It is important to have a rebbe who is your primary source for Psak and Hashkafah and a chavrusa with whom you can explore traditional Jewish texts such as Chumash MIshnah Gemara and Halacha who can serve as a role model for you and your family .
I read this earlier, but since you invited me to visit it again, I will leave some comments.
I didn't like this piece. You tell stories that are clearly intended to be evocative in a way that promotes a way of thinking about god and religion. And that could be fine, once we've established that god exists and religion is true. But before we do that, I find that you miss the mark with this piece. I find the Tatz story not just unfunny, but completely pointless. I'm not here to tell people how to live and how to laugh, but what was the point of the story, precisely? It seems that it was meant to trigger some sort of deeper understanding in respect to religion. But it's not informative at all while it pretends to be. Feel good stories are nice, but not when they pretend to be more than they are. And that's how I saw the telling of this story.
Then you speak about how you arrived at religious Judaism while fleeing from secularism. You list off a bunch of thoughts you had in your mind from that time you spent in secularism, and it's entirely unclear what you mean by this. It's like you were a Jets fan and you weren't happy with losing every season, so now you're a Chiefs fan and now you get to feel happy. Religion, in a serious conversation, is about the claims made by that religion. Religionists of Christianity are not just those who have Christmas trees, but who actually believe for good reason that Jesus was the messiah and that he'll be coming again...despite any good reason to believe this. The idea of Pascal's wager is silly because religion is not a scarf that you bring with you in your pocket...if you need it you'll have it and if you don't, well, no great loss. The idea of the wager may make sense to people who aren't being serious when they consider what religion really is, but if we're having a serious conversation about religion, then it's a discussion about what we believe and why. Putting forth ideas that one might as well "believe" to cut their losses misses out completely on what belief is and, frankly, what religion is. It makes religion into a scarf.
Retelling your conversation with Sarah about whether you believe in god or not is also revealing of your position. True and real belief in a god must be a result of our contact with something. We must be plugging into something, we must be encountering something and then responding to it. As Sam Harris puts it, if we are to have a relationship with god, it needs to be that our relationship would be different if he were different, and it must be that the relationship would be non-existent if he were to be non-existent. If find the way you talk about Judaism to be silly because you seem to miss this completely. How can you believe but also doubt? How can you believe one day but not the next? As far as god goes, today is the same as yesterday. Whatever is written in the books is written and whatever he's done is recorded, for there is no evidence of god today more than there was yesterday. I would say that they are both equal to zero, and I ask you to speak up about how you observe it any other way. But it's certainly not changing rapidly enough for you to feel that he exists, sort of, kind of, sometimes, in a way...
Your explanation of belief is on par with the poorly-written primer by Lisa Liel, where she outlines religion and belief in a manner that is completely disjointed from reality. Making a claim that there is a god who listens to prayers and sometimes answers them, is to make a claim about reality, and to use circular reasoning to explain why you believe in it is not being serious. If you want to have serious conversations, then we can have them. But I can't be the serious one here while everyone else says things like: "I know there's a god because I have a soul" or "I know that I have a soul because I can feel it" when it's so clear that the evidence here is just as much of a claim as the claim is.
And then you close with the following:
>>>I look at the Orthodox community and see big, thriving families that seem at least as happy, if not happier, than the ones I know in the secular community. I experience with the Orthodox community joy in prayer, learning, “simchas” (celebrations) “farbrangens” (drinking parties where you talk Torah). I watch these guys singing niguns passionately, caring lovingly for their children, and strolling happily with their wives. I see them stretching their minds with what might very well be kabbalistic mumbo-jumbo but is far more life-affirming than the Euphoria that popular culture pushes.
What you are so clearly seeing if people enjoying something. Nothing you've just written about has any bearing on the truth value of god or religion.
>>>I also see the secular world pushing its share of lies, demanding its pound of cognitive dissonance, and discouraging, if not actively punishing, dissent.
Now you write about the underbelly, so to speak, of the secular world, but you and your recounting suffers tremendously from denominator neglect. You haven't brought up the lies and the suffering in the religious world and you haven't brought up the uplifting virtues in the secular world. The fact that people who pretend and/or lie to themselves and their children about there being a god can be happy is to say that people can be intoxicated and happy. I don't know that anyone doubted that, and yet it's clear that you're trying to use this as a basis for defending religion. But you are only defending it from attacks that the people in it are suffering. It's as though you're saying, "Suffering? They're not suffering! Look, they are enjoying themselves and their kids are having fun!" Yes, but you are deflecting here. The challenge was never whether people could have fun or find meaning in nonsense. You should republish this post and remove all comments you made that do not engage with the important question we are dealing with, which is "why do you believe in a god?" and you'll be left with "well, I don't know, and sometimes I don't even."
That would have at least been on target and honest.
>>>So I live a life “as if” I believe, which I sometimes do and sometimes don’t.
You would then have concluded with a different sentence. Perhaps something like: "I don't know if there's a god but it seems like a lot of the people who live like there is a god have a good time, except those who suffer deeply from misogyny and homophobia. But I can sing and be merry and what I was thinking about the entire time anyway was fun rather than truth. Because sometimes we just want to have fun."
And then no one would mistakenly have thought you were trying to be serious in defense of the truth claims of Judaism.
I finally articulated my response to not just your piece, but the whole back and forth on substack. But I haven’t read any piece but yours. My reaction is from other exposures to similar conversations. My point on orthopraxy a long time ago was about a basically happy person who has doubts but still observes the law. Perhaps the current discussion is more about someone pretending to follow the laws for social reasons. Amplifying that is a cynical bid to everyone to doubt everyone else’s sincerity. It’s not personal any longer if that’s true.
There’s a prevailing idea that anyone who questions their faith abandons it. This implies that anyone who is born observant and remains observant has never thoughtfully evaluated the faith of their youth; they allowed inertia or social pressure to propel them forward.
I was born observant and remain observant but I have thoughtfully questioned everything I was raised with. I have compared it to other ideas and other practical lifestyles. I remain convinced in my soul and in my mind that this is truth. Because I grew up with it, I know what I am getting into. And I overcame the childish impulse to do the opposite of my parents in a flat effort of self-definition.
I think that there are many like me. I think certainty in faith is sometimes expressed in anger. That’s beyond counterproductive. It reinforces whatever rejection people speak from. But it comes from a place of certainty and solidarity. I don’t condone it. Im just explaining.
A lot of people are in a lot of pain.
But my mid- (late?) forties have taught me that I can still speak the truth. Even if someone somewhere might feel bad.
Jewish Renewal is an offshoot of Orthodox Judaism, not Reconstruction. IIRC Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi went OTD, traveled to the East with the hippies and then reconnected with the mysticism in the Jewish tradition, but with a looser, buffet-style approach, and leadership roles for women. It has influenced the other less halachic movements with innovations such as Friday night music shabbat and making Kabbalah cool (but not studied seriously).
I agree that we are all Orthopraxists. Ancient Judaism was Orthopraxy, not Orthodox. The Torah commands action, not belief. Nowhere in the Torah does it require belief. Thus, Jews are not required to believe that the Torah came from sinai or even God. As for myself, I am a rational deist. The Torah for me is entirely a human document.
I guess a rationalist, but not an empiricist? I guess I'm not clear on what you mean by "deism" or "rational." If you mean that we can reason ourselves into believing in God, I guess I get it. But I don't really buy Descartes' proof of God (which also seems to be Spinoza's). And I'm not sure how Maimonides fits into this. But I also know you're planning to write on all this, so look forward to seeing what you've go to say.
I understand that Maimonides is a deist because his conception of God is deistic. Maimonides presents his conception of God and religion in a rational way in the first four chapters of his code of Jewish law, the Book of Knowledge. A deistic conception of God means that God is not involved in human affairs. Maimonides' God does not interfere in human affairs. Yes, I hope to write about it soon. Thank you for your interest.
Sorry I'm a bit late to this. I'm very behind in Substack reading right now. I agreed with most of it, although I've never been convinced by Source Criticism (although I find it does help me look at Torah in helpful ways sometimes).
