Response to Rabbi Michael Abraham’s Column / Noam Oren (Column 515)
With God’s help
Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed for the podcast “The Metaphysical Circus,” hosted by Jeremy Fogel. My interview is a kind of response to previous interviews Jeremy conducted with Rabbi Michael Abraham (hereafter—Rabbi Michi) and with Tuval Rosenzwajg (both of whom I consider friends). To my delight, Rabbi Michi took the trouble to respond at length to my remarks, and so I would like to repay the favor—by responding to his words with the respect they deserve. I hesitated for quite some time over whether to write an independent column in response or to copy Rabbi Michi’s column and reply to each and every claim. The great advantage of the first method is that I can present a structured, clear, and consistent argument in favor of my position. The disadvantage is that I would not be able to address all of Rabbi Michi’s remarks and would be forced to select a few claims and respond to them. Therefore, I chose to take both approaches together. Here I will write a relatively short column responding to the main points of Rabbi Michi’s piece and, at the end, add a file containing all of Rabbi Michi’s words with my comments interleaved throughout the text.
I will open this column with a concise presentation of my claim, and then turn to the main critiques that Rabbi Michi directed at me and at my claim.
My Claim
To understand my claim (and to respond to Rabbi Michi’s remarks) it is important to begin with a methodological note. There is a difference between a definition and a characterization. A definition is entirely arbitrary (from now on I could define the word “lion” as a green, winged entity. From that moment, in my language all green flies are kinds of lions). By contrast, a characterization is an attempt to describe an existing phenomenon accurately. Thus, if I wish to characterize lions, I must turn to the appropriate disciplines (biology, zoology, genetics, etc.) in order to find the appropriate features of lions. Hence, characterization is not arbitrary at all. In addition, a characterization can be partial, whereas a good definition ought to be exhaustive. For example, it would be correct to characterize lions as animals with a mane, but it is clear that this is not a full characterization. By contrast, if we were arbitrarily defining how we use the word “lion,” we would be providing a description that captures all lions and only lions (in our language).
With this preface, we can come to my claim. My claim is that religious faith is not the acceptance of a specific proposition or a set of beliefs (there is a God, there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, the Messiah will come, etc.) as true, but something else. In other words, in my view, the religious utterance “There is a God” is closer to “There is a God!” when shouted at a soccer match than to “There is a God” when stated in a metaphysics class after a systematic walkthrough of the ontological argument.
It is important to note two components of my claim. First, my claim is negative. That is, I am arguing what religious faith is not, and I am not committing myself to what it is. Second, my claim is not intended to define what religious faith is, but to characterize the human phenomenon called religious faith. If so, my goal is to describe an existing phenomenon (even if not exhaustively). In this sense, my project is descriptive in nature—I am trying to describe reality as it is, not as it ought to be. I am not claiming how religious faith should look, but how it is in fact expressed in the world. Nevertheless, as I have written and explained elsewhere, even if one accepts what is called the “naturalistic fallacy” (according to which descriptive facts alone cannot justify moral judgments), it seems that descriptive accounts still have a place within normative (moral) discourse and argument.
The kind of evidence required to support descriptive claims differs in nature from the evidence required to support normative claims. Whereas to support normative claims one must use the “eye of reason,” to support descriptive claims one must use actual eyes; we must look at the world around us and use our senses in order to identify and characterize the phenomenon in question. Thus, for example—to substantiate my claim that religious faith is not identical to scientific/philosophical belief, we will need to find a feature of religious faith that does not exist in scientific or philosophical belief. That would suffice to show that we are dealing with two different human phenomena (though further work would be needed to prove that religious faith does not involve any adoption of a claim about the state of affairs in the world). In this response, I cannot enter into all the empirical evidence, since that is not the purpose of this piece. My goal here is to respond to Rabbi Michi’s remarks. I am writing the full substantiation of my claims in other frameworks (I attempted to do so in the interview in question. I also wrote about this here and in my MA thesis. In addition, I am currently working on several more papers in the field).
