Why Be Religious? (Column 395)

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.

Dedicated to Racheli Rotner (although we are not acquainted)

A few days ago a post (see also here) by Racheli Rotner came my way that deals with the question of why be religious, or why observe the commandments. I like reading and listening to her, despite the provocativeness—and perhaps precisely because of it. I have a soft spot for free and honest people who don’t defer to convention, especially if they are religious (otherwise it’s not much of a feat).

She wrote a beautiful post, and from the flood of responses she received (which she herself marvels at and is surprised by) it is clear that she touched a raw nerve or a sensitive chord in many people. The feelings she describes honestly apparently reside in many of us. It seems to me that such feelings in me and in others led me to write the trilogy, and in fact to the long years of inquiry that culminated in writing it. My religious worldview came, among other things, to give religious people the freedom I find in her.

I will allow myself to analyze her words, and I hope this will serve Racheli Rotner and perhaps even help her understand herself (truly, not as a joke). I will try here to explain my answer to her questions, and to suggest that these are probably her own answers as well, only she does not manage to formulate them to herself.

Rotner’s Post

First, here are her words in full:

She herself concludes in wonder and says that she does not understand herself, and therefore I hope it won’t be considered paternalism if I allow myself to offer her an explanation of herself from which she might also draw conclusions.

A First Look at Her Words

I’ll begin with a sentence Chayuta Deutsch wrote to me regarding this post:

She speaks about a “need for God”; I thought you would dismiss it with the well-known line from the genre: “Let her go to a psychologist, take medication, and leave us in peace.”

As the editor of the trilogy, it seems she knows me well. Indeed, Rotner’s search for the need these things meet for her and the benefit she derives from them should have elicited from me a response in that spirit. It turns out that others also understand her words that way and respond accordingly. See, for example, the response of Rabbi Moshe Rat (I was told this is a response to her post):

I completely agree with his words in themselves, but not that this is a relevant response to Rotner’s words. Now I will try to explain why, perhaps surprisingly, I read her words entirely differently—and in fact the very opposite.

So Why, Indeed, Serve the Lord?

In my trilogy I argue that true faith is not supposed to give us anything, and in any case the benefit from it, even if it existed, cannot and should not be the reason for religious obligation. The reason is supposed to be the faith itself, the commitment to God’s command and our conception of divinity. My claim is that God is such a being that one is obligated to fulfill His commandments by virtue of His being God. There is and should be no other reason that establishes religious obligation.

Maimonides stands on this in his famous words at the beginning of chapter 10 of Laws of Repentance (see also in column 22):

a. A person should not say, “I will perform the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom so that I may receive all the blessings written therein, or so that I may merit life in the World to Come; and I will separate from the transgressions that the Torah warned about so that I may be saved from the curses written in the Torah, or so that I may not be cut off from life in the World to Come.” One should not serve the Lord in this manner; one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets nor the level of the sages. They serve the Lord in this way only the common folk, women, and minors, whom one trains to serve out of fear until their knowledge increases and they serve out of love.

b. One who serves out of love engages in Torah and commandments and walks in the paths of wisdom not because of anything in the world, and not out of fear of evil, and not in order to inherit the good; rather, he does the truth because it is the truth, and in the end the good will come because of it. This level is exceedingly great, and not every sage merits it; it is the level of Abraham our father, whom the Holy One, blessed be He, called His beloved, for he served only out of love. And it is the level that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us through Moses, as it is said, “And you shall love the Lord your God.” And when a person loves the Lord with the proper love, he will immediately perform all the commandments out of love.

Serving for its own sake is the observance of the commandments and a religious commitment that is unconditional and not dependent on anything external to it. True, this arouses in many the sense that we are dealing with irrational behavior—or, alternatively, elicits meaningless and vacuous responses such as: faith is above reason; a leap into the realm of the absurd; the “vacated space”; R. Nahman; New Age; Rabbi Shagar; etc., etc. But all of these are based on a logical error.

Every value decision that is based on some explanation—its explanation will contain a value or values (the value of human life, helping others, honoring parents, love of neighbor, patriotism, and so on). When we seek an explanation for the value itself, we cannot find one. Ask yourselves: Why is there value in human life? The only answer is: Because human life has value. Why is it important to help others? Because it is important to help others. Values serve us to explain decisions and derived conclusions, but they themselves constitute the axioms of ethics. They themselves have no—and cannot have—an explanation external to them. If they had an explanation, they would be means and not ends—in other words, not values. As with every logical system, it is impossible to base all its claims on arguments and proofs, for these themselves are based on axioms, and axioms, by their very nature, cannot be proven. Therefore, when I explain to someone why it is forbidden to do X and I hang it on the value Y, one cannot ask me why to adopt the value Y. By virtue of being a value, it obligates. This necessarily leads to an infinite regress. One can, of course, dispute my value—and it is certainly possible that I am mistaken; here I only wish to claim that the fact that I have no explanation for it is not a flaw in my doctrine. On the contrary—there is and cannot be anyone who does not “suffer” from this.

