Q&A: Faith and Knowledge Regarding the Existence of God
Faith and Knowledge Regarding the Existence of God
Question
Hello Rabbi, and happy holiday. My name is XXX, I’m an electrical engineering student at XXX University, and a baal teshuva.
I turned to Professor Nadav Shnerb with a fairly deep question, and in his helpful reply he told me to contact you, saying that perhaps you could help me.
I’m attaching the email I sent to the honorable gentleman above, with a few changes that have occurred to me over the last two days.
I would be grateful if you could help me.
I’ll briefly tell you about myself: I’m in a process of repentance that began through studying historical materials (specifically ones unrelated to the Jewish people), and from them I reached various conclusions. It continued with Torah study and deep inquiry, mainly in order to see that there are no logical contradictions in the Torah and its Creator.
All of Maimonides’ writings are part of my soul, first and foremost The Guide for the Perplexed. Thanks to Maimonides, I am no longer perplexed. I have no questions about Judaism, I have no questions about the Creator—but the fact that I have no questions about the Creator does not prove His existence.
I’ll give an example from my worldview: I went to my physics lecturer and asked him what he thought of string theory (of course, my knowledge comes from basic books that touch on the issue only a little, certainly not at an academic level), and he told me that the fact that it succeeds on paper in reconciling quantum theory with relativity does not mean that it is correct so long as it has not been experimentally proven. This is only to illustrate the difference
for me between lack of contradiction and truth.
I’m now at the stage in repentance of “to be or to cease.” I don’t have a television, I keep away from women, Torah study has become more significant, I spend a lot of time in secluded personal prayer, and I have a total desire to cleave to my Creator.
As the professor surely understood from what I wrote above, I’m a somewhat different kind of baal teshuva—a rationalist. Physics, mathematics, engineering, and philosophy are an inseparable part of me. And then I reached the point where I want to know whether there is a Creator or not, unequivocally.
After all, what does it mean to believe that a Creator exists? It’s naïveté. I cannot describe myself as living as a “believer,” but only as a person who “knows.” The problem is that everyone around me does not think this way. I’m surrounded by many baalei teshuva who were simply swept into it, without really lifting their heads to ask, or even to think, about “knowledge of the Creator”; for them it’s all faith.
Subjectivity—that is my great problem. The evil inclination may be nothing more than a biological process in my body. Creation may be non-intentional. The evil inclination may be nothing more than a psychological desire of a person to find purpose in life.
I would like to seek the help of the honorable Rabbi-Professor. I know that no person in this world can show me the Creator’s existence—except He Himself. I do not see anything that any person in the world can say or show me that would suddenly make me know my Creator. And so I began increasing my personal prayers; I plead often for the concealment to be removed. But what happens when there is no answer?
My great pain is that I have no contradiction with Judaism or the Torah; I’ve managed to work through everything. My love for the Torah grows from day to day, and just the thought of going back to being secular pains me in an unusual way. But for me there is truth and falsehood; there is no good and evil, no subjective faith—there is objective knowledge.
It’s important to note that I do not see anything scientific as proof of the Creator’s existence. Arguments like “what a perfect world,” “look at the perfection in creation,” are not confirmation for me but unnecessary recycling (of course, once the existence of a Creator is clear to you, the perspective is different). But in general, for me these are two completely separate schools of thought.
Therefore I am not turning to you as a rabbinic authority, or as someone who brings people to repentance, or as a professor of physics, but as a person with whom I might identify, who might be able to give good advice on how to reach the place I need to reach. I must admit that this email is being sent as a “last resort.” Sending an email to a person I do not know at all, with such a desperate request for help, is not something that suits me. But my desire to reach my purpose overcomes that, and I would be grateful for your help, because for now I am alone in my world.
Thank you very much, happy holiday,
Answer
I think you are mistaken in your distinction between faith and knowledge, and in my opinion the mistake is on both sides of the equation (what faith is and what knowledge is). On the one hand, faith is a synonym for knowledge and not something different. And on the other hand, no knowledge (and therefore no faith either) is certain—in any field. Therefore one can hope at most for high probability, not for certainty and absoluteness. From your short letter it seems to me that you are a black-and-white kind of person, and in my opinion there is a philosophical problem in that (I am not speaking psychologically; rather, philosophically, seeing things in black and white is incorrect, and it is very confusing).