Another note I wish to make is that, like any description of a complex human phenomenon, my description of religious faith is a rough generalization. That is, I am trying to describe how religious faith typically appears. If there are individuals or religious streams for whom my description is not accurate—that will not constitute evidence against me, since I do not deny that possibility at all. This is akin to claiming that “a lion is an animal with a tail”—a claim about lions in general and about the “normal” instance of lions. But clearly, someone who says this does not commit to the proposition that every single lion must have a tail, for there could be a lion with a genetic mutation that affected tail growth, or a lion whose tail was, Heaven forbid, torn off in an unfortunate accident.
I have finished my introductory remarks. I will now turn to respond to Rabbi Michi’s critiques.
Response to the Critiques
In Rabbi Michi’s piece one can find several different critiques of my position. I will try to categorize them into distinct critiques and respond to each in turn.
Critique A: Philosophy, Psychology, and Sociology
A central critique that recurs several times in Rabbi Michi’s remarks is that my claim in particular, and the discussion in general, does not pertain to philosophy at all but to psychology or sociology. I must admit that I do not understand this critique. Personally, I do not care what the name of the discipline I am practicing is—be it philosophy, psychology, or shadkhif. I engage with what interests me and leave it to others to categorize my work under the proper discipline.
But his critique contains an additional component. He is not merely claiming that I am doing psychology/sociology, but that I am engaging in something unimportant. As he writes:
“And if you are not making philosophical claims but remain in the realms of psychology, then what has that to do with philosophy?! There is no reason to invest energy and effort in this, or to invest in an intellectual analysis of these phenomena.”
This, to my mind, is an outrageous claim. The attempt to understand and characterize the nature of religious faith is of enormous importance in so many domains. Religious faith plays roles on many planes—psychological, moral, social, political, and so on. Therefore, beyond the fact that a deep understanding of a broad human phenomenon is interesting in its own right, such understanding may help us solve problems that exist in all the domains I have just mentioned.
Critique B: Interpretive Paternalism
Rabbi Michi, and many others, argue against me (and against other philosophers who hold similar views) that our position is implausible because it contradicts the reports of religious people themselves. For if you ask religious people whether the statement “There is a God” is an ontological statement about the existence of an entity called God—it is likely they will answer “yes.” If so, who are we to tell those religious people that they do not actually believe what they say they believe, and that their faith is an expression of identity more than it is a claim about the state of affairs in the world?
I answer this critique on two levels. First, as I wrote at the outset, my claim is a rough generalization. I do not deny the existence of people whose religious faith functions exactly like their other philosophical/scientific beliefs (it seems to me that Rabbi Michi is indeed an example of such a person). Therefore, it is possible and even likely that in certain cases my claim will not hold. Even so, I do think that in the vast majority of cases my claim is correct, even if many religious people would deny it.
In the attempt—mine and that of many other philosophers—to characterize religious faith, there is a paternalistic dimension. We are trying to characterize religious faith, and we are aware that many religious people may well not accept our conclusions, and we are untroubled by that. But I think this lack of concern is justified. For (here I rely on the words of D. Z. Phillips) just as there is no reason to think that a good person will be able to supply a good moral theory, and just as there is no reason to think that a good artist will be better at supplying a good theory of the “beautiful,” so too there is no reason to think that a person filled with religious faith will be able to describe well what religious faith is. To do that, one must examine how religious faith functions in the world and see whether it truly is “the endorsement of a set of propositions,” or whether it is something else. And, as stated, I am trying to show that religious faith simply does not function like scientific, philosophical, or mathematical belief. It is simply something else. I spoke about this only a bit on the podcast, but this is the bulk of my daily work.
So as not to leave matters in the air, I will provide an example—consider someone who says he does not believe that walking under a ladder brings bad luck. Yet this person systematically avoids walking under ladders, and when he accidentally ends up walking under a ladder, his anxiety spikes significantly. Would it not be reasonable to say that this person does, in fact, believe that walking under a ladder brings bad luck, despite his repeated declarations that he does not? It seems to me that the answer is clearly yes.
