Q&A: Your Attitude Toward Other Religions
Your Attitude Toward Other Religions
Question
I listened to the episode they did with you on the podcast “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” You were asked there about your attitude toward other religions, and you said that unlike the philosophical God—where you firmly maintain that someone who thinks He does not exist is mistaken—regarding Judaism versus other religions you are not that sharp-cut, and your claim was that even though you do not really believe the stories about Jesus and so on, if a Polish peasant was raised into Christianity, it cannot be that the Holy One, blessed be He, expects anything more of him than to be a good Christian.
And I was very puzzled by your words, because this is a classic confusion between what is expected of you and what is true. After all, even regarding someone born, say, into an atheist family and atheist education, it could be that there is no expectation of him not to be an atheist, since he did what was expected of him and had no real possibility of believing in the Holy One, blessed be He; he is a kind of “coerced person.” And nevertheless, according to my view, he is certainly mistaken. So the same surely applies to the Christian: maybe he is not expected to do anything differently from how he acted, and yet according to my view he is mistaken, since Jesus never actually prophesied and in practice the Holy One, blessed be He, never imposed the commandments of Christianity on anyone. If so, what distinction is there between the two questions—that is, between the question whether the Holy One, blessed be He, exists or does not exist, and the question whether He demands Judaism or Christianity?
Answer
The difference is that on the question of whether He exists, there is a path open to everyone to reach a conclusion.
Clearly there is a difference between the truth and what is expected. Here my claim is twofold: it is not expected, and also the truth is not so unequivocal (because I too am a product of my native landscape).
Discussion on Answer
I do not usually hint. What I think, I say. These things are explained in detail in my book The First Existent.
Indeed, belief in God is stronger than belief in the Jewish tradition. Beyond that, it may be that God demands different things of me than what is demanded of a Polish gentile. There is not necessarily any contradiction here. The exclusivity that every religion claims for itself can be the result of internal considerations (to create motivation and devotion). Therefore it is not necessary that the Christian gentile is mistaken. To me it seems less plausible, but I too am a product of my native landscape. And as stated, the question is also not really very important in my opinion.
When you say, “I do not usually hint,” are you hinting that sometimes you do write in hints?
I understand that belief in the revelation at Mount Sinai may be less unequivocal—in the sense that, say, regarding the existence of a philosophical God I am convinced at 90%, and regarding the revelation at Mount Sinai only at 60%. But still, given certain facts, I do not see why it should be possible to “choose” a religion. All the information accessible to the Polish peasant (traditions about Jesus, etc.) is also accessible to me, and all the information accessible to me about the Jewish tradition is also accessible to him (at least as much as his access to the physico-theological argument). So given that information, one should make the most rational decision, even if the certainty is lower, and I do not see why, given the same information that I have, the Polish peasant would make a different decision from mine.
Unless you are actually arguing here, implicitly, that the Jewish traditions are not really more convincing than the Christian ones, and that you believe in Judaism rather than Christianity only because you happened to be born Jewish—I do not understand what you are claiming.