Deducing God’s will from the evidence for his existence is not necessary.
Honorable Rabbi Michi
First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to ask for your time and answer the questions.
I have been reading your words for years and recently I have also watched some of the debates on the Internet, they are certainly fascinating and I am looking forward to them! If I understood your method correctly, you claim that from the point at which we conclude that God exists with rational probability to the inference that the Torah in our hands was given by Him, there is a double process and the starting assumption of A necessarily affects our attitude towards B. In one place I saw that you claimed that it is similar to two tunnels that are carved from both sides of the mountain and meet in the middle, each side is not a tunnel that goes from one side to the other unless the two tunnels meet in the middle, so one supports and proves the other (I hope I understood you correctly).
After we have concluded that there is a God, the tradition we have (the Torah, the witness argument, etc.) will meet the first inference somewhere halfway, and therefore any challenge to the inference of tradition and Torah from heaven should be stronger, because the point of assumption/starting point is that there is a God and from this point – somewhere in the middle of the mountain, the second tunnel should only reach there, meaning we assume with a high probability that we have an expectation of revelation and Torah from heaven, we just need to find that authentic Torah.
But here, the proofs for the existence of God – no matter how strong they may be – only prove that there is a creator, but do not necessarily prove the next link in the chain that the creator God wants something from his creatures (apart from their very existence and their actions according to the mechanisms established in them – determinism?).
The biblical text is a foundational text only after we conclude that it is true and authentic (despite all the perplexities it contains, and they are many, because if we conclude that the Torah is heavenly and authentic, it is irrelevant). In your opinion, part of the plausibility leading to this conclusion depends on the starting point that there is a God, but in my opinion, this is not the relevant point. The starting point should be the inference that the existing God wants to reveal himself and demand certain things from us. This is an assumption that is not reasonable in my opinion, it is much more clear that the Creator is not interested in demanding anything from his creatures other than their very existence according to the mechanisms he has embedded in them (based on the evidence for his existence).
For example, let’s take any technology, no matter how advanced it may be, for example a Swiss watch with many mechanisms (not exactly on the beach…). The creator of the watch created it in order to tell the time, perhaps even to enjoy the magnificent technology and play with it, but he does not require the hands of the watch to act and choose anything on their own, but rather he wants them to operate in the way he designed and created them and the mechanisms that operate them.
Here lies the weak link in the connection between the two tunnels. The assumption that the Creator wishes to demand that His creatures behave in a certain way and therefore it is reasonable that He revealed Himself to them is an assumption without a necessary rational basis. God – who we have concluded exists – created an amazing wonder called the world, with many mechanisms, including living creatures and humans with intelligent capacity. But this intelligent capacity is part of the mechanisms of the game, just as plants grow, like animal instincts, so intelligence is in the G-d another mechanism created to function as the Creator created.
And hence the argument about morality, even if morality had to be determined by God, it is no different at the level of creation from the mechanism of evolution of viruses or any other natural selection. It is a mechanism that is inherent in humans and not necessarily in animals (after all, it is immoral – in the prevailing perception – for a person to eat his neighbor for appetite, for an animal to devour another animal to satisfy hunger).
I am willing to accept that the entire complexity and reality of morality (requiring that they be) were created by an entity whose perception is limited beyond imagination and the stacking of words and definitions, but the weak link is; how do we know that this entity wants to communicate with us, to reveal itself, to command, to demand actions? All of these are assumptions that stem from human thought and the rooting of religions, perhaps from feelings and experiences, but what do they have to do with rational necessity?
After a little digression, I would be grateful to the rabbi if he could enlighten me on the rationale for this weak link, otherwise there are two tunnels being dug in parallel that will never meet.
With great appreciation
Lavie
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Thank you for the clear and quick response.
First, I can only agree that the very belief in God allows for the fact that He was revealed. For those who do not believe at all, there is no one to reveal Himself to, and if the proof of revelation is not strong enough to prove that there is a God, it is also not proof of the revelation itself, which has nothing to rely on.
But this is still digging two tunnels at the same time, because reality is separate and inference about guidance is separate. Your book is available first, but I do not have it under my control. If there is a link to it, I would be happy to read it, or any other article that explains the point (I read the notebooks eagerly years ago and have looked at them several times since then).
Your words are summed up in your answer here, that by virtue of the fact that we have a choice, it turns out that it was given to us so that we could choose, it turns out (just as we were given eyes to see and a nose to smell), but why should I conclude that the choice itself will be for His use and for His sake (do the hind legs and the dog's nose necessarily work for His use and for His sake?).
