Chapter 13: Rabbi Dr. Michael Avraham — The Intuition for the Existence of God — Relevant

Table of Contents

• [0:01] The podcast opening and introduction of the host
• [1:51] The question of reconciling creation in the Torah with science
• [6:00] Presentation of philosophical arguments for the existence of God
• [7:41] The cosmological and teleological proofs for the existence of God
• [9:22] The principle of causality according to Kant and the critique of it
• [18:29] The double-slit experiment and its connection to consciousness
• [28:04] The solution to the problem of intuition and the need for formulas
• [30:00] Questions about God’s behavior
• [31:12] Why choose Judaism and not Islam or Christianity
• [38:03] Interactionist dualism — the soul and the body
• [43:14] Searle’s Chinese room and examining mechanical thought
• [49:15] The resurgence of religiosity in Israel — criticism and influence

Summary

General Overview

Rogel Alper hosts Rabbi Michael Abraham, a PhD in theoretical physics, for a conversation about the possibility of believing in God and in the giving of the Torah without treating the Torah’s description of the creation of the world as a factual account. Abraham argues that science is the way to arrive at facts about the world, whereas the creation story in Genesis is a mythic, educational narrative that places the commandments in the context of a relationship with God. He presents philosophical arguments for the existence of God, emphasizes that he himself is certain of nothing but leans toward what seems reasonable to him, and objects to psychological explanations that attribute belief to emotional needs. Later on, he rejects a popular interpretation of quantum theory as making existence dependent on human consciousness, presents a non-exclusive stance toward other religions, adopts dualism regarding consciousness and the soul, sharply criticizes New Age-style religiosity in Israel, and justifies a halakhic approach that seeks fidelity to principle rather than fixation on external form.

Opening and Introduction of the Guest

Rogel Alper introduces the podcast “There Is No God” from Relevant as a program in which he talks about God and supernatural powers with people who are in touch with them. He presents Rabbi Michael Abraham as a doctor of theoretical physics who teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University, and notes that the program can be watched on the Relevant app and on Relevant’s YouTube channel. Alper says that the most common name that came up in the comments as a candidate who would “show me that there is no contradiction between the Torah and physics” was Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham.

The Creation of the World, Dinosaurs, and the Six Days

Rogel Alper raises the contradiction between belief in the creation of the world and scientific knowledge such as dinosaurs having existed sixty-six million years ago, and asks how the story of creation in six days can be reconciled with what is known from physics. Michael Abraham distinguishes between the issue of the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the issue of the creation of the world, and argues that the Torah’s description of creation is not necessarily a factual account. Abraham says that he arrives at facts through science, observation, and thought, and therefore does not see the Torah as a source of factual information, comparing this to Leibowitz. Abraham argues that the book of Genesis is not lying but rather offers a mythic or educational account whose purpose is to place the commandments and everything that follows within the context of a relationship with God, and he describes the story as “fictional” and even “mythological” from his perspective.

The Source of Belief and the Philosophical Arguments for the Existence of God

Rogel Alper asks what the basis for belief is if the Torah is not a source of facts and there are no mystical experiences. Michael Abraham says that someone who has visions is not a believer but “a delusional person,” and presents the source of his belief as philosophical. Abraham says that he has “good arguments” for the existence of God and divides them into three, similarly to Kant’s classification: the ontological proof originating with Anselm, the cosmological proof about the need for a cause for existence, and the physico-theological proof concerning the structure and complexity of the world, which are not reasonable as the product of chaos without a guiding hand. He says that the first seems like a play on words, though it is hard to pinpoint exactly where the problem is, and in any case he himself thinks it is insufficient, while the latter two are more significant in his view. Abraham emphasizes that “must” is too strong a word, and he prefers to say that it is “highly reasonable” that there is a cause. He adds that he is not certain of the existence of God, not of science, and not of anything, except that he is certain that he is certain of nothing.

Causality, Intuition, and the Argument Against Psychological Reduction

Rogel Alper raises the possibility of complete randomness and rejects the principle of causality, suggesting that belief stems from a psychological need in the face of randomness and lack of meaning. Michael Abraham says that his position is intellectual, not psychological, and objects to reducing belief to need, deprivation, or fear, arguing that intuition is a cognitive faculty and not merely a mode of thinking. Abraham corrects the formulation regarding Hume and argues that Hume showed that there is no observational source for the principle of causality, but did not show that causality does not exist. He adds that in his view it is possible to know things about the world even not through direct observation. Alper argues that intuitions are the product of history and community, and Abraham responds that existence shapes cognition, but not all cognition, and notes that he has “formal proofs” and has written about “the logic of intuition.” Abraham argues that foundational assumptions are not necessarily arbitrary or psychological, and gives Ockham’s razor as an intuition that works in practice.

Quantum Theory, Consciousness, and the Existence of the Universe

Rogel Alper argues that today “human consciousness precedes the existence of the universe” and that “the moon” does not exist when nobody is looking at it, presenting this as a reading of the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. Michael Abraham corrects him “as a physicist” and argues that this is “a cliché of quantum physics,” and that physics does not claim that the existence of the universe depends on human observation. Abraham says that physics actually reinforces the Kantian distinction between the thing-in-itself and its appearance to us, in the sense that the picture depends on the tools of perception, but not that the world’s existence depends on consciousness. He brings up the double-slit experiment and argues that the myth about consciousness being decisive is incorrect, giving the example of a detector whose information was immediately erased by a computer without any human eye seeing it, and yet the same result was obtained. Therefore, human observation does not do what people attribute to it.

Laws of Nature, “Who Wrote the Instructions,” and the Factory Analogy

Rogel Alper presses on the choice of God over randomness, and Michael Abraham says that the Big Bang and evolution are explanations “within the laws,” while his question is “where did the laws come from” and why they are such as to allow life and intelligence. Abraham says that randomness within the laws seems reasonable to him, but randomness regarding the laws themselves does not seem reasonable to him, and he emphasizes that this is a philosophical claim, not a psychological one. He gives an analogy of a coordinated factory in which Alper points to “the Ten Commandments” as instructions that explain the order, and Abraham asks who wrote the instructions on the wall. Abraham explains that he does not need God in order to explain what happened within the laws, but rather in order to explain the conditions themselves, and he is ready to move on to the next question of “who determined God” as a separate question.

