Q&A: God
God
Question
Hello,
I wanted to know the Rabbi’s view on whether God is obligated to be moral, and whether God can be evil.
Secondly, why did God not leave behind even one orderly proof of His existence? Why did He not want to leave any trace that would clearly prove that He exists? What is the point of our living our whole lives in uncertainty? I don’t see any obligation in that. And if I serve Him because His existence is unclear to me, is that considered, from His perspective, devotion to faith? After all, if I do not know Him at all, then nothing obligates me, so what exactly is the point?
Answer
It is commonly assumed that the nature of the good is to do good—that benefiting others is part of His essence, and therefore He cannot do evil. That sounds reasonable to me, but I am not sure.
1. Even when there are proofs, people follow their impulses and abandon them. Leibowitz already said that the sin of the Golden Calf happened immediately after the direct encounter with the Holy One, blessed be He.
2. But there are some decent proofs (see “The First Existent”).
3. It is not true that you are required to serve Him without knowing. That is nonsense. If you do not think He exists, then do not serve Him.
4. There is no certainty about anything (and not only about God’s existence), but as in any other area, there is no need to wait for certainty. Probability is good enough.
Discussion on Answer
That you will have to ask Him.
All right, I’ll try… but until then, can I conclude that He probably either does not exist, or that He is apathetic and does not care to prove Himself—whoever gains, gains, and whoever doesn’t is screwed—or that He is simply evil?
What all those options have in common is that I see no reason to serve Him, whether because He doesn’t exist, or because He is evil, in which case I simply can’t work with Him, because maybe in the end He’ll decide to favor דווקא the wicked and burn the righteous. All the more so since there is no issue here of intuition that would obligate me to obey the command of such a character…
You can conclude whatever you want, according to your understanding. In my opinion, of course, that is a mistaken and patently illogical inference.
The real question in this context would be:
After all, we and our impulses do not really exist. So why do we serve ourselves and our impulses?
After you answer that, start asking questions about God, and go on with the performance of pretending that you care whether something really exists or not.
But what is His point in not giving us certainty? Or at least probability at a level where the whole world would be convinced of His existence? (I’m sure even then there would still be plenty of sinners to fill Hell, if that’s the problem… Besides, if the nature of the good is to do good, then let Him create everyone as believers, and our struggle can start from there, with actually keeping the commandments. After all, when the Torah speaks about sins, it is speaking about a person who knowingly sins against his Creator; but if he does not acknowledge His existence at all, then this is not the classic sin—if it is a sin at all.)