriction against intermarriage and when is it Americans just welcome the new spouse into the group then there wouldn't be that negative effect so having an isolating law doesn't automatically improve the chances of survival when you think when you have this intuition oh yeah we have that law and it isolates us which you're assuming we're not realizing it is that you're talking about a law that's going to be camped conscious well isolated because because those people who keep kosher are more likely to retain their Jewish identity that's true those who actually do keep kosher those who actually do anything Jewish are more likely to survive as Jews and those who don't do that thing other things be equal but having a law in the books means that some people are going to fail and those people are going to fail are going to be more pushed away from Judaism because of that law so then to say that the law contributes to survival you have to know to sum total effect that's not easy to calculate indeed early reform which threw over many of these laws the reform was not trying to have Judaism commit suicide they weren't looking to disappear their argument was the opposite the argument was if you forces do to keep kosher he can't go to university he can't get a good job he won't be respected by the non-jews that he's going to become a Christian many Jews in Germany did convert to Christianity if you drop cancerous you're going to make a positive effect on Jewish survival because the Jew no longer has that conflict he doesn't have to keep kosher it doesn't have to keep Shabbos strictly so then he can go to university you can get a job he can be accepted and he can retain the rest of his Jewish identity it's insisting I'm all of it that means you're gonna lose all of it if you compromise with some you'll be able to keep the rest that was the reform thought now let's play back the Roger Bannister fallacy the natural reaction of people is yeah that's what they thought but they were wrong why were they wrong because you see they ended up assimilating and the people who kept it ended up surviving that's the Roger manifest Bannister fallacy because we now have a reason to think that the laws will work against survival so what do you say back yeah but these guys survive those guys didn't that's they survived and they had Q so Q must explain their survival that's not an argument that's the Roger Bannister fallacy if you have a reason for thinking that the laws are gonna work against you you don't prove that that reason is wrong by saying but we survive maybe who survived in spite of the laws not because of the laws so we now have three reasons to think that this sort of explanation is not going to do the job I have a fourth reason let's imagine they're all the three reasons I gave you're not correct let's imagine that they do naturally lead to survival let's imagine that we have them alone in ancient other HSS eyes didn't have them you'd still have to ask where they came from where did they come from how did they get put in place were they created as a survival package or not well if they were created as a survival package and remember who's talking now person was talking now I was a naturalist he believes the natural world doesn't believe in God - my Providence means people thought it up people thought up that these kinds of rules which will enable you to be able to survive so the question will be why didn't other cultures also think up those rules didn't they want to survive every culture wants to survive every culture want this children and grandchildren to walk in the same ways especially if you have a religion and they all had religions in the ancient world so if you're really chauvinistic you say we're just smarter than everybody else but they could have copied us could have copied us we hung around for a long time thousand years before the destruction of the temple 2,000 years afterwards couldn't look at us and say hey you know these guys are doing well they've got some let's figure out what it is and let's copy it so we'll do well also you say well I guess it wasn't put in place as a survival package and it wasn't observable that it's a survival package it wasn't obvious with obvious other people would have imitated it but it wasn't obvious if it wasn't put in place for that reason and it wasn't obvious I want to know how did it get obvious now what do you know now the people didn't know five hundred years ago about what enables cultures to survive and what enables cultures to disappear what are you operating on after all they're operating on what you shiva's they call a push for it means a gut feeling you have no statistics you have no compared studies you just say yeah and cautious will keep a serpent so that's why we're separate people couldn't say that five hundred years ago thousand years ago I'm I say there's no there's no explanation whatsoever of how this package of institutions is responsible or survival in naturalistic terms nobody recognized it nobody understood it nobody observed it nobody copied it and now all of a sudden we know that it's true I think there's absolutely no basis for a judgment like that so I think that the whole the whole effort to explain Jewish survival the naturalistic terms at least so far is bankrupt now I'll go back and just be people that said it's beginning yesterday the natural thing to say is okay so bankrupt so far maybe tomorrow I pointed out yesterday that we don't always do that we don't always say here something needs to be explained and I look at my resources of explain it just doesn't seem to work and say well just doesn't seem to work tomorrow we'll prove a genius and you'll figure it out we don't always do that sometimes we changed the way we look at the world the nuclear force is one example unconscious is another example where certain things were observed they couldn't be explained people said and they're not gonna be explained and not can we explain therefore we have to change our picture of how the world works that's the only way to get an explanation sometimes that's the right move intellectually now can I demonstrate for you that's right move here all I can say to you is that this is not a new problem thousand years ago people were already