Ever since the “Enlightenment”, its philosophers and scientists (e.g. Hume, Kant, Marx, and Darwin) have accused religion of being based solely on blind faith. These intellectuals and founders of modern Western thought (and their successors) have sought to free science and philosophy from the embrace of religion and its Biblical values, so as to re-orient life towards improving this world rather than preparing for an illusory afterlife.
In re-orienting human life towards a solely atheistic and materialistic world, these modern thinkers abandoned traditional philosophical categories and redefined the scientific method to eliminate — by fiat — religious thought and values.[1]In an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1948, the empiricist philosopher W.T. Stace wrote about the moderns’ decision to abandon the earlier philosophy of plan and purpose in … Continue reading
As a consequence for our times, religion and nation are currently opposed, scorned and vilified by leftist woke dogma. Leftism is a fast growing (pagan) religion under the progressive elites of western culture who have seized control of the universities, the political leavers of control, the judicial system and big business. Throughout the west, there is now an all-out assault on the very idea of God and the Torah Nation. It is a war against the Creator and Guide of the cosmos. It is a war against that nation chosen by God, at the mountain of Sinai, to receive the objective moral values inscribed on the tablets with the Ten Commandments[2]More correctly, “Ten Sayings” that categorize the 613 commandments given at Sinai. This onslaught attempts to dismember the traditional nuclear family and normative sexuality in the framework of the sanctity of marriage. It hijacks education replacing knowledge and rationality with propaganda and the suppression of dissent, and it seeks to vilify masculinity. At the core of this agenda lies the aim of exiling religion from the public square.
This is a war against God, the truths of His Torah and the Torah Nation. See the right of Israel to exist.
This abolition of the soul of man has left young people in the hands of an empty dogma, and in search of meaning and purpose.
However, there is a robust case to be made for the existence of God and the truths of His Torah. Briefly, it is based on the following categories of evidence:
- When we look at nature we see a world buzzing with Plan and Purpose, and wherever we see a purposeful arrangement of parts Intelligent Design is implicated. If there is Design, there is a Designer. Thus, a Being of enormous wisdom and power transcending space and time is the most reasonable explanation for the existence of the Cosmos. That Being is God.
- At the mountain of Sinai, God communicated His Torah to the whole Jewish Nation (and appointed Moses as His Messenger). This was preceded by the Ten Plagues and the splitting of Sea in a miraculous salvation from the horrors of the Egyptian enslavement.
- There is a detailed mechanism of transmission of the Torah. This includes the Tanach, the Mishna and the Gemora with a detailed chain of transmission from the leaders and teachers of each generation to the next, and from parents to children (think of the Pesach Seder).
- The predictions of the Torah have come true, including the prediction that we would be exiled, persecuted, small in number, the land would lie fallow. And yet — one day we would return to the Land of Israel.
- We are the only nation of antiquity still around to tell the tale.
Plan and Purpose
In his A History of the Jews, the late historian Paul Johnson (who is not Jewish) described the nature of the Jewish contribution to mankind as follows:
No people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny. At a very early stage of their collective existence they believed they had detected a divine scheme for the human race, of which their own society was to be a pilot. They worked out their role in immense detail. They clung to it with heroic persistence in the face of savage suffering… The Jewish vision became the prototype for many similar grand designs for humanity; both divine and man-made. The Jews, therefore, stand right at the centre of the perennial attempt to give human life the dignity of a purpose.
A History of the Jews (2013)
Morality
Pagans and Marxists like Hitler, Stalin and Mao admired Darwin’s materialistic theory of “survival of the fittest; and, used this worldview t0 make the 20th century one of the bloodiest (with the horrific murder of tens of millions of men, women and children).
“I am freeing men from the restraints of an intelligence that has taken charge; from the dirty and degrading self-mortifications of a chimera called conscience and morality, and from the demands of a freedom and personal independence which only a very few can bear.”
Adolf Hitler in “Hitler Speaks”, Herman Rausching. Quoted in Bernard N. Schumacher, “The Dictatorship of the Conscience”, Nova et Vetera, Volume 15, Number 2, Spring 2017
“Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a [mutilation], like circumcision. … There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense.”
Herman Rausching, president of the Senate of Danzig during the years 1933–1934 thus records several remarks by Adolf Hitler, who stated that the “new man,” the one whose coming the Nazi Party wanted to see, has an obligation to liberate himself from the oppression of his moral conscience, as well as from an independent mind, by subjecting both to the conscience and mind of Hitler, and to him alone.
By contrast, the reality of good and evil — and the truth of objective morality for an ethical civilization — has its basis and source in Biblical values:
….I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing nations… I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty Sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be the great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.
— US President John Adams, in a letter dated February 18, 1809, Letter to Dutch jurist Francis Adrian Van der Kemp (1783-1825) dated December 31, 1808
The Promise
Genesis 18:17-19: Now the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do [to the evil city of Sodom], since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth will be blessed thorough him? For I have cherished him, because he will instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of Lord by doing what is just and right, in order that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what has been promised him”.