Mount Sinai, Hiddenness, and the “Broken Clock”

Rogel Alper asks why a God who revealed Himself at Sinai does not come again and explain everything clearly. Michael Abraham argues that the questions need to be broken down into separate pieces and not mixed together, and that not understanding God’s behavior does not undercut the basic argument for His existence. He uses an analogy to Paley’s watchmaker argument and adds the example of “a broken clock” in order to argue that disruptions or perceived imperfections do not negate the existence of a watchmaker, but only our understanding of his intention. Abraham says that he has many questions about the behavior of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that he does not understand why there is no repeated revelation, but from his perspective that does not decisively count against the previous conclusions.

Judaism, Other Religions, and a Non-Exclusive Covenant

Rogel Alper wonders how it makes sense that a God who created a vast universe would make a covenant specifically with the Jews, attributing this to ethnocentrism. Michael Abraham places this within the framework of the “broken clock” and adds that he has arguments for why Judaism is “better or more reasonable,” but he presents a non-exclusive position regarding other religions. Abraham says that he is aware that if he had been born in a Polish village, he might have been a devout Christian, and he argues that it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, also wants what the Polish Gentile is doing, and that there is no necessity that a structure of reward and punishment between religions is correct. He compares the gap between Jews and non-Jews to differences in obligations within the Jewish people, such as priests versus others, and presents a “concentric” conception of circles of roles. Abraham says that he tends to think there is “one God,” that there are “different languages” and different ways of serving Him, and he does not determine whether Christians and Muslims are right or wrong. Nor does he describe this as pluralism in the sense of multiple truths, but rather as lack of knowledge and as the possibility of a complex truth with different roles.

Soul, Dualism, Brain, and Consciousness

Rogel Alper asks whether Abraham believes in a soul that survives physical death, and Abraham says that he “tends to think so” and defines himself as a “dualist” and an “interactionist dualist.” Alper argues that thought processes are neurochemical processes in the brain, and Abraham rejects this, giving an anecdote about Professor Yosef Ne’eman from Tel Aviv University, who, according to him, said as a materialist and atheist that the mental world “is not neurons” and that “thinking is not electrical currents in the brain.” Abraham accepts that there is correlation but rejects reducing thought to neurochemical states, and brings John Searle’s “Chinese room” example in order to distinguish between mechanical response and understanding. Abraham says that neuroscience does not deal with the question of the interaction between soul and body and that “we haven’t advanced a millimeter” since Descartes, and notes that he is writing a book about neuroscience and free choice in which that is his argument.

Religious Nonconformity, Jewish Law, and Modernity

Rogel Alper argues that Abraham is unusual within the religious community, and Abraham agrees and says that he is called “a heretic and a Reform Jew” because of various positions, including halakhic positions. Abraham says that he supports adapting Jewish law to the circumstances of life out of fidelity to principle and not out of convenience, and clarifies that the point is not “a national matter” but “the halakhic matter” that constitutes the nation. He uses the example of clothing suited to the weather in order to argue that fidelity to tradition can actually mean change in accordance with conditions, and he criticizes “simplistic conservatism” that freezes an external form.

Religiosity in Israel, Politics, and New Age

Rogel Alper asks whether the resurgence of religiosity in Israel is harmful to life in the country. Michael Abraham says that he relates to it “with great hostility” for two reasons: he opposes the way religious people in Israel conduct themselves today in most areas, and he thinks this is not real faith but part of the New Age. Abraham says that this religiosity resembles channeling aliens in his eyes, in that people “communicate with God or with angels” and build for themselves something that will be comfortable for them to live with and that will give meaning. Abraham notes that he himself tends to the right politically, but does not fit the simple correlation between degree of belief and political position, and the interview ends with Alper thanking Abraham and the production team.

