Faith – Lesson 10

Table of Contents

• Intuition as a middle ground between sensory perception and thought
• The distinction between intuition and emotion, and its implications for truth and disagreement
• Indications of non-sensory perception and the claim of a direct intellectual faculty
• Three conclusions about intuition and their extension to axioms and science
• Uncertainty, probability, and the synthetic position versus fundamentalism and skepticism
• Testing in science, applying it to God, and the claim that science strengthens faith
• Intuition, morality, and normative claims as descriptive
• Criticism of atheist claims and a declaration of willingness to give it up if persuaded
• Intuition as a cognitive faculty and the dependence of content on reality
• A framework for ways of arriving at God, definitions, and Occam’s razor
• Rejecting emotions, experiences, and pragmatism as evidence for the existence of God
• Seven ways to faith and a commitment to a systematic discussion
• Moving from the philosophical God to religious commitment
• Questions from the audience and accompanying clarifications

Summary

General Overview

The text argues that faith and intuition are the same intellectual faculty, located between sensory observation and internal thought, and that it enables a person to grasp factual claims about the world without relying on the senses and without being merely a subjective mental state. It draws a sharp distinction between intuition and emotional feeling, and argues that anyone who is neither a fundamentalist nor a skeptic necessarily relies on intuitions as the basis for first assumptions, for the sciences, for morality, and for general judgments. It adds that the intuitive faculty is not certain, but it is reasonable and useful, and therefore it can also be applied to belief in God even though that belief cannot be experimentally tested. It then presents a framework of seven ways—one of which is rejected—for arriving at belief in God, and marks both the distinction and the connection between the philosophical God and religious commitment.

Intuition as a Middle Ground Between Sensory Perception and Thought

The text argues that a dichotomous view that divides insight into sensory observation on the one hand and detached internal thought on the other is insufficient, and therefore there must be some combined faculty in the middle. It defines that faculty as intuition or faith, and interprets the statement “I believe” as a factual claim about the world, not as a feeling of the soul. It states that when a person believes in something that cannot be seen through the senses but is also not merely a subjective thought, he is relying on an intellectual ability “to grasp things in reality through the intellect, not through the senses.”

The Distinction Between Intuition and Emotion, and Its Implications for Truth and Disagreement

The text presents a common confusion that identifies faith with emotion, and rejects it on the grounds that emotion is subjective and is not a source for claims about the world. It illustrates that emotions like fear or love are internal reports over which there is no argument in terms of right and wrong, whereas intuitions generate claims about reality and therefore can be the subject of real disagreement. It gives the example of a mathematical genius who quickly spots the correct solution, and argues that speaking about a “feeling that it’s right” conceals the fact that this is actually a direct intellectual grasp of truth that is not the result of explicit calculation.

