Is Learning Science Spiritually Dangerous?

Shabbos 112b:

Our Chachomim are b’nei malachim.

What would you do when presented with direct evidence that Chazal were wrong on a point of science?

Such evidence does not, and never will, exist. Including the lice issue. (See my earlier post discussing it.)

I was once told by a person that he holds it is a safek doraysa l’chumra so it is completely forbidden to kill lice. I’m disgusted by the freethinking, and lack of emunas chachomim. We have to accept that Chazal were above us and our brains. Btw not that this is emes, but maybe all Chazal meant that l’inyan the m’lochoh of netilas neshoma it has to come from a certain type of egg etc. like by bishul Chazal were koveia that a kli sheini is ossur, kli shlishi is mutor etc. We should use our brains to reconcile Chazal and find out biyun what they mean, not chas veshalom ridicule them and forbid killing lice

not chas veshalom ridicule them

Poshite,

No one is ridiculing Chazal here.

The Wolf

(Mods please forgive me one more time for the length of this post. Thanks)

Should a human not have a Neshama or a Nefesh, he is not a human, but an organic construct; should someone create an organic machine that mimics plant life in every biological way possible, it may still be considered a Domem, if it lacks the spiritual Nefesh HaTzomeches.

(reposted from elsewhere)

BS”D

Neither Chazal nor anyone else dropped the ball on the cure for cancer. Hashem for whatever reason has not yet revealed the cure for malignant illness.

The Rambam was most probably a far greater doctor and certainly far more intelligent and righteous than the discoverer of penicillin (Fleming?). For one thing, the Rambam spoke of aerobic exercise and dietary restraint when people believed in resting and overeating.

But Hashem instead decided to reveal penicillin, a mold that existed since the beginning of time, to a non-Jew who was not even looking to mold as an antibiotic, but who somehow chose not to throw out his moldy petri dish. The penicillin was there, but it was Hashem Who decided how and when to reveal it.

And He did so during World War 2, to a British scientist who was charged with preventing infections in soldiers who were wounded while stopping the most vicious tzoirer ha-Yehudim of all times yemach shmo.

When the Rofe Koil Bosor decides to reveal the cure for cancer, it will come. It could come bederech hateva, in a university or drug company lab (and if in EY this might be bederech Teva, but their R&D is actually very overrated), or it could come out of nowhere, for instance from someone noticing some effect on cell growth when he spills food or cleaning solution in a test tube.

One thing is for sure, looking for ways to reduce the niflois haBorei to mere mundane chemical occurrences and to otherwise dray Torah chas vesholom is not going to draw down the siyata deShmaya that is needed for this cure to be revealed, even if Hashem reveals it through an oived avoido zoro in the Far East.

The important thing is that at the end of the day it is mutor to kill lice on Shabbos. If you chap a geshmak to farenfer the reason (which isn’t metaphysical, although Chazals to have secret layers) just like by bishul there is a Chazal’s definition which is very different from ours, kol hakavod.

“Do you think that respectful disagreement is impossible?… The same applies to scientific statements of Chazal — I can disagree respectfully. Disagreement in and of itself is not disrespect.”

Wolf: Correct. It is impossible for you to chas v’shalom disagree with Chazal.

Your summation of my lice post wasn’t too bad.

BSD:

Joseph:

Once again (and just to protect everyone else), what you have said seems to be (C’V)close to (I’m sure you are not saying kefira, so please restate what you said).

When the chachomim said a girl under 3 will not lose her Besulim and they grow back, they meant it literally. Same for a bird that only hops (for those who learn Daf). It does not hop more than 50 Physical Amos, not Spiritual Amos(?).

Please restate/clarify what you have just posted. And I apologize if I am being harsh (or if you agree & I did not understand).

Thanks.

gavra: I posted the Rishonim and Achronim. Read them again, and you’ll find your answer.

Wolf: Yes.

Wonderful!

Guess what, then — Chazal aren’t interested in science (as it is presently defined)!

So all the arguing is meaningless.

Lice can come from eggs on a physical level — but Chazal meant something else when they said that they don’t.

The universe can have existed for billions of years on a physical level — but Chazal meant something else when they said that it’s only ~6000 years old.

And so on and so forth.

In other words, Chazal aren’t really making scientific statements (as we understand them today) — they were making metaphysical/mystical statements.

That’s fine. I’m perfectly willing to believe that the universe is billions of years old and that Chazal had some other deeper meaning behind their statement.

The Wolf

Poshite,

No problem. I didn’t think you meant it accusingly. I was just clarifying my position in case you misunderstood.

The Wolf

And btw Wolf I didn’t mean you should jump the guns and say that the world is chas veshalom 15.3 trillion years old and lice come from eggs… I meant to give it some iyun or ask a rav to really find out. I keep on refering to the example of bishul on Shabbos. Chazal say that in this kli it’s bishul, this one it’s not. Maybe (idk) the fertilization of lice is meshuneh from other briyos, or maybe their eggs are too small or something ( I be’emes dont know) But I think Chazal meant what they meant even physically you just have to find out what they mean. It could take time.

I really don’t want to get involved, but I do have a point to make.

If lice are hatched from eggs, then how do we attribute kessamim? The entire concept of teliya is based on abiogenesis.

No, they were most definitely not talking about lice coming from eggs. A better possiblity is that what we call lice is not what Chazal called lice, and we in fact have no idea what Chazal lice are. I say better, only.

And the gemara says explicitly that lice don’t come from eggs.