Similarly, I think that when examining the nature of religious faith, we see that people do not believe religious propositions in the same way that they believe scientific/philosophical propositions. Moreover, the difference is not merely quantitative. That is—it is not just that they believe scientific/philosophical propositions wholeheartedly and religious propositions only partially. The nature of the belief is entirely different. We are dealing with a different human phenomenon.
To sum up this critique—I concede that there is a paternalistic dimension to my claim. But it seems to me that this is justified paternalism.
Critique C: The Nature of Analytic Philosophy
Throughout his column, Rabbi Michi levels many accusations at me and at various figures associated with analytic philosophy, all revolving around the claim that analytic philosophers tend to “play with words” and nothing more. I must admit that I simply do not understand where this accusation comes from.
For example, he claims that for analytic philosophers any coherent position (i.e., a position that contains no contradictions) is a legitimate position. I do not know a single philosopher who thinks this. True, many analytic philosophers (though not all) hold that a necessary condition for a theory to be true is that it be coherent. But of course, for it to be true it must also correspond to reality, not merely be coherent. Thus, for example, the theory that the President of the United States is Benny Gantz is a coherent theory (there could be a possible world in which this somehow occurred). But it is obviously a false theory, since Gantz is not the President of the United States.
Another example is his claim that I, and many other philosophers, suffer from “the analytic fallacy whereby what cannot be justified empirically or logically is not true and, of course, does not exist—at least in the ordinary sense of ‘true’ and ‘exists.’” Again, this is an accusation whose basis I simply do not understand. The position he presents was common among analytic philosophers more than seventy years ago. Today, I do not think there are many philosophers who hold it—certainly not the ones he cited.
In short—his accusations against analytic philosophy are indeed interesting, and I certainly agree with much of them. They are simply not directed at analytic philosophy but at imaginary people.
Critique D: Atheism in Disguise
Rabbi Michi claims that I, and other thinkers who take similar positions, are actually atheists in disguise. We do not believe in the existence of the religious God, and in order not to exit the religious community (or something of the sort), we distort the meaning of the concept of faith, thereby enabling ourselves to count as religious and believing people.
My response to this critique has two parts. First, I am not an atheist—at least not in the ordinary sense of the word. I think there is a God, and I believe that some of the arguments for His existence are quite persuasive. However, as I said on the podcast, I think that from there to faith in the religious God (and certainly the Jewish one) the distance is great, and I do not think that philosophical arguments can bridge that distance convincingly. As part of this, I do not think I can justify my religious way of life by philosophical means. But, as noted, I do not think that a religious way of life in general (for me or for many others) stems from philosophical reasons at all, since we are not dealing with the adoption of a practice derived from conviction in a metaphysical theory.
Moreover, I actually think that Rabbi Michi is the atheist in disguise. For, on my view, religious faith is not the adoption of some ontological claim about the world, but something else (regarding the nature of that “something else” I am less certain, though I am attempting to outline general lines in my research). If I am right, then it seems that Rabbi Michi, whose faith is merely the adoption of some claim or other about the world, is not a person of faith in the religious sense of the word. In other words, there is nothing whatsoever in common between Rabbi Michi and the faith of Israel Saba.
So far I have responded to the main points of Rabbi Michi’s column. In the attached file you will find the full text of Rabbi Michi’s column along with my responses and comments to all the different claims raised in it.
My response appears in the comment down below here. Michael Abraham
Regarding the Risha, does the Rabbi also make the distinction between definition and characterization? Because it is natural that he simply changed the word definition to characterization?
First point: It seems to me that you are creating a private language. You write: “There is a difference between a definition and a characterization. A definition is something completely arbitrary […] On the other hand, a characterization is an attempt to describe an existing phenomenon precisely”.
