As ever, you do not need a doctorate in invisible sky wizard to conclude that there is no invisible sky wizard, and you also don't need to know all the sophisticated excuses for why the invisible sky wizard you were told about is not exactly what the most sophisticated dupes believe they believe in (even as they go on telling children about the interventionist superparent).
The trouble with this heuristic is it fails when you aren't right to start with. See also: creationists.
That said, you do, in fact, seem to understand the claims theologians make pretty well, so I'm not sure why you're defending this position in the first place. Arguments are soldiers?
But by the same logic, I'm pretty sure I'm talking about a very standard element of the religion when I talk about later religious authorities being presumed to have immensely less theological knowledge than earlier authorities and hence no ability to declare earlier authorities wrong.
Well, I probably know even less about your former religion than you do, but I'm guessing - and some quick google-fu seems to confirm - that while you are of course correct about what you were thought, the majority of Jews would not subscribe to this claim.
You hail from Orthodox Judaism, a sect that contains mostly those who didn't reject the more easily-disprove elements of Judaism (and indeed seems to have developed new beliefs guarding against such changes, such as concept of a "written and oral Talmud" that includes the teachings of earlier authorites.) Most Jews (very roughly 80%) belong to less extreme traditions, and thus, presumably, are less likely to discover flaws in them. Much like the OP belonging to a subset of Mormons who believe in secret polar Israelites.
I am also suspicious that any recounting whatsoever of what went wrong will be greeted by, "But that's not exactly what the most sophisticated theologians say, even if it's what you remember perfectly well being taught in school!"
Again, imagine a creationist claiming that they were taught in school that a frog turned into a monkey, dammit, and you're just trying to disguise the lies you're feeding people by telling them they didn't understand properly! If a claim is true, it doesn't matter if a false version is being taught to schoolchildren (except insofar as we should probably stop that.) That said, disproving popular misconceptions is still bringing you closer to the truth - whatever it is - and you, personally, seem to have a fair idea of what the most sophisticated theologians are claiming in any case, and address their arguments too (although naturally I don't think you always succeed, I'm not stupid enough to try and prove that here.)
The trouble with this heuristic is it fails when you aren't right to start with.
Disbelieving based on partial knowledge is different from disbelieving based on mistaken belief.
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A list of some posts that are pretty awesome
I recommend the major sequences to everybody, but I realize how daunting they look at first. So for purposes of immediate gratification, the following posts are particularly interesting/illuminating/provocative and don't require any previous reading:
More suggestions are welcome! Or just check out the top-rated posts from the history of Less Wrong. Most posts at +50 or more are well worth your time.
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Note from orthonormal: MBlume and other contributors wrote the original version of this welcome post, and I've edited it a fair bit. If there's anything I should add or update on this post (especially broken links), please send me a private message—I may not notice a comment on the post. Finally, once this gets past 500 comments, anyone is welcome to copy and edit this intro to start the next welcome thread.