I once compared this to moral obligation. Think of someone who comes to you and says: I understand that murder is immoral, and still it’s not clear to me why not murder. Why be moral? One who asks such a question is confused: either he does not understand what the statement “X is immoral” means, or he does not really think that murder is immoral. If he thinks so and understands the meaning, there is no room for the question of why not murder. It is a direct corollary of the statement that murder is immoral.

So too regarding the obligation to God’s command. It has—and needs—no explanation external to it. Certainly not a utilitarian explanation, but not even a value-based explanation. It is a basic value, and upon it one can build explanations for other things. One who says to me: I understand that the Lord is God and that He commanded to do X, and still I ask myself why and whether to do X—I tell him he is confused: either he does not really believe that the Lord is God, or he does not understand the meaning of the statement that the Lord is God. But if he believes and also understands, then there is no room for the question of why to fulfill His commandments. In fact, this is the meaning of the concept “God”: the entity whose command we are obligated to do (by the very fact that He commanded). In light of this principle, I have often explained Maimonides’ puzzling words in Laws of Idolatry 3:6 (“acceptance of divinity”). Therefore, the term “elohim” in Scripture also describes judges (see Sanhedrin 3 and elsewhere), for a judge is a person whose commands we are obligated to obey by virtue of his being a judge. That is precisely “elohim.” Thus Maimonides, at the end of Laws of Kings ch. 8, writes that one who performs commandments because of reasoned judgment (because it makes sense to him) is not pious but perhaps wise. There is no act of commandment here, for a commandment must be done by virtue of the authority of the Commander and nothing else (“acceptance of divinity”).

My favorite example of this is the famous mountaineer George Mallory. When asked why he climbs Everest, he answered: Because it’s there. This is a wonderful illustration of faith and religious commitment. A person has fundamental values for which he has no explanation, and he also does not need one (and cannot find one)—precisely because these are his most basic values. Axioms have no proofs and no explanations. They are true just because. One who does not experience this attitude toward mountaineering (like me) will not understand Mallory, and no explanation will help him. It will appear wholly irrational. The same goes for one who does not experience faith. He, too, cannot understand this answer for religious commitment.[1] Therefore the example from morality is, in my view, so good and powerful—because there we all experience it. As for religious commitment, apparently not every person experiences this.[2] But religious people usually do, and in my view this is indeed the deep reason for their commitment.

Two Kinds of “Just Because”

It is important to sharpen and clarify that I am not saying values are arbitrary (as Leibowitz claimed; see my article here). My claim is that values do not require an explanation, for they are self-evident. An explanation of claim X is to ground it on claim Y that is more intelligible than it. But the most intelligible claim cannot be grounded on a more intelligible claim, and therefore we will have no explanation for it. Moreover, we necessarily must have such claims (axioms); otherwise we fall into an infinite regress.

Hence there is no possibility of proposing an explanation for a value in terms of something more clear and intelligible than it. It is the most clear and most self-evident. Therefore every ethical chain of explanation begins from values, and by definition they cannot have an explanation. My claim is that the obligation to God’s command is a value in the deepest sense of the word. It is the most fundamental value, and by means of it one can explain other decisions and values. But precisely because of that, it itself is not explainable and does not need an explanation. Yet none of this means that values or faith are arbitrary. Quite the opposite. They are the parents of every rational argument by being the axioms on which it rests.

One of the axioms of Euclidean geometry is that two parallel lines do not meet. By virtue of its being an axiom, we have no proof for it. We also cannot say that it is the result of observation (who walked with those lines to infinity to ensure they don’t meet?). It is true because it is self-evident to us. When I am asked why this is true, I will say: “Just because.” But my intent is not that it is arbitrary; rather, that it is self-evident and requires no explanation. On the contrary—geometric theorems are explained on the basis of the axioms. By means of them we can explain or prove other things, but they themselves require no explanation.

Anyone can see that we are not dealing with an irrational approach. On the contrary, a rational argument is always based on foundational assumptions, and therefore a rational explanation always begins from an essential “just because.” The statement “I believe in X” or “I am obligated to Y—just because” is a thoroughly rational statement. There is nothing problematic in such an explanation. On the contrary, it only means that we are at the root point of my beliefs and values—what is most clear and most intelligible to me.