So, in a language that is not private, when the language functions as a means of communication between speakers of the language (who are precise in their language): :
“Definition” – includes only the defined and all those defined by it.
We can distinguish between a “dictionary definition” and a ”constitutive definition”. (You can use synonyms for this).
In the Aristotelian dictionary definition, for example: ” A person is defined as a thinking (speaking, thinking) mortal animal” – Such a definition expresses the meaning of the term “human” in common usage. In the opinion of the definer, it includes all humans and only humans.
On the other hand, in a constitutive definition – the use of the term “human” will be in accordance with my determination of defined needs. ” will only be a moral being, and any other born of a woman will be, in my estimation, “not a human”.
“Characterization” – is not binding as a generalization or a distinction. “My neighbor is very generous” / “nervous” / “black-haired” – All these are characterizations.
This is how people communicate in Hebrew. What you have proposed is at best – constitutive definitions, at worst – a private language subject to the problem of mutual lack of understanding.
Do you agree?
When you define a beautiful work that the artist does not think is beautiful, is that a correct characterization of something beautiful?..
The parable of the ladder is reasonable because we have no other explanation. And really the explanation you gave is not what you were supposed to give – a subjective explanation. But “bad luck” in the objective sense.
In any case, here the explanation that believers claim fits well with their understanding.
And unfortunately you did not address in your response the parable of the scientist, who is also under philosophical doubts like the believer. And he does not know how to deal with them either. And that does not mean that he thinks everything is subjective.
You wrote: “When you define a certain work as beautiful”. “Beautiful” is an adjective that is not enough to define.
Like “A statue is a three-dimensional work of art” – then every three-dimensional work is a statue.
If I define “a person” in the Aristotelian definition (“a thinking animal”) – then everything that is a “thinking animal” is a person.
Correction to the second sentence,” definition is: “A sculpture is a three-dimensional work of art”…
Sorry to interrupt with a side point. The definition you proposed for sculpture raises a question for me: Is Duchamp's "Fountain" a sculpture? (Beyond the question of whether it is a work of art.) I think not.
It seems to me that it is not enough for the work to be three-dimensional, but that it must be the work of the sculptor (=man creates the sculpture). That is, the artist created its three-dimensional structure from more fundamental elements (this touches on Taburo Latouri's work on the work of a builder on Shabbat. Column 397).
Is "Fountain" a plastic art? I think not, for the same reason.
In a certain sense, this "work" is more similar to photography than to plastic art. Taking a piece of reality and putting it as it is in an artistic context. Unlike painting, which is about creating the composition yourself. The same goes for sculpture. These matters were alluded to in my columns about Assaf Inbari, and so on.
Your comment is interesting and actually touches on perhaps the title of “artistic work” in a double way:
1. Does placing a felled tree trunk found in a field as it is (perhaps it is more sympathetic than the famous ”fountain”) in a museum – make the exhibit ”artistic”? Isn't there a need for more than that? Is ”artism” only in the eye of the beholder, or does it require an artistic action? Modern art at its peak really makes it difficult for us to answer that.
2. A question that I have been pondering for a long time (after reading a discussion on this subject by two: Leah Goldberg and Iris Murdoch). Is there such a thing as a “bad poem” or is a “bad poem” not a poem? (A bad story – according to one of them – exists.) In fact, according to Murdoch, there is no such thing as a bad philosopher. He is not a philosopher, at most a “thinker”. And for our purposes, is the phrase “artist” a title that also contains values, and the phrase “bad art” meaning “this is not art”.
I intentionally wrote that I did not want to focus on this question. I neutralized the question of whether the “fountain” is art, and focused on the question of whether it is sculpture. Precisely because of what you wrote here.
Are you claiming that if it is not art, then by definition it is not sculpture? See section 2. But you claim, or at least raise an issue, that it is art (that is what I meant when I compared it to photography, which is also considered art even though it only places a given object in an artistic context), and therefore the question remains whether it is sculpture.