בראשית י״ח:י״ז-י״ט וַֽה׳ אָמָ֑ר הַֽמְכַסֶּ֤ה אֲנִי֙ מֵֽאַבְרָהָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר אֲנִ֥י עֹשֶֽׂה׃ וְאַ֨בְרָהָ֔ם הָי֧וֹ יִֽהְיֶ֛ה לְג֥וֹי גָּד֖וֹל וְעָצ֑וּם וְנִ֨בְרְכוּ־ב֔וֹ כֹּ֖ל גּוֹיֵ֥י הָאָֽרֶץ׃ כִּ֣י יְדַעְתִּ֗יו לְמַ֩עַן֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְצַוֶּ֜ה אֶת־בָּנָ֤יו וְאֶת־בֵּיתוֹ֙ אַחֲרָ֔יו וְשָֽׁמְרוּ֙ דֶּ֣רֶךְ ה׳ לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת צְדָקָ֖ה וּמִשְׁפָּ֑ט לְמַ֗עַן הָבִ֤יא ה׳ עַל־אַבְרָהָ֔ם אֵ֥ת אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּ֖ר עָלָֽיו׃
Resh Lakish said: Read not “and he [i.e. Abraham] called” but “and he made to call” [vayakri], thereby teaching that our father Abraham caused the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, to be uttered by the mouth of every passer-by. How was this? After travelers had eaten and drunk, they stood up to bless him; but, said he to them, “Did you eat of mine? You ate of that which belongs to the God of the Universe. Thank, praise and bless Him who spake and the world came into being.”
Talmud, Sotah
Abraham is associated, above all, with the attribute of chesed – acts of kindliness to his fellow men. But Abraham also proclaimed the truth about God to a world in which the knowledge of that truth had been lost. Abraham considered this truth to be the most important thing that he could teach to anyone who enjoyed the warmth and hospitality of his home.
My purpose in this chapter is to explain to you by means of arguments that come close to a demonstration that the universe is here by design [kavana, i.e. the whole universe manifests plan and purpose that leads to a direct awareness of the Creator] … For this reason you will find that all the prophets used the stars and spheres as proof for the existence of a necessary and transcendent Being. Abraham reflected on the stars as is well-known. Isaiah, calling attention to conclusions to be drawn from the stars, says: “Lift up your eyes on high, and see: Who created these?”. Jeremiah says “He made the heavens”. Abraham says: “The Lord, God of Heavens”.
Maimonides, Moreh Nevuchim 2.19
This site is called Toriah. Why Toriah? “The stimulus provided by the Torah (ha’heara ha’Toriah) is an introduction and preface to the stimulus provided by the intellect (ha’hearas ha’Sechel) and serves as proof for it.” [Rabbenu Bachaya ben Joseph Ibn Paquda, Chovos Halevavos, Shaar Avodas HaElokim, chapter 3.]
- Miracle of Life (and the cell)
- Evolution
References
| ↑1 | In an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 1948, the empiricist philosopher W.T. Stace wrote about the moderns’ decision to abandon the earlier philosophy of plan and purpose in the medieval age of faith. “The real turning point between the medieval age of faith and the modern age of unfaith came when the scientists of the seventeenth century turned their backs upon what used to be called “final causes”. . . [belief in which] was not the invention of Christianity [but] was basic to the whole of Western civilization, whether in the ancient pagan world or in Christendom, from the time of Socrates to the rise of science in the seventeenth century. . . . They did this on the ground that inquiry into purposes is useless for what science aims at: namely, the prediction and control of events. . . . The conception of purpose in the world was ignored and frowned upon. This, though silent and almost unnoticed, was the greatest revolution in human history, far outweighing in importance any of the political revolutions whose thunder has reverberated through the world. . . . The world, according to this new picture, is purposeless, senseless, meaningless. Nature is nothing but matter in motion. The motions of matter are governed, not by any purpose, but by blind forces and laws. . . . [But] if the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too. Everything is futile, all effort is in the end worthless. A man may, of course, still pursue disconnected ends, money, fame, art, science, and may gain pleasure from them. But his life is hollow at the center. Hence, the dissatisfied, disillusioned, restless, spirit of modern man. . . . Along with the ruin of the religious vision there went the ruin of moral principles and indeed of all values. . . . If our moral rules do not proceed from something outside us in the nature of the universe – whether we say it is God or simply the universe itself – then they must be our own inventions. Thus it came to be believed that moral rules must be merely an expression of our own likes and dislikes. But likes and dislikes are notoriously variable. What pleases one man, people or culture, displeases another. Therefore, morals are wholly relative.” |
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| ↑2 | More correctly, “Ten Sayings” that categorize the 613 commandments given at Sinai |