Podcasts from Relevant. Hi, I’m Rogel Alpher, and you’re listening to “There Is No God” from Relevant, a program in which I talk about God and other supernatural forces with people who are in touch with them. And this time, Rabbi Michael Abraham, a doctor of theoretical physics, who teaches at the Institute for Advanced Torah Studies at Bar-Ilan University. And if you’d like to watch us, we’re also on the Relevant app and on Relevant’s YouTube channel. Michael Abraham, you’re also a rabbi, because you teach Torah—that, I now understand, doesn’t necessarily mean you have some special title and so on—and you’re a doctor of physics, and you know that after we launched this podcast and started getting responses, the most common name that came up as someone we absolutely had to invite, because he’ll show me that there’s no contradiction between Torah and physics, that they fit together, that they can be reconciled, was Rabbi Dr. Michael Abraham. So first of all, I’m waiting. From here it can only go downhill. Exactly. Now, I just want to, you know, lay down a kind of foundation. So okay: you’re a doctor of theoretical physics, and you’re a rabbi, and you believe in God, and you believe in a God who created the world. Right. So I just want to start with the first obvious problematic point. He created the world—but not five thousand-something years ago. Probably not. Rather, you believe the dinosaurs existed sixty-six million years ago. Probably. So first of all, how do you reconcile the story of creation in six days? Because I know you also fully believe in the revelation at Mount Sinai, that Moses received something there, and if he received something, he received it from someone, he received it from God, Creator of the world. How do you reconcile the story of creation in six days with the physical truth known to you—that it’s just not true, that it’s absurd? Well, you have to separate two issues here. The issue of the giving of the Torah at Sinai and the issue of the creation of the world are two different issues. Let’s go into creation. That’s how we learned about creation—because of the event at Mount Sinai. Okay. As far as I’m concerned, the Torah’s description of the creation of the world is not necessarily a factual description. Meaning, for me, the way to arrive at facts is through scientific means—observation, reasoning—like any sensible and rational person. Therefore I don’t see the Torah as a source of factual information at all. In that sense I’m very similar to Leibowitz. So as a starting point, if I identify with or arrive at the conclusion that scientific findings say something specific, then as far as I’m concerned that’s probably the truth. Even though I don’t have unqualified trust in science, because it’s only true until disproven otherwise or confirmed otherwise. But if you say that what physics says about the formation of the world is true, then it follows that on the matter of creation, the Book of Genesis is lying. No, not lying, not lying, and not necessarily mistaken either. Rather, it offers some sort of description—you can call it a mythical description or an educational one—whose purpose, ultimately together with what comes later in the book, the commandments, is to place them within some intellectual context of relationship with God. But the story is fictional. Right, almost mythological, in my view. But for me at least, it’s not a source from which I learn facts. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, I don’t jump to your conclusion that if so then it’s lying, mistaken, and so on. If you don’t learn facts from the Hebrew Bible, and if you’re a person—I understand you to be a person devoid of mystical experiences, a rational person, a cold fish, like Leibowitz too, no visions—then you’re not one of those people who will come and tell me, “Listen, I just feel that God exists, I feel He created the world.” So how do you know at all? Why do you believe it? What’s your basis? Okay, so here indeed—I’ll say more than that: someone who has visions, as far as I’m concerned, is not a believer. He’s a delusional person who for some reason takes his delusions seriously. So up to this point you and I are in complete agreement, I’m just trying to understand how you got there. But that’s not a source at all. Our sources of knowledge in general—our epistemology, how we know things about the world—you know, that’s science. Now science tells us—we’re looking now for information about things that happened ages and ages ago—science tells us one thing, the Book of Genesis says something else which is not true, and you say it’s allegorical and so on. What other source of knowledge about God’s existence and actions could you possibly have? My main source is philosophical, and in order to present—meaning you have a philosophical proof for God’s existence? I have good arguments. “Proof” is a concept that needs discussion as to what it means, but I have good arguments in favor of God’s existence, and of course every argument is based on assumptions, but that’s an unavoidable bug. Present the argument to me. So these arguments—let’s say there are several. Kant divides them into three in order to explain why they’re not necessary, but I divide them into three in order to explain why they’re plausible. Okay. The same three, and after that I also have some additions. So he talks about the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, and the physico-theological proof, in his terminology. The ontological proof is a kind of analytical game in conceptual analysis. Basically, Anselm is really the source—Anselm, the Christian from Canterbury—who first formulated this proof, which says that from the concept of perfection one can derive the existence of God. People tend to dismiss this game quite a bit because it really looks like some kind of word game. It mainly looks like a word game, you know—again, against the facts we have from physics, that we don’t need God in order to explain the—“we don’t need God” is one thing, and saying that physics says there is no God is another. Okay, so you derive Him from the idea of perfection, meaning His existence is derived from the idea of perfection. No, I’m just laying out the map right now. One possibility is the ontological proof, which really does come from the idea of perfection. I wrote a long survey of this issue to show that what Bertrand Russell said—the well-known atheist—that it’s much easier to laugh at this proof than to put your finger on where exactly the problem is. This proof is not something I would dismiss, but at the bottom line I show that I think it’s not enough. There’s the cosmological proof, which in plain language means that if something exists, there has to be some reason that it exists. There’s the physico-theological proof—But you agree with me that there doesn’t have to be a reason, right? A thing can exist simply because it exists, by pure chance. No. But I need the third thing in order to come back to the second as well. The third thing is the physico-theological proof, which talks about the particular structure there is in the world—the uniqueness, the complexity—not its mere existence, but a Kantian distinction. Meaning that this complexity could not have arisen out of chaos without a directing hand. Exactly, and so again, basically a claim against chance. That’s why I said I need the third move in order to illuminate the second too. So for me these two moves are more significant than the first. You’re saying there has to be a cause for the existence of all this, and also teleologically there must be a purpose, there must be meaning. No, teleology is a separate issue; right now I’m talking about a cause. Okay. The cause—and again, “must” is too strong a term. It’s highly plausible that there is one. I prefer that formulation. Highly plausible that there is one. By the way, I’m not certain of anything—not of God’s existence, not of science, not of anything—except perhaps for the fact that I’m not certain of anything. