From: aap@wam.umd.edu (Alberto Adolfo Pinkas)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: O-C-R Debate
Date: 28 Jul 92 21:02:16 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park


From: rivk@quads.uchicago.edu (nora gayle rivkis)

>It is my deductive methods, not my values, that are at issue here. And
>I believe I owe myself and my religion no less than to determine in the
>way I believe most likely to be accurate just what the law I am expected
>to obey means, so that I can be sure I am obeying it correctly.

>My values are Jewish ones in that they are derived from Torah by the
>most accurate method I know for derivation. I think the sages were wrong
>on some of their reasoning, and for that reason I do not always follow
>what they said, but my reason for not following them is not because of
>values that differ from Judaism, but from a difference as to what details
>in particular these values require of us. My methods are not cultural-
>specific any more than the laws of physics are. A is A.


I understand your position, however, I do not understand why the laws derived from the Torah, and any religious law by the way, should follow any logic. 
There is no reason why God should follow any logic. That is why he (or maybe is a she?) is God.
You made a comment about applying some symbolic logic to Christians, and sowing the illogical. Why should they be logical? After all, you are taking a set of rules as granted (as any other person does), and they just take another set, which is different than yours. That is given. However, why expect it to be logical?

I would disagree that logic is a mathematical set of rules. I would say that logics is just a set of rules. But, at the end, it just makes a self-consistent set of ideas. However, what would prove that set correct is reality.
Are physics laws cultural?
Physiscs is not reality. It is just an abstraction that allows us to think about reality. We do not know if there are electrons or quarks. We know that for a cause there is an effect and then we create rules to understand them.
Because Physics is not reality, we impose conditions on physics, to make it understandable. One of those conditions is self-consistency. Even when the Universe is not slef-consistent. Is a photon a particle or a wave? Why a particle excludes a wave? We would say: It depends how you measure it. It will behave like a particel or like a wave. Then, it is neither of both. But, we need to imposse self-consistency on our rules and we will imposse sometimes artificial differenciations.
But, we still have to prove that our physics can describe the world.
However, when one follows a logical set or rules to deduce from the Torah, how can one be sure that besides being self-consistent, it is right?
We have seen in history a lot of theories, which were self-consistent, but did not work when compared with reality.

I guess that the only way is to compare the concusions with ones experiences.
And there, we go back to the bigining. Assuming that we can deduce a set of rules, even if they are sel-consistent, at the end, we will apply or morality/ethics/etc to check the conclusion. But, that set of rules is given by the dominant culture in our society, and it is not Jewish.
Of course, we cann accept the conclusions as true without checking them. In that case, we do not know if what we are doing is really right or not.
Is there another way out of that?

>I'm a Jew because I was born one; that simple. How I can be a better Jew
>or what I must avoid in order not to be a worse one are the questions on
>the table. Unless you're prepared to question my parentage, there is no
>basis for the above query.

I sould have said: How can be sure that his/her religion is Jewish?
My mistake.



>	-Nora


AAP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish