Ari Mandel's shtick (he admitted as much in a podcast), whenever presented with a Kuzari proponent seeking to debate, is to refer the proponent to Google. In other words, Ari feels that it's unnecessary to debate the Kuzari argument, as mere Google results prove that the Kuzari argument is a flawed argument. Specifically, he referred me to Baruch Pelta's critiques (which I have long been aware of). Thus, I feel compelled to outline the flaws presented in Baruch Pelta's argument:
1) Pelta's first criticism of the Kuzari argument is that Kuzari proponents can't present a single example of a society rejecting a false national belief. If so, argues Pelta, how can we assume that a nation would necessarily reject a false national belief.
Flaw: Pelta is inappropriately shifting the burden of Proof. Kuzari proponents do not argue that it is impossible, or even unlikely, to convince a population to accept a false national history. Rather, it is the atheist or Kuzari-critic who claims that national history is a fallible form of evidence; it is the atheist who is asserting that you CAN convince a population to accept a false history. Indeed, all the Kuzari proponent is merely asserting is the following: our tradition is a form of evidence which we have no reason to ASSUME is fallible. Thus, it is the Kuzari critic, who ASSERTS that our tradition is fallible, to show a false belief about a national event. Until he does so, we must admit that we simply do not know whether national tradition is a fallible form of evidence. (How we go from an agnostic position to actual belief is for another post, though it is probably obvious to the reader).
2) Pelta's second criticism is that the Torah appears to be a "very" human document.
Flaw #1: even if we assume that, G-d forbid, the Torah was written by humans, that does not imply that the national miracles did not happen. While the Torah being a human document would certainly contradict Judaism, it does not FORCE us to conclude that the miracles at Sinai did not happen. Thus, while Pelta's critique is a relevant objection to traditional Judaism, it does not seem directly relevant to the Kuzari argument. Flaw #2: Pelta irrationally assumes that God could not or would not write a particular book. Pelta assumes that "of course" God would not write a book which could have or, theoretically, would have been written by humans. He presents no evidence whatsoever that God would not write a book like the Torah, a book that (perhaps) looks like it was written by humans. As his assertion is based purely on blind faith, I need not rebut it. Indeed, his argument mimics Sam Harris's argument, and it based on presuming what type of book God would write (though, as a matter of fact, even if his argument was a logical one, if one delves deeply into the Torah one could justify why an Omniscient Being would write such a book, but, again, the basis of his argument is unfounded, and thus there is no need to respond to it).
3) Pelta's third criticism of the Kuzari argument is that passages in the Tanach appear to imply that the Torah did not appear on the scene until the times of Ezra and Nechemia.
Flaw: there is absolutely no evidence that the population was unaware of the Sinai miracles. Though there are numerous flaws (and baseless assumptions) in Pelta's argument, his argument is irrelevant from the get-go: we are arguing that one can't convince a population regarding a false national event (the Sinai miracles). EVEN IF, the population was unaware of the Torah (there is no evidence of that from the text, BTW), or that the population near Ezra hadn't observed Succos (there is little evidence for that from the text), that is irrelevant to HIS CLAIM that one could CERTAINLY foist BELIEF in a false national EVENT upon the population.
The remaining flaws are so numerous, that "אי אפשר לפרטם כי רבים הם")
4) Pelta's fourth criticism of the Kuzari argument is that it arbitrarily (without "mathematical" justification) asserts that only counterexamples of more than 100,000 are sufficient to disprove the Kuzari argument.
Flaw: Pelta once again misconstrues the Kuzari argument and the burden of proof. When one argues, as the Kuzari critic does, that national history is fallible, he needs to show that it was surely possible to convince the Jewish people of the false events recorded in the Torah. Now, according to the Torah, millions of people witnessed the Sinai events, which would have created millions of general lines to subsequent generations. Essentially, the Kuzari critic is asserting that one can convince a population of a non-event which should have created millions of direct OR INDIRECT witnesses (the subsequent descendants of those witnesses). That is a considerable assumption that the critic is making, that a population would be so barbarous to believe in such a non-event that should have been so easily refutable. As the burden is squarely on the critic (see paragraph #1 above, where I argued that the Kuzari proponent does not claim that the evidence is infallible, and thus does not assume ANY burden), it is upon the critic to present some evidence that our evidence is fallible. In order to do so, he needs to present SIMILAR evidence which has shown itself to be fallible. Now, there is some grey area here, since there are some forms of evidence which may be somewhat similar. But we can pretty confidently assert that when the evidence is less than a THIRTIETH of the evidence for the Torah, it is not remotely similar to the evidence for Torah. So, if the only example of people believing in a "national" event is an event which included less than 100,000 people (compared to the Torah which contained as many as three million people), we have no evidence that the evidence for the Torah is fallible.
5) Pelta's fifth criticism of the Kuzari argument is that the the Aztec migration myth present a valid counterexample.
There are numerous flaws here. And I have displayed the irrelevance of the Aztec myth numerous times online (go google them). But paragraph #4 above sufficiently rebuts the Aztec migration myth by itself, as the myth does not assert how many witnesses were on the migration and so it is completely irrelevant to the Kuzari argument which had millions of witnesses and would have created millions of generational lines to subsequent generations.
6) Pelta's sixth criticism of the Kuzari argument is the fact that we've yet to find evidence of the Jews in the desert despite thoroughly and repeatedly searching it. Flaw: Even if this argument is factual (it isn't), it is not sufficient to rebut to the Kuzari argument. If the evidence for the Sinai miracles is infallible, we obviously must accept that the Jews were in the desert for 40 years. Indeed, if we'd go back in time and witness the events ourselves, would we pay any attention to archaeological record? Of course not. So the first step for the critic is to show that our evidence is fallible. If he can't, he's toast. (Elsewhere online, I have argued why factually there is no archaeological evidence against the Sinai sojourn).
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