How is that different?

The Wolf

I once went to hear a speaker who was actually proving that the torah and the science don’t contradict each other. Saying that the midrash says that each day of creation lasted for millions of years because our concept of time is different than hashems. I don’t remember his name but I thing he was a professor or something that worked with NASA.

000646 – you understood my point exactly.

squeak: Going with your pshat, how is it that it is still mutur to kill (what we call) lice on Shabbos?

646: The 6 days of creation were in fact 24 hours. How could they not be? Aren’t days 24 hours now? So when did this change? Where does it indicate in the slightest that the first Sunday after creation (or the first Shabbos) was suddenly shorter than previous days?

On the contrary – it’s clear that on the fourth day Hashem said the sun should shine during the time-period that was called “day” and the stars/darkness should rule during the time-period called “night”. Since then, that hasn’t changed, and obvisouly, as we can see today, the sun and the stars have decided that the time period called day plus the time period called night, are 24 hours.

Joseph,

Lice are born from eggs, actual physical eggs not dirt. Dirt means dirt not eggs even small ones and even ones laid by lice.

According to you why is it ok to say that when Chazal say “dirt” it sometimes actually means “lice eggs”, but not ok to say that when Chazal say “days” they mean periods of time?

Question: Could not Hashem have created a universe that was billions of years old?

Where do tomato bugs come from? Where are the tomato bug eggs before the tomato seeds are planted and the plant is grown?

Where do maggots that come out of dead bodies come from? One theory is that flies lay their eggs on the body and produce the maggots. Or, do they produce on their own in a dead body?

I think science only serves to enhance our emunah. If Chazal said something that we know to be scientifically inaccurate, perhaps our understanding of THEIR understanding is inaccurate, or perhaps it is not an halachic issue, so we should not be so concerned about it. In general, Chazal seem to have had a really impressive understanding of the world, of illness, of human nature, etc. without all the fancy accoutrements of today. So if they misspoke about lice and its source, or if they understood it differently, big deal. They still knew what was treif and what was kosher. And more important, they knew how to treiber out the gid hanasheh, so we could eat the good steak! Bottom line – this is nit-picking (pun intended).

Psh. Let’s keep something in mind about “science” here. “Science” just consists of people–namely, “scientists”–making “observations” about the world, noting “regularities,” making “predictions” and testing them with “experiments,” amassing “evidence,” and using “inductive logic” to make conclusions about “underlying laws.”

As a side note: I’m wondering if all things on Earth are made of “atoms” and “molecules” or of the four elements (earth, wind, water, fire). Any takers?

I do not buy into the opinion that one can learn science from Torah. If Chazal said something of a scientific nature, it was due to the then prevalent scientific “knowledge”. If you want to then call it Torah, fine, but it is just prevalent knowledge and was known to goyim also. If a Rav or posek reads a secular scientific book ,paraphrases it, and I then read the Rav’s writings, I have not “learned science from Torah”.

Please be intellectually honest. No Rov will make the claim that he can study only traditional Torah and seriously know current engineering, medicine, physics or math. I challenge any Rov or godol with no secular education, to take the National Boards Examination in a medical discipline or GREs in any science. So claiming that all of science is in traditional Torah when no one in history has achieved anything approaching this is dishonest.

And curiously, unless I missed it, I have not seen an angry letter from the International Society of Mermaids attacking me for denying their existence, past or present.

Were there ever empirical facts that were later disproven? Or is that a contradiction?

A fact is not something you prove or disprove, it is a statement of something you have seen or observed. For example that the orbit of mars is an ellipse not circle is a fact, based on observations by Tycho and others after him. Now the accuracy to which we know the details of that has of course gotten better.

There have been some things that were taken as facts over the years that came from measurements that we conducted incorrectly, or in some cases out right fraud. (It happens)

But in general things taken as a fact in science have been tested and retested in many different ways over the years. For example relativity has been tested in thousands of experiments over the last 100 or so years and has been found to be correct in every case.

The name of this is “Is learning science spiritually dangerous?” We got a little off topic about some arguement if Chazal knew science or not (chas veshalom). But this slightly off topic conversation proved one thing: Learning science is spiritually dangerous – if that’s the type of things people can say about Chazal after learning it. The Chazon Ish advised top brain surgeons, and knew psychology very well. He never left the beis medresh or chas veshalom read those books. Once a man askded the Chazon ISh if he can learn psychology, and the Chazon Ish asked him “Why can’t you learn it from Chumash-Rashi?” Every few years scientists change their theories, and in a hundred years they’ll be laughing at using carbon14 to prove ages of fossils and things. But then, they’ll have weirder theories then. The point is, we should stick to Chazal because they’re always right. “Kol Haoseik batorah lishmah zocheh lidvarim harbeih”, “Hafoch boh vahapoch boh ki kuloh boh”

BS”D

Again, Ames, what are you setting out to learn? The positions of the stars? Their brightness and even their composition? Or their supposed origins?

Only the last can be spiritually damaging, and even that is not a given if all you want to find out is how we understand the way Hashem created them. The Torah is not meant to give us the technical details of creation, only to make it clear Who created the world and for what purpose. Parshas Bereishis is hard enough to listen to on Simchas Torah; would you like to hear a series of chemical reactions as well? (The only chemical reaction that matters on Simchas Torah is the reaction of ethanol with various human cell structures….)

The problem is only found in cases of brainwashing by those who use their findings to deny Hashem and the authenticity of the Torah.