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. Meaning you lead a religious life even though you are not certain of God’s existence. You assume His existence and think it’s more plausible than that He does not exist. Right. And you derive that from the necessity that stems from causality. From the principle of causality. Meaning I claim that it’s implausible that something distinctive came into being without a directing hand. But you know that the principle of causality too, according to Kant, exists only in our mind; it doesn’t exist in the world, it’s something we impose on the world. No, so here I’ll correct that a bit. It starts with Hume, not Kant. Hume basically pointed out that there is proximity in time and space but not necessarily a causal connection; that we do not see. Okay, so here I’ll correct the wording a bit—not yours, Hume’s. What Hume showed is that there is no observational source for the principle of causality. He did not show that there is no causality. Now that’s a big difference. Because for me, unlike what—but Hume, as an empiricist, thought that what you don’t—from logic, yes. From the logic of causality. And I claim that we have some ability to know things about the world not only through direct observation. Call it intuition. For me, intuition is a cognitive faculty, not a thinking faculty—or not only a thinking faculty. People think intuition is a kind of thought, thought detached from the world, somehow taking place inside me. I claim that intuition is a kind of ability to interact with the world not through the senses, or at least not with the senses as mediators. Even your intuitions are a product of a point in time, of history; you’re not born with all of them. That I don’t agree with. So you don’t say that being shapes consciousness? I claim it shapes it, but not all of it. Meaning, clearly there are such influences, but I don’t claim that that’s everything. But you’re basically arguing that in your dilemma—which took place in your twenties—whether God exists or not, whether to go in the path of religion or in the path of secularism and so on, you latched onto causality and also, basically, onto a kind of aversion—my definition, okay? probably one shared by most human beings—to chance. Meaning the thing that is most terrifying is the thought of the total randomness of your existence. First of all it starts from the absolute randomness of the very fact that you exist, and goes on to the questions of why you exist and what the meaning of your existence is, and so on. You don’t like that. No one likes that. I’ll correct one word. No, I’ll correct one word. This is an intellectual proposition, not a psychological one. It isn’t emotional? No. That’s exactly the point. A great many people, certainly from the atheist starting point—I assume that’s your starting point—treat this as some kind of psychological product. Basically you reduce it to a need, to some psychological lack you have. Motives, all kinds of need, distress and things like that. No, but that’s completely true. Yes, and I disagree with that because I think you’re begging the question. I too am begging the question, only my question goes in the opposite direction. Meaning I think intuition is a cognitive, intellectual faculty, and the distress—I try specifically to neutralize it. Of course it exists, we’re all human beings, there are distress and psychological influences, but I try to neutralize them. You may say I didn’t succeed. So you’re saying it’s not that I believe in God because I’m afraid of death, or afraid of meaninglessness or chaos, or because I’m unable to contain the wild randomness both of the existence of the universe and of my own existence. Because you don’t believe in chance. But of course that’s something you can’t prove. It’s your axiom, the foundation stone on which your thought, your doctrine, rests. And if I reject that—meaning if I tell you, I do believe in chance—then you basically accept the validity and legitimacy of my not believing in God. Because you agree there is no other proof for His existence apart from that principle of causality. No, so here there are several points. First of all, I don’t agree—there are other arguments. Second, of course every argument has basic assumptions, the other arguments too. Right. Now the question is how you relate to basic assumptions, because that’s what supports every argument. Usually axioms are basic assumptions that you can’t prove; they simply stand at the base, right? Okay. But the question is whether the fact that you can’t prove something means that it’s subjective, arbitrary, the product of one psychology or another, one psychological effect or another. That introduces a certain relativity into the discussion. No, that’s a more moderate wording. Or do I say: look, I can’t prove it, I can’t derive it from observation, and still I think it’s true. Meaning not that I choose to live this way because it’s comfortable for me or something like that. For example, I can use Occam’s razor, as I told you. Which itself is a product of intuition. Fine, I don’t know whether Occam’s razor is a product of intuition so much as it seems to me to make sense in scientific practice—that when I seek to explain a phenomenon, I will assume the minimum number of entities whose existence I need to assume in order to explain the phenomenon. That’s the formulation of the intuition of Occam’s razor. I don’t think that’s intuition in the ordinary sense. Look, it’s a practice that proves itself theory after theory. Exactly. Look, I also see another problem with basing oneself on Kantian thinking in order to prove God. You know, Kant didn’t know contemporary physics in any way, shape, or form, and would presumably have been horrified by it and found it very hard to accept. I want to give you an example, okay? Let’s go to the Nobel Prizes, the latest ones in physics. When I read—you say it’s a myth, but it’s a myth that nonetheless purports to present some kind of truth—when I read in Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” that means the world, the universe, exists prior to human consciousness, and independently of and detached from human observation of the universe. That’s one interpretation, that’s what this myth says. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” then He filled the—you know—planets and animal life and vegetation and fish and birds, and then He got to human consciousness. All that existed before human consciousness. But today we know—and for this we award a Nobel Prize in physics, I think the latest one, actually in 2022—that human consciousness precedes the existence of the universe. Meaning the universe is not real if you don’t—you know, Einstein said, in relation to quantum physics, “I want to believe the moon exists even when I’m not looking at it.” It doesn’t exist when you’re not looking at it. That’s the findings now. Meaning in the Hebrew Bible, in the Torah, there is no trace of the fact that basically without human consciousness—no human consciousness, no universe; the universe is not real in the sense—Here I’ll correct you as a physicist, not as a rabbi or a believer. That’s simply not true, what you’re saying. It is not true that the existence of the universe depends on human observation. Absolutely not. I’ll explain this in two—there are two points I’ll make. First point: what you just described is exactly the Kantian point of view. It doesn’t contradict the Kantian point. Kant distinguished between phenomena and noumena, between the thing-in-itself and the thing as it appears to us. Of the thing-in-itself he said, I can’t say anything about it—which, by the way, when you mentioned Leibowitz, he said God is the thing-in-itself, I can’t know anything about Him. So you’re saying that I—that you’re Leibowitzian in that sense. Depends in what respect. Depends in what respect. Not in that respect. So first, what you described actually fits Kant rather than contradicting him. But what I just told you is really a cliché of quantum physics. If there is no consciousness—Now I’m switching to my physicist hat, and I’ll correct that. It’s a cliché of quantum physics—that’s exactly the point. But it’s not true. No, it’s not the truth. The world certainly exists, and Kant—“certainly” what does that mean? In my opinion. Nothing is certain, but the world most likely exists; there is nothing in physics that says otherwise. Kant actually gets support from this aspect of physics. There are other things, by the way, that don’t. But from this aspect of physics Kant actually gets support. And the point is that the picture we see of the world is indeed dependent on our tools of perception. That’s Kant. Exactly. But physics today says not the picture we get of the world, but the existence of the—meaning that—you don’t agree that today basically the claim is that the universe is not real and is non-local? Absolutely not. Non-local is something else. Which also has no trace in the Hebrew Bible. No, irrelevant. The Hebrew Bible isn’t describing physics in terms of all the details of physical mechanics. To say that electrons that are located—Okay, but wait, we’re scattering. Let’s stay with the issue of consciousness and the universe. Look, I’ll give you an example. There’s a