A question following a podcast you participated in (The Hedgehog and the Fox)
Hello Rabbi,
I heard you on the aforementioned podcast recently and I wanted to ask a question that is probably asked a lot and is very annoying to you.
From what I understand, you are claiming that belief in God is the logical (philosophically?) necessary thing.
10-15 years ago, I was very preoccupied with this issue, and over time I developed a belief (perhaps ardent) that these are issues that cannot be proven/disproved, not in the rigorous sense of the word (the only reference I have is proofs in mathematics, by the way, your son’s summaries are excellent and useful).
This applies both to arguments from tradition and, even more so, to more general arguments (“it is impossible that this is so”)
So if you could please direct me to books/articles that contain such proof, I would be very grateful.
Before I ask for proof of God’s existence, it is important for me to define what I even mean by God:
What is not God? When I started asking such questions, I was told, “Look at this whole complex world, do you think it created itself?” (The clock argument) This is a meaningless argument to me (beyond its logical fallacies), as if I were claiming that without God everything is understandable.
I am convinced that there are things that cannot be understood, and that it is not a function of time, knowledge, or IQ.
So a claim that ultimately shows me that I don’t know how to explain something misses the point.
What is God to me? It’s not well defined, but to me God is someone and not something, and perhaps God is something that gives moral validation to something, not my or your validation but an inherent validation of existence.
thanks,
By the way, I’m adding another argument here that I find problematic, but this email is already long.
I recently heard a claim that “there is no 100% proof” but there are many good “90%” arguments and putting them together brings us almost to the brink of confessions (whatever that means).
I encountered well-defined (abstract) objects in a fairly simple way, and yet calculating their distribution was difficult to very difficult. Therefore, when a person of average (and not-so-average) intelligence claims things that involve “infinity,” “the cause of causes,” and in fact even the infinity of parameters that surround us on a daily basis – because it indicates X 90% of the time, it sounds like meaningless gibberish to me.
If brilliant mathematicians describe stock market trading as a random walk (it’s true that a thing or two can be said about this object as well), it doesn’t sit well with me that an average synagogue can define a distribution of an event that includes the stock market, the planet on which the stock market is located, and everything in between.
(The last line is not accurate, the difficulty in analysis does not always increase as the event includes more details, this is just a way of trying to explain how presumptuous it is in my opinion to give a probability to all sorts of exotic possibilities)
Additionally, from my brief experience with mathematical proofs, if it’s almost true, and it feels true, and for every plausible scenario I can think of it’s true – then it’s not true in a significant portion of cases.
So I’m quite skeptical about the “percentage approach.”
Hello.
I much prefer questions via the website.
As for your words, it’s hard to elaborate here. There are quite a few mistakes in them, in my opinion. You asked for the reference, so I can refer you to my first published book that deals with this subject in great detail. There I answer everything you asked here and much more.
Regarding the second half of your statement, anyone who talks about probability in such questions is unaware of the meaning of the concept of probability. In these contexts, one should talk about likelihood, not probability. In this, there is no need to calculate or know distributions.
As you wrote about the stock market example (which is clearly wrong), increasing the scope of the perspective and the topic does not necessarily increase the complexity of the discussion. On the contrary, sometimes looking at a large scale greatly simplifies the discussion. This happens quite a bit in mathematics and physics themselves. But the simplest way to see this is through the relationship between the various sciences. Think about biology. If you were to do a full physical analysis of every particle in a biological system, you wouldn’t get very far. The laws of biology are an average of all these analyses on all particles, and they provide a simpler and much more effective tool for biological discussion (but also greatly confuse biologists. For example, evolutionists who think that there is a random component to it).
Incidentally, this also happens with respect to proofs of God’s existence. Going down to scientific details is clearly unnecessary and complicates the discussion unnecessarily. Even there, it is correct to broaden the view to the whole of creation, and then the conclusions are really obvious. See my aforementioned books.
Indeed, there are no 100% proofs. Incidentally, not in mathematics, and certainly not in any other field. Every proof is based on assumptions, and assumptions are not 100%. There have been several philosophers throughout history who have tried to provide a proof that does not require assumptions (but is derived solely from an attractive analysis. Kant called this an ontological argument). Descartes and Anselm are the two most prominent examples. Godel also offered a mathematical proof of the existence of God (I discussed it in a column on my website). Therefore, if you are looking for absolutely certain proofs of anything on earth (not just faith), I can already save you a lot of time and tell you that you will not find any. I have dealt with this in my book, Two Carts and an Unstable Truth, and also in various articles and lessons.
All the best and happy holidays,
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