Holy Madness Pod: Religion, Culture, Love, Israel

Holy Madness takes to the verbal warpath after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting - but it's probably the opposite of what you'd expect.

We ruminate on the broken glasses people use to process information - the immediate turn to arguing politics instead of any kind of real reflection.

We call out the Twitterati who said idiotic things, the antisemitism industry (yes, we went there and called it that), and end with some reflections on what it takes for people to just wake the hell up.

Holy Madness returns from an inexcusably long summer break to discuss truth, connectivity, repentance, reflection, refutation, and Jewish history. We explore the idea that in the modern West, liberty is seen as the freedom from the need to change - and why this is a dead end.

Tzvi's burning question is who wrote the Torah and when? Meir-Simchah is miffed by his co-host's heresy. It ends well. Tzvi neither burns up Torah, nor burns at the stake (yet). Then Meir-Simchah confesses to burning over questions like how do languages work and evolve, how are flocking birds like computers but maybe more like us, and ultimately how does meaning emerge from structure? He also fires a volley in the war over gender and pronouns. Then, nearly doublebacking on our argument against scientism, we look at how nature is the good and (for you kabbalists out there) come to a new understanding of chesed.

Some references:

Will Stephen's TED parody https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0FDjFBj8o, Sam Harris' talk about facts and values https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww (which itself falls into a scientist problem), and Radhika Nagpal's talk on swarm intelligence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bRocfcPhHU. Work by Lera Boroditsky (http://lera.ucsd.edu/papers/). The oeis.org (music from here: https://oeis.org/search?q=a001414&sort=&language=english&go=Search).

We open up with some extended housekeeping which will excite any Global Zionist Conspiracy theorist. We explain our long hiatus, technical problems, and adventures with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard; we digress about the crash of 2008, Icelandic bankers, and German poo; and we speculate about doing episodes on profanity, on law, and on rabbis. We also celebrate Tzvi’s new job at Proggio! Then, remarking on how we’re the anti-religious religious guys, we smoothly transition into our main topic (brought to you by Holy Madness community member Yonadav!): BURNING QUESTIONS.

… a topic which makes Meir-Simchah insecure and defensive because the fire of his burning questions has faded. Instead he has hypotheses.

Tzvi then discusses growing up in black hat Brooklyn and how teenagers who asked theological questions were considered troubled… which was true, but not for the reasons their rabbis and parents thought. Questions burn, Tzvi suggests, when they hang your sense of self in the balances; and in contrast with Meir-Simchah, when Tzvi found he was no longer burned by his questions, he felt like he’d gotten somewhere in life. (Did he?)

We then stumble over a proof that the Torah was authored by God.

Turns out Meir-Simchah’s burning questions in high school were the cutting-edge of the post-modernism against which the “Intellectual Dark Web” has mobilized (we mention metaphor-meister Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, and Bari Weiss). Tzvi remarks that both Social Justice Warriors and the Intellectual Dark Web religify politics converting what could be essentially pragmatic or philosophic matters into burning questions where the self hangs in the balance. Masculinity pops up.

These strange appetizers flow into a meaty dialectic. What’s with the weird opposition of Culture vs. Technology, Philosophers vs. Technologists, Ends vs. Means, The Meaning of Life vs. cancer drugs… Not to mention, the Spirituality of Doing Science vs. AI Takeover Dystopias, and Arnold Schwarzenegger vs. Tzvi’s impersonation of Mr. Universe. Then suddenly Meir-Simchah appears to be a closet Marxist!

Tzvi reviews Neil Postman’s Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, and quotes a section in which Postman reviews—and mocks—a New York Times article by Daniel Goleman. This leads into a discussion of how, lately, some public intellectuals try to convert moral questions into technological questions, whether the Talmud does that (it doesn’t), the Naturalistic Fallacy (cf. the Is-Ought Problem), and gay pigeons in Hume's Guillotine (no gay pigeons were harmed in the production of this episode… cisgender pigeons however are Nazis according to Antifa).

What’s the difference between Maimonides’ scientific meditations and the Total Perspective Vortex in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide? Knowing how the world is created for you.

If you enjoy the show, there are many ways you can support the show. Please check our previous episodes and subscribe via this site, iTunes, whichever podcast app you like best, etc. Please spread the Holy Madness to your family, friends, and community members! And if you're up for some discussion, join us on our Facebook page "Holy Madness - The Show" and Facebook discussion group "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group".

If you would like to contribute some of the money you have for tzadaka or charity, as the saying runs, "no flour, no Torah; no Torah, no flour," please pitch in on our PATREON at www.patreon.com/holymadness.

And, finally, as we were saying about live shows... Tzvi and Meir-Simchah do travel down from their mountain periodically, so if you have a synagogue, church, campus, and/or coffee shop in your area where you would like to host us, please get in touch!

Epsiode17 is here, y'all.

We discuss free will, providence, intelligent design and evolution, chaos, lag ba'omer, and feature callbacks to episodes 8 and 9.