I think it depends on the question of why the poem is bad. I devoted a series of columns to the definition of poetry (107 onwards), and I think that a more complex answer to the question you raised here arises from there.
It's not clear to me, then, what your argument is with Miki. You are dealing with a realistic characterization, and he is dealing with a reasonable position based on reasons, two levels that are not related and do not communicate.
Noam, thank you for your response. I will try to address the points raised in your words, but in the end I will summarize the main point (everything else is not really important).
1. The terminology definition versus characterization is of course arbitrary. According to you, a definition is arbitrary and complete and characterization is partial and essential (not arbitrary). What about an incomplete definition? Why is there no appropriate term for this? But I take your definitions of these terms as ’definition’ (in the sense you gave it). There is a contradiction right from the beginning of your words. You say that a definition must be complete and characterization is partial. But if a definition is an arbitrary matter, then who are you to tell me whether to give a complete definition or not? I want to define something arbitrarily in a partial way. Is it forbidden? In your example, I want to define a lion as a creature with a mane and that's it. On what basis do you forbid me to do this?
I am not just arguing, but trying to show you that you yourself do not understand the concept of definition as you defined (!) it. A definition is not arbitrary, except in very specific cases. I have argued this in my columns on poetry and many others. A lion is defined fully according to its true characteristics and not arbitrarily, and that is precisely why you did not accept its definition as a creature with a mane. There is nothing to argue or not to accept about an arbitrary matter. This conceptual introduction is incorrect.
2. You only want to say that your goal is to describe and not to make claims. This has nothing to do with the distinction between definition and characterization (which is itself problematic). In my opinion, your (incorrect) conceptual introduction is completely unnecessary.
3. As I wrote to you, sociological descriptions are not interesting to me. But for the purpose of our discussion here, I will accept that we are dealing with sociology and not philosophy.
4. You wrote rightly that in order to establish descriptive claims, one must make observations and base them on facts. This is exactly what you did not do, neither here nor in the interview. Perhaps it was done elsewhere, but it is difficult to argue or discuss with that. It is impossible to conduct a discussion without reasons and rely on what you have reasoned elsewhere. What is the purpose of this discussion if no reasons are presented? In the margins of my remarks, I will repeat what I wrote to you, that in my opinion there are no such reasons, certainly not regarding religious Jews in Israel, and in my column I talk about them. I do not know other believers in depth, although I think you are wrong about them too, but in the religious society that I know you are certainly wrong. This is why I assume, although I do not know the reasons and facts to which you refer, that your claim has no factual basis because it is clearly not true. But this is a fruitless discussion as long as the relevant facts are not presented.
Incidentally, when no factual-observational reasons are presented, it is no wonder that I assume that you do not intend to engage in sociology but in philosophy. Therefore, there is a point in pointing out that in practice you do engage in sociology.
5. It is implied from your words that a believer who seriously intends to claim that there is a God (a factual claim) is like a lion whose tail was torn off in an accident. This is of course completely delusional and has no basis. I do not know which religious people you are talking about, but it is certainly not the ones I am talking about and know. As I wrote in the column, such statements characterize various intellectuals (following Wittgenstein), and I also added a joke at their expense. But if you do indeed intend to make such a radical claim, then certainly facts are needed to support it. This cannot be simply stated.
6. I do not know where you got the claim that I criticized you for engaging in sociology. There is no hint of this in my words. I only mentioned this fact to sharpen the discussion. The discussion was presented as belonging to the realm of philosophy (which is also the field in which you engage and study), and I noted that it is sociological and not philosophical.
7. You defend paternalism, but as I wrote to you, I am not opposed to it in principle either. There are even columns here in which I speak in praise of paternalism. I certainly agree that there are situations in which I will understand better than someone his own views. But to offer a paternalistic interpretation, good evidence is needed. There is no evidence at all in your words, not even bad evidence. And it is similar to someone who says that he believes in God and you interpret that he does not believe at all but means that he plays football, since in his language, believing in God means raising a left-wing horn. This is all true, but some evidence should be provided for this strange use of language that you assume exists in him.