aware that the Jewish histories different everybody else's history and no one in all of the history of trying to explain these things has taken as taken a shot at it must tell you two great historical movements in 20th century 190 20th century is Marxism the other words Arnold Toynbee Greek British historian both of them had theories of the history of the world how the world works how the world the belt of what the dynamics are the Jewish people was an exception to both of them a contradiction to both of them and they had nothing to say they had nothing to save her the Marxist position is that everything in your culture is determined by the economy sport poetry art religion is all determined by the economy different economies produce different sport and arts and and political forms and religion but we've lived under every economy with the same religion Toynbee was so stymied by the Jewish people that he described us as the fossils of history fossils fossils are dead the pieces of stone in the ground well pieces of stone on the ground don't repopulate their ancient nation and create a new government and resurrect a 2000 year old language fascist don't do that by calling us fossils he just declared bankrupcy I can't say anything about the Jews they don't fit well we don't fit now that being the case if there isn't natural explanation then one has to look for something that goes beyond what's the normal natural explanations provide the final factor is is this predicted the Torah says that we're in eternal people the Torah says in Deuteronomy 28 through 30 that we're never going to disappear we're going to come back to the land from which we started it was predicted before it happened well that indicates that whoever is responsible for the text knew about it and if the text do about it then it's related to whatever it is that made it happen okay time for a short summary and conclusion I want to draw and then this discussion we can have it the five o'clock we saw three elements of evidence we saw reason to believe that revelation is a real historical event we saw a prediction July 20 through 30 about conquest and exile and survival and return and we saw the survival of the Jewish people now the first step is to ask what's the minimum I have to accept to explain those things well to explain Sinai I've got to have some agency which can speak to 4 million people simultaneously and can cause a mouth shake and fire and smoke and the sound of the shofar and the plagues in Egypt and the splitting the red sea some agency has to be responsible for that obviously that's an agency which isn't restricted by the normal natural restrictions of agencies that we are aware I must tell you our sources say that it's a demonstration that the agent is the creator of the universe I don't know how to argue that in modern terms I know how Maimonides enough amenities are you in the Middle Ages they had certain background assumptions I don't know how to argue our turns but for one thing's for sure no agency known into the whole of mankind would allow 3,300 years ago an agent that could do that secondly this agent if it's responsible for the prediction in Deuteronomy 28 through 30 even though the future or knows the future by causing it and this agent is producing the survival of the Jewish people that's the survival of a culture over thousands of years against all odds against all expectations of the environment in which they're living well this agent must be very intelligent this agent must have considerable power at its disposal and this agent must care about the Jewish people because these things happens the Jewish people and not other people now if you add to that the fact that the Jews and Judaism it can be argued I've had a bigger effect on the development of world culture than any other group did the Greeks have an impact on world development you bet Romans you bet what about the Jews well 40 percent of the world's population is either Christian or Muslim that mean our book became the basis of their entire civilization and international values of justice and freedom and respect and brotherhood of man which I found in our prophets have become international values the cornerstone of the United Nations of the world which I think if present has about a hundred and seventy-five nations the cornerstone is inscribed with a verse for the Book of Isaiah think it's about self back 2,000 years ago scattered groups of Jews the temple destroyed so on and so on and ask yourself what probability would you give that 2,000 years in the future when the whole of the world will unite under one banner that a verse from their book will be in the cornerstone I think the probability would be zero it's astonishing that's what happened so this agent who caused the revelation of Sinai and who predicted the future of our egg conquest eggs and return and who preserved identity this agent doesn't care only about us obviously that agent is using us as a wedge to have an effect on the world as a whole that much I think you can read right off the record now those descriptions that I gave of this agent are classical Jewish descriptions of that I think those descriptions can be read right off the record I think that's the minimum you have to recognize in order to explain this torkoal record of course that's not all what Judaism believes about God thinks about God what about those well you have a classical situation here where you have a body of information not all of it is testable certainly all those fully testable you test what you can and under certain conditions that gives credibility to the rest let's take as an example somebody whose EE Newton's law of gravity Newton's law of gravity says gravity works in a certain way everywhere every wind that means 13.8 billion years of history according to their picture and 20 or more depending upon problems relativity 20 or more billion light-years of space in all directions gravity works the same way it's the same everywhere everyone how much of the have we tested what percentage of that have we tested if you started putting zeros after the decimal point for 16 years you wouldn't get enough zeros we've tested a tiny tiny fraction so how could anyone say that we reason to believe in this law