common myth about the double-slit experiment in quantum theory. Right. Okay. In the double-slit experiment you send an electron, there are two slits, and somehow it passes through both of them. If you put a detector near one of them, then it chooses either to pass through this slit or to pass through that slit. Now the myth, which starts with von Neumann and others, I think, says that basically the measurement or human consciousness is what determines what happens. It turns out that’s not true. Or at least as far as I’m up to date, because in recent years I haven’t been up to date on what’s happening in physics. So I’m telling you that’s how I understand the 2022 Nobel Prize. Maybe you’re not up to date. I think that’s a big mistake. A big mistake. On that fundamental level, I think I am up to date—on the broad, general level. Okay, but one experiment I remember, just because I know about it—I even mentioned it in one of my books—they put a detector next to one of the slits, and they sent the information from the detector to a computer that destroyed it, destroyed it immediately after it got it. No human eye ever saw that information. The same thing happened. Meaning human observation does nothing; rather, the detectors apparently have some effect on what happens physically, just as various devices and objects and so on have an effect. Meaning you’re not impressed by the fact that the truths of quantum physics are not included in the Torah in any way, meaning also not in the creation myth, not even the issue of the—The Torah is not a physics book, okay? Obviously not. You say it’s just a story. Yes. Certainly not here. Details—why would it be? But because of this story you also, for example, decided that despite the fact that there are a trillion galaxies, and within the trillion each galaxy has a trillion solar systems, and we are in one remote solar system on an even more remote planet, and we are—you know—ape-like creatures who call themselves Jews, and we had very specific figures like Moses at Sinai or Abraham and so on, and you think it makes sense that the creator of this entire immense universe decided to make a covenant specifically with the Jews, in this strange, remote galaxy—why? So now you’ve moved on to the next stage. Yes, but I want to go back for a second first, because I still need to complete the layer of God’s existence, and then after that the covenants and what He demands of us. The existence of God—the point that is important in my eyes, and this too is the little nub of the argument, also has to do with God’s existence even before the covenant with us. Because people say, okay fine, in one place such creatures developed, in another place different creatures developed, things happen, you can’t learn anything from that. Or not even different creatures, but just Chinese people—but why is He in a covenant specifically with the Jews—No no, I’m not at the covenant yet, I’m talking about existence itself by virtue of creation, meaning how I get from creation to the fact that He exists. My claim is that all the standard explanations in the scientific world—the Big Bang, evolution, and so on—are explanations within the laws. Meaning once the laws are given, the laws of nature, then within them I can explain how life arose and how—which is basically from the moment of the Big Bang onward. Yes, not important right now, but yes. For our purposes, within the accepted theory it’s not even from the Big Bang onward because we don’t really know how to explain the entire path; there’s abiogenesis, which is still an open question, though progress is being made there too. The ultimate goal is to arrive at an explanation that is complete within the laws. But I ask the question: where did the laws come from? Meaning why are the laws such that within them biology, life, intelligent beings, and all these things can come into existence? And again, you don’t like the answer “chance.” No, it’s not that I don’t like it—I think it’s implausible. That’s a philosophical claim, not a psychological one. You think it’s implausible? Implausible. You also think that the chance involved in the mutations of evolution is implausible? No, that is plausible. There, yes. I’ll tell you why. Meaning we developed by pure chance within the laws, by chance within the laws, but the laws are what determined in the end where you would arrive. Right. Now the question is where did the laws come from? Not what happened within the laws, but who determined the laws? And it helps you to say God determined the laws? So who determined God? No, that’s another question. First of all it does help, but that’s another question. No, I mean even intellectually—how does that help you? I’ll give you an analogy. You come to some factory, some company, functioning perfectly. Meaning everyone knows what to do, there’s coordination between the different factors and so on. A perfect assembly line. Perfect—so there’s obviously some manager organizing the whole thing. We’re both walking around there, and I say to you, “Look, clearly there’s some manager organizing this story, it couldn’t have organized itself otherwise.” And you say, “What are you talking about? Look here on the wall, there are instructions hanging up for every worker, every department—what it’s supposed to do. There’s no need for any manager, everything’s fine; it runs because there are instructions here, and those instructions tell everyone what to do.” And then I ask you, “Yes, but who wrote the instructions on the wall?” That’s the analogy for what I call explanations within the laws. When you tell me evolution explains the formation of life, and the Big Bang—Through chance. People have enormous, enormous, enormous difficulty containing that concept, yes? that all evolutionary development is based on random mutations. Sure—just a moment, I’m about to qualify even that—but sure. Okay. I still ask—you know, once I saw in some atheist article an example someone gave: a drunk leaves a tavern. On one side of him there’s a canal, on the other side there’s a wall. And he staggers in a completely random way, and in the end he’ll find himself in the canal. No matter how he moves. Why? Because the circumstances lead him to the canal. Now basically they wanted to argue that this is an analogy for how the laws lead us to the formation of life, and there’s no need here for a directing hand—the drunk walks there on his own. And I ask: who built, who sent the drunk to that place where here there’s a wall and there there’s a canal? That’s what determined that the drunk would end up in the canal, not his swaying. So you really are dealing with philosophical questions whose answers are not necessary—meaning it may very well be that it did happen by chance and you’re wrong, and you’re easing yourself with that. You’re simply saying that for you somehow it’s not a sufficient explanation, meaning that if these laws exist—No, “sufficient” is psychology. Not a philosophically sufficient explanation. You know, a complex thing—someone who thinks that some terribly complex thing—I mean, if I came to some place and said, forget it, it all came about by chance, I would immediately—Obviously I need God, clearly I need God in order to explain how the conditions for your formation arose within the laws. No, not the conditions—yes, for the conditions I need God. Once there are conditions, the laws of nature, as to how it happened within them—I don’t need Him. Then afterward you need to solve the next questions: how did God come into being? Okay, so that’s the next question, that’s why I told you. And why does He communicate with the human species in such a way—how shall I put it—so far from perfection? Meaning if you’re God and you really—you claim there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, meaning that same God came down and met Moses. Why doesn’t He come again and simply explain all the issues? What’s all this great mystery? What’s this game? Why? Okay, so one of my ways of dealing with these questions—why are we groping around in the dark like this—is to lay them out in slices. That’s why I insist on the slices. In the first stage I discussed why I think there is a God. Now the next questions have to be discussed each on its own, but mixing them together creates fog over everything. No, I agree, I’m just saying I’m not convinced by this explanation for God’s existence because I don’t feel, I don’t have that intuition you do. Look, people have sat opposite me and said, listen, I simply had an experience, I saw, I met, I felt, I heard something—you don’t have musical hearing, you don’t hear that frequency, and so