ChaBad Debate

=====I recently visited Chabad.org, as I am doing research for a book I hope to write by the end of 2008. While I was there, reading the articles, I came across an article entitled "Proof of the Existence of G-d." The article is quite lengthy, and the point thereof is evident. I read the entire article, and I couldn't help but to feel bad for the author. After thinking about it a moment, however, I remembered that religion is a system based on faith, not on academic argument. The lack of the necessity of academic and scientific support for philosophical and religious faith is definitely the saving grace of many of the articles found at Chabad.org.
=====I honestly don't understand the motivations of people who, while claiming to have the utmost faith in their God, try to build logical and academic arguments for their God's existence. The entire concept doesn't make any sense to me. Either you have faith, or you do not. Faith in a matter, by definition, should preclude the search for proof of the matter. Once you begin a mission to prove the matter of your faith, you have ceased exercising your faith. You cannot have both faith and logic. Faith is the belief in ideas that logic cannot support.
=====You cannot have "faith" in science, for example. Science is a process by which theories are constructed from the observation of facts. Science needs evidence to support facts, and it needs facts to build theories. At no point is it possible to "believe" in something that logic cannot support. Science, by definition, requires logic and experimentation to function.
=====Despite this seemingly obvious initial flaw in the arguments for a Biblical God, I will still analyze the arguments presented by the author for academic and logical merit. To keep things ordered, I will address the issues one at a time and use block quotations from the original article.
=====The first point formulated by the author is the "just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there" argument. The author writes:

Prove the existence of G–d? In truth we must analyse the question before we attempt an answer. What is considered a proof? How does one prove that anything exists? Take, for example, a blind man. Does colour exist for the blind man? He cannot see colour yet it still exists. That fact is established by others who can see. The blind man believes and trusts that his fellow men can see that colour does exist although it is beyond his personal experience.

For a further example, take electricity. When we turn on a light can we see electricity? The answer is no, we see only its effect. Take gravity. When an object falls we cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell gravity – we see only its effect. All agree that gravity is an undisputed fact of nature – since we see its effect. Scientists today are still baffled as to exactly what is the “stuff” of gravity.

The author is overlooking one of the fundamental elements of science. The author is overlooking the fact that science deals with natural phenomena and uses physical evidence -- be it a matter of the five sense, mathematical calculation, or otherwise directly observable or measurable data or result -- to build an understanding of that phenomena. The author is making the suggestion that scientists postulate theories and ideas without direct physical evidence.
=====The difference between the author's assertion that the presence of God can be observed via its effect on a living creature and the theory that gravity pulls things toward the center of the planet is that the latter is based on physical, measurable evidence. The effect of God on a human being cannot be measured. It is not genuinely possible to scientifically measure what one might describe as "happiness" or "spirituality." Even if it were possible to measure these things, a heightened level of "happiness" and/or "spirituality" would simply be an observation in the change of emotional state -- it would not be proof, or even evidence, that God was the cause, let alone that God even exists.
=====Electricity can be measured and its effects on objects and environments can be witnessed in a tangible and physical sense. Colour can also be measured and analyzed on the colour spectrum. The blind man would not know colour existed without a seeing person's observations, but a seeing person would not know colour existed without the physical sense of sight and the observation of the beaviour of light in the spectrum. Electricity and colour are natural and physically observable phenomena and are in no way related to the emotional "feeling" or philosophical "seeing" of the presence or power of God. The fact that the Biblical God is not physical, but metaphysical, makes any scientific debate over His existence impossible.
=====In his next argument, the author turns from the scientific to the legal and historical in an attempt to prove God's existence. The author says:

In a court of law the strongest proof that something happened or existed is a witness statement. Seeing is believing. You cannot compare something seen to something heard.

The "strongest proof," though I assume he means strongest evidence, in a court of law that something happened, especially that it happened a particular way, is forensic evidence. As the author says, "You cannot compare something seen to something heard." For this reason, forensic science, which allows a judge and jury to "see" evidence and data from a crime scene, is more powerful than eyewitness account. Witnesses are human so they can make mistakes and/or lie. Forensic scientists must use scientific method through experimentation and observation to verify the claims of eye witnesses. Without forensic science, which relies entirely on physical observations, cases are almost impossible to "prove" -- such is the "case" for the Biblical God.
=====The author follows this incorrect assertion with another, suggesting:

Any historical fact is proven by those who witnessed and recorded the event. It follows that the more witnesses to that event, the more bona fide the fact.

