New And Returning Members!

ames, thats it! When I was queen, I never forgot! At least I appreciated it, I think I should take back the honor. 😉

*kapusta*

Not bad areivim, but if you want to improve you should just plagiarize from Dr. Seuss v’Rochvo like the rest of us.

Big welcome goes out to DovInBeitShemesh!

Thank you for considering the CR your place- please stick around 🙂

Big welcome to all of today’s new members, from the CR Board & CR Gang & CR Crew!

Since this question might be bothering some other people, i’ll enlighten you all a bit. I don’t, I assume from his/her writings, & neither does anyone really know mine/mine. Besides it was not a Mussar Shmooze, as I/I wrote there!

ahavas yisroel chinum

you wrote:

“Areivimzehlazeh. …Love you too!”

I am not sure how this post was approved.

Although we do allow public recognition of good posts we do NOT allow public displays expressing emotional feelings towards other posters. It is inappropriate and if you continue, we will block you.

from where?

I think we need a welcome back thread for all our returning wanderers.

*kapusta*

Although old members that have returned to active posting would not know to check this thread, I will nonetheless do my duties for the chushuva CR

Does the new thread title help?…80 Thank you mod 80 🙂

A very Grand re-Welcome goes out to:

COKE NOT PEPSI

BAAL KISHRON

We’re so relieved to see you join us once again! Please do not desert us and keep posting- thanks 🙂

luv2hack- if this is what you really love doin, where’ve you been for the past 3 months??

Welcome back to the grand CR! Please stick around 🙂

Thanx 80, I like the new title!

*kapusta*

mods- welcome back 🙂 Please stick around 🙂

Welcome Back SJSinNYC! Glad to see you posting again 🙂

Just to let everyone know – my departure is permanent.

I am no longer in any way involved with Judaism or the Jewish community and have returned to a secular way of life. No hard feelings; just a realization that I cannot maintain my former beliefs and practices against overwhelming scientific evidence that supports atheism.

Since I have no desire to participate here whatsoever and certainly no desire to sway anyone else’s beliefs in any way, could you please delete my account? Thank you and best wishes to all.

A6KB – I hope your read this, and B”H may Hashem lead you back home, especially in this zman of Teshuvah.

The world was built perfectly by Hashem. May Hashem open your eyes to the miracle of the growth of even a blade of grass to the power of the sun. There is a Creator and the world did not just happen on it’s own.

There are no words adequate for this.

??? ??? ???? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???? ?????

Where there’s life, there’s hope for teshuva.

May Itzik aka “A600KiloBear” once again find his way back, as well as all other binei Yisroel who have lost their emuna.

Just one last thing.

Rationality opened my mind to the growth of a tumor, the dissolving of human flesh by tiny bacteria that are stronger than any chemical designed to kill them, the birth of a defective baby who will never know a good day in his life and will be a burden on himself and others, the quadriplegic who was healthy until the moment his car was hit by another one because the second driver was distracted for a moment.

This is not perfection. This is a random world, with no reward and no punishment, but one which eventually human beings or our evolved successors will understand and conquer. Khomeini lived to be 86. Rudolf Hess lived to be 93. How many times do we see appeals when a “frum” head of household passes away in his 30’s or 40’s of a disease he had no control over? This is no test from any deity. It is a test that we’ll overcome when DNA mapping lets us know once and for all what is in store for us and what we can change to live longer and better (and considering how shidduchim work, I know that there will be a Dor Yeshorim that will make sure those with defective DNA don’t pass it on to the next generation, which will mean an even bigger shidduch crisis and this time for a good reason).

No Torah sage discovered the polio vaccine. Two atheist scientists did because that was what they set out to do.

I believe at this point that this physical, random world is the only one there is and ever will be (unless the Muslims get a dirty bomb and destroy it one day which is a very faint possibility).

I don’t worry about the afterlife or about Moshiach anymore. No proof, no belief. However I also don’t care to argue with those who choose another belief so long as they do not harm me in the name of their belief.

And by harm, I mean Islamic terror, not putting up an eruv or running a shabbos siren or even practicing kiruv (just know that I no longer consider myself a Jew and when confronted by any attempt at kiruv I can now honestly state, sorry, I am not Jewish, have a great day).

Listen, it is me.

I wanted so badly to believe after coming back the second time.

But I realized little by little that I just don’t belong. First of all, I want to stay alone in life. A family and community oriented set of beliefs is just not for me. In the real world, I am single. Means the same as my height. I’m not 6’9″ so I can’t play basketball, and I’m not married so there are events that I wouldn’t be invited to – so what? On the other hand there are many things I can do just because I am not burdened by a wife and family.

In the frum world, I am nebach half a person, which is just not the way it really is. According to biology, I am a whole person with control over my decision to mate or reproduce as I see fit. I choose to remain alone because that is how I feel happiest. Others feel otherwise and I understand why they do.

