Rabbi Eliyahu Maksumov - Divinity Series - Torah & Science - The Psychological Argument

Now, how do we know the Torah was given to us directly by God? Well, let's take a closer look. What are the chances if I would speak in front of millions of people and overnight they all became religious simultaneously? What are the chances? Probably zero. Almost impossible. For millions of people just to change like that overnight, millions of people, it's impossible. Yet in history something like this did happen. Moshe Rabbeinu comes and he says to the people, "This is the book of God." And they all adopted it from him. We have to use our seichel. We have to use our minds. How did he do it? How did he succeed? If, let's say, Moshe was a faker, like God forbid like some people like to say he was or whoever wrote the Torah. How did he convince millions of people to take the Torah like that? To convince everybody to become religious overnight? We have to investigate. We have to use our common sense. Now, when we we review the 613 mitzvot, we find some of them are very difficult to keep. 80% of the Torah are laws that are against all human logic. Defies all logic. It's laws that we don't understand, laws that we can't comprehend. You're defeating it on purpose. A major part of the Torah are against our thinking. If Moshe was, God forbid, a faker or whoever, like we said, whoever wrote the Torah. The first thing he should have done is he should have brought a very easy book to follow, to comprehend, and to abide by. So that the people will not rebel against him. He should make them interested in all these changes in their lives. He should make five or six commandments. Make sure everybody understands that you're the boss and the leader around here. Of course, he should get some donations. And done deal. Finished. Why make all these complicated rules that will require people to change their life completely 360? Why do you have to make all these complicated rules for? What human being in his right mind would dare even write such laws? What does he gain from making such laws? Of course, only God could pass laws that are beyond our comprehension. But wait. It gets better. It becomes even more sophisticated. Thousands of the people that were standing by the mountain when Moshe Rabbeinu gave the Torah, thousands of them were married to their aunts. Back then it was normal. It was considered normal to marry your aunt. Why not? You have a little sister. Uh you have an older, you know, older son. It makes sense to marry them off. Makes sense for the inheritance. They come from the similar background. They have a similar mindset, similar goals. It Why not? Why not keep it in the family? Just uh for someone to come along to marry their own aunt. Especially when we're talking about So some of them had 10 children or even more. Moshe Rabbeinu comes the uh from the mountain with the Torah and he says in front of 3 million people, "Everybody now who was married to their aunt must divorce their wives." Do you think they will cooperate with Moshe Rabbeinu? Or do you think they're going to destroy him before he supposedly destroys them? He perhaps might be even risking his life by passing such laws. You know why he's risking his life? Because they will say, "By you making such a law, if you're going to go and try to convince other people of this, then you might come to brainwash others. We We better stop you." And they'll do whatever they can in their power to stop Moses. If Moses was God forbid a faker and he's trying to make such laws, why would he make such laws knowing that he's going to only cause the people to rebel against him? The only way the people will not rebel against him is if they know with 100% certainty that the Torah that they are getting is from God. They have heard the voice of God by the mountain. Everything the Torah must be saying is true. Otherwise, they wouldn't have taken it so easily. By the way, it's not like we're talking about loyal, obedient angels over here who listen to every single word of Moshe Rabbeinu. They were rebellious. And the more bizarre thing you could think of is that Moses's mother was his father's aunt. Which means that he's not just writing something that's going to work against the people, but he's writing something that's going to work against himself. Because by writing this law that you have to divorce your aunt, what did he just say? He just said that my parents' relationship is not approved according to the Torah. He's delegitimizing and compromising his own roots. Why would Moshe Rabbeinu write such a thing in the Torah? What would he gain from making such a law? Divorce your old aunt? Why would he What would he gain from making such a law? Only Hashem who understands what is considered moral and not moral, what's considered ethical and what's not ethical, only he could pass such a law. Could a person who made up a religion go ahead and convince people so easily overnight to go things to do things against their thinking, to go ahead and to divorce their wives? You're already starting off the religion on the wrong path. You should have made the religion very simple, make it very convincing, make it very easy. It's almost as if he doesn't want the people to want to follow him. He wants the people to resist. As you're trying to convince the people, you're going to think you're a lunatic, you're crazy, you're a madman. You're trying to pass laws that you made up. What Nobody's going to be interested. Do you think anybody will be successful in writing such a Torah and passing it and getting people to follow it? Forget not Forget about 3 million people, not one person will you be able to convince. And yet Moshe Rabbeinu convinced 3 million people to follow this book. The only reason they would have taken it seriously is is they knew with 100% certainty, with no doubt, absolutely no doubt, that the Torah is from Hashem. They heard the voice of God, they saw the miracles. Now they say, "Listen, after seeing everything I've seen, after hearing the voice of God by the mountain, after everything, I cannot deny it. I know this book is a myth. Even if whether I want or I will not want, I will have to keep it." And only then can a religion like this begin. No human being could start a religion like this. Only God. And just through the simple psychology as we have been giving, nobody will be able to pass off a forged book as divine with deliberately include statements which are bound to be proven false and risk exposing themselves as a fraud. The only way it could have been passed is only if it was passed by God. I hope that this gave us a new outlook, a new perspective on the Torah, on the psychology of the Torah. Just whether just to make a decision, was this book written by God or written by by a human being, it should give us the confidence that if I put it on the scale, I try to measure, weigh it out, it'll be clear that the chances of it being being written by a human being are impossible. And if a human being couldn't have written this, there's only one other option. And that's God himself.