8. It is difficult to enter into a discussion of analytic philosophy here, but the demand for consistency is certainly not their essential characteristic. It is a demand of every philosopher. What distinguishes an analytic philosopher is that he deals only (or mainly) with the question of consistency. But someone who focuses on consistency naturally neglects the question of truth. By the way, this is also true in Talmudic scholarship, among the Briskans. They have excellent analytical skills, and precisely because of this they cannot decide what is true and are strict in order to exhaust all methods. When consistency is demanded and only that is examined, the result is that any consistent interpretation is equally acceptable. This is clearly a simplistic and inaccurate description, but in the context of a side note in a column that does not deal with this, it is certainly true. By the way, the deviation from this picture is when the analytical philosopher becomes a sociologist, that is, examines people's use of the term in question, and through this determines what is “true” and what is not. Analytical analysis in itself cannot give you the truth or falsity of a claim (unless it contains a logical contradiction of some kind).
9. You claimed that I accuse you of saying that what is not empirically or logically solid is unacceptable, and you claimed that it is not true for you in general. But your words here prove the opposite. After all, to validate your claims you need sociological facts, that is, observation. This is not a philosophical argument but a sociological theory. After all, you do not arrive at a decision about what religious belief is with philosophical tools, since any consistent interpretation will be acceptable to you.
10. I did not understand how you agree with my accusations if they are directed at imaginary people. By the way, my accusations do not attack the analytical philosophy that I know and cherish, but rather what I called the analytical approach. It is not at all imaginary and is actually very widespread among philosophers.
11. I did not deal directly with your own belief, but with the belief of that person you describe (which does indeed fit several academics in these fields). That person is an atheist in disguise. But you imply that this also describes your own approach, and add that you are not an atheist in disguise after all. I wrote about this. If this is your belief, then you are indeed an atheist in disguise. You do not believe in God in the factual sense (that He exists) but in some other strange sense. This reminds me of those who interpret the Rambam in the sense that God answers that God's knowledge is not like our knowledge and in this he solves the problem of knowledge and choice. And so I ask what is your point: If that knowledge is something else, does he have knowledge in the sense that is accepted by us? If so, then what was the benefit of the shift towards knowledge in a different sense? And if not, then again you have not gained anything. He simply does not know and that is it. What do I care if he has something else that is also called knowledge in order to confuse us?!
12. I think I have made it clear that when I talk about atheism I mean “a-theism” and not “a-deism”. You wrote that you accept my arguments in favor of the existence of a philosophical God (deism), so how can I say that you are a philosophical atheist?
13. Observing a mitzvah for reasons unrelated to the existence of God and commitment to His mitzvahs is not observing a mitzvah. Just as sitting in a pergola similar to a sukkah is not observing the sukkah mitzvah. In order to observe a mitzvah, one must do so out of a commitment to the one who commands the mitzvah (and of course, faith in His factual existence and that His commandments are binding). Ahad Ha'am, even if he were to observe all the details of the halakha so that they would preserve us as a people and as a culture, has never observed a single mitzvah. This is essentially the religiosity you describe. As far as I am concerned, such a person does not join the minyan and is not a believer (not a theist).
14. Of course, if you define (and not characterize!) a religious person as someone who does not believe in God, then I am an atheist. This is part of the wonders of arbitrariness and analytical wordplay (which you claim does not exist, while you yourself clearly show that it does).
In conclusion, my main argument beyond all the details is that your thesis boils down to you making a paternalistic factual claim without providing a shred of evidence for it (you claim that you provided evidence for it elsewhere). I could equally claim that you are a Neturi Karta man, because when you say that you study philosophy in the Neturi Karta language, you actually mean to say that you are a follower of ‘Shomer Emunim’. It's just that the meaning of the words for you is different from the accepted one (in fact, in my opinion, the accepted meaning is different from the accepted one). Would you accept such a claim? It's simply a delusional argument.