When you start realizing you have no place, you start reading and researching, especially when you were always taught to question and debate. And that is where my reading led me, to a realization that as much as I would like it to be true, Torah just doesn’t hold water for me.

So, I leave in peace. When I left the first time it was because of run-ins with a corrupt and criminal individual who had and sadly still has an important position. Had he never interfered in my life (and believe me I was not involved with him but went my own way), I would not have left in anger the first time but rather faded out as I am doing now. This time, I have not one bad word to say about 99% of the people I met over the past four years, but something just doesn’t make sense to me and who I really am just doesn’t belong in the frum world.

Therefore, I must move on and must live according to reason, rationality and pure fact. I will never answer every question I might have, but now I no longer care. I know what I want in life and am pursuing it to the exclusion of these questions.

Since you say that you were always taught to question and debate, I hope you won’t mind if I do so too. After all, I was brought up with that same method. You have given 3 different reasonings above for your decision:

1) The world is imperfect

2) You don’t seem to belong in a frum setting

3) Torah doesn’t hold water in the face of scientific explanations

Then at the end, you say that you will live instead according to rationalism. That may have been a pervasive and intriguing way of thinking in the Renaissance era (Spinoza, Descartes, Kant, etc), but modern thinking has shown that human beings are not rational beings at all, but rather are rationalizing beings.

Any one of the three reasons you have given in your above posts can be countered by alternative logic, assuming the opponent in the debate is competent. You are merely rationalizing with this, not truly stating your reasons.

The subconscious of the mind is far more powerful than the rational portion, as psychologists have proven as early as the end of the 19th century. Rational thought without empirical evidence is next to worthless. Take physics as an example: Every theory postulated is a result of reasoning coupled with observation. Supposing we develop new measuring tools and an observation changes. As soon as that happens, physics changes. The previous way of thinking becomes laughable, no matter how rational it seemed before the tools were developed. It has already happened countless times, and it will happen countless more times in the future.

It is the same thing with mankind’s quest for truth. We lack tools to make the necessary observations. As a result, we are compelled to answer our own questions without observations; some attempt to do this with rational thought. The Jewish people believe that we do not need tools, because the Torah tells us as much as we need to know. That means that we do not have all the answers, only what we have been given. But no one without the Torah has all the answers, either. Certainly not the rationalists.

I can only imagine what it was that shook you enough to cause your way of thinking to change. All I can do is invite you to investigate the science from more than one perspective. The religion of science is a very weak one. We have a lot to be grateful to science for – a long list actually – but giving us truths about the world we live in is not amongst that list.

There will be no shortage of reminders that the world is not borderless; or remind one of their tribal identity, when they wish to forget it.

I don’t think that the “scare tactics” are necessary to make the point.

Itzik, it is true that good things happen to bad people, and bad things happen to good people. But you have already said the answer to this – you said that you are free to choose what you want to do with your life. This is absolutely true. It is also the answer to why bad things happen to good people.

Imagine for a minute that a certain type of person was never afflicted by tragedy. Let’s say for argument’s sake that statistics show no Catholic who went to confession ever got into an auto accident, ever got sick, ever lost money in the stock market, or ever had so much as a backache. I guarantee you that with the release of that study skeptics would start going to confession every week to test the study. If nothing bad happens to them after that, it would soon become “the ultimate segula” to go to confession, right? Pretty soon, everyone would be going and no one would ever suffer again. I don’t believe in confession, it is a load of garbage – but if everyone who went was protected from all harm, I wouldn’t have any choice but to become a practicing Catholic, would I? What kind of an idiot would do something (e.g. missing confession) that is guaranteed to bring about retribution? Besides, the fact that doing it protects you would be proof that it is the right thing to do. I would have no choice in what I do.

There is no free will to do right or wrong unless the the bad things that happen in this world are distributed indiscriminately to good and bad people. Who could possibly choose to do bad if you knew that lightning would strike you a minute later? Similarly, are you really a good person if you do good only because you know it will protect you from all harm? It is only your choice if there is no consequence.

There is no consequence except the obvious.

The only commandment is the 11th – thou shalt not get caught. And of course there is the even more obvious that if you engage in certain behavior like drug abuse or drunk driving you’ll ruin yourself fast.

I know of someone who ran a tax scam that was so simple I could have run it back in kindergarten. It paid for him to do it. He sat his year in Club Fed, even spent Yom Tov at home, and died an old, rich man years after his release.

Try that nowadays with the present state of computers and you’d get caught in 2 minutes and get sentenced to 10-15 years.

Look, this is my last post here. You are happy as you are, I am happier the way I am now. Goodbye and good luck.

Sometimes, the quest for truth leads to a different truth than the one originally expected.

What can I do? We are just masses of chemicals in a random world.

Enjoy yourselves. Over and out.

I’m not asking for answers. I am just saying goodbye. This is my final farewell, my final day of transition back to the world I should never have left.