Q&A: “As People Say,” and Another Question
“As People Say,” and Another Question
Question
Hello to the Rabbi, may he live long and well.
Many laws and presumptions in the Talmud were formulated in the name of sayings introduced with “as people say.” This raises a difficulty: first of all, who are these “people” (I’ve heard several opinions: heavenly messengers, angels, prophets, important philosophers of their time, and more). Aside from that, if we explain it in the straightforward sense as the folk wisdom of the Babylonians 1,600 years ago, then many laws, including important presumptions such as “better to dwell as two,” etc., were established on the basis of the wisdom of Babylonian grandmothers. That’s a bit hard to accept, no?
On another matter, for a long time I’ve had the following question in my head: how are there atheists in the world (I mean the intelligent ones)? After all, the existence of God, according to logic, is so clear that I came to understand that דווקא from an emotional standpoint atheism has an advantage (because of the amount of evil in the world, and divine indifference to the situation, the eternal laws of nature, the stupidity of religion in these generations, and more), and not according to the common explanation regarding religion. By contrast, from a purely logical perspective God is beyond any doubt. Does the Rabbi agree with this analysis?
Answer
Forget all this nonsense about heavenly messengers and other inventions. Popular wisdom was relevant then too. Usually it comes to support a line of reasoning, not to create a new law.
That’s a question in psychology, and I don’t feel qualified to answer it. To each his own quirks. For some people it apparently really isn’t all that self-evident (and they ask themselves how there are intelligent believers in the world).