The Rational Jew

 A common argument for asserting the veracity of religion is belief. "I just believe" is a common retort I hear when challenging the veracity of Judaism. I don't think this is sufficient justification Judaism's veracity. Basic Counter-Argument Assumptions Judaism's veracity is mutually exclusive to some set of other religions (further referred to as false religions) Any false religion has adherents that justify their religions veracity using belief  Argument With the above assumptions, if: belief is sufficient to assert the veracity of a religion then both: Judaism is true as it has believers the false religions are true as they have believers In other words, if belief is sufficient, then mutually exclusive belief systems are concurrently true. This cannot be. Therefore, belief does not cause a religion to be true.  I think this argument should remove belief from consideration when attempting to establish if a religion is rooted in truth. This argument should also...

Tanach is full of what seem to be errors. Not something you would expect from a divine document. I urge you to approach these errors with the perspective of someone trying to answer the question, is this a divine text?  If you come to the text with the assumption it is divine, you can obviously never conclude that it is not. Parallel Narratives Combined Into One One of the modern secular theories of the Tanach is that it was either composed of multiple source texts or was supplemented with addendums over time to create the patchwork text we have currently. I am going to quote some passages that make sense if they were:  originally multiple source texts that were spliced together edited over time written by an author who was happy to take artistic license  but are both confusing/convoluted or completely contradictory if thought of as a single source text presenting the literal truth.  Yosef sold to slavery Bereshit 37 25 And they sat down to eat bread; and they lifte...

This argument was actually the last holdout for me on my journey towards atheism. On its surface it appears rock solid, but with a broader understanding of history it is clearly bogus. I am bothered how this argument continues to make its rounds in Orthodox circles and it is the duty of truthful Jews to shut it down.  Claim The written/oral Torah relays the claim that the entire people of Israel witnessed God giving the ten commandments. Such a claim could have never been started. If the claim was started at the time or shortly after the time when such event supposedly happened, the false ‘prophet’ relaying such a claim would not be believed because the events would be easily verifiable. Not only did the supposed event just occur, but anyone being lied to would have easy access to others who supposedly witnessed it (everyone was there). If the mass revelation claim was falsely created many generations after the supposed event, the figure who introduced the claim would be recorded a...