This is a more rambling episode, as Tzvi had a migraine during recording, and Meir Simcha carried the load here.

We would love for y'all to comment, critique, and share.

If you enjoy the Holy Madness, there are many ways you can support the show. First, please check out previous episodes at www.holymadness.org and SUBSCRIBE to Holy Madness via iTunes, another podcast app, or the website itself.

Second, please SHARE the show! Spread the good word to your family, friends, and community members!

Third, please join our FACEBOOK page (just search "Holy Madness - The Show") to get updates and our discussion group ("Holy Madness - The Discussion Group") to join the conversation in our community and contribute your ideas to our work. (You can also email us at [email protected] with question, comments, and technical issues.)

Fourth, as the saying runs, "no flour, no Torah; no Torah, no flour," please pitch in on our PATREON at www.patreon.com/holymadness.

Fifth, Tzvi and Meir-Simchah do travel down from their mountain periodically, so if you find synagogues, churches, campuses, and/or coffee shops in your area which would like to host us, please get in touch about a LIVE SHOW!

It's been a long break, but we are back, baby!

Episode 16 starts with some ruminations on Israel's 70th birthday, specifically zooming in on Israel's marking of Memorial Day and Independence Day back to back and comparing it to the United States. We talk about our experiences of both, but continue on to discuss the difference between having something to die for versus having something to live for (an important distinction, indeed!).

Follow us on Facebook - search "holy madness the show" (follow the group, and then join "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group" for thought provoking topics and educational and entertaining talk), or email us at [email protected]. Spread the good word, y'all. Add us to your RSS feed, to your iTunes, or follow us here on soundcloud. We also now have a Patreon - www.patreon.com/holymadness - so if youd like to help keep this going, head on down there.

Continuing in the Passover suite, here is Holy Madness reading the Haggadah. Insights abound, and for first timers, this is a fantastic way to introduce yourself to the text of the Haggadah! You'll learn different traditional tunes, too.

Enjoy, and have a happy Pesach!

Follow us on Facebook - search "holy madness the show" (follow the group, and then join "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group" for thought provoking topics and educational and entertaining talk), or email us at [email protected]. Spread the good word, y'all. Add us to your RSS feed, to your iTunes, or follow us here on soundcloud. We also now have a Patreon - www.patreon.com/holymadness - so if youd like to help keep this going, head on down there.

Let my Episode 14 go!

This episode is an overview of Passover - what is being celebrated, why, and how.

We discuss the oddly universal celebration of our little nation's holiday commemorating its emancipation, the themes and imagery of the holiday, and we go back to place issues discussed in Episode 12b (freedom and liberty) in the Passover milieu.

Ultimately, this is a fantastic overview of the holiday's ubiquitous insistence on freedom through words. We discover a little bit of what that means, and set the stage for the coming episodes - where we will explore the Haggadah in depth and inside.

Follow us on Facebook - search "holy madness the show" (follow the group, and then join "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group" for thought provoking topics and educational and entertaining talk), or email us at [email protected]. Spread the good word, y'all. Add us to your RSS feed, to your iTunes, or follow us here on soundcloud. We also now have a Patreon - www.patreon.com/holymadness - so if youd like to help keep this going, head on down there.

Its the long awaited Episode 13!

Sarah returns as a special guest. We discuss our favorite books in the bible (SPOILER ALERT: IT IS NOT CHRONICLES), and segue into a conversation about education within religion.

We compare belief and ideology, talk about the effects of religious education on faith, and end with a discussion on the shortcomings of modern "classical liberal" ideology in giving a society a "why" to their lives, as well as something that connnects them all. Along the way, we compare orthodox and orthoprax, define what an "ummah" is, and highlight some of the real aims we ought to have in education.

Follow us on Facebook - search "holy madness the show" (follow the group, and then join "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group" for thought provoking topics and educational and entertaining talk), or email us at [email protected]. Spread the good word, y'all. Add us to your RSS feed, to your iTunes, or follow us here on soundcloud. We also now have a Patreon - www.patreon.com/holymadness - so if youd like to help keep this going, head on down there.

We discuss randomness (with a meandering random way of getting to it), then explain how the random nature of the universe is what gives us choice. Choice is the bedrock of freedom, and liberty. We then discuss the differences between the two, the need for limitations, and end up back in different views of randomness - the postmodern version, and the Torah version. Along the way, we highlight these ideas within the Book of Esther and the holiday of Purim.

This is a fun episode, featuring some bad InfoWars Alex Jones impressions, ruminations on apophenia and libations, and some personal anecdotes.

Happy Purim!

Follow us on Facebook - search "holy madness the show" (follow the group, and then join "Holy Madness - The Discussion Group" for thought provoking topics and educational and entertaining talk), or email us at [email protected]. Spread the good word, y'all. Add us to your RSS feed, to your iTunes, or follow us here on soundcloud. We also now have a Patreon - www.patreon.com/holymadness - so if youd like to help keep this going, head on down there.