"Perfect faith" is a much more Christian concept than a Jewish one. I was actually in a class on Rambam recently where we spoke about faith "as if" and the (Orthodox) rabbi defended it as a viable and understandable way of living.
There's a discussion in the Talmud about beggars who pretend to be disabled to get charity money that says that they end up being punished with the disability they feigned. So, what happens to someone who pretends to be a saint to get charity money? His punishment is to become a saint. Why is this a punishment? There are different answers, but one is that it's not a punishment, but a reward -- for choosing to pretend to be a saint. Perhaps we would say he had an unconscious desire to be a saint. Maybe the world would be a better place if more people lived their lives "as if" they were saints.
Not really an affirmation or a rebuttal, but just an encouragement: it’s a great help to read such a frank, authentic representation of the challenge you (by which I mean: we all) face. Jordan Peterson taught me, somewhat indirectly, to lose interest in what I say or think I believe, and what other people say or think they believe, but instead to see in “practice” the only meaningful expression of belief. I do not think we should demand from our fickle minds such zealous consistency, and anyway it’s a seductive distraction. The conduct of our lives is what really matters.
True faith is evident in a life carefully lived. There might be faith in those whose behaviors don’t show it but I don’t believe that people act with self discipline who don’t truly believe.
We can believe in god with a lower case g. Why believe? The "ex nihilo": ex nihilo, nihil fit, which is a true positive statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Why a lower case g? Because so far as I can tell, humans' claims about the nature of god are incredible, inconsistent, and often demonstrably unpersuasive. Belief in a providential god defies both thought and empirical evidence.
I believe in god, but I know absolutely nothing about god.
1) How is that different than saying you believe in a Jabberwocky, even though we know nothing about it because the only poem referencing its attributes and its power and its location and its traits is in nonsense jargon?
2) If your god is undefined, how is it at all meaningful to say that you believe in him?
3) Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty refer to belief as things you have no control over. This is contrary to how most people use this term casually in their daily lives.
They say that you are compelled to believe things when you are shown enough evidence, and until then, you don't believe because you can't believe. Sure, we can debate what's sufficient, but when there's no evidence, what leads to belief? They both say it's not a choice or a decision. Do you disagree?
Your question is a good one. What I believe is not really an "in." What I know is true is the Ex NIhilo and what it being true implies.
1. I know that something has always existed and cannot fail to exist by the pure, undeniable logic of the Ex Nihilo. As I said, the Ex Nihilo does not give us the God of Abraham, does not give us a providential god, does not give us much aside from the certainty that existence is and cannot be is not.
2. What counts as "evidence" is not clear cut and objective. I wrote "I believe in god" with a lower-case g, which is rather like what physicists call "dark matter." Physicist do not so much "believe" as they cannot refute the hypothesis that dark matter comprises a huge amount of all the matter in the universe. What can a physicist say about dark matter? Pretty much nothing, other than it "is."
3. I agree with Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty (I have not read MD, and only a bit of SH). I have absolutely no control over what my mind takes to be logical; all I know is it does.
Lots and lots of people have never carefully given any thought to what it means to "know" or what it means to "believe." The non-formal meanings of both words are quite ill considered. I have a true justified belief that the Ex Nihilo is a true positive statement. To say I believe in god might be better said like this; the Big Bang theory is false. On the one hand, saying so is saying quite a lot, but at the same time saying not enough.
Kant's a priori analytic statement is a statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Such is the Ex Nihilo. The Big Bang theory is an a posteriori synthetic statement, whose truth value cannot be known, but for which empirical evidence may be persuasive. I wrote about these ideas in my book Morality and Capitalism: A Dialogue on Freedom. I encourage you to check it out. 😊
I think it's important to not fall into special pleading. Special pleading would be:
a) saying anything in this conversation or giving any explanation that would not be satisfactory to justify Judaism that can be equally applied to any other faith or religion. So, for instance, to say that you feel Hashem and if only I felt him too, then I'd believe. Plenty of people, and not those who score a touchdown, praise Jesus and when you ask them why, they'll tell you that they felt him and that he assisted. Bogus. Since it's not particular to Judaism, general feelings and thoughts and thus arguments should be considered insufficient.
b) saying anything that would not be accepted by any reasonable person (presumably including you) by someone defending a decidedly nonsense proposition, such as that they can tell the future or they have a monster in their closet or that they propose astrology as a great way to guide one in love, business, etc.
>>>Your question is a good one.
Thanks for opening so strongly and compassionately.
>>>What I believe is not really an "in."
I'm only one sentence in, but I already suspect special pleading, which is why I began with the preamble above. If someone came to you telling you that they broke up with Cindy and started dating Cheryl or quit from ABC, Inc. and took the job at DEF Co. because their mother, who is good with tarot cards, warned them about Cindy or ABC, Inc...and you asked them why they think their mother has any special information on these matters, and they began by saying exactly this: "what I believe in is not really an "in" I imagine you'd call BS and prevent them from thinking that that's a valid point. So I will continue, but I'd really like to you consider that, and if you don't get to it, I wonder you have to say about that.
>>>What I know is true is the Ex NIhilo and what it being true implies.
What do you mean by this?
>>>I know that something has always existed and cannot fail to exist by the pure, undeniable logic of the Ex Nihilo. As I said, the Ex Nihilo does not give us the God of Abraham, does not give us a providential god, does not give us much aside from the certainty that existence is and cannot be is not.
I don't think you know any such thing. I think you don't know, and neither do I, and that's fine. Let's just say we don't know. Let's not pretend that we know things we cannot know.
>>>What counts as "evidence" is not clear cut and objective.
I call this special pleading. When you ask your friend why he believes in fairies and what his evidence is for thinking fairies live in his garden and he responds with "I don't actually believe IN fairies" or complains that your desire for evidence is difficult or overwhelming or confusing or otherwise inappropriate, I imagine you'd immediately realize that you're not going to have a constructive conversation unless your friend shifts from his evasive sort of explanatory position.
>>>which is rather like what physicists call "dark matter."
I'm no physicist, so I will defer to Neil deGrasse Tyson who explains that dark matter (and dark energy) are just terms used for a coefficient that is needed in certain physics formulae where the known values of more well understood variables do not add up. Basically, matter imparts gravitational pull and there's too much gravity for all he matter that we can measure. So they call this unknown and poorly understood thing that imparts more gravity than can be accounted for "dark matter," but it's not silly or nonsensical or supernatural at all. In fact, it's quite rational. And as soon as there will be more information, the term and/or its definition will be modified or eliminated, whatever the preponderance of the data indicates.
And so I'd like to submit this tremendous contrast between god and dark matter as a great wonder toward your position. There's no evidence for a god, and to say that you referred to him in lowercase is really not helpful, I think. Let's just all admit that we don't know things until we do, and not fall into the trap of using words that everyone else knows what they mean by certain words, and then use those words as though they don't mean what everyone else says they mean or what everyone else uses them for.
>>>I agree with Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty (I have not read MD, and only a bit of SH). I have absolutely no control over what my mind takes to be logical; all I know is it does.
You can find Dillahunty on YouTube (as well as Harris, although Harris is a writer as well, of course) and I'm glad we can find some common ground. :)
>>>I have a true justified belief that the Ex Nihilo is a true positive statement.
I disagree
>>>To say I believe in god might be better said like this; the Big Bang theory is false. On the one hand, saying so is saying quite a lot, but at the same time saying not enough.
Quite confusing. I think instead of saying you believe in god, especially given your acceptance of the Harris/Dillahunty definition of belief, would be to just say "I don't know," which is true for everyone, even if they don't know it. Everyone is an agnostic, even if they don't know it.
>>>Kant's a priori analytic statement is a statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Such is the Ex Nihilo. The Big Bang theory is an a posteriori synthetic statement, whose truth value cannot be known, but for which empirical evidence may be persuasive. I wrote about these ideas in my book Morality and Capitalism: A Dialogue on Freedom. I encourage you to check it out.