Similar to a random mechanism - the creator of the mechanism does not know what the results will be, but he defined it that way because from his perspective any result is desirable because the definition of the result he wanted to achieve is a random reality, so too is choice. Giving choice does not necessarily entail a command to choose the good if it were not for the command of "and choose life", it simply shows that the one who gave it was interested in implementing a mechanism of choice and nothing more (without going into the question of knowledge and choice, where it is clear to me that God does not know at all what was chosen and what was not).
And regarding morality, I think I understood your view, but I argue that it is in the G-d another mechanism from the variety of mechanisms that were created and therefore it is not binding on its own, as long as or if you do not believe that there is no divine command regarding it. There may be binding definitions defined by man, from Hillel's words of praise for what is hateful and so on to Kant's categorical imperative (and there is something in common between these two), but the definition of the objective reality of morality, according to you, must be external, and whoever believes in it must believe that there is a being who created it. What I am arguing is that even if, as you say, it is not necessarily true, God created morality, but how do we know that it is His will that it should be done this way? These are just more definitions that are part of the great game.
This is not digging two tunnels at the same time, as I explained. I see no point in repeating the explanation I wrote when you have not presented any counterargument.
Are you deceiving yourself or me? First you said that it is probably for him and not for us, and now you ask how it is for him and why not for us.
I explained the matter of applying our reason to him. I have nothing to add.
As for morality, I did not understand anything.
Proving from tradition that God communicates with his creatures is a tunnel in itself. The reality of God is not the other half of the tunnel, Aristotle's God did not communicate and intervene in the world either. The other half of the tunnel, in my understanding, should be an inference of probability that God will reveal himself to his creatures, I am unable to reach this conclusion based on the evidence for God's existence and I have no proof for it (apart from the tradition, which is unconvincing without a starting point, that God will apparently reveal himself).
I will try to clarify the second point, God created mechanisms, choice is one of them. He wanted the mechanism of choice to be part of the world composed of a variety of mechanisms, but I have no reason to conclude that he wanted me to use my choice to please him (without an explicit command), he in the Bible wanted me to choose something just as any other mechanism does something.
The same applies to morality.
Thank you very much.
I don't know what's unclear here. It seems you're just insisting on not understanding the basic point. I'll try again and suggest we finish.
There is a chain of claims that leads to faith and religious commitment. In short: that there is a God. That he revealed himself and gave Torah. He gave it to the people of Israel. This is the Torah that is familiar to us and has come to us. Such a chain is not so strong, since each of the links can be challenged. If I showed a few first links, it strengthens the chain. And if I showed the end, it goes back and strengthens the whole even more. This is even though each link can be challenged. This is not an argument, because that's what my argument is trying to solve: the strength of the chain is stronger than the strength of each link individually.
I claim that there is good evidence that there is a God. True, maybe it's Buddha, Gilgamesh, or Zeus. But maybe also the Almighty. This God created the world and it's unlikely that it's Buddha (who was a man within the world). Then I expect that he will give us something because every creator wants to achieve something. Indeed, perhaps it is Aristotle's God (although it is clearly unlikely, but we will leave that for now). But now I have a tradition that we were given the Torah. So you insist that it is nevertheless Aristotle's God and the Torah is a fiction invented along the way. Don't you understand that this is a weaker argument than the claim that it is fiction without me having the beginning of the chain? And conversely, without the chain and tradition, the first argument (that he expects something from us, after all, perhaps it is Aristotle's God) is weaker.
In the second part, the basis of the misunderstanding is your use of ”mechanism”. Choice is not a mechanism. Therefore, it is impossible to say I will choose something in the same way that everything else does something. Something else does something, but in choice I am the one who chooses, and therefore it is reasonable that he expects me to choose something. This is exactly the difference between choice and a deterministic mechanism.
That's it. I think we have exhausted it.
Thank you for your response, Rabbi Michi.
Since we have reached the end of the matter, let me just summarize the points of disagreement:
A. According to Rabbi Michi, the God who created the world (of which there is evidence) will also reveal himself to his creatures. In my opinion, without external proof (not from explanation or tradition) that God needs to reveal himself/has revealed himself, this is the weak link.
B. According to Rabbi Michi, since the choice was given, it is clear that the one who gives the choice expects them to choose a certain path (and similarly regarding valid morality). In my opinion, without an explicit command to choose a certain path or to act morally, even if the choice or morality was given by God, these are just mechanisms (or in the Rabbi's words, 'mechanisms') that do not actually oblige me by the very fact that God created them.
Again, thank you very much for the wonderful and fruitful website!
A. You are ignoring the other side of the tunnel. You missed the whole point.
B. Choice is not a mechanism. And carefully.
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