The four main problems with Orthopraxy

There's a bunch of problems with OP that people keep mentioning:

1. Why would anyone be motivated if they didn't believe God commanded it?

2. OP will never last more than  one or two generations.

3. OP will never be a mass movement.

4. How is this authentic Judaism?

I think I have a good response to all of these except maybe the last one.

1. Motivation

This is the most frequent argument, and also the easiest to counter. Most Frum Skeptics remain with a Charedi mentality that they'll only ever be bothered to do anything (chessed, pay their taxes, get up early on a Sunday) if God directly commanded them to, otherwise there's no point.And of course anyone who goes OTD has no motivation to be moral or good in any way.  What these Frum Skeptics fail to realize is that the world is full of people who do stuff because they WANT to, not because they have to. In fact, many people would be moser nefesh (or have been) for all sorts of values and reasons, and nothing at all whatsoever to do with God. I know this is hard for a fundie (or ex fundie) to grasp, but try.

So then the argument goes, OK, people do hobbies and such, but the costs of OJ are just too high. Again this simply isn't true. I know plenty of people who either don't perceive the costs to be too high, or alternatively find that the benefits outweigh the costs. For example community, shabbos, values etc. It's just a cost benefit analysis, like everything else.

2. Longevity

Everyone always brings the example of Conservative Judaism as proof positive that anything less than OJ can't survive and will always fail. But people don't know history. When the ghetto walls went down, OJ 'didn't survive' either, 70% of people went OTD. Nothing survives intact ad infinitum (newsflash - the sun is burning out in 5 billion years).  Things change drastically from generation to generation, and it is foolish to be concerned about whether your particular brand of Judaism will survive intact for ever. It won't, no matter what it is.

3. Masses

I've got some bad news for you sunshine, OJ isn't a mass movement either. OJ are a tiny percentage of Jewry, which is a tiny percentage of world religions. So OP is even smaller, so what? 

Some argue that OP can only survive by mooching of OJ (MO OJ). Even if that's true so what? It's exactly the same argument against MO, they only survive  by mooching off the UO. How many MO shochtim are there? Mashgichim? Not that many, if any. So there's a symbiotic or dependant relationship (even one way dependance). So what? I guess we just have to be nice to the MOs, that's all.

4. Authenticity

This is the one genuine 'technical' problem with OP (the rest are more sociological). How can we daven, or say brachos with kavanah when what we are saying isn't true. How far can metaphor be stretched? Can we pretend God just means 'Existence' and still claim to be heirs to Judaism?

So there are a number of counter-arguments to this:

1. Judaism has always evolved. Originally it was Henotheism. Have you even read the Asseres Hadibros?? I am YOUR God because I took YOU out of Egypt, so don't worship OTHER Gods. Thats what it says. It does NOT say 'I'm the ONE and ONLY God'.  Then it was God with a body - God walks, he smells (other things). Even many Rishonim (Rashi for example) held that God had some kind of body. Now of course God is just an abstract something. My problem with this argument is that although the concept of what God is has evolved, we still hold He has the same attributes. Of course Halachah has evolved, but to say that TMS is now just 'Metaphorical DI' and that's just a natural evolution seems more of a stretch.

2. A different approach is to claim that Judaism has always been metaphorical. The famous story of Tanur Achinai - did the Rabbis really believe that God laughed? Of course not, it's just medrash. Same with everything else. Hard to say this though, the Torah isn't written as medrash, it seems the people who wrote it (and everyone after that), actually believed it was true. So sure, you can take it all metaphorically NOW, but that's not at all how it was always understood. (The same problem applies to the Metaphorical Genesis crowd).

3. Another approach is to say that there really is no such thing as 'authentic Judaism'. Judaism has always evolved and changed. OJ is the heir of Rabbinic Judaism which was simply the most successful of the many brands of Judaism around the end of the second temple (not counting Xtianity - ha!). Likewise today, despite the claims of Kiruv Clowns, OJ isn't the most 'authentic Judaism', it's not even the largest denomination. It's just one version out of many. So how do you define what is Judaism and what isn't? That's a whole nother question. But however you define it, OP will have no problem being part of that. 

I think approach 3 is true, but you still have a problem with davening (and brachos etc). As Rabbi Sacks points out in his intro to his new siddur, the tefillah really encodes the beliefs of OJ. It's hard to get around that. Can you say 'Asher Bochar Bonu' metaphorically? It's tough. I see 3 potential solutions here, none of them great:

1. Don't daven.

2. Mumble and have no kavanah. Just like everyone else.

3. Change davening.

I actually like davening, so 1 doesn't appeal. 2 is too fake, even though when I look round in shul no-one has any kavanah. But OPs are more meaning oriented than most. So 3 is the only option. Maybe I'll embark on a project to create my own davening.