on. With you, I’m in a situation where okay, you have some intuition, I don’t have it. I don’t have it, I manage fine without it; I actually have other intuitions according to which the wonder of existence is even more real and even more true and even more awe-inspiring if you accept the lack of meaning, yes? If you accept the absurdity of existence. After all, it’s hard to accept the absurdity of existence. Since we’re talking philosophy, so much of philosophy has been devoted to that question, you know, to dealing with it, certainly existentialist philosophy. I disagree with you because I don’t classify that as part of philosophy. Existentialism, as far as I’m concerned, belongs to psychology, not philosophy. Then we completely disagree on that. Okay, but that’s why I say the criterion of whether it’s awe-inspiring or not awe-inspiring doesn’t interest me; what interests me is whether it’s true. I understand, same here. Okay. But I was simply trying to address what you call intuition, because in my view intuition isn’t something inborn, primal, ancient, hardwired, you know, in our brain; rather it is a product of community, history, sociology, time, education. On that issue I even have several formal proofs for why that’s not true. I’ve written quite a lot on the logic of intuition. I doubt we’ll be able to solve the problem of intuition right now because—I don’t know if this is the place, because I’d need formulas and graphs. But let’s now go into what happened at Mount Sinai and why it’s all so cryptic and unclear. With such a God and all, then just come and say: I created everything, I had reasons, these were my reasons, I made the laws this way, and why. The point of the sequencing that I mentioned before—that first you need to arrive at the conclusion that there is a God and then discuss the question of Mount Sinai—is very important. Why? Say, you know Paley’s watch argument? Yes, a much-maligned argument. You find a watch on the sand here in the street—well, a watch like that didn’t create itself, there must have been a watchmaker, okay? Right. So that’s basically, by analogy, the physico-theological argument I presented earlier. Now let’s say I found a broken watch, okay? The watchmaker whom Dawkins talks about, Richard Dawkins—the blind watchmaker. Okay, the blind watchmaker. Now let’s say I found a broken watch, okay? Does that mean there is no watchmaker? Or a watch that’s slow by a few minutes, or not exactly right. No. I claim there is a watchmaker, I just don’t understand his thinking. Why? Because my conclusion that there is a watchmaker comes from the complexity of the watch. The fact that I don’t understand why the watch works this way and not that way—that’s a good question, maybe I have an answer, maybe I don’t—but it doesn’t affect the original argument, which says that if there is something complex here, someone assembled it. Again, this argument also works on the structure of the human eye—meaning it’s so complex that someone surely assembled it, it can’t be the result of random development. No, someone created the laws. No, it can happen within a system of laws that ensures that it happens, and the question is who is responsible for the system of laws. Fine, okay. Now the same thing with Mount Sinai: I have many questions I can’t answer about the Holy One, blessed be He. How He behaves, why He isn’t clearer, why He doesn’t reveal Himself again. And you’re sure He’s the Jewish Holy One, blessed be He, and not the god of one of the other three thousand religions in the world? Completely sure. No. No. But you keep referring to Him all the time as the Jewish Holy One, blessed be He; meaning you’re not talking about Allah or the Christian God or, as mentioned, the other three thousand. We’ve moved to stage D now; I’ll get there in a moment. We’re still at Mount Sinai for now. Okay. And what I want to say is that I too have questions similar to yours, maybe, and I can add a few more questions of my own. I don’t understand why He behaves the way He does in many respects. The question is whether that means He does not exist, did not create the world, did not reveal Himself at Sinai. No. That’s the broken watch. No, because once you’ve decided there is a God, then it’s built in that He transcends your understanding; the less you understand Him, the more divine He is and the smaller you are before Him. No no no, it’s not a matter of awe, I’m not dealing with awe. Not awe, not awe—there’s a kind of logic to the thinking, to the discourse. Either I understand Him or I don’t understand Him; I don’t want not to understand, but if I don’t understand, that doesn’t necessarily pull the rug out from under my previous conclusions, because those conclusions are based on an argument that still stands even if I don’t understand. That’s the broken watch. Now the question of why accept Judaism rather than Islam or Christianity is a completely different question, and here I have a more complex answer. I have certain arguments why I think this is preferable or more plausible, the thesis. Again, I want to understand from you: God created—you accept this, after all—that in the observable universe there are a trillion galaxies and each galaxy has a trillion solar systems. You’re saying God created that, but a covenant only with you and people like you? Not with any other creature in the universe and no other creature on planet Earth, and somehow that sounds reasonable to you? I’ll say it with qualification. First of all—and not simply as a product of ethnocentrism because you were born Jewish, raised that way, that’s what they taught you, and you decided that instead of its just being folklore or a nice legend—after all, you said the story of Genesis is a legend—it’s some great meta-cosmic thing. I’ll repeat your words, only at the end I’ll put an exclamation point instead of a question mark, but I’m basically more or less repeating your words. And what I want to say—almost—is first, that even if I don’t understand, as you said earlier, why what He wants is specifically from me and not from all the other people or the universe or whatever. Or the creatures—there are other creatures, not only human, other kinds of intelligence, galaxies, whatever. That goes under the broken-watch framework. Okay, there are other things I don’t understand about the Holy One, blessed be He. Does that pull the rug out from under the basic argument? No. It’s just a broken watch. But in order to believe it’s a broken watch, you have to believe that a real connection was created with God—namely that what is written in the Torah is the living word of God, that He wrote it, not that human beings invented it. Meaning you’re basically saying the story of Genesis is a story, it’s a legend, human beings invented it—right? because it simply has no connection to facts in any way. Not that human beings invented it. Then what? Of course not, it’s part of the Torah. Meaning God wrote it? And it has no connection to reality? Right, those mythical things at the beginning of Genesis. Why wouldn’t He simply tell how He actually created the world? Because maybe He has no interest in giving a course in quantum mechanics there. Why would He? If I were writing a book today for people living today, I wouldn’t write quantum theory in chapter one of Genesis. You study a whole degree in it and in the end you still don’t grasp what it is. If you were writing today how the world was created, would you write it differently? I wouldn’t write that it was created in six days, obviously, if it were facts. No, because it so contradicts the facts that you yourself are aware of. If it were facts. But if you’re trying to write a founding myth that provides a context or framework for the laws that come within it, then you choose the conceptual world of the people you’re talking to. So the main thing is the laws—that the laws create a way of life and the laws create a people, yes? Meaning the ones who observe this Jewish law and so on and so on—that’s the Jewish people, meaning that’s the main thing from your point of view? The national aspect? Right—no, not the national aspect, the halakhic aspect. The halakhic aspect establishes the nation. I just want to finish for a moment my repetition of your words that I mentioned and promised you earlier, sorry—with Islam and Christianity, I really do come to this issue from humility, because it’s arrogant to say that I’m humble, but I’m aware that if I had been born in a Polish village then I would have been a devout Christian doing what my priest told me or what my pope told me, and I probably would have believed wholeheartedly in Christianity. Wait—so