I'm not a philosopher, and so quite unfamiliar with Kant. And I'm not a physicist, so I cannot speak intelligently at an advanced level to defend or attack Big Bang cosmology.
Thanks for your engagement...I thoroughly appreciate it. :)
No special pleading from me. The God of Abraham is the God of the world's three largest religions, I think. Whatever I wrote applies to all three equally. I am not agnostic. I am a theist. To be more accurate,I am a deist. If you disagree with the Ex Nihilo, then all further discourse about the topic is futile. The reason why is that logic either makes immediate sense to someone or it does not. If it does not, one cannot use logic to explain why a statement is true by logic.
By the way, Tyson is not at the top of anyone's list of brilliant physicists. He may be no dunce, but he also is not Niels Bohr. If you have not read Kant, you may want to attend to that immediately, way before you spend any more time on Sam Harris. I say this not to be critical of you or Harris, but only to state that the field of philosophy is vast and there truly is nothing new under the sun.
>>>The God of Abraham is the God of the world's three largest religions, I think. Whatever I wrote applies to all three equally.
The idea that there's something of substance to defend in the Judeo-Christian perspective (and you're not throwing in Muslims as well) is something you'll hear a lot from Ben Shapiro and it benefits him greatly.
It's politically smart. There are so few Orthodox Jews that to say "I wear a yarmulke and we've got it right and everyone else is deeply mistaken in ways that are unredeemable" is not going to get Ben anywhere. He can't arrive at anywhere worth going if he's going to harp on talmudic interpretations of the Old Testament, and he's not trying to give a shiur. He's trying to unite the country and he's trying to raise his standing, but never at the expense of the country. So he's smart, but his argument is all emotion and no substance, when you get down to it. Jews claim that Jesus is a false messiah.
That doesn't sit well with Christians, but Ben is not having a religious debate here. He wins if Judaism rises along with Christianity, so why not say things that raise them both. Well, again, if you're giving a shiur and discussing halacha, they can't both win. But he does his own halacha behind the scenes and he only talks about it in public to be cute and show humility, which works. He talks about the wacky things he does, whether it's separating from his wife during her period or not using technology on Shabbos or Yom Tov, and it comes across as intriguing that someone like Ben Shapiro can miss out on 3 days of news if it happens to be that Thursday and Friday are holidays and they run into Shabbos. And yet he can remain the powerhouse that he is. And he talks about needing to find a kosher restaurant. And he talks about not having slept with anyone except his wife, and even not with his wife until they married. He gives that boyish grin about having been a virgin until marriage and if he's happy, then more power to him. He's rich and famous and smart and if he's telling you that he's happy on top of that, he's a super success story and no one can take that from him. So he becomes a real power broker for Judeo-Christian values because he never focuses on the things that separate Judaism from Christianity and why should he? You'll never see him talk about the stupidity of Christianity from the Jewish perspective and from the Jewish perspective, Christianity is quite stupid.
So we don't even need to discuss Islam because it can only make it worse for the credence of your point, not better. To get back to my point in responding to your point about "whatever I wrote applies to all three equally" means that your words cannot defend Judaism if they equally defend Christianity (and now throw in Islam as well).
>>>I am not agnostic. I am a theist. To be more accurate, I am a deist.
I disagree. Before having discussions like this, one may be excused for thinking they have beliefs when they really don't. Step one would be to get someone to recognize (or agree, as you already have) on the Harris/Dillahunty definition of belief. That they are compelled by sufficient evidence. Step two is to ask for one's evidence for a claim they are making. And when they come up short, they then must yield to what was already establish by H/D, and that belief is no longer advanced because it's now appreciated that it's no longer a belief, but just a thought they had that they no longer can have. Once someone is made aware that their beliefs are no longer grounded in fact or good reason, they cannot be maintained, by definition.
So you say that you're a deist, and whether you're a theist or a deist, because you didn't make that distinction before (which is fine), I asked you why, and all I saw was special pleading, and here you've done it again, but at the same time denying that it's special pleading, and I'm not understanding this discussion motion of yours.
>>>If you disagree with the Ex Nihilo, then all further discourse about the topic is futile.
It's not that I disagree with it, but that I don't think we know. And I don't think you know. But you seem to think you do, and so I was just asking how you know. And instead of explaining, you merely reiterated.
>>>The reason why is that logic either makes immediate sense to someone or it does not.
I don't agree with this at all, and I don't even think you agree with it. It's very seductive to think that logic permeates immediately and fully, but it doesn't. It can take time to understand an argument, even if it's fully logical and rational. It's fully rational to completely reject the truth of religion, and look how long it takes for people to hear the points being made against their indoctrination!! And even when there's no controversy, but it just seems strange, like a whole bunch of the logical fallacies do at first blush, logic isn't immediately absorbed just because it's true.
>>>Tyson is not at the top of anyone's list of brilliant physicists
I agree. But he's clear and concise, and so he's a great common man's physicist.
>>>If you have not read Kant, you may want to attend to that immediately, way before you spend any more time on Sam Harris.
I'll throw in a couple more observations, but then I must move on. To "know" is to have a true, justified belief. This definition of "know" is pretty much settled in philosophy, so far as I know. Also, I did not leave out Islam; Allah is the God of Abraham in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Finally, I will repeat that so far as I can tell, I offer no special pleading. I hope you have a wonderful day; I will be driving for the next 8 hours.
The greatest distance in the world is between the mind and the heart.
We know in our minds that Hashem sees everything, but our hearts don't feel it as much.
This has nothing to do with religion. We all know that keeping our mouths shut can improve the happiness of our lives. We all know that being nice to our family members can only work to our benefit. Yet we often fail at these. Because our minds are not as connected to our hearts as our eyes are. A cop isn't in our minds, it is in our eyes.
I don't know if biology figured out why this should be, but that has no bearing on the facts.
>>>The greatest distance in the world is between the mind and the heart.
Without intending to be pedantic or mean spirited, being metaphorical can sometimes get in the way of having a difficult and serious conversation. When you say "heart" here, you mean mind, and so to say that there's a distance between the mind and the mind is confusing people, and so is to use adjectives to describe such a non-existent distance.
>>>We know in our minds that Hashem sees everything, but our hearts don't feel it as much.
1) We actually don't know anything about Hashem.
2) Our hearts are certainly not involved in this calculation
>>>This has nothing to do with religion.
What could you mean when saying that a discussion about religion has nothing to do with religion?
>>>We all know that keeping our mouths shut can improve the happiness of our lives.
Again, without intending to be silly or mean spirited, this is no different than saying "we all know that keeping our pants on can improve the happiness of our lives." Sometimes kids make things more difficult, and sometimes having intercourse with certain people makes this worse. But sometimes they will be great! So the truth value of this is debatable.
>>>I don't know if biology figured out why this should be, but that has no bearing on the facts.
I'm really confused by your entire post here. Perhaps you could reiterate in a more focused way as to what points you're trying to make.
'Heart' is generally understood to mean 'feelings'.
We actually know that Hashem sees everything. Because He told us.
Our feelings don't appreciate it. Our senses haven't been updated. We do things we know we will punished for, because we forgete about Hashem's presence.
This problem isn't about religion, it's about not doing what we know to be the correct thing.
Your analogy between wearing pants and keeping quiet assumes that you sometimes walk around without pants, like we all sometimes say things we shouldn't.
Well, I think we're having an exceedingly complicated conversation, where a good chunk of the people (let's call them the pro-religion camp) are, according to another good chunk of people (let's call them them the non-pro-religion camp) not really understanding what they are not understanding. So to be most clear, it's important to define things properly and not speak poetically or metaphorically because in doing so, the things we're trying to discern will be overlooked.
>>>'Heart' is generally understood to mean 'feelings'.
Yes, but feelings come from the mind. And so that clarification helps not.
>>>We actually know that Hashem sees everything.
How do you know that?
>>>Because He told us.
How do you know?
