Oy Vey!
R Gil Student has clearly lost his mind. Maybe it was me tagging him as Conservative Chareidi in my previous post that did him in.
R Gil says (regarding Gosse):
Does this contradict the way God is supposed to work? I don't know. My general response is simply "Could be." Can the world have been created looking old? Could be. Would God make this elaborate fake-out to fool us into thinking the world is older than it really is? Could be. Hey, I don't claim to know how God works.
To which the only rational response is:
Does this contradict the way Zoboomafoo is supposed to work? I don't know. My general response is simply "Could be." Can the world have been created with fake evidence of Sinai? Could be. Would Zoboomafoo make this elaborate fake-out to fool us into thinking that Judaism is real? Could be. Hey, I don't claim to know how Zoboomafoo works!
R Gil, I like you, so listen up and listen well.
You cannot throw rational thought away with such wild abandon like that. It's insane. You cannot just create arbitrary theories to explain away contradictions. You undermine the basis for everything once you start doing that. Even the Gedolim have not endorsed Gosse. There is no mekkor ANYWHERE in traditional Judaism for the idea of G-d creating fake evidence.
Maybe you could find some support for the idea of the World being created at a certain age, like Adam. But certainly not for fake cave paintings, or clean up of a global flood. That's nuts. Gosse is not only insane, but a distortion of traditional Jewish values too. So maybe the mythology peshat is not so traditional either, but at least it's not insane.
Once you discard evidence for non rational arbitrary theories, there is no more room for rational discourse. I could make up anything at all and say 'Could be, could be'. Well anything could be, even the holy Zoboomafoo.
The point is NOT what 'could be'. The point is, 'What is most likely to be'.
