Today's Talmud Chacham Equals Yesterday's Am Ha'aretz

Let me just get another of my Ba'al T'shuva pet peeves off my chest. When a skeptic raises questions to most Rabbis, he is typically dismissed with scorn as an "am ha'aretz (a talmudic term literally meaning "people of the earth" used to describe completely illiterate farmers and the like in Talmudic times).

But times have changed and so, I think the connotation must change as well. Nowadays, your average talmud chacham is a person so devoid of secular learning and so twisted in his conception of reality that he is really a backwards ignoramus. The talmud chacham who also knows something of the real world, must subordinate his secular learning at every step of the way in order to be a "true talmud chacham."

Thus, let's be honest. While the talmedei chachamim of yesteryear were the "ivy leaguers" the doctors, lawyers and mathematicians of their culture, such is no longer the case. Yes the T.C.'s today might have some smarts, but it is utterly irrelevant except in their narrow realm. They are not particularly able to do anything better as a result of their extensive and ultimately wasteful learning.

I hope orthodox jewry comes around and sees that 5% is the most of our people that should be spending all their time learning. In the meantime, all I see are a lot of destitute groveling people becoming much less in life because of their quest for mediocrity and studying the fables, illogic and outright lies of our talmudic ancestors.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

More Heresy: Cancer and Viruses- the Best Evidence of Intelligent Design!

Cancer and Viruses have got to be the most amazing things! Think about it, even more amazing that reproduction. After all, modern science has been able to cure previously infertile couples with regularity, creat life in vitro, even freeze fertilized eggs (zygotes) for future use. Amazing.

Yet, cancer, what an even more amazing thing it is. How it starts is a mystery even to oncologists. How it spreads undetected until it's too late- quite something. HOw cancer hijacks cells in distant locations on the body in metastasis is essentially the kiss of death for most who experience it. Our best treatments- high tech radiation and patented chemotherapies are hardly a match for cancer- where success is measured in extra months a patient has rather than expecting a total cure. The cancer even evolves and adapts to the chemotherapy- forming a resistance.

Viruses are no less amazing. They also develop immunities to our vaccines, if we're able to form a vaccine at all. They also hijack cells, but in an even more amazing way. They hop aboard a cell and inject their own DNA into the cell, like a sinister combination of a dyslexic mosquito crossed with a computer hacker!

Yes, these things were just too random to form by chance. They needed a designer. A sinister designer. An evil designer. One that has no regard for the young children his invention strikes. Or the mothers, or hardworking fathers. Nope. This Intelligent Designer could care less.

Have the intelligent design loonies overlooked this point?

Here's another- our susceptibility to cancer and viruses are incontrovertible evidence of UN-intelligent design! If a cell phone company manufactured as many phones with terminal defects equivalent to cancer, heart disease, viruses, type I diabetes, multiple sclerosis, blindness, retardation, progeria, agromegaly, taysachs, spinal bifida, and on and on- that cell phone company would be regarded as incompetent and we'd expect it to become bankrupt! What happened to the intelligent designer crew here? Have they overlooked the obvious again?