I will deal with your points about miracles and maths.. I will leave out the spanish!
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those 2 [saadya and rambam] did not reject Kabbalah! In Moreh Nevuchim Rambam discusses Maseh Bereshith and Maseh Merqavah, older terms for Kabbalah. Rav Saadya Gaon wrote an exquisite translation and commentary of the Sefer Yetzirah another core Kabbalistic text.
I don't think it's very logical to just say follow those 2 for the sake of it, or to follow everybody else for the sake of it. But anyway.
"Those 2" don't mention any kabbalah post talmud.
Maaseh Beraishit and Maaseh Merkava are referred to in the Talmud.
Sefer Yetzirah is referred to in the talmud.
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Tell me what is there in Kabbalah that “cannot be demonstrated to be true” and “makes no sense”? On the contrary what about the fact that –
I wouldn't have said what judea said there.. Certainly the written and oral Torah have the stronger foundation of national revelation.
regarding scientific facts.. there was an interesting debate between nadir ahmed and dennis giron about scientific "miracles" in the quran.
Ahmed (the muslim) suggested a procedure to test if they are valid or not.
Giron(atheist) then showed all of Ahmed's claims failed his criteria.
Ahmed said that the sum of them made it true.
Giron failed to reply that 0*0*0=0 (AND=*).
And Giron failed to state that certain errors were copied , and invalidated the muslim religious book completely. (he seemed nervous and -very- respectful! and just making the claim that the scientific miracles were false, not touching on whether the muslim book was true or false!)
Here are some of the criteria Ahmed mentioned. they are relevant here too.
It doesn't count if,
- if it's 50/50
- if it's something that man can see/test for himself..(e.g. a curious person without deep scientific knowledge could observe or test it quite easily)
- if it was already known at the time
I would also add, science is a big field, and it's rather unfair to bring up many many claims that just don't hold up to reason. Fortunately, the jewish claims are not ridiculous at all, and not too numerous.. (in contrast, the muslims pump huge amounts of money into inventing thousands of the most ridiculous stupid so-called miracles to fool people.. but let's not go there, i've mentioned that story in another thread)
And, I would add that non scientists, and non mathematicians, can't readily criticise these things, and usually these facts are just put out there but not in an honest way.. Nobody actually takes these facts to scientists for an answer. They are usually answered by *honest* orthodox jews themselves, that have run into these facts and have the background or knowledge see if they are valid.
The Zohar says the earth is a rotating sphere and people in different places experience day and night at the same time?
Google tells us "Around 350 B.C.E., the great Aristotle declared that the Earth was a sphere"
Still, some jewish sources said flat, some round. But there was disagreement amongst the nations at the time anyway. It was a 50/50 really too.
this site mentions that the bavli said flat. The jerusalem talmud may have suggested round. the Zohar and midrash beraishit rabba said round.
http://seforim.blogspot.com/2006/07/flat-or-round-earth-and-zohar.htmlAs far as day and night.. Well, I think that if you see the sun moving around the earth, you might think ,Ah, it was day over there, and night here, now the sun is moving over here. So it will be day here and night there.
So it is observable.
Now regarding rotating.
Are you sure that the Zohar says the earth is rotating ?
The rotation and orbit are different by the way, but either would be impressive.
People thought that the sun had an orbit around the earth.
It would be good to see te exact quote where you get the rotating aspect from.
By the way.. The RAMBAM said in "the guide" that we don't know, and for calculating the calendar we use the greek hypothesis , science of the time, because the calculations work, so the hypothesis is fine for that purpose.
The base 10 numeric system which can depict any number and enables complex mathematics originated from the Kabbalistic concept of the 10 Sefiroth?
One would be hard placed to say what is special about base 10.
Infact, one can represent all those numbers in any base. And if base 8 or base 16 was used, we could even convert between bases quite easily.
Say we used base 10. We could have words for one 16, 2 16s e.t.c. and digits for all 16 hex digits and it would all seem perfectly natural! Some people do that, just without the words!
Most mathematicians or computer scientists might suggest that we use base 10 because we have 10 fingers. There is no obvious reason why we use it.
A jewish answer I once considered was that Hebrew - the original - Lashon HaKodesh, always had numbers, and it -almost- uses base 10! It's a bit like roman numerals, but the only -consecutive- digits it has are One to Ten. (I know, it skips 0. Base 10 would use 0-9, no letter for ten. And It has other letters like kaf lamed e.t.c. hebrew isn't really base 10, not at all really!)
Kabbalist gadol and proponent of the Zohar’s authenticity Hakam Yitzhak of Akko said that the universe is 15 billion years old? (this is the exact age of the universe most scientists estimate today!)
There was a recent thread I posted in on this subject. A post about the 6000 year issue in the subject..
The ~15 billion figure is 42,000*365.25*1000
He wouldn't have said 42,000 though.
Another source suggests it.
He says, quoting the talmud, that the world goes through 7* 7000 year cycles.
Apparently, he put us in the 2nd cycle.
But if you put us in the 7th.
So we had 6 before it, and those 6 were divine years..
We get 42,000 by doing 6*7000
http://www.jewishmag.com/8MAG/WORLDS/worlds1.htmthis skeptic one (I notice this skeptical article doesn't make sense in describing rabbi aryeh kaplan, and it makes a really silly argument that 365.25 is not the jewish year. A year is a natural thing, a solar-earth thing)
http://orthoprax.blogspot.com/2005/01/kaplan-and-ramban.htmlIt does mean that we should look into it more closely.. What rabbi yitzchak of acco says. And what sources rabbi kaplan uses..
That orthoprax site did a tiny little bit more information.. of a skeptical nature, that I didn't have in the previous thread where I mentioned this.. where I just relied on the jewishmag link.. but the jewishmag link is very very good
And by saying that rabbi yitzchak of acco says 15 billion, hey presto miracle.
That is problematic if science then changes.
You have to realise that that kind of science is not definite, it's done by extrapolation. True, extrapolation based on various methods.. But it's possible that the earth was different pre flood and this influenced many methods.
Don't twist(/liberally interpet) things into unskeptically saying the torah predicts a big bang and an expanding universe and a universe of 15 billion years. Because then when science changes, you'll lead alot of people to secularism..
It is of course important to put Truth first, and not get too excited by the moment.
Kabbalist gadol Ramban said that the universe was initially as small as a mustard seed until it expanded and became tangible? (compare this with the present big bang model all scientists accept).
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You are quoting things you haven't read.. You should really quote it here.
I haven't read it either.. But you are making the claim.
Here are 2 criticisms of the claim that the RAMBAN's words go along with the big bang.
Rabbi dovid gottlieb says regarding Gerald Shroeder's book.
http://www.dovidgottlieb.com/comments/CommentsGenesisBigBang.htm"P 65. Ramban's first creation is Aristotelian "prime matter" which is pure potentiality without any positive characteristics at all. There is no evidence in physics for such an entity. Also, much of the description of the big bang in the Ramban is the product of the author's expansion and interpolation. In particular, the Ramban does not say or imply that as the prime matter expanded, the universe expanded with it."
This site says regarding it
http://orthoprax.blogspot.com/2005/01/kaplan-and-ramban.html"
Ramban's view of creation is not the same as is found in modern cosmology. Ramban's idea of creation is that G-d created a "prime matter" without any characteristics - this a Greek idea - from which all other matter of the universe came from. However, he also asserts the initial creation was actually of two prime matters: one of heaven and one of earth.
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Topic: The Zohar Definitely Was Written By Rashbi (Read 24696 times)