for everywhere everyone interest that's how it's done you have a law which describes everywhere everyone you test it as mister finally pointed out don't test it in some selective way only in South America no try to be tested in different directions try to pick out different times by going back in time by using the light from stars for which portrays the situation millions of billions of years ago if you do it in a non biased way and you get the same results on the basis of that tiny sample you have reason to accept the whole you might be wrong but you have reason to accept the whole now something like that what's going on in our case we have a body of information where we contested attests true then the rest of it gets confirmation because it's part of the same body of information I used to say this saying this for 30 years about 50 years ago a student challenged me and he said that I'm assuming something under the table and the argument as that presented is not complete and he was right what I was assuming or what I need to assume I need to at least show is that there's a certain level of integration in the information so the law of gravity is absolutely uniform gravity always operates in exactly the same way and you have a very simple equation that describes it let's take as a contrast New York Times which is contrasting in many ways now the New York Times has in it sports scores and political commentary and op-eds and the latest discoveries and psychology and so on and so on there's lots of different types of information there the sports scores are going to be 100% accurate the political commentary it's going to be I understand you know and iPads will be somewhere in between you can't apply the idea of testing it where you can and getting credibility for the whole if the whole has in it many different kinds of information there has to be some unity in the body of information so I accepted that from a student thank you very much it was a very very good comment I started to think about it how unified is the information in the Jewish picture I think it's quite unified you can't match gravity of course but if the you have a scale of zero to a hundred where gravity is at 100 in New York Times is it zero I'm just talking about disunity on that's I think the other thing some other times I would put the unification of the Jewish information about 80 after all we have what a story with one simple theme there's a creator created the universe for the sake of benefiting and benefiting includes earning what we get and that's this that's the theme of the entire creation all the rest of it is sub-clauses that thing I think that's unified enough so that if parts get confirmed by our direct observation the rest of it gets some confirmation and that's all I need all I need is that the hole has some confirmation then it stands or falls on the basis of challenges rather from other sources in the meantime there's their support for the hole so I think that if you asked whether we have support for believing the hole the Jewish tradition I think the answer is yes that's what I wanted to show you one more remark let's imagine that you have two competing theories a and B that happens a lot usually a is evidence in its favor vs evidence in its favor and then it's quite difficult sometimes to sum up which one is a better position usually works like this a is evidence in its favor and B which is competing the evidence in favor a is against the counts against B and likewise B has its evidence in its favor and if it's a favor of B counts against hey that's the usual situation but not always not always sometimes a has it's evidence and it's evidence counts against B whereas B has its evidence and B can explain away a z' evidence B can neutralize A's evidence so that A's evidence doesn't really count against B under those conditions usually B is the superior choice because a has positive and negative evidence in the body of evidence B has positive and neutral that puts be in a better situation now I think that it's a good description of let's say the contest between Judaism and science Judaism has evidence in its favor I've presented that in the brief fashion over the last few days evidence is a science has evidence in its favor the Jewish evidence conflicts the science science can't explain the Jewish heaven the Jewish evidence is something which science can't deal with so it counts against the scientific picture the evidence in favor of science can be explained away by saying that God made the world look that way then the evidence of favor of science doesn't count against Judaism Jason can neutralize that evidence under those conditions Judaism is in a superior position tears of logic to dismiss a superior position so I don't think that we have to be we're going to have it free already complex we don't have to feel that we are somehow second-class in terms of our ability to defend ourselves in logical terms I think we can defend us in logical terms and we should have the self confidence that that brings yeah you mentioned here in Deuteronomy 28 to 30 and we there was the prophecy of things that were to happen it also there's accounts of multiple things happening in that period how much of that is actually can be verified okay well I have time to explain this to you I in my written in the written form of this I write this out in detail you look at this chapters a long chapter yeah it has in it three different types of statements one is statements of things which would be expected to happen no matter what and therefore they're not selective like it'll be conquered and everybody gets conquered sooner or later another type of statement is poetry which is vague the heavens will be iron and the earth will be copper well I suppose that means they'll be very little rain and I suppose it means that the ground won't be fruitful exactly how much rain 2.7 inches per year you know one tenth of the normal crop one-fifth of the normal crap is very late very vague predictions serves no purpose mark me carefully I don't negatives I don't say they heard they serve their purpose because almost whatever happens you can say fulfilled it after we're talking about the process of conquest during conquest appeals are not very well