Hello Darkness?

The purpose of this blog is to light up the Friday night dinner table... please print and share...

Last week, we offered you superheroism on a silver platter.

This week, a different kind of heroism.

Here's the scenario:

Picture lighting a candle outside on a sunny day. Not much to see, it doesn't seem to cast much light.

Light that same candle in a dark room, and the light leaps out at you at one hundred eighty-six miles per second.

Same candle!

What does this mean?

Does it mean that darkness creates light?

Or does it mean that darkness makes light relevant?

Here's a dialog that I witnessed online this week between a theist and an atheist (I made them blue and green to help you follow who is saying what)...

I wish Jews were more strict about not assimilating because we have such a long and unique history, it’s such a shame seeing it come to a stop simply because people don’t really care.

You should get downvoted to oblivion. If the Haskalah movement (Jewish Enlightenment) did not take place the world would’ve been deprived of all the famous secular Jewish scientists, mathematicians, politicians, business leaders, artists… of the last almost 200 years.

If not for the Haskalah, maybe Moshiach would be here! The rise of secular humanism also led to two world wars, atom bombs, and tremendous human suffering. I'd take peace on earth over science, business and art any day.

You can’t seriously attribute the two world wars, especially the 2ed and rise of the Nazis to secular humanism. The nazis were literally a rejection of humanism the antithesis of it! I’ll leave moshiach out of this one but I wouldn’t wait around for him to show up but Einstein did not “delay” him.

Scientific advances in a world of secular humanism will inevitably lead to advancing the goals of imperialism, regardless of the driving ideology (Hellenism, Fascism, Communism, Pax-Americanism). But had Einstein and those Jews of his ilk devoted their incredible brainpower to Torah, Avodah and Chesed....

Are you insane? Um no science does not lead to imperialism, the world is way more complicated than that. And nothing is inevitable. If Einstein and the great jewish scientific/political/mathematical/philosophical secular leaders wasted their time re reading jewish sacred texts the world would be a much darker more dangerous place!

That ain't what I said. Read it again.

Scientific advances in a world of secular humanism does not lead to imperialism… I simplified but still is a pretty radical unsubstantiated opinion to hold!

It's only radical to someone with an emotional commitment to the system. But consider: secular humanism leads to all sorts of moral positions, including passivism and including (sometimes), "might makes right". At those times - given the technical means - wars will happen. What Russia and China are doing presently is merely a current example of this.

There's more, but that's enough for today's question for your table:

What do you think? Who wins the debate - Judaism or secular humanism?


Shabbat Shalom

and

Happy Channukah!

PS - Mindful of the countdown to Channukah, I'm guessing that you may be doing some shopping on Amazon - did you know that every Amazon purchase can trigger a donation to your favorite charity by using http://smile.amazon.com? Please do so and consider choosing Jewish Spiritual Literacy as your grantee in order to support this weekly email and our other worthy programs.