>>>Our feelings don't appreciate it. Our senses haven't been updated. We do things we know we will punished for, because we forget about Hashem's presence.
You have so far made 5 claims that I reject. Do you have any good reasons to claim even one of them, let alone all five? I imagine you recognize that you can't come to argue that there's a god by saying "because I know."
>>>This problem isn't about religion, it's about not doing what we know to be the correct thing.
What is the correct thing? Again, more claims with no good basis for making them.
>>>Your analogy between wearing pants and keeping quiet assumes that you sometimes walk around without pants, like we all sometimes say things we shouldn't.
My analogy was about having intercourse...sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. So, too, sometimes keeping quiet is good and sometimes it's bad. You can find multiple references to how silence is bad, made by the likes of MLK Jr. and those against antisemitism.
It was for the purpose of showing how your assertion was unnecessarily and unhelpfully broad, making it not true in so many instances that as a blanket rule, it ought not to be accepted as good advice.
Now that you told us WHAT you believe, I look forward to hearing WHY you believe these things. Thank you! :)
I didn't lose anything. I'm fairly intelligent and understood exactly what you were trying to do, but a good way for people to become entangled in nonsense, no matter which side one is arguing, is to speak in an unclear way. Unclear presentation betrays unclear understanding.
Those who are religious generally take positions regarding the OTD, although there might be more:
A1) The Nebech Approach: where the OTD is seen as unfortunate and lost and misguided and in need of major support and even more love.
A2) The Angry Approach: where the OTD is seen an evil and conniving and scheming and interested in all sorts of unsavory things that they know are bad, such as bacon cheeseburgers and sex in hotels with hot girls they just met at a bar.
But from the OTD's perspective, there are a number of positions to take, and this is not a comprehensive list:
B1) The Emotional Approach: I don't like how religion feels to me anymore and I don't want to do it anymore. It's overwhelming to deal with the pressure and I want out and I no longer want to believe.
B2: The Intellectual Approach: With greater and greater access to information (which is made possible by the internet), I've come to realize that Judaism isn't true. So I no longer believe.
You come and make some silly comments, and I call them silly not at all as a personal attack on you or your beliefs, and I obviously do think they are silly because I don't think you have any good reason to believe them, and I think you're deluded. But I don't attack people for their silly beliefs unless they first put them out there because I don't want to ruin your life with you going down a dark road you're not interested in traveling.
Rather, I say that your comments were silly because you didn't have to say anything. But when you do, it's like a card game where you put some money into the pot. If you call, you need to recognize that you can also be called. You can't make arguments and think you'll be taken seriously if when someone asks you what you're trying to say you take your chips and leave. I mean, you can, and it seems that's what you're doing...but you can't call and then run. You are essentially folding.
Why are people orthoprax? There can be a list for that as well. But it's usually because since Orthodox society locks you into a niche with a spouse and kids at an early age, and you hardly know or associate with any non-Orthodox Jews, when you finally realize that this is all bogus, it's too late. You have your job and you have your wife and you have your 3 kids and you feel stuck. Your parents and your siblings and your friends and so everyone you know would cut you out of their lives because who wants their kids to have an uncle who doesn't keep kosher or shabbos. It's a tremendous threat, and it can't be easily countered because there's nothing to say that doesn't undermine your own faith.
Rejecting nonsense is a feature, not a bug. But you misunderstand that because you've still got blinders on. You refer to seeking truth as "a human quirk," which is bizarre because you think that I've lost the plot, although I wouldn't have used the word "plot"...no I would say you've missed the point.
And then you write me off as a flat earther anti-facter, which is also bizarre, since science is forever chasing fact and rejects a flat earth, while it is religion that accepts things based on authority and revelation, two sources of information that are subject to mistakes in a way that fact-checking cannot fix.
>>>I am not here to debate them.
And then you run away. That's all the pre-religious camp can do when they face a B2 OTD adversary. It's one thing to talk it out with a B1 OTD position holder, because all you need to do is unsour them toward religion. A rebbe spoke to you or touched you inappropriately...that can be dealt with. It's a simple thing to intellectually understand that he's not a good representative of the religion, regardless of the length of his beard or the fame associated with his last name. That's not to say that emotionally this can be a difficult hurdle to overcome, but it should be obvious to an independent third party that such a person is not a good spokesman for the religion, and so you just gotta get this OTD candidate to emotionally divorce this person's words or actions from the institution of Judaism at large. It may take counseling and it may take years. But it can be dealt with. Just like it's reasonable to imagine that anyone who's been verbally or physically or sexually abused can come to recognize that the behavior they experienced from one person does not generalized to all people. There are some bad people here in life.
But for those OTD who demonstrate B2, this is not about feelings. This is about reality and they think you're delusional. And so you can try to first talk them out of it (as though they are merely emotionally disconnected) but as soon as it becomes clear that they espouse heretical ideas, the religionist must self-preserve and either attack or run away. And the attacks don't work because they are dumb. Anything that can be said in anger can also be said with love, and if when said with love they make no sense, they certainly don't make more sense in anger. And you just look worse for it, because not only do your words have no substance but now you look even more delusional because your confidence (demonstrated by your anger) is way disproportional to the merit of your argument.
So I get it. In the least condescending way, and I don't know if you can trust that, because you don't really know me, it seems you are just not prepared to defend your faith. You come here, guns blazing that Hashem is here and Hashem is there and Hashem is truly everywhere and loves each and every little yid, but when asked how you know that and why you think that, you can only say something silly like "you're denying Hashem because it's a human quirk and you're akin to a flat earther."
So, your great intelligence didn't manage to work for you to actually understand the point I made.
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - Having intelligence is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
I treat you OTDs like Mormons who knock on my door, Na Nachs dancing in the street, and anti-vaxxers with their inserts in the newspapers. I don't care to debate you, I didn't come here to make a point about religion, and there are plenty of sources for the honest researcher.
What a wonderful essay! There is so much wisdom in living “as if” we believed completely. (Although for me God is not a cop or IRS agent, but rather a loving parent who expects us to be our best selves.) And you make an excellent point that the secular side is not purely rational either; it has its own acts of faith and unproven beliefs. So why not look at which system makes its followers happiest? All this plus Flannery O’Connor!
I wondered whether the allusion was to Puck’s final speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which begins “If these shadows do offend”?
Thanks Mari, I also think of God as a kindly father more than a cop or an IRS agent, but I figured for the analogy of compelled action those work better because who listens to their dad? Your a few hundred years off on the allusion. I'll give you a hint. Crutch.
The story ends with ‘I’m not an ‘am Haaretz’. / loose translation an ignorant person. You may have wavering belief but you don’t act like an idiot judaicly. Judaism is how you live. Period. It’s a brilliant thought. Faith waivers. Life is lived day in day out.
I love this story! It spoke profoundly to this Greek Orthodox woman. “ I’m not a barbarian” hit me right behind the eyes. I am certain there are many such people in my church. It isn’t spoken of openly, but I sense it. I have lived many year In the same manner as the man in the story
It is important to have a rebbe who is your primary source for Psak and Hashkafah and a chavrusa with whom you can explore traditional Jewish texts such as Chumash MIshnah Gemara and Halacha who can serve as a role model for you and your family .
Hi Thomas,
I read this earlier, but since you invited me to visit it again, I will leave some comments.
I didn't like this piece. You tell stories that are clearly intended to be evocative in a way that promotes a way of thinking about god and religion. And that could be fine, once we've established that god exists and religion is true. But before we do that, I find that you miss the mark with this piece. I find the Tatz story not just unfunny, but completely pointless. I'm not here to tell people how to live and how to laugh, but what was the point of the story, precisely? It seems that it was meant to trigger some sort of deeper understanding in respect to religion. But it's not informative at all while it pretends to be. Feel good stories are nice, but not when they pretend to be more than they are. And that's how I saw the telling of this story.