kept and droughts happen in this country I've lived to 35 years of them through four major jobs and jobs happen very often so that's something which which you know so the heavens are iron how much iron and how long have to be it's very vague so if it's vague then it's too easy to make true it's something which you would expect his stories won't write about it because it's normal you'll suffer diseases sure if you're on the run if you're not getting adequate nutrition if you have cuts and bruises that don't get attended to you will suffer the seizures you'll get infections and then disease will spread those kinds of statements they don't hurt us but they don't help us they're to be expected in any fashion I chose the statements which are precise and which you're unlikely to happen in other in other forms all the ones that I told you are public knowledge now you can go through it and check for yourself there's one there that which is very I should tell because some people think they have a kind of zip but it's not really true it says you'll it describes people who are always afraid never secure so the history of anti-semitism does seem to be yeah and I say that means among other things you won't have a state because you have a state you have your own army you have your own economy you do have a certain amount of security and the counter examples that they want to raise it to that is the kazars you've heard of the book the kuzuri the book kuzuri the name is taken from a country state in Central Asia which existed for a couple of centuries there was a nation called the kazars people thought that he make this up but isn't true it's it's a real it's a real factor of the next and they all converted to Judaism our mass the entire nation converted to Judaism and they survived for some centuries and then something happened weather eather scattered over that would begin a war or something else than they disappeared well they had their own country for 200 years or more doesn't that sound pretty secure why would you think that maybe insecure that's right but their converts the text is addressing the people who sold the Torah out who failed to live up to the Torah and the consequences of that failure that doesn't apply to convert they didn't sell it or out their ancestors didn't sell it or out so the reason why the the prediction should apply to them it's the fact that they had a functioning state for a couple of centuries and did okay and they were confident and secure during that time it's not a contradiction to what we're talking about at all so I think that all all of the statements that are there that are precise and are unlikely to come true those are the ones that I chose because all the ones that are relevant and all of them are public record I didn't I didn't say anything that isn't publicly sure will be conquered by an by a nation whose language you don't understand which didn't have to happen we're conquered by by Rome there's no Latin culture in the Land of Israel at the time that we were conquered by Rome there's plenty of Greek culture have you been conquered by a Greek state their addiction but it will come out false having been conquered by a neighbor British will come out false or conquered by you by Rome which spoke Latin pretty my true prediction says that the company ends of the earth we were defeated by the Romans three times the third time the legions came from England which was the end of the earth and those are the ones that defeated us and destroyed the temple and and presented into exile they destroyed the the population men women the children that's documented by Roman historians they did that only twice they did the Carthage and us and it was a big deal and they created coins we've defeated Judea and Judea as captives are because we were a tough tough tough Bunch so these are these are all public records it's not we have a bit of a choice here first of all I only used one concept of survival that's described with culture I was not talking about this rival of genes I didn't bring any I'd say the two things that need to be explained the culture only I didn't I don't have two things to explain number one number two because I'm only talking about culture my position on the Romani's is that they didn't survive there may be people there but the culture was lost so that that's the contrast that I drew between the two of them I was not talking about the existence of genes I was talking about the existence of a culture and therefore only one thing has to be explained and as far as persecution is concerned every place where we test persecution it's it's it's successful and wiping people out I'm not sure that the Romani's accept that there are Nazis and that's just wanted to wipe out the the gypsies I think wanted to wipe out the Jews they killed more than a million of them but prior to that I'm not aware of any systematic persecution of Romani's there were just minorities that were tolerated Jews were persecuted because Christianity couldn't couldn't allow our existence Shannon had lots of plans to annihilate us but the Romani's just weird you know fellow travelers so I don't think that the persecution applied to them but as far as culture is concerned that's where cultures disappear I don't know saying that that that persecution would be the only thing that destroys cultures cultures disappear for licensing reasons I was just responding to a claim persecution preserves this culture I said well let's see what prick when when persecution is applied what does it do the cultures answer is it wipes them out Christianity wiped out all the cultures in Europe Islam wiped out of all the country cultures in the peninsula and in Russia the persecution wiped out 90% of us in less than a century and had going on another century there wasn't any juice left so that was my response to persecution so I'm saying there's only one thing to be explained that's the culture and the culture worked away the way I said it's not if there are two things after he explained I agree with you two things to be explained could be explained by different features that they don't have to explain by the same thing that would be just a prejudice but only to explain one thing I'll tell me explain the aspiration of