There is an Aristotelian distinction between “essence” and “virtue”. In the case of animals, they probably cannot be defined as an essence, but only as a virtue (a marginal trait) - as you suggested: an animal with a mane. Man can be defined essentially as a thinking animal, and in a peculiar definition – as an animal that laughs / wonders / has claws (as it seems to me).
I would like to respond to one of the arguments of the philosopher Noam Oren, he wrote:
” Can Michai criticize an atheist who has read all of Rabbi Michai's books, and yet he simply cannot believe that the claim 'There is a God' is true?”
To my understanding, Mr. Michael Avraham believes that his philosophical arguments are true, and a truth that is not too complicated to understand.
That is, if an atheist does not accept the arguments as Michai presents them, then it is likely that he is stupid or evil or biased.
There is indeed a theoretical possibility that he was 'innocently mistaken', but this is unlikely, because according to Michai's philosophical arguments the truth is so clear, and anyone who wants to will reach it.
Of course, Mr. Michael Avraham is very wrong, and his philosophy is far from being such a clear truth.
It is easy to show the holes in all his philosophical arguments (of course he denies them).
And yet, the best evidence for this is what is happening on the ground. Hundreds of thousands of interested people have been exposed to his arguments on YNET and various platforms (have you ever seen anyone given a more serious platform to convince of the existence of God?), and I don't remember hearing even one story about someone who was convinced (and even if there are a few, it is truly a tiny number). Moreover, it was met with indifference and lack of care, and quite a few educated and wise people even came out to show how wrong Mr. Michael Avraham is (Dr. Ido Hedi, Dr. Gadi Alexandrovich, Dr. Yair Razak, and more).
Apparently, the right way to reach the Creator is the immanent approach that philosopher Noam Oren alludes to. The cognitive matter that exists inside all of us.
Whoever wants to arrive through philosophy is completely legitimate, and excellent.
Anyone who believes in God is excellent.
But still, to those who support the philosophical method, don't be surprised why your method fails to bring about repentance.
Sometimes, it also causes a lot of blasphemy, as in the case of the blog owner, Mr. Michael Avraham.
I have never encountered anyone who has shown that Mikhi is wrong, and usually if their arguments reach him (from all shades of the rainbow, smart as stupid, delusional as rational, believers as atheists, religious extremists, ignorant and the people of the lands, as evidenced mainly by his polemics with them here on the blog and in the comments, and on various other platforms, including the Winnet you mentioned), he responds and answers. It is possible that someone has written something about Mikhi's arguments and Mikhi does not know about them yet, or knows about them but they are at the level of cheap demagogy and the recitation of mantras, declarations and curses of the inferior type found in the bastus, of the "Nuclear Crackers" party and the "Backgammon" games. Mikhi trusts in the intelligence of the readers who know how to recognize this on their own and saves his precious and busy time from addressing his idols, but none of this shows and certainly does not prove that Mr. Michael Avraham is wrong. I would be happy for links like this that you put here at least one of them so that I can examine it myself and decide, or verify it. With him, then maybe you can write such statements with coverage, which you don't have right now.
Noam, you did not respond here to what I think is the most important claim of all: Even assuming that you are right and that this is indeed a faithful description of a religious person, it does not mean that there is justification for such behavior, that is, for a halakhic obligation on this basis. If we look for a moment at the example of the person who is afraid to go under a ladder even though he does not really believe that it is problematic - if this is not a real psychological problem, it is at least undesirable behavior, which we would prefer to get rid of if possible. All the more so for a halakhic obligation - if God did not really reveal Himself at Sinai, perhaps other practices such as prayer can be justified, but how can we justify illogical behaviors such as redeeming a donkey, not eating pork, etc., not to mention conflicts with morality such as not rescuing a Gentile on Shabbat and things like that? To claim that you do not factually believe that there is a reason to act this way, but that you act this way because of a mental tendency, is simply to say, "I am a crazy person," and it is appropriate to try to get rid of such a mental tendency.