Matan, you are making an error in logic. And I know you "mean every word" because in pseudo-Maskilish communities this piece of illogical, robotic thinking is mother's milk, and from your other posts, most of which do not appear on the site because they are not meant seriously, it is clear that you have accepted blindly the “teachings” of such communities.
And please, nobody elected you spokesman for anybody else. ("To someone who has doubts about the torah, that answer is meaningless.") To you, who did not understand even the question, never mind the answer, perhaps that is true, but you have no right to speak for other people. You can say that you don't get it, but others who are more objective will. Please don't hide behind imaginary throngs of "rational" people, who exist only in your mind. You speak for yourself and only yourself.
Parenthetically, please note I am telling you off like this because, although I asked you nicely many times to stop, you continue to try to waste my time and the time of the readers by trolling and your disrespectful patronizing. I asked you previously to please go play your games elsewhere with some other rabbi. Your attitude that "I understand that we must learn and have emunah. But what happened to being rational. A good question is a good question, regardless of judaism." is symptomatic of the frumophobic indoctrination that is so blatant in so many of your unaccepted posts. Whoever told you that anybody believes what you just implied we do, misled you. Attributing such an attitude to the frum community is a defense mechanism of secularists, convincing themselves that they are the "intellectuals" who are "intellectually honest" and "ask hard questions," as opposed to the religious, who live "on faith."
Your personal beliefs are your own business, but your belief that we have horns (figuratively speaking) is not welcome on this site, regardless of how much you think it is true. So just go somewhere else to spew your ignorance. I'd be happy to answer your questions, if only they would arrive unaccompanied by the anti-frum attitude, and the sometimes subtle and at other times not so subtle attempts at mockery.
But to an extent, you are a Tinok Shenishba, trained to have others do their thinking for you and to have blind faith in whatever beliefs coincide with the vox populi, rational or absurd. That is no excuse for harassing us, but it is an excuse for your not being able to see straight. Because of that and also because I want to point out to the users of this site an example of secular blind faith, I will address your post:
As I said, you are making a careless error in logic. Please read the thread again. The question we are discussing is: Is the fact that the world appears to be more than 6,000 years old a contradiction to the Torah? Is the apparent age of the world is a refutation of the claim of the Torah that the world was created 6,000 years ago?
The answer is no it is not. Both the Torah’s claim and the scientific evidence can be correct, because the Torah claims the world was created aged. And therefore, according to the Torah, the scientific evidence would certainly indicate a world aged beyond 6,000 years. In fact, I said, it would be quite surprising if it did not.
This answer is not designed to disprove the position that the world is millions of years old (for that we have other arguments). It is designed to negate the proof that the world is millions of years old. It is designed to show that the Torah’s claim that the world is 6,000 years old – but aged – is sustainable even if you accept the scientific evidence of an aged world. That does not mean we have proven anything about the Torah; it means we have defeated an alleged proof against it.
Then, somebody posed a counter-argument. And since the only claim I ever made was that the Torah's claim of a 6,000 year old world is compatible with scientific evidence, this counter argument tries to prove that the Torah’s claim of a 6,000 year old world is in fact not compatible with scientific evidence. It does so by attempting to dismantle the claim that the world was created aged. The argument says if you accept that the world was created aged, then maybe the world was created 5 minutes ago with false memories planted in our minds?
But that argument is a mistake. Because the question we are discussing is, does what the Torah claims contradict the scientific evidence? The answer is no, because the Torah claims the world was created aged.
Now what part of that is hard to accept? It is only "hard to accept" to you because it has been hammered into your head that this silly question ("Maybe the world was created 5 minutes ago?") is a valid response to the "aged world" argument (presented incorrectly in your circles). I am publicly claiming neither you nor any of the users of this site can make even a bit of sense out of what you were taught and now accept as, in your own words, "rational."
The argument about the world possibly being created 5 minutes ago does not impact in the slightest on the argument it attempts to refute. It does not provide any demonstration that the Torah’s claim of an aged world created 6,000 years ago world is not compatible with scientific evidence, and that is all that is being claimed.
Asking “maybe the world was created 5 minutes ago” is the same as asking: Maybe the world was created 7,000 years ago or 8,000 years ago, or 5,300 years ago? Obviously, none of those questions are relevant to our discussion, because they have nothing to do with whether the evidence for an aged world contradicts the Torah.
The fact is, I have proven that the Torah's claim of a 6,000 year old world is compatible with scientific evidence. Your question "But maybe the world was created 5 minutes ago" does not diminish in the slightest the force of the proof. We are reconciling the Torah's claim with science. Asking maybe the world was created 5 minutes ago, which is NOT the Torah's claim, is not an argument against the compatibility of the Torah's claim with the scientists' evidence. It just sounds cute to ask such a question. It is astounding that rational people can even think like this (actually it's not so astounding - see the Bais Halevy below - but it is definitely revealing).
So now, "Mr. Rational," I would like to ask you why you or anyone else takes this flaky argument seriously? Why is this not a clear demonstration of what the Bais HaLevy writes, that Apikorsim are the biggest believers in blind faith? That they do not think for themselves and the only reason they accept the ludicrous reasoning of the Apikrosim is that it is vogue to do so?
Forgive me, therefore, if I publicly cannot hold myself back from snickering at your claims of being “rational” and that a “good question is a good question regardless of Judaism.” Even after you heard why the question is not a good question, you come back not merely with a question or a challenge, but with claims that we should be "rational" (like you, of course) and we should address good questions, and then, as an example of a "good question" that we should address regardless of Judaism, you throw me a mindless mantra that you picked up from some website or heard somewhere that makes no sense whatsoever.
Please, explain to me what goes on in the mind of the secularist. Please explain to me – because from where I am sitting, the only good question here that is not being addressed is this: Why do secularists refuse to think for themselves? Is it that they are afraid to be different? Is it that they afraid to be called “fundamentalists”? Is it peer pressure? Or maybe the desire not to be bound to Hashem’s laws? What is it exactly? (I have my own answer, here.)
Again, please do not suspect me of randomly being ill-mannered toward you. I am rubbing it in because of your established credentials as a scoffer. אם ללצים הוא יליץ. And, I believe it is very productive for the readership of this site to see a real live example of secularist blind belief, and to know that just because pseudo-Maskilim say they have "good questions" against the Torah, it does not mean at all that it is so.
Here is the Bais Halevy inside. A very, very important principle:
בית הלוי על בראשית פרק מה פסוק ד
רואים אנחנו בחוש אשר כל אפקורסי הזמן, הכפירה והכחשת האמונה לא בא להם מחמת רוע מזגם שקשה להם להאמין דבר שאינם משיגים בשכלם רק אדרבה כל המינות שלהם בא להם ע"י אמונה, שראה באיזו ספר דברי מינות הגם שהכותב היה בור ריק גם משכל האנושי, והוא מאמין לכל דבריו וסומך עליו כסומא בארובה לכפור בתוה"ק ונמצא הכפירה באה להם ע"י אמונתם וכפתי מאמין לכל דבריו הכוזבים, עד כי בטח נוכל לומר על משכילי זמננו כי הם אבערגלויבער, וזהו שהתאונן הנביא וחוקיו לא שמרו, דלא רצו להאמין בחוקים. ויתעום כזביהם דלהכזב ששמע משקרן אחד האמין בהם לתעות מהתוה"ק.