A PROVEN SYSTEM WHICH WORKS WELL AND IS WITHIN THE REALM OF PLAUSIBILITY

What follows is an out and out theft from a recent posting by the Godol Hador (aka Not The Godol Hador aka XGH).

I lifted these passages from the post (here: http://extremegh.blogspot.com/2006/09/you-must-read-this-post.html ) where he relates what "a senior Orthodox Rabbi" said to him in a recent discussion. This is most-marvelously mechazek my emunah (in the same way that the GodolHador himself is mechazek my skepticism).


Now then. Selective cut-and-paste.

ON RELIGIONS:
"...Judaism is unique as compared to Islam & Christianity. Both Islam and Xtianity believe that their prophet and their revelation are the exclusive truth, and that you must convert to their religion. Chazal never felt like that. Chazal were perfectly comfortable with other religions being also true, and other prophets having revelations (Bilaam is even in the Torah!), and even other texts being holy and ‘written’ by God. The only promise in this area is that for Jews, no prophet will ever replace Moshe. But Goyim can have prophets, texts and other paths to God. Chazal did not encourage gerim for that reason: other religions might be true too. The Rishonim also took this position, and there is even a baal tosafos who thinks that Zoroastrianism might be true, and many Rishonim who held that Islam might be true too (except for the parts which claims to have superceded Judaism of course)."


ON JUDAISM:
"...Judaism is a proven system. Its 2,000 years old at least, and has never been guilty of any major injustice. Of course its not perfect, but compared to Islam & Xtianity we come off way better. Secularism doesn’t have a good track record, especially in the last century (2 world wars, Nazis, communist Russia etc). Judaism has maintained a very good moral touchstone (in general), and builds good, successful communities with low crime rates, divorce rates, etc etc."
"...Other alternatives don’t give you such a moral foundation and framework. Agnosticism is dangerous because people are too good at self-rationalizing and there is a danger they could ‘flip out’. Judaism seems to do well (in general) with not ‘flipping out’."
"...In other words, there are multiple paths to God. The only reason we have to be Jewish is because we were born Jewish, and those are the rules of the community."

ON ORTHODOXY:
"...There's not any other system or ideology out there which is significantly better, or possible even equal, over the long term, so it's worth a shot to try and create a rational Orthodoxy."

ON LITERALISM:
"...Firstly, there’s no problem at all in viewing the narrative portions of the Torah as mythological or allegorical (or just plain exaggerated for effect I guess). Chazal clearly viewed early Breishis as allegorical. It’s not a problem. As for the DH, he looked into that in depth but never found it particularly convincing. And anyway, he has no problem with a looser definition of Torah MiSinai. Maybe some bits were added later, some were added earlier (the avos wrote Breishis) etc. "
"...Chazal were always comfortable in allegorizing parts of the Torah."

ON PLAUSIBILITY:
"...The basic concept of Divine Revelation is within the realm of plausibility. Judaism works well and is a good moral system, it has withstood the test of time. You are not required by Judaism to believe in it 100%, (the) Rambam’s ikkarim are not the ikkarim, so there really is no problem!"

Applicable afterthought - XGH's own words, from a different posting (see here: http://extremegh.blogspot.com/2006/09/i-hate-skepticism.html ):
People need a framework. People need life rituals. People need community. People need moral and ethical rules which they can have confidence in. People need meaning. People need to have something bigger than themselves to believe in.