In my above article I showed that Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who used the term “arbitrariness” very much to describe his relation to values, intended “just because” in the sense I described here—and not “just because” in the arbitrary sense. His terminology—that values are “arbitrary”—was not successful and thus confused many, including himself. Values indeed are not rationalizable and not justifiable—but that certainly does not mean they are arbitrary. In my assessment, Leibowitz himself did not grasp that there are two kinds of “just because,” and therefore tended to relate to fundamental truths as if they were arbitrary (he identified non-justifiability with arbitrariness). But I claim—paternalistically, clearly—that he did not decipher himself correctly. I also have an explanation for my paternalism: his positivist thinking, according to which what cannot be explained and proven is arbitrary, necessarily led him to the mistaken terminology and to this confusion. Now I will argue that something similar happens to many people, who do not fully understand their own outlook.

On Attempts at Rationalization and on Unconscious Understanding

Many people wonder why to observe the commandments. They seek an explanation—and naturally do not quite find one. Sometimes they cling to the usual clichés, such as that if we serve God He will deliver us from all sorts of things, or that our lives will be better; it will give us satisfaction and meaning, and so on. I don’t believe any of that (except for satisfaction and meaning, with which I completely agree; but in my view that is not a reason to serve the Lord), and in my estimation others, deep in their hearts, also do not truly believe it. They find themselves compelled to say this because of the very distress Rotner describes. If we have no such explanations—why do we at all observe and have to observe the commandments?! This is a rationalization that comes afterward, a kind of cognitive dissonance (a person’s psychological tendency to justify his path and to seek consistency in his positions).

The fundamental reason for this confusion is that the “explanation” I suggested above does not occur to people at all. When people look for an explanation for their religious commitment, they do not think of the option that there is—and needs to be—no explanation. The “just because” explanation is not an option, for as is well known, “just because” is “not a reason.” But alas, contrary to what we are constantly told, “just because” is actually the ultimate reason. This is not an arbitrary “just because,” just because I feel like it. Nor is it the claim “I observe because that’s how I was raised” (a foolish and even appalling statement, in my eyes; any pagan or ISIS member also does what he was raised to do). It is an essential “just because.” It is the most basic truth and therefore does not require an external explanation—therefore there is and can be no such explanation.

This is the reason people invent explanations like acting out of gratitude (see my article here), or that faith and religious commitment are tools for a good life; the commandments make us better and more moral people; or any other benefit, physical or spiritual. I do not believe any of that, and in my view factually it is not really true and does not really work. But again, people are forced to cling to those slogans; otherwise, they will have no good explanation for their way of life.

What I want to argue is that there is such an explanation: I am obligated—just because! It is a fundamental value for me and it requires no explanation. My claim is that because people are unaware of this option, they concoct all sorts of other explanations for themselves that do not really hold water. We know such phenomena from neuroscience. I discussed this in my book The Sciences of Freedom, but see here for a simple description of a similar phenomenon in people with split brains (I recommend ignoring the foolish conclusions drawn there from these phenomena. After all, this is the Hofesh site, and one should not expect too much):

In an elegantly simple experiment conducted by a group of researchers led by Michael Gazzaniga at Dartmouth College, they showed images to the left and right hemispheres of a split-brain patient, and then asked each hemisphere to choose an image that would go with the one shown at first. To the right hemisphere they showed (through the left half of the visual field) a house covered with snow. Quite logically, the hemisphere chose a picture of a snow shovel. To the left hemisphere they showed (through the right half of the visual field) a chicken’s foot, and it chose a chicken’s head—again, quite logically. Afterwards, the researchers verbally asked the patient to explain his choices. The left hemisphere was the only one that could express itself, but remember—it did not know why its right-hemisphere mate chose the shovel, since the information about the snow-covered house did not pass through the damaged corpus callosum. The patient’s answer was nothing less surprising than illuminating: “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken’s foot goes with the chicken (which was true), and you need a shovel to clean the chicken coop (a plausible but wrong answer).” In other words, the left hemisphere acted as an interpreter of the person’s worldview and simply made up a story to fit the available information!

A person supplies himself with explanations to rationalize his choices. When he has no reasonable explanation at hand, he invents something else. Cognitive dissonance exists in split-brain patients, and certainly in a person with a whole brain. This is what happens to many of us at the intellectual level: the blindness we have regarding part of the picture (essential “just because” explanations) causes us to complete it in strange ways that seem relatively sensible to us. Anything is preferable to remaining with an inconsistent and illogical picture.

This is the source of the explanations about the wondrous benefit that observing commandments has for our lives and about our becoming better people. No fact will move us from these baseless conclusions; otherwise, we are left without a justification for our way of life. Our entire lives are presented as an empty vessel. No wonder cognitive dissonance works overtime here!

But there are those who are more honest. They are unwilling to adopt these concoctions—but then they abandon their religious commitment or simply continue with it out of inertia. Both are making the same mistake: indeed, all those explanations are incorrect, but that does not mean religious commitment is irrational and not mandated.