Then you speak about how you arrived at religious Judaism while fleeing from secularism. You list off a bunch of thoughts you had in your mind from that time you spent in secularism, and it's entirely unclear what you mean by this. It's like you were a Jets fan and you weren't happy with losing every season, so now you're a Chiefs fan and now you get to feel happy. Religion, in a serious conversation, is about the claims made by that religion. Religionists of Christianity are not just those who have Christmas trees, but who actually believe for good reason that Jesus was the messiah and that he'll be coming again...despite any good reason to believe this. The idea of Pascal's wager is silly because religion is not a scarf that you bring with you in your pocket...if you need it you'll have it and if you don't, well, no great loss. The idea of the wager may make sense to people who aren't being serious when they consider what religion really is, but if we're having a serious conversation about religion, then it's a discussion about what we believe and why. Putting forth ideas that one might as well "believe" to cut their losses misses out completely on what belief is and, frankly, what religion is. It makes religion into a scarf.
Retelling your conversation with Sarah about whether you believe in god or not is also revealing of your position. True and real belief in a god must be a result of our contact with something. We must be plugging into something, we must be encountering something and then responding to it. As Sam Harris puts it, if we are to have a relationship with god, it needs to be that our relationship would be different if he were different, and it must be that the relationship would be non-existent if he were to be non-existent. If find the way you talk about Judaism to be silly because you seem to miss this completely. How can you believe but also doubt? How can you believe one day but not the next? As far as god goes, today is the same as yesterday. Whatever is written in the books is written and whatever he's done is recorded, for there is no evidence of god today more than there was yesterday. I would say that they are both equal to zero, and I ask you to speak up about how you observe it any other way. But it's certainly not changing rapidly enough for you to feel that he exists, sort of, kind of, sometimes, in a way...
Your explanation of belief is on par with the poorly-written primer by Lisa Liel, where she outlines religion and belief in a manner that is completely disjointed from reality. Making a claim that there is a god who listens to prayers and sometimes answers them, is to make a claim about reality, and to use circular reasoning to explain why you believe in it is not being serious. If you want to have serious conversations, then we can have them. But I can't be the serious one here while everyone else says things like: "I know there's a god because I have a soul" or "I know that I have a soul because I can feel it" when it's so clear that the evidence here is just as much of a claim as the claim is.
And then you close with the following:
>>>I look at the Orthodox community and see big, thriving families that seem at least as happy, if not happier, than the ones I know in the secular community. I experience with the Orthodox community joy in prayer, learning, “simchas” (celebrations) “farbrangens” (drinking parties where you talk Torah). I watch these guys singing niguns passionately, caring lovingly for their children, and strolling happily with their wives. I see them stretching their minds with what might very well be kabbalistic mumbo-jumbo but is far more life-affirming than the Euphoria that popular culture pushes.
What you are so clearly seeing if people enjoying something. Nothing you've just written about has any bearing on the truth value of god or religion.
>>>I also see the secular world pushing its share of lies, demanding its pound of cognitive dissonance, and discouraging, if not actively punishing, dissent.
Now you write about the underbelly, so to speak, of the secular world, but you and your recounting suffers tremendously from denominator neglect. You haven't brought up the lies and the suffering in the religious world and you haven't brought up the uplifting virtues in the secular world. The fact that people who pretend and/or lie to themselves and their children about there being a god can be happy is to say that people can be intoxicated and happy. I don't know that anyone doubted that, and yet it's clear that you're trying to use this as a basis for defending religion. But you are only defending it from attacks that the people in it are suffering. It's as though you're saying, "Suffering? They're not suffering! Look, they are enjoying themselves and their kids are having fun!" Yes, but you are deflecting here. The challenge was never whether people could have fun or find meaning in nonsense. You should republish this post and remove all comments you made that do not engage with the important question we are dealing with, which is "why do you believe in a god?" and you'll be left with "well, I don't know, and sometimes I don't even."
That would have at least been on target and honest.
>>>So I live a life “as if” I believe, which I sometimes do and sometimes don’t.
You would then have concluded with a different sentence. Perhaps something like: "I don't know if there's a god but it seems like a lot of the people who live like there is a god have a good time, except those who suffer deeply from misogyny and homophobia. But I can sing and be merry and what I was thinking about the entire time anyway was fun rather than truth. Because sometimes we just want to have fun."
And then no one would mistakenly have thought you were trying to be serious in defense of the truth claims of Judaism.
I finally articulated my response to not just your piece, but the whole back and forth on substack. But I haven’t read any piece but yours. My reaction is from other exposures to similar conversations. My point on orthopraxy a long time ago was about a basically happy person who has doubts but still observes the law. Perhaps the current discussion is more about someone pretending to follow the laws for social reasons. Amplifying that is a cynical bid to everyone to doubt everyone else’s sincerity. It’s not personal any longer if that’s true.
https://substack.com/@baronessorczy/note/c-83030218?r=2z8wkz&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
There’s a prevailing idea that anyone who questions their faith abandons it. This implies that anyone who is born observant and remains observant has never thoughtfully evaluated the faith of their youth; they allowed inertia or social pressure to propel them forward.
I was born observant and remain observant but I have thoughtfully questioned everything I was raised with. I have compared it to other ideas and other practical lifestyles. I remain convinced in my soul and in my mind that this is truth. Because I grew up with it, I know what I am getting into. And I overcame the childish impulse to do the opposite of my parents in a flat effort of self-definition.
I think that there are many like me. I think certainty in faith is sometimes expressed in anger. That’s beyond counterproductive. It reinforces whatever rejection people speak from. But it comes from a place of certainty and solidarity. I don’t condone it. Im just explaining.
A lot of people are in a lot of pain.
But my mid- (late?) forties have taught me that I can still speak the truth. Even if someone somewhere might feel bad.
You might want to look into Yeshayahu Leibowitz's approach to mitzvot as what makes Jews Jewish.
Jewish Renewal is an offshoot of Orthodox Judaism, not Reconstruction. IIRC Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi went OTD, traveled to the East with the hippies and then reconnected with the mysticism in the Jewish tradition, but with a looser, buffet-style approach, and leadership roles for women. It has influenced the other less halachic movements with innovations such as Friday night music shabbat and making Kabbalah cool (but not studied seriously).
I agree that we are all Orthopraxists. Ancient Judaism was Orthopraxy, not Orthodox. The Torah commands action, not belief. Nowhere in the Torah does it require belief. Thus, Jews are not required to believe that the Torah came from sinai or even God. As for myself, I am a rational deist. The Torah for me is entirely a human document.
What do you mean by rationalist deist? Sounds like an oxymoron.
I am trying to say that I am a rationalist. Deism is a rational position. Maimonides was also a deist.
I guess a rationalist, but not an empiricist? I guess I'm not clear on what you mean by "deism" or "rational." If you mean that we can reason ourselves into believing in God, I guess I get it. But I don't really buy Descartes' proof of God (which also seems to be Spinoza's). And I'm not sure how Maimonides fits into this. But I also know you're planning to write on all this, so look forward to seeing what you've go to say.
I understand that Maimonides is a deist because his conception of God is deistic. Maimonides presents his conception of God and religion in a rational way in the first four chapters of his code of Jewish law, the Book of Knowledge. A deistic conception of God means that God is not involved in human affairs. Maimonides' God does not interfere in human affairs. Yes, I hope to write about it soon. Thank you for your interest.
Do you mean the "Mishneh Torah?"
No, I was referring to the Sefer Hamada. Tho it is a part of the Mishneh Torah. Specifically the first part of the Mishneh Torah.
Sorry I'm a bit late to this. I'm very behind in Substack reading right now. I agreed with most of it, although I've never been convinced by Source Criticism (although I find it does help me look at Torah in helpful ways sometimes).
"Perfect faith" is a much more Christian concept than a Jewish one. I was actually in a class on Rambam recently where we spoke about faith "as if" and the (Orthodox) rabbi defended it as a viable and understandable way of living.
