Q&A: Reward and Punishment
Reward and Punishment
Question
Hello Rabbi,
There are verses in the Torah that say that whoever keeps the commandments will merit reward, and whoever does not follow the path of the commandments will merit punishment. The verses speak specifically about this world. (We read in the last few portions all about the curses and the blessings.)
If the assumption is that the Torah of God is true, why don’t we see this happening? The question is not the issue of “the righteous who suffers and the wicked who prospers” — that’s not the direction I mean at all.
Seemingly, someone who challenges the truth of the Torah looks more like he is right.
Answer
We don’t see it happening because it doesn’t happen. You can of course infer from that that the Torah is not true, but if there are good reasons to think that it is true, then this can be interpreted differently as well. I explained this here: https://mikyab.net/%D7%9B%D7%AA%D7%91%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A9-%D7%90%D7%97%D7%A8-%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%94%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%91%D7%A2%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9D
Discussion on Answer
Why does that matter? I don’t think so.
I wrote that it depends on the strength of the reasons in favor of the book.
I wanted to ask:
Does the Rabbi also think this is the strongest empirical difficulty against the Torah?
Besides that, this connects to a more fundamental question: from when does a difficulty become evidence for the other side, such that it would cause us to abandon the theory (in this case, that religion is true), and when does it merely create a need for an explanation?
If you had no prior knowledge about an ancient book, and you saw that it contains blessings and curses, but you also saw that they are not fulfilled in reality — wouldn’t that be sufficient evidence for you to assume that the book is not true?