On Denying

Three years ago I wrote about what I thought was one of my better ideas - that once upon a time 3500 years ago it would have been absurd for a Jew to deny Matan Torah at Sinai but over time such denials became much more plausible since eye witnesses to the event were long dead and buried and all people had to go on was tradition and the Torah saying that the event happened.  I then extrapolated this to the Holocaust, pointing out that in the future, probably sooner than we think after the last survivors have passed on, people will do the same thing.  In fact, I think that in an age of photo-shoping and increasingly sophisticated technology people will find it all that much easier to deny the existing evidence of the Holocaust and come up with "reasonable" alternative explanations for our claims that the tragedy happened.

And then out of nowhere a comment appears from someone monikered "FQ":

Sorry I'm a couple years too late. I think this is an interesting comparison and a good point. The issue I have with it is when I take your argument and turn it around. Let's say I start making up proofs that aliens landed in my neighborhood and I spread it around and tell my kids and friends, and they play along. If someone is skeptical 100 years later because he's not convinced by the "proofs", is that the same as a future holocaust denyer?And if it is different, then how does sinai denial resemble holocaust denial more than alien denial.

Now let's approach this piece by piece.  This is not the first time such a question has been asked and, in one of its more absurd manifestations, it has morphed into a pseudo-movement whose whole purpose is simply to mock God's existence.  As FQ might have implied, all major religions start with a claim of some kind of interaction with or manifestation of the supernatural.  The story must inevitably be taken on faith.  Why should I believe my religion's story is any more legitimate that any others?  Why must I believe any of them?

The first  part of the answer derives from the Kuzari proof which is quite a good argument for the truth of Torah when applied against the two rival monotheistic religions which claim to have supplanted Judaism as God's chosen revelation.  This is not what I think FQ was getting at so I won't pursue it.

So let's look at the example he brings (if FQ is a she, I apologize for using the male gender to identify her).  Let's say alien's landed in my neighbourhood one afternoon and subsequently departed without leaving a trace of evidence behind.  There are now two possiblities.  One is that they appeared, looked around, maybe enjoyed a Big Mac, and then departed.  The other is that they interacted with the local populace, gave them information or told them about life on other worlds, and then departed.

If it's the former, then really, who cares?  Yes, aliens were here.  No, they weren't.  Yes, there's advanced life out there but so what?  We can't even get a man to the moon any more and any advanced enough life form will be able to wipe us out from space so again, who cares?  How does my life change on a daily basis?  Other than knowing that we are not alone in the universe my day-to-day existence is unaltered.

On the other hand, let's say the aliens leave something behind, like rules to live by.  I ask again: why should I care?  Why should I do anything they say?

And this is something I think people don't realize when they dismiss the Kuzari proof, mostly because it's not part of that original argument.  The Jewish claim is not that God revealed Himself once at Har Sinai, gave us the Torah and then went back to Heaven but that He continued to reveal Himself on a regular basis afterwards to ensure we remembered His presence in our lives.  Ours is not a revelation on the road to Damascus or in some dark Arabian desert but rather an ongoing revelation.  

Unlike Chrisianity which started by promising a monotheistic-sympathetic Roman culture that they could have all the reward of Judaism (Heaven, blintzes, etc) without any of the obligations, and unlike Islam which was supported by the military prowess of its military leader, Judaism had to overcome the opposite of both. Remember that the Bible, unique amongst ancient documents, narrates our stumbling as avidly as it does our successes.  We learn that early on, right after conquering part of Israel that our ancestors were invaded and oppressed on a repeated basis by their neighbours.  We learn that the various mitzvos were not happily accepted by our ancestors.  It was only through crying out to God and seeing His miracles in rescuing us that we continued to exist.

Remember what the Torah tells us - the Shechinah, the physical manifestation of God's presence, accompanied our ancestors for forty years in the desert.  It was present for much of the First Temple's existence.  It was this ongoing revelation that cemented the loyalty in Torah in our ancestors despite all their documented backsliding.  

So yes, on one hand if aliens landed and looked around my neighbourhood then denying they did in a few years would be no different on a superficial  level than Holocaust denial.  If you want to keep things simple than Sinai denial, Holocaust denial and alien denial are all the same thing: a denial about an event that happened.
And that was my point, not trying to prove the truth of Sinai which I've done in other posts.  My point was simply that those folks who get into a hot lather about Holocaust denies but then turn around and say "Yeah, but Matan Torah didn't happen the way the Torah says it did, of course" are engaging in a denial that's no different.