There's a discussion in the Talmud about beggars who pretend to be disabled to get charity money that says that they end up being punished with the disability they feigned. So, what happens to someone who pretends to be a saint to get charity money? His punishment is to become a saint. Why is this a punishment? There are different answers, but one is that it's not a punishment, but a reward -- for choosing to pretend to be a saint. Perhaps we would say he had an unconscious desire to be a saint. Maybe the world would be a better place if more people lived their lives "as if" they were saints.
Not really an affirmation or a rebuttal, but just an encouragement: it’s a great help to read such a frank, authentic representation of the challenge you (by which I mean: we all) face. Jordan Peterson taught me, somewhat indirectly, to lose interest in what I say or think I believe, and what other people say or think they believe, but instead to see in “practice” the only meaningful expression of belief. I do not think we should demand from our fickle minds such zealous consistency, and anyway it’s a seductive distraction. The conduct of our lives is what really matters.
True faith is evident in a life carefully lived. There might be faith in those whose behaviors don’t show it but I don’t believe that people act with self discipline who don’t truly believe.
We can believe in god with a lower case g. Why believe? The "ex nihilo": ex nihilo, nihil fit, which is a true positive statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Why a lower case g? Because so far as I can tell, humans' claims about the nature of god are incredible, inconsistent, and often demonstrably unpersuasive. Belief in a providential god defies both thought and empirical evidence.
I believe in god, but I know absolutely nothing about god.
What you mean when you say, you "believe" in him?
1) How is that different than saying you believe in a Jabberwocky, even though we know nothing about it because the only poem referencing its attributes and its power and its location and its traits is in nonsense jargon?
2) If your god is undefined, how is it at all meaningful to say that you believe in him?
3) Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty refer to belief as things you have no control over. This is contrary to how most people use this term casually in their daily lives.
They say that you are compelled to believe things when you are shown enough evidence, and until then, you don't believe because you can't believe. Sure, we can debate what's sufficient, but when there's no evidence, what leads to belief? They both say it's not a choice or a decision. Do you disagree?
Your question is a good one. What I believe is not really an "in." What I know is true is the Ex NIhilo and what it being true implies.
1. I know that something has always existed and cannot fail to exist by the pure, undeniable logic of the Ex Nihilo. As I said, the Ex Nihilo does not give us the God of Abraham, does not give us a providential god, does not give us much aside from the certainty that existence is and cannot be is not.
2. What counts as "evidence" is not clear cut and objective. I wrote "I believe in god" with a lower-case g, which is rather like what physicists call "dark matter." Physicist do not so much "believe" as they cannot refute the hypothesis that dark matter comprises a huge amount of all the matter in the universe. What can a physicist say about dark matter? Pretty much nothing, other than it "is."
3. I agree with Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty (I have not read MD, and only a bit of SH). I have absolutely no control over what my mind takes to be logical; all I know is it does.
Lots and lots of people have never carefully given any thought to what it means to "know" or what it means to "believe." The non-formal meanings of both words are quite ill considered. I have a true justified belief that the Ex Nihilo is a true positive statement. To say I believe in god might be better said like this; the Big Bang theory is false. On the one hand, saying so is saying quite a lot, but at the same time saying not enough.
Kant's a priori analytic statement is a statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Such is the Ex Nihilo. The Big Bang theory is an a posteriori synthetic statement, whose truth value cannot be known, but for which empirical evidence may be persuasive. I wrote about these ideas in my book Morality and Capitalism: A Dialogue on Freedom. I encourage you to check it out. 😊
I think it's important to not fall into special pleading. Special pleading would be:
a) saying anything in this conversation or giving any explanation that would not be satisfactory to justify Judaism that can be equally applied to any other faith or religion. So, for instance, to say that you feel Hashem and if only I felt him too, then I'd believe. Plenty of people, and not those who score a touchdown, praise Jesus and when you ask them why, they'll tell you that they felt him and that he assisted. Bogus. Since it's not particular to Judaism, general feelings and thoughts and thus arguments should be considered insufficient.
b) saying anything that would not be accepted by any reasonable person (presumably including you) by someone defending a decidedly nonsense proposition, such as that they can tell the future or they have a monster in their closet or that they propose astrology as a great way to guide one in love, business, etc.
>>>Your question is a good one.
Thanks for opening so strongly and compassionately.
>>>What I believe is not really an "in."
I'm only one sentence in, but I already suspect special pleading, which is why I began with the preamble above. If someone came to you telling you that they broke up with Cindy and started dating Cheryl or quit from ABC, Inc. and took the job at DEF Co. because their mother, who is good with tarot cards, warned them about Cindy or ABC, Inc...and you asked them why they think their mother has any special information on these matters, and they began by saying exactly this: "what I believe in is not really an "in" I imagine you'd call BS and prevent them from thinking that that's a valid point. So I will continue, but I'd really like to you consider that, and if you don't get to it, I wonder you have to say about that.
>>>What I know is true is the Ex NIhilo and what it being true implies.
What do you mean by this?
>>>I know that something has always existed and cannot fail to exist by the pure, undeniable logic of the Ex Nihilo. As I said, the Ex Nihilo does not give us the God of Abraham, does not give us a providential god, does not give us much aside from the certainty that existence is and cannot be is not.
I don't think you know any such thing. I think you don't know, and neither do I, and that's fine. Let's just say we don't know. Let's not pretend that we know things we cannot know.
>>>What counts as "evidence" is not clear cut and objective.
I call this special pleading. When you ask your friend why he believes in fairies and what his evidence is for thinking fairies live in his garden and he responds with "I don't actually believe IN fairies" or complains that your desire for evidence is difficult or overwhelming or confusing or otherwise inappropriate, I imagine you'd immediately realize that you're not going to have a constructive conversation unless your friend shifts from his evasive sort of explanatory position.
>>>which is rather like what physicists call "dark matter."
I'm no physicist, so I will defer to Neil deGrasse Tyson who explains that dark matter (and dark energy) are just terms used for a coefficient that is needed in certain physics formulae where the known values of more well understood variables do not add up. Basically, matter imparts gravitational pull and there's too much gravity for all he matter that we can measure. So they call this unknown and poorly understood thing that imparts more gravity than can be accounted for "dark matter," but it's not silly or nonsensical or supernatural at all. In fact, it's quite rational. And as soon as there will be more information, the term and/or its definition will be modified or eliminated, whatever the preponderance of the data indicates.
And so I'd like to submit this tremendous contrast between god and dark matter as a great wonder toward your position. There's no evidence for a god, and to say that you referred to him in lowercase is really not helpful, I think. Let's just all admit that we don't know things until we do, and not fall into the trap of using words that everyone else knows what they mean by certain words, and then use those words as though they don't mean what everyone else says they mean or what everyone else uses them for.
>>>I agree with Sam Harris and Matt Dillahunty (I have not read MD, and only a bit of SH). I have absolutely no control over what my mind takes to be logical; all I know is it does.
You can find Dillahunty on YouTube (as well as Harris, although Harris is a writer as well, of course) and I'm glad we can find some common ground. :)
>>>I have a true justified belief that the Ex Nihilo is a true positive statement.
I disagree
>>>To say I believe in god might be better said like this; the Big Bang theory is false. On the one hand, saying so is saying quite a lot, but at the same time saying not enough.
Quite confusing. I think instead of saying you believe in god, especially given your acceptance of the Harris/Dillahunty definition of belief, would be to just say "I don't know," which is true for everyone, even if they don't know it. Everyone is an agnostic, even if they don't know it.
>>>Kant's a priori analytic statement is a statement that can be known to be true by thought alone. Such is the Ex Nihilo. The Big Bang theory is an a posteriori synthetic statement, whose truth value cannot be known, but for which empirical evidence may be persuasive. I wrote about these ideas in my book Morality and Capitalism: A Dialogue on Freedom. I encourage you to check it out.
I'm not a philosopher, and so quite unfamiliar with Kant. And I'm not a physicist, so I cannot speak intelligently at an advanced level to defend or attack Big Bang cosmology.
