Is MO Stupid?

In a recent comment thread I made the assertion that I don't think Chareidim are stupid, because they live in a fantasy world, and how could they know any better. However the MO, who are supposedly living in the modern world, should know better. Two responses below:

From jer:

Why "stupid"? Can't we just say "wrong" and leave it there? Were you stupid when you believed in TMS? Did your IQ suddenly jump after you stopped believing? Clearly we are talking about intelligent people who have been indoctrinated a certain way, have a huge investment to lose if they stop believing, may lose family and friends, will lose certainty in the goodness and meaningfulness of the universe, and will have to admit that there's at least a chance that the nihilistic view is correct. (Having ticked all those off, I'm kind of wishing I could believe again.)

Yeah, their methods are galling and some of them are downright obnoxious. But still, some sympathy is in order.

Gil and the Rationalist Rabbi are trying to preserve what's best in the tradition without succumbing to the insanity, corruption and incompetence we've seen throughout these past few years (Slifkin ban, child molesting cover-ups- way to go, Agudah, you and the Catholic Church killed another bill this week, theft, Lipa ban, ad nauseam). Go ahead and show how they're wrong or evasive, but ultimately, as an Orthopraxer, you need to recognize them as allies.

So jer makes two points:

1. They're not stupid, just brainwashed and biased.

2. They are our allies against the chareidim, so let's be nice to them.

I agree with point 1 though there comes a certain point when brainwashed and biased becomes pretty stupid. I didn't have a skeptical bone in my body until January 2005, age 37. Even though I lived in the modern world and prided myself on being very smart. Does that make me stupid? Well, my IQ hasn't changed, but in some respects I would have to say yes. How could I have been so incredibly clueless? Plus, as soon as I was exposed to skeptical thought I came to my senses pretty quickly. The same can't be said for the MOs in similar situations. So maybe stupid is the wrong word. I'll agree to brainwashed, biased and clueless. OK?

As for the second point. I can't address the Rational Rabbi in any way whatsoever (seriously). I should never have mentioned that topic in the first place and will never do so again. As for Gil and friends, yes they are fighting against the Chareidim. And it would be tragic if the only approach to orthodoxy was Chareidi. But I feel exactly the same about the MO! We need to fight the MO in the same way the MO fight the Chareidi! We need to ensure that the fundamentalist approach (i.e. MO and CHareidi) are not the only approach to Orthodoxy (i.e. committed, practicing Judaism).

And this one from ej:

XGH...Once you agree that with charedim, who live in a pre-modern world with different rules, are not stupid , why are you so certain MO are stupid? Certainly RWMO are not different from charedim in this regard. Even LWMO to the extent they insist on TMS should be thought of as charedi in this respect. Remember they are saying God dictated all of chumash to Moshe who wrote/engraved it on a stone tablet, word for word with no distortion, and that our Masoretic text is identical with the text Moses transcribed from God's words speaking in Hebrew. Furthermore God also told Moses the entire Oral Torah. In turn this Torah sheah baalpeh was transmitted accurately for around a thousand years until it was written down. This view is not one that seems plausible using modern methods of histiography; possible certainly, plausible no. With respect to TMS, MO are willing to jettison secular rationality, in order to hold onto pre-modern beliefs.

Your arguments work with people who totally accept the scientific method as the way of telling us how reality looks. But for those people, most EVERYTHING about Orthodoxy is not real. How is Shabbos possible, time is uniform? How do we know there are real properties like kodesh-chol, kasher-treif, tahor- tawmeh etc that obey the laws of chazal? Once you adopt a positivist account of reality all of Torah becomes arbitrary rules/conventions that define non empirical properties which we cannot perceive directly. Most Reform Jews do not believe that these properties are real empirical properties like color, size and shape. The fact that most everyone who is Orthodox thinks of treif as a real property of an object is already an indication that there world view is not modern.

ej makes two points

1. When it comes to beliefs, MO ARE Chareidi

2. A strange (interesting?) point about the reality of Shabbat.

As regards point 1, I agree, I have been arguing that for years. However see my response above to jer. As regards point 2, I'm not sure you have to really believe that Shabbat is "real". I FEEL the reality of Shabbat, even though I'm a skeptic. Likewise Kashrut etc. I don't think that MOs think that "treif" is a real property of an object, certainly not in any physical sense. And maybe not even in any spiritual sense, unless they are particularly mystically inclined. But that's an interesting topic for debate, some other time.

I think the major debate here is the same debate I have with H for Heterdox. Should we be quiet little lambs, and not make any waves, because we need the MO. (And we need them in two respects, 1) to have shuls and communities we can belong to, and 2) to fight the chareidim).

Or should we fight for what we believe in (or rather fight for what we don't believe in, lol).

I can hear both ways. To be completely honest, I haven't fully made up my mind yet, which is why the "fight" is mostly confined to the blog world, with only some very minor spill-over into real life.

But once I make my mind up, watch out MO! (Or maybe I'll shut down my blog. Could go either way).