Back to Racheli Rotner

Racheli Rotner is one of those honest people, but she conducts herself differently from those two ways: she doesn’t buy the penny-worth explanations, but she also doesn’t abandon. Despite all the questions, she finds herself committed and observant. True, she does not understand why she herself does this—but that does not stop her from continuing. She has no answer, but she does not abandon. My claim is that she has no answer because she is not looking in the right place. She seeks an answer in the planes of benefit and the goals of religious commitment, but, as noted, such an answer does not exist and cannot exist. Therefore she rightly concludes that those answers do not persuade her and cannot explain her conduct.

In my estimation, the correct explanation for her behavior is that she is obligated: “just because.” She understands that this is the truth and that a divine command must be fulfilled. Period. But such an answer does not arise in her mind as the answer of a rational person (you need to get used to philosophical-Wittgensteinian thinking to adopt it), and therefore she searches for answers in those realms—utilitarian and “spiritual”—and of course does not find them. I claim she does not decipher herself correctly, and it seems to me that not a few religious people are in a similar state (hence the flood of responses to her post).

This claim of mine concerns many who continue to observe and be committed without having answers. I claim that they are in fact observing because of this reason.[3] Moreover, many of those who concoct other answers—ones that do not persuade me and, in my view, not even themselves—deep down probably understand that faith and religious commitment are a basic value that requires no explanation. They serve the Lord “just because,” because He commanded. This is the inner truth for them—but they themselves do not know how to formulate it to themselves and to diagnose that this is their deep motive (because it is a fairly sophisticated diagnosis, even though it looks simple on its face). Therefore they try to rationalize it—that is, to ground that commitment on a more basic rationale (which for some reason will not need a rationale—otherwise we are in an infinite regress), just like the completion the brain makes about the tractor shovel needed to clean the chicken coop. No wonder they live with embarrassment or some internal conflict. They have no explanation or answer, but they continue. The reason is that deep in their hearts they understand that no answer is needed. They know, even if not consciously, that when God commands, we are obligated to fulfill. But they do not manage to understand that and therefore fall into odd rationalizations of various kinds.

By the way, even in the moral context, people who begin to ask why be moral usually concoct ridiculous answers of various kinds. There, too, it stems from the same intellectual helplessness (that there is no answer). As I explained, the truth is that there is—and can be—no answer in terms of more basic values (values that explain why to be obligated to moral values). This is also the meaning of Kant’s categorical imperative. The imperative is categorical because it is not conditioned on more basic values. Kant does not bother to explain why to be moral, because the imperative is categorical. He only tries to define the content of the imperative (“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”), but does not touch its validity—that is, the reason it is binding; why obey it. Yet even in the moral context, most people do not consider this option because it seems irrational. Therefore they look for another explanation (they rationalize), and when they do not find a plausible explanation, they turn to the realms of the tractors.

My paternalistic claim is that the behavior of these people attests to what they themselves think in the depths of their souls, much more than what they themselves say. What they say are excuses formulated after the fact and out of lack of choice—but deep down they act for the right reason. They conduct themselves morally because there is an obligation to be moral, and they conduct themselves out of religious commitment because there is an obligation to obey the divine command. The explanation for the moral obligation, like that for the religious obligation, is: “Just because!” I claim this is an excellent and super-rational explanation. In fact, it is the only possible rational explanation. I suspect that after you examine it you will discover that it nests within you, only you did not know how to formulate it to yourselves. I also suggest that Racheli Rotner examine this option.

This is why I disagree with the claims against Racheli Rotner. I indeed do not think a utilitarian search for an explanation can ground religious commitment. On the contrary—religious commitment, like moral commitment, is only commitment that is not done for benefit. But this is an argument against those who supply explanations and those who abandon commitment due to the lack of explanations. Those who, even in the absence of a utilitarian explanation, continue on the path—and for that earn torrents of scorn—are the only rational ones. Their conduct tells us and them, as well as Racheli, that deep inside she acts for non-utilitarian reasons, and those are the right reasons. I have criticism of her search and of the kinds of explanations she proposes and rejects—but the fact that she continues nonetheless says she acts correctly and for the right reasons, only she apparently does not understand herself (because she is not aware of the option of the “just because” explanation).

[1] See on this in the article by Yaakov Yeshua Ross, “Why Observe the Commandments,” in the collection Religion and Morality (edited by Avi Sagi and Daniel Statman). Among other things, he discusses there a similar answer Wittgenstein gave to this question.

[2] I write “apparently,” since it is possible that all human beings experience this, only they suppress it because it feels like irrational conduct. See more on this below.

[3] The claim that this is “a commandment learned by rote,” i.e., mere habit, does not persuade me at all. Some observe halakhah seriously and meticulously even when no one is watching. The “by rote” is a rebuke from “mashgichim” (in the Yeshiva sense) who do not understand this state.