Thanks for your engagement...I thoroughly appreciate it. :)
No special pleading from me. The God of Abraham is the God of the world's three largest religions, I think. Whatever I wrote applies to all three equally. I am not agnostic. I am a theist. To be more accurate,I am a deist. If you disagree with the Ex Nihilo, then all further discourse about the topic is futile. The reason why is that logic either makes immediate sense to someone or it does not. If it does not, one cannot use logic to explain why a statement is true by logic.
By the way, Tyson is not at the top of anyone's list of brilliant physicists. He may be no dunce, but he also is not Niels Bohr. If you have not read Kant, you may want to attend to that immediately, way before you spend any more time on Sam Harris. I say this not to be critical of you or Harris, but only to state that the field of philosophy is vast and there truly is nothing new under the sun.
>>>The God of Abraham is the God of the world's three largest religions, I think. Whatever I wrote applies to all three equally.
The idea that there's something of substance to defend in the Judeo-Christian perspective (and you're not throwing in Muslims as well) is something you'll hear a lot from Ben Shapiro and it benefits him greatly.
It's politically smart. There are so few Orthodox Jews that to say "I wear a yarmulke and we've got it right and everyone else is deeply mistaken in ways that are unredeemable" is not going to get Ben anywhere. He can't arrive at anywhere worth going if he's going to harp on talmudic interpretations of the Old Testament, and he's not trying to give a shiur. He's trying to unite the country and he's trying to raise his standing, but never at the expense of the country. So he's smart, but his argument is all emotion and no substance, when you get down to it. Jews claim that Jesus is a false messiah.
That doesn't sit well with Christians, but Ben is not having a religious debate here. He wins if Judaism rises along with Christianity, so why not say things that raise them both. Well, again, if you're giving a shiur and discussing halacha, they can't both win. But he does his own halacha behind the scenes and he only talks about it in public to be cute and show humility, which works. He talks about the wacky things he does, whether it's separating from his wife during her period or not using technology on Shabbos or Yom Tov, and it comes across as intriguing that someone like Ben Shapiro can miss out on 3 days of news if it happens to be that Thursday and Friday are holidays and they run into Shabbos. And yet he can remain the powerhouse that he is. And he talks about needing to find a kosher restaurant. And he talks about not having slept with anyone except his wife, and even not with his wife until they married. He gives that boyish grin about having been a virgin until marriage and if he's happy, then more power to him. He's rich and famous and smart and if he's telling you that he's happy on top of that, he's a super success story and no one can take that from him. So he becomes a real power broker for Judeo-Christian values because he never focuses on the things that separate Judaism from Christianity and why should he? You'll never see him talk about the stupidity of Christianity from the Jewish perspective and from the Jewish perspective, Christianity is quite stupid.
So we don't even need to discuss Islam because it can only make it worse for the credence of your point, not better. To get back to my point in responding to your point about "whatever I wrote applies to all three equally" means that your words cannot defend Judaism if they equally defend Christianity (and now throw in Islam as well).
>>>I am not agnostic. I am a theist. To be more accurate, I am a deist.
I disagree. Before having discussions like this, one may be excused for thinking they have beliefs when they really don't. Step one would be to get someone to recognize (or agree, as you already have) on the Harris/Dillahunty definition of belief. That they are compelled by sufficient evidence. Step two is to ask for one's evidence for a claim they are making. And when they come up short, they then must yield to what was already establish by H/D, and that belief is no longer advanced because it's now appreciated that it's no longer a belief, but just a thought they had that they no longer can have. Once someone is made aware that their beliefs are no longer grounded in fact or good reason, they cannot be maintained, by definition.
So you say that you're a deist, and whether you're a theist or a deist, because you didn't make that distinction before (which is fine), I asked you why, and all I saw was special pleading, and here you've done it again, but at the same time denying that it's special pleading, and I'm not understanding this discussion motion of yours.
>>>If you disagree with the Ex Nihilo, then all further discourse about the topic is futile.
It's not that I disagree with it, but that I don't think we know. And I don't think you know. But you seem to think you do, and so I was just asking how you know. And instead of explaining, you merely reiterated.
>>>The reason why is that logic either makes immediate sense to someone or it does not.
I don't agree with this at all, and I don't even think you agree with it. It's very seductive to think that logic permeates immediately and fully, but it doesn't. It can take time to understand an argument, even if it's fully logical and rational. It's fully rational to completely reject the truth of religion, and look how long it takes for people to hear the points being made against their indoctrination!! And even when there's no controversy, but it just seems strange, like a whole bunch of the logical fallacies do at first blush, logic isn't immediately absorbed just because it's true.
>>>Tyson is not at the top of anyone's list of brilliant physicists
I agree. But he's clear and concise, and so he's a great common man's physicist.
>>>If you have not read Kant, you may want to attend to that immediately, way before you spend any more time on Sam Harris.
Thanks! I'll look into that. :)
I'll throw in a couple more observations, but then I must move on. To "know" is to have a true, justified belief. This definition of "know" is pretty much settled in philosophy, so far as I know. Also, I did not leave out Islam; Allah is the God of Abraham in Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Finally, I will repeat that so far as I can tell, I offer no special pleading. I hope you have a wonderful day; I will be driving for the next 8 hours.
The greatest distance in the world is between the mind and the heart.
We know in our minds that Hashem sees everything, but our hearts don't feel it as much.
This has nothing to do with religion. We all know that keeping our mouths shut can improve the happiness of our lives. We all know that being nice to our family members can only work to our benefit. Yet we often fail at these. Because our minds are not as connected to our hearts as our eyes are. A cop isn't in our minds, it is in our eyes.
I don't know if biology figured out why this should be, but that has no bearing on the facts.
>>>The greatest distance in the world is between the mind and the heart.
Without intending to be pedantic or mean spirited, being metaphorical can sometimes get in the way of having a difficult and serious conversation. When you say "heart" here, you mean mind, and so to say that there's a distance between the mind and the mind is confusing people, and so is to use adjectives to describe such a non-existent distance.
>>>We know in our minds that Hashem sees everything, but our hearts don't feel it as much.
1) We actually don't know anything about Hashem.
2) Our hearts are certainly not involved in this calculation
>>>This has nothing to do with religion.
What could you mean when saying that a discussion about religion has nothing to do with religion?
>>>We all know that keeping our mouths shut can improve the happiness of our lives.
Again, without intending to be silly or mean spirited, this is no different than saying "we all know that keeping our pants on can improve the happiness of our lives." Sometimes kids make things more difficult, and sometimes having intercourse with certain people makes this worse. But sometimes they will be great! So the truth value of this is debatable.
>>>I don't know if biology figured out why this should be, but that has no bearing on the facts.
I'm really confused by your entire post here. Perhaps you could reiterate in a more focused way as to what points you're trying to make.
You got to be unintendedly pedantic.
'Heart' is generally understood to mean 'feelings'.
We actually know that Hashem sees everything. Because He told us.
Our feelings don't appreciate it. Our senses haven't been updated. We do things we know we will punished for, because we forgete about Hashem's presence.
This problem isn't about religion, it's about not doing what we know to be the correct thing.
Your analogy between wearing pants and keeping quiet assumes that you sometimes walk around without pants, like we all sometimes say things we shouldn't.
>>>You got to be unintendedly pedantic.
Well, I think we're having an exceedingly complicated conversation, where a good chunk of the people (let's call them the pro-religion camp) are, according to another good chunk of people (let's call them them the non-pro-religion camp) not really understanding what they are not understanding. So to be most clear, it's important to define things properly and not speak poetically or metaphorically because in doing so, the things we're trying to discern will be overlooked.
>>>'Heart' is generally understood to mean 'feelings'.
Yes, but feelings come from the mind. And so that clarification helps not.
>>>We actually know that Hashem sees everything.
How do you know that?
>>>Because He told us.
How do you know?
>>>Our feelings don't appreciate it. Our senses haven't been updated. We do things we know we will punished for, because we forget about Hashem's presence.
You have so far made 5 claims that I reject. Do you have any good reasons to claim even one of them, let alone all five? I imagine you recognize that you can't come to argue that there's a god by saying "because I know."