you accept the superiority of cultural relativism over truth? No, what I want to say—A moment ago you said: as it happened, you were born a Jew so you know the truth, and if you’d been born Polish you’d have grown up on a lie and believed it? Isn’t that what you just said? No, because what I want to say—now I’ll say what I wanted to say. What I basically want to say is that although I was born Jewish, because I am aware that I was born Jewish, I understand that it is definitely possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, also wants what the Polish non-Jew is doing, and it is not true that just because I am Jewish I’m supposed to sit there in the World to Come and laugh at all the Polish people because they’re—But then you’re saying there is such a thing as a non-Jew, and the non-Jew is inferior to the Jew; we know that. No, I don’t know that. That does not follow from the Torah. Absolutely not. The Jew has a certain mission that was not assigned to non-Jews. Why? Why? Why? Why is there that gap? Is equality broken? I don’t know. The Holy One, blessed be He, chose. Just as within the Jewish people there are certain obligations imposed on priests that are not imposed on others. I’m not a priest. Why? I don’t know why. The Holy One, blessed be He, works in a concentric way—there are circles like that. There is a core that has some role, there is around it a periphery with other roles, like in any society whatever. And behind all that—all this is still only the Jewish picture. Now I go outside and say: it may be that this whole picture is just my way of looking at things. But the Christians’ and the Muslims’ way of looking at things—it may be that that too corresponds to the will of God. And it may be that they will sit together with me in the same place. The same God? Yes. Meaning in any case there is only one God? That’s what I tend to think. Yes. Meaning it’s not that you think there are three gods? No, no. But there are different languages and different ways of worshipping Him, and I don’t see it in an exclusive way. Meaning that if I’m right then he’s wrong, if I’m in heaven then he’s in hell, and all kinds of statements of that sort. I have no idea what happens in heaven and hell. But you do think that the Jew is the one who is in covenant with God. The God I’m talking about—that’s the Jews’ covenant with God. The Christians claim a different covenant with God. I’m too small to determine whether they are right or wrong, but it’s not because I—That’s not pluralism. It’s not pluralism in the sense that there are multiple truths. No, you’re saying: I don’t know. Right. And it may even be more than that: there is one truth that is complex, and each person has his role and all of us have our roles. And this exclusive discourse. After all, that’s what you want—it’s teleology, it’s purpose. Everyone has a role, everyone has meaning. Meaning, for example, do you think that your very existence—specifically yours—was planned by God? No, that I don’t know. I have no idea. Meaning you accept that your existence may be completely accidental? Yes. But it doesn’t matter; I still need to do the best I can according to my understanding in order to advance Torah, observance of the commandments, Jewish law. Do you believe you have a soul that will survive your physical death? I tend to think so. I’m a dualist. Where, within the physical world? Not within the physical world. No, wait, I’m asking for a second. Your personality, what is called your psyche, all your thought processes—after all they are neurochemical processes in your brain. Absolutely not. No. Then what are they? I’m what’s called an interactionist dualist. What does that mean? You know what, I’ll tell you an anecdote. There was a Jew named Professor Yosef Neumann, Tel Aviv University, life sciences. I studied with him. Oh really? I studied evolution with him. The professor of evolution. So he was exactly—he was a very active atheist. After I published my book against Dawkins he called me, and he said to me, listen, just a conversation—he was a very nice man. He died a little while after that and I was really sorry to hear it. We had a very long conversation, about an hour and a half on the phone. He called me and said, listen, I’m really not with you, I even mentioned some of his views in the book and criticized them. But I’ll tell you something very interesting. There are atheists like me, materialists like me—I’m a materialist atheist too, that’s what he told me—I can’t make them understand that our mental world is not neurons. It is not neurons. And he says this as a materialist. It is not neurons. Thinking is not electrical currents in the brain. Love is not a biochemical process. Isn’t it true that every emotion and thought of yours is a neurochemical state in your brain? No, absolutely not. Then what? So I’m telling you, he said that as a materialist and atheist and all that, and I’ll tell you why. Because it was obvious to him that the electrical currents in the brain may perhaps generate the mental results, but you can’t say that a thought is currents in the brain. Like a computer—Well, there’s the claim that mental states cannot be reduced to neurochemical states. Exactly, exactly. Just without the tone. Yes, but listen, obviously there’s a correlation, yes? Meaning in the sense that a neurochemical state is a necessary condition for the existence of a thought, just as the existence of a thought is a necessary condition for that. Obviously there’s influence in both directions. I don’t know, influence in both directions? I don’t understand why one would even think in that way. But listen. Obviously there’s a correlation, yes? Meaning not in the sense that our mental state is a necessary condition for the existence of a religious thought. That the existence of a thought is a necessary condition for that. Obviously there’s influence in both directions. I don’t know, influence in both directions. What? I don’t understand why one would think that way at all and what it contributes. No—facts. What do you mean facts? After all, you yourself are saying: look, when you talk about such a soul that does not occupy space in time and space, and that you basically do not know by means of what mechanisms it comes into interaction with the neurochemical states in your brain, but you claim there is of course a close interaction, because that’s your soul and it started, I assume, when you were born—and you also say you don’t know, maybe it’s reincarnation too, it will continue afterward—but it does not occupy space in time and space, it cannot be measured, it cannot be observed. It has no value from a physicalist worldview. Right—from a non-physicalist one. No, I don’t understand why we need it, and what the problem is exactly, I don’t understand Neumann’s problem. If every neurochemical state is a thought, then in what sense exactly can’t you reduce it? No, no neurochemical state is a thought. A computer does not think. In a computer the same processes happen as in us. Do you know John Searle’s Chinese room example? You know it? I know it, and I also know the Turing test, but even the claim that a computer does not think is problematic. If it simulates—if it performs a sufficiently accurate simulation of what appears to be a human thought process. No, not true. The connection between input and output in a computer is the same connection that exists in us. But the Chinese room example is a very strong example on this point. Although again, John Searle too was what’s called an emergentist; he wasn’t a dualist like me. But still, you couldn’t—I don’t understand why you bring up Searle; it’s not that I want to talk about him because too many people listening to us don’t know him, so that’s why I—No, I can say it in one sentence. In one sentence: a person sits in a room, there’s a window. He doesn’t know Chinese, he’s Israeli. Fine. Questions written in Chinese come in to him. Through the second window he sends out answers written in Chinese. He has a crate full of Chinese letters, he takes them out—he doesn’t understand the questions, doesn’t understand the answers, doesn’t know Chinese. After every answer he gets feedback. If he gave the wrong answer, he gets an electric shock. He has infinite time. In the end, somehow, like neural networks—we know this better today than Searle did—in the end he’ll be able to give answers, but he doesn’t understand Chinese. Exactly. Now the question is basically why you call that not understanding Chinese. You actually have to say he does understand Chinese, because basically exactly what happens in him is what happens in me according