I'm not sure of the difference (from a plausibility standpoint) between the third approach and the second approach. The third approach gives a title to the unexplainable "reality" and accepts that nothing came before instead of questioning it, while the second doesn't even try to define a beginning (meaning it also accepts a level of unexplainability). And while both the second and third approaches seem to accept an unknown element, at the same time they allow for people to try and get closer and closer to the truth (the third through religion/Torah and the second through science) and in both cases, we have to accept we'll never be fully there (the third approach perhaps allows the possibility for us to understand after the end of life/time/existence, but that would be a presumption).
The falling chain and the World Turtle myth sounded like attempts to explain the limitations of the 2nd approach, but again, I think they just point to an acknowledgement of unknown. Any time we try to understand this "primordial being/reality" in the third approach it seems like the same process.
I'm tempted to answer my own question by saying that the main difference between the approaches is that in the third approach Torah claims to have all the answers (we just can't comprehend them all), but we can at least offer more explanations for many questions than "science" which doesn't claim to have a baseline record of all answers and is being fleshed out in real-time constantly.
So it seems like approach three has the answers and we just get fuzzier and know less over time--by virtue of a scaled up version of the telephone effect whereas approach two doesn't start with the answers but we crowd source and work our way closer and closer to the truth. One might argue by approach two, we're infinitely farther from the truth since we start from zero knowledge, whereas by approach three we start from having all the knowledge (even though practically speaking we're still infinitely far from the full truth--just not as far). All of that has to assume though by approach three that Torah has all the answers, but is that even a fair assumption? Is there more to it than this?
I'm not sure of the difference (from a plausibility standpoint) between the third approach and the second approach. The third approach gives a title to the unexplainable "reality" and accepts that nothing came before instead of questioning it, while the second doesn't even try to define a beginning (meaning it also accepts a level of unexplainability). And while both the second and third approaches seem to accept an unknown element, at the same time they allow for people to try and get closer and closer to the truth (the third through religion/Torah and the second through science) and in both cases, we have to accept we'll never be fully there (the third approach perhaps allows the possibility for us to understand after the end of life/time/existence, but that would be a presumption).
The falling chain and the World Turtle myth sounded like attempts to explain the limitations of the 2nd approach, but again, I think they just point to an acknowledgement of unknown. Any time we try to understand this "primordial being/reality" in the third approach it seems like the same process.
I'm tempted to answer my own question by saying that the main difference between the approaches is that in the third approach Torah claims to have all the answers (we just can't comprehend them all), but we can at least offer more explanations for many questions than "science" which doesn't claim to have a baseline record of all answers and is being fleshed out in real-time constantly.
So it seems like approach three has the answers and we just get fuzzier and know less over time--by virtue of a scaled up version of the telephone effect whereas approach two doesn't start with the answers but we crowd source and work our way closer and closer to the truth. One might argue by approach two, we're infinitely farther from the truth since we start from zero knowledge, whereas by approach three we start from having all the knowledge (even though practically speaking we're still infinitely far from the full truth--just not as far). All of that has to assume though by approach three that Torah has all the answers, but is that even a fair assumption? Is there more to it than this?