>>>This problem isn't about religion, it's about not doing what we know to be the correct thing.
What is the correct thing? Again, more claims with no good basis for making them.
>>>Your analogy between wearing pants and keeping quiet assumes that you sometimes walk around without pants, like we all sometimes say things we shouldn't.
My analogy was about having intercourse...sometimes it's good and sometimes it's bad. So, too, sometimes keeping quiet is good and sometimes it's bad. You can find multiple references to how silence is bad, made by the likes of MLK Jr. and those against antisemitism.
It was for the purpose of showing how your assertion was unnecessarily and unhelpfully broad, making it not true in so many instances that as a blanket rule, it ought not to be accepted as good advice.
Now that you told us WHAT you believe, I look forward to hearing WHY you believe these things. Thank you! :)
You seem to have lost the plot.
The issue was about people claiming to believe, yet living lives belying said belief.
To which I answered, this isn't limited to religious beliefs. It is a human quirk.
You are welcome to your flat-earth anti-fact beliefs. I am not here to debate them. There is no shortage of people with ludicrous beliefs out there.
>>>You seem to have lost the plot.
I didn't lose anything. I'm fairly intelligent and understood exactly what you were trying to do, but a good way for people to become entangled in nonsense, no matter which side one is arguing, is to speak in an unclear way. Unclear presentation betrays unclear understanding.
Those who are religious generally take positions regarding the OTD, although there might be more:
A1) The Nebech Approach: where the OTD is seen as unfortunate and lost and misguided and in need of major support and even more love.
A2) The Angry Approach: where the OTD is seen an evil and conniving and scheming and interested in all sorts of unsavory things that they know are bad, such as bacon cheeseburgers and sex in hotels with hot girls they just met at a bar.
But from the OTD's perspective, there are a number of positions to take, and this is not a comprehensive list:
B1) The Emotional Approach: I don't like how religion feels to me anymore and I don't want to do it anymore. It's overwhelming to deal with the pressure and I want out and I no longer want to believe.
B2: The Intellectual Approach: With greater and greater access to information (which is made possible by the internet), I've come to realize that Judaism isn't true. So I no longer believe.
You come and make some silly comments, and I call them silly not at all as a personal attack on you or your beliefs, and I obviously do think they are silly because I don't think you have any good reason to believe them, and I think you're deluded. But I don't attack people for their silly beliefs unless they first put them out there because I don't want to ruin your life with you going down a dark road you're not interested in traveling.
Rather, I say that your comments were silly because you didn't have to say anything. But when you do, it's like a card game where you put some money into the pot. If you call, you need to recognize that you can also be called. You can't make arguments and think you'll be taken seriously if when someone asks you what you're trying to say you take your chips and leave. I mean, you can, and it seems that's what you're doing...but you can't call and then run. You are essentially folding.
Why are people orthoprax? There can be a list for that as well. But it's usually because since Orthodox society locks you into a niche with a spouse and kids at an early age, and you hardly know or associate with any non-Orthodox Jews, when you finally realize that this is all bogus, it's too late. You have your job and you have your wife and you have your 3 kids and you feel stuck. Your parents and your siblings and your friends and so everyone you know would cut you out of their lives because who wants their kids to have an uncle who doesn't keep kosher or shabbos. It's a tremendous threat, and it can't be easily countered because there's nothing to say that doesn't undermine your own faith.
Rejecting nonsense is a feature, not a bug. But you misunderstand that because you've still got blinders on. You refer to seeking truth as "a human quirk," which is bizarre because you think that I've lost the plot, although I wouldn't have used the word "plot"...no I would say you've missed the point.
And then you write me off as a flat earther anti-facter, which is also bizarre, since science is forever chasing fact and rejects a flat earth, while it is religion that accepts things based on authority and revelation, two sources of information that are subject to mistakes in a way that fact-checking cannot fix.
>>>I am not here to debate them.
And then you run away. That's all the pre-religious camp can do when they face a B2 OTD adversary. It's one thing to talk it out with a B1 OTD position holder, because all you need to do is unsour them toward religion. A rebbe spoke to you or touched you inappropriately...that can be dealt with. It's a simple thing to intellectually understand that he's not a good representative of the religion, regardless of the length of his beard or the fame associated with his last name. That's not to say that emotionally this can be a difficult hurdle to overcome, but it should be obvious to an independent third party that such a person is not a good spokesman for the religion, and so you just gotta get this OTD candidate to emotionally divorce this person's words or actions from the institution of Judaism at large. It may take counseling and it may take years. But it can be dealt with. Just like it's reasonable to imagine that anyone who's been verbally or physically or sexually abused can come to recognize that the behavior they experienced from one person does not generalized to all people. There are some bad people here in life.
But for those OTD who demonstrate B2, this is not about feelings. This is about reality and they think you're delusional. And so you can try to first talk them out of it (as though they are merely emotionally disconnected) but as soon as it becomes clear that they espouse heretical ideas, the religionist must self-preserve and either attack or run away. And the attacks don't work because they are dumb. Anything that can be said in anger can also be said with love, and if when said with love they make no sense, they certainly don't make more sense in anger. And you just look worse for it, because not only do your words have no substance but now you look even more delusional because your confidence (demonstrated by your anger) is way disproportional to the merit of your argument.
So I get it. In the least condescending way, and I don't know if you can trust that, because you don't really know me, it seems you are just not prepared to defend your faith. You come here, guns blazing that Hashem is here and Hashem is there and Hashem is truly everywhere and loves each and every little yid, but when asked how you know that and why you think that, you can only say something silly like "you're denying Hashem because it's a human quirk and you're akin to a flat earther."
Now who's being ludicrous?
So, your great intelligence didn't manage to work for you to actually understand the point I made.
To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher - Having intelligence is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
I treat you OTDs like Mormons who knock on my door, Na Nachs dancing in the street, and anti-vaxxers with their inserts in the newspapers. I don't care to debate you, I didn't come here to make a point about religion, and there are plenty of sources for the honest researcher.
What a wonderful essay! There is so much wisdom in living “as if” we believed completely. (Although for me God is not a cop or IRS agent, but rather a loving parent who expects us to be our best selves.) And you make an excellent point that the secular side is not purely rational either; it has its own acts of faith and unproven beliefs. So why not look at which system makes its followers happiest? All this plus Flannery O’Connor!
I wondered whether the allusion was to Puck’s final speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which begins “If these shadows do offend”?
Thanks Mari, I also think of God as a kindly father more than a cop or an IRS agent, but I figured for the analogy of compelled action those work better because who listens to their dad? Your a few hundred years off on the allusion. I'll give you a hint. Crutch.
>>>I...think of God as a kindly father
Why?
Aha! I can’t believe I missed that one! I even just finished next week’s Happy Wanderer, which is on that book! D’ohh!
Yes, me and Peterson are on the same page about a lot of things. He's got more subscribers though.
The story ends with ‘I’m not an ‘am Haaretz’. / loose translation an ignorant person. You may have wavering belief but you don’t act like an idiot judaicly. Judaism is how you live. Period. It’s a brilliant thought. Faith waivers. Life is lived day in day out.
This sounds very similar to Jordan Peterson's take on religion
I love this story! It spoke profoundly to this Greek Orthodox woman. “ I’m not a barbarian” hit me right behind the eyes. I am certain there are many such people in my church. It isn’t spoken of openly, but I sense it. I have lived many year In the same manner as the man in the story
This is consistent with your always excellent pieces. Food for thought in the best way.
Maybe Baruch Spinoza had the answer but he had to live with excommunication.
Spinoza does have the answer. The smartest man who ever lived, Albert Einstein thought so.
Second smartest man. Nietzsche is numero uno 😊
I’ve just started reading Spinoza. He’s very tough going.
Stephen Nadler's books on Spinoza are quite good! #Blessed
You’ll have to cheat and read the secondary accounts. 😊 Even Nietzsche read him in the secondary sources.