to your method. I actually say that’s not an important question. Meaning what matters is what I see. God forbid that this is not an important question. It’s—does he understand Chinese or not understand Chinese to the same extent as someone who is supposedly said to understand or not understand Chinese. Meaning, if he answers like a Chinese speaker, if he manages to produce—Yes, he manages to produce relevant answers. He passed the Turing test. He doesn’t understand Chinese because it’s completely mechanical, okay? because there isn’t really an element of understanding there. But the element of understanding that exists—But when I seat a person who really does know Chinese, okay? and he really does know how to connect these answers, then you’ll see a certain neurochemical activity in the brain that I can analyze as the act of understanding. No, it’s not the same act. One responds behavioristically to a stimulus and tries to avoid getting shocked and tries to get the—like a lab mouse. The other truly understands. So he performs the translation act correctly or gives the correct answers, and the neurochemical state of understanding is expressed in his brain. I don’t understand how one can think otherwise. What? No, I don’t mind, that’s fine, I’m prepared to accept that, but you see there is a difference between the two models. Yes. So if there is a difference between the two models, that means it’s not only input-output. Understanding or thinking is not just a matter of input-output. So I return to the computer. A computer does not think. You agree now that a computer does not think. Well, at the highest levels it’s already a bit problematic to say that. It may be that there are computers that can already generate an act of thought, but again, we’re entering here into the area of AI. That’s the point. So I claim that this added value, which a computer doesn’t have and a human being does, makes me understand that apparently there is something else in us. That’s why I become a dualist. Meaning what causes a person like Searle to understand that apparently something is missing in a computer causes you to say that what is not missing in me is what I call a soul. It’s simply a neurochemical state, though. No, no, because neurochemical in principle a computer has too—metallic, physical. A specific neurochemical state, specific—it’s different. Not a substantive difference. What’s the difference? What’s the difference? So what if it’s another circuit? That’s not interesting. Now I say, someone can come and say, look, it’s all emergentism. Emergentism really is a strong competitor on the board, and that needs to be discussed separately. But I don’t think anyone can come and claim that dualism is not an extremely plausible and sensible intuition in light of our immediate experience—our perception, let’s not call it experience because that’s emotional—our immediate perception. Meaning you’re basically saying we haven’t advanced a millimeter since Descartes in understanding the interaction between the soul and the physics of the body. Correct. He attributed it to the pineal gland, I think. Unfortunately he was wrong about the pineal gland. I assume—I don’t know, I’m not a brain researcher. But unfortunately, Yosef Neumann didn’t know that at the very same time I was already sitting and writing my next book on neuroscience and free choice, and there exactly that is my claim. Exactly that claim: that we haven’t advanced a millimeter. Neuroscience doesn’t deal with that question. And in your view it also cannot deal with that question because again it would have to deal with some entity, the soul, which does not occupy space in time and space, cannot be observed, cannot be measured. You too are basically inferring that there is a necessity for this to exist, just as there is a necessity for God to exist. “Necessity” I don’t know, but more plausible. More plausible in your eyes. Yes, yes. Meaning that’s what I’m investing in now. And you say—I can’t—but you do recognize that psychology also correctly describes the mechanism of human thought. Meaning you say there’s no way to reduce this to your fear of death, it has nothing whatsoever to do with your fear of your finitude. You know, I can never answer a question like that. Just as I try to neutralize my psychological biases as much as I can so they won’t affect how I think about the positions I formulate. Whether I succeed or not I don’t know how to judge. I try. But that’s true of everyone. Now basically ninety-something percent, ninety-nine percent of religious people in Israel do not have your way of thinking, right? Meaning you’re very alone within the religious community. Very unusual in the religious community, and also in my halakhic views, by the way. I’m already called a heretic and a Reform Jew and whatever else, because I really do bring very different positions. Because you believe Jewish law can be adapted to modernity, to changing life circumstances. Right. You say that if we’re walking on the beach in a swimsuit and the weather changes from blazing heat to cold, then it makes sense to put on a coat even if it’s not written in Jewish law, because basically the logic of Jewish law was simply: adapt yourselves to the environment. The point is not “walk around in a swimsuit,” but “wear clothing suited to the weather.” If that’s the halakhic thesis, if that’s the tradition I’m supposed to obey. I just think that in your worldview you adapt it to your own needs—meaning you do what’s comfortable for you in the sense that, you know, there is causality and there is meaning and there is purpose, there is life after death, yes? meaning you’re willing to adapt the various laws to changing circumstances. In practice you live in a comfort zone. I would only correct one thing. I adapt it to what I think is true, not to what is comfortable for me. Sometimes I arrive at conclusions that are not comfortable for me. But if that’s what needs to be done today, then I think that’s what needs to be done. And that’s the problem with the swimsuit example, because there I really had to—I once did this exercise—take the opposite example, say to show why someone who comes to a cold place and specifically puts on a swimsuit is the one continuing the tradition, and not someone who says, let’s say, we always walk around in coats in a hot place and then we arrive in a cold place and I suggest switching to a swimsuit. By the way, you know, that’s a very interesting example, because when you look at Haredim—and Haredim is a sociological group, yes, not a definition of faith like Orthodoxy or a stream of belief like Orthodoxy and so on—and you see how they dress in the Israeli heat. It’s time they read my swimsuit example. Haredi-ness, you’re right that it’s sociology, but it has a point to it—and you know, in sociology there’s always—that goes against life circumstances. Not only against life circumstances, but against what I called simplistic conservatism. Let’s stay with a swimsuit forever. They think that’s true faithfulness to tradition, and I claim they’re mistaken. That’s not faithfulness to tradition. I have time for one last question. Do you think the religiousness that is very, very much awakening now in Israel—it’s in great momentum—is harmful to life in this country? Very. I relate with a great deal of hostility to the awakening of this religiosity for two reasons. One reason is because of its effect on what’s happening, because I strongly oppose the way religious people conduct themselves in Israel today in most areas. And that is also the best predictor of political position in this country. Even though I tend to the right. Yes, yes, but in that sense the degree of your faith also usually indicates your politics. Okay, and in this case I think I actually don’t fit the myth. In this case, in this case I think I actually don’t fit that correlation. Second, I truly don’t think this is real faith. In my view it’s part of the New Age. Meaning part of the New Age is communicating with aliens, and he communicates with God or with angels or with I don’t know what, people who help him in life—and as you said earlier, attributing to me something I don’t agree with—they build themselves something that will make life comfortable for them, that will give them meaning and so on. You see? And I don’t accept that as religiosity. It took us fifty minutes, but you convinced me and we agreed. Okay, thank you very much, this was really fascinating. Thank you. Thank you very much for being with us, thanks also to the team—Itamar the editor, Alex and Danny the technicians, and Eli, manager of the podcast department.