The author has just put the entire discipline of archeology out of work. Obviously, recorded history can be flawed or even invented. To get to the facts of recorded history, archeologists must search for clues and evidence as to the true nature of ancient events. The author seems to misunderstand science at every level and in every discipline.
=====The misinterpretation of what constitute a fact continues. The author offers the reader a bit of circular reasoning, arguing:

All agree, however, that the Jews left Egypt and, forty-nine days later, stood before Mount Sinai and heard the Ten Commandments from G–d.

This is known, not just because a book (the Torah) tells us so, but simply by tradition – by the fact that generation after generation of Jews have transmitted this story, and that it is based on the actual experience of an entire nation. It therefore remains an undisputed historical fact. The Jews who left Egypt witnessed the Ten Plagues, the Exodus, and revelation at Sinai, and transmitted these events down the generations.

I say this is circular reasoning because the author's argument boils down to the idea that the Torah is not the source of Jewish tradition, even though Orthodox Jews observe Jewish tradition based on what the Torah tells them to be the facts and to be the laws. The author comments further:

In fact, had there been “Chinese whispers”, a distortion of the story over generations, we would have ended up with different versions of the story. All agree, however, that the Jews left Egypt and, forty-nine days later, stood before Mount Sinai and heard the Ten Commandments from G–d.

Chasidic Judaism is a form of Orthodox Judaism. Orthodox Judaism is defined as, "The branch of Judaism that is governed by adherence to the Torah as interpreted in the Talmud," by the American Heritage Dictionary. The author is overlooking the fact that traditions, as they exist is Judaism today, are derived entirely from the Torah and the books written to "decode" the Torah (like the Talmud). The Torah is thousands of years old. The traditions and stories that have been passed down through the millennia have gone unchanged because they have been taken from the Torah which had been used as reference material for thousands of years. There is no way of knowing how many different stories and traditions there were before the information in the Torah was recorded and ultimately institutionalized, so there is no way of knowing what alterations have been made to the traditions and stories since the time before the Torah had been written.
=====For the record, there is no historical evidence that there ever was a Hebrew Exodus from Egypt or that there ever were ten plagues or that there ever was a Moses. The Torah offers no date for this event, and clouds things further by never mentioning the name of the Pharaoh who resided over Egypt at the time of the alleged Exodus. You would think, in these oral traditions, that one of the greatest enemies to the ancient Hebrews -- and the first human opponent of God -- would be a person worth remembering by name. Almost every random and kindly shepherd is recalled by name, every Canaanite chief and family history, every animal sacrificed and when, every exact number of wizards, priests, prison wardens, and women is remembered with precise detail; yet, the Pharaoh is unnamed. Aside from the fact that archeological evidence actually suggests that the Egyptians would have probably been on good terms with the Hebrews, if they were ever in fact in Egypt, the story is extremely suspect due simply to the lack of a name for the residing Pharaoh.
=====The author goes on to attempt to prove the existence of God through the application of the history of the Jewish people; however, I think, from the flaws in the Exodus story, it is safe to say that this idea is also an exercise in circular reasoning and move on. To even begin to take this idea seriously, one must be willing to admit that there was, in fact, an Exodus from Egypt by Hebrews and that there was, in fact, a Moses. Archeological evidence suggests that the likelihood of either of those two pieces of information turning out to be an actual fact is extremely low.
=====From there, the author begins listing passages from the Torah, solidifying the fact that the history and traditions of the Jewish people come directly from the study of the Torah. There is no scientific evidence suggesting that any of the stories in the Torah are historical facts. There is no way of knowing how much of the original oral tradition made it into the Torah as it has been for the last few thousand years. There is no way to scientifically prove that the Torah scrolls or the Dead Sea scrolls were even written by Jews -- it just seems like it would make sense. Somehow, the author forgets that to exhibit faith, one must believe something that cannot be proven and to give that thing relevance beyond scientific proof. The author demonstrates his lack of faith in God by attempting to prove the existence of God through the utilization of his faith in the Torah as unquestionable fact. Somehow, God is questionable, but the Torah is not.
=====I'm not a religious person. Still, I think, no matter what religion you practice, it seems silly to put the unquestionable truth of an inanimate object above the unquestionable truth of the existence of your God. The Torah, however, cannot be proven to be true through science. As the Torah cannot be proven truth with science, then the Torah can only be debated in the realms of the philosophical. If the Torah, then, is only a piece of philosophical literature, where does that leave the Biblical God?