I did not understand what you mean when you say that for you there is no good and evil, only truth and falsehood. Truth and falsehood are truth-values regarding factual propositions. Murder, for example, is not judged in terms of truth or falsehood but in terms of good and evil. I do not mean to say that the prohibition of murder is subjective, only that it is not a fact.
If you are talking about philosophical proofs for the existence of God and/or about the transition from the philosophical God to the religious God, I can send you a few notebooks (=files) I wrote about this, but they are long and I’m not sure you will have the patience to read them in order.
Clarifying these questions by email is difficult because this is a long and complex discussion. If you would like, we can meet and clarify it. I am at Bar-Ilan, and we can arrange it by my phone number that appears below.
All the best and happy holiday,
Michi
——————————————————————————————
Questioner:
Thank you very much for the reply, and of course many thanks for the invitation. I would be happy to meet.
But first, I’d like to restate myself—let’s say with greater honesty and directness.
I am not looking for a scientific or philosophical proof of the Creator.
I believe that the only one who can turn my faith into knowledge is the Creator.
And because of that I’m looking for someone who may have experienced what I’m experiencing now. My current state is one in which intellectual conclusions have brought me to the point where I say: there may be a Creator, but it is only a possibility, and I feel that the intellect cannot take me further. No argument that pertains to reason can bring me closer to my Creator.
So I began to act on a plane that was relatively distant from me—emotion, Hasidism, let’s call it that. I began spending time in secluded prayer and simply asking, “And if there were, along with this, a knowledge such that it could not in any way be replaced by another knowledge, and there would be no room to reject this knowledge, nor to imagine an alternative possibility” (Guide for the Perplexed, Part I, chapter 51).
A better analysis might be this: I am a man in his twenties who is giving up women, who for several years has been giving up his Sabbath, who lost all his friends during the process of repentance (because of the reality of kashrut, modesty, wasting time), who gives up time from his degree studies (I’m sure you can understand the workload of a degree) in order to get to the kollel at 10 at night and study Talmud until 12, sleeping 5 hours a night in order to get things done. For years my head has been occupied with solving difficulties connected to Judaism in order to clear my path forward (for example, a problem that greatly troubled me was personal choice versus the Creator’s omniscience), etc.
And now, if I come to the conclusion that my Creator demands that I be naïve—more than I already am—after all this, then it is hard for me, and I am being restrained in my words.
At this point, I am looking for a person who has experienced this mental pit and can help me understand how to arouse the “mercy” of my Creator.
Someone who understood that he had no other way out of this pit, and I think such a person must be an educated person.
In any case, I hope I managed to express myself better. I would be glad if we meet later on, and I must again note my gratitude. You have no idea how much I appreciate that a busy and respected person like you invests his time in a person he has never met. I do not take this for granted.
Thank you very much and happy holiday.
——————————————————————————————
Rabbi:
I myself experienced the search for certainty, but now, precisely because of my own logicist inclination, I am no longer there. My conclusion from that search is that there is no certainty and no possibility of attaining it. I do not believe in Hasidism and religious emotion as an alternative route. In my opinion, there is no substitute for rational thought, and although it does not provide certainty—that is what we have. Part of maturing is understanding that there is no certainty, only probability, including in the area of faith. Mystical revelations are not my territory, and in that regard I can only wish you luck (with quite a bit of skepticism).
On the issue you pointed to (free will and divine knowledge), in my opinion there is a very simple way out: there is no prior divine knowledge. This is a myth with no justification and no real source, and it contradicts several cornerstone principles of Jewish thought and of logic in general (especially free will, of course). By the way, I wrote a book about free will (= The Science of Freedom), though there I deal mainly with the question of scientific determinism and hardly at all with theological determinism.
At the margins of my remarks I will add that I also do not think one should give up the degree, nor friends, and not even a relationship, nor should one isolate oneself. It is certainly worthwhile and necessary to study, but extremism, in my opinion, is generally not recommended. One should think and make sensible, considered decisions, and it is generally not right to carry out acts of sacrifice.
I would be happy to talk if you would like.
All the best and happy holiday,
Michi