a culture their survival culture probably at actual people fleshing about people or DNA is not not my issue yeah just keeps hearing well God made this with God made this regard I think the scientific arguments out the body your your your your not distinguishing carefully between evidence in favor on the one hand and defending against evidence against on the other those are two different matters I'm not saying God did it it's a reason to believe that Judaism is right I didn't use that reason once I used the any tease for revelation and the prediction and and your survival as positive but then I'm wondering how you defend yourself against counter evidence evidence that you're wrong that's where the critic is buried the birthday proof say I have reason to think you're wrong there I'm defending myself against evidence not providing evidence defending itself against counter evidence there I say we could defend ourselves against that counter evidence by saying God made it that way we can neutralize it doesn't count on our favor it just counts again doesn't count against let's take the age of the universe looks like from scientific point of view the age of universe 13.8 billion years hard all power creator of the universe to make it look that way so I say the appearance of 38 billion years doesn't count against us and I'm not saying God made it that way thereby should believer right not at all I'm not using this positive evidence I'm just saying you want to use it against me I can explain it away and there's nothing special going on here let's suppose that you have repeated computer breakdowns it could be that faulty software 40 cards over the Sun or it could be espionage you know it could be an attack right so you have to weigh up the evidence does it happen at times when we're trying to finish the crucial a crucial project and in competition you know of course clever clever malicious attacker will do it at other times also so you won't pick up that pattern right so now so you say well it happens also on last Thursday and certainly nobody was at stake doesn't that count against a malicious attacker no I could explain that away he wants to cover his tracks I don't know that that's true but you're trying to give me evidence against the malicious attacker I say almost just attack I could do that also doesn't count against how many not Thursday isn't in favor of the malicious attacker it's not against him either that's what I mean by explaining away counter evidence so in general when you have competing theories each one has evidence supporting it if they're competing usually what supports this is against that what supports this is against that so then when I look at this one I say well what's your favorite what's your evidence of favor here's my evidence of favor what are you gonna do about this evidence against sometimes they say we're just more evidence that's all can't help but this is against but there's more that's to be true but sometimes this theory can say yeah but it is really isn't against us because we can explain it away and then we have evidence in favor and no evidence against that's what God did it does God did it explains away evidence against so you're right if somebody says God did it and we use that it's a reason to believe that's nonsense that's not evidence of failure at best it's a defense against evidence against ya for isolating features I say if they were that means somebody had to be able to understand that they would preserve be so aku even though it's according to the Torah it's kosher you know it's like a bread just because the rabbi said so all right then look at the taller right he says don't write down the world's work you should write them but you know we might lose it people are going all over the world so what do we got to do we got to write it down you know all these things are kind of put in place so okay there are really two different things the two items just you're citing are really in two different schools well let's take the first one this question is often asked and it's often asked by people who know Torah background you know something obviously and it's all people back I think there is a a failure of context here the rabbi said don't eat certain things that are cooked by non-jews and it's true they had in mind that that should serve as an isolating factor but who says in the rabbi's statement in the rabbi's mind that will serve as an isolating feature in naturalistic terms they aren't natural ists they are at atheists they believe in divine providence so if you're going to take their point of view what they're saying is if you do this then divine providence will protect you on the basis of the fact that you do this not that it works in purely naturalistic terms because they don't believe in feeling a stirred naturalistic terms to impute to them that a strategy that leaves out their major premise of their picture of the world negative the gods running the world seems to me to be just without any foundation whatsoever now as far as writing down the oral torah sir if there weren't a clause in what what was had to received up until that time that this could be done when necessary they wouldn't have done it and they would have said gods running the world and he wants us to remember it will be remembered right that's why no one could say look they did that so if we want to drive cars on job is to get the synagogue so V but why not but why not obviously they from a perspective of this is a preservation yeah yeah but but I'm pointing out that if it weren't a legal precedent from before then the same argument could be made about Chavez also you did that for the sake of survival so we know this mistake of survival the the background to what you're saying is for the sake of survival everything any of these permitted for a second survival nothing is permitted you can't violate any law up in the sake of survival because we aren't responsible for the outcome we're responsible for doing with God once he responds with the outcome he makes the outcome so if there weren't an escape clause in the original saying that when necessary you can write down the world we'd never been able to write it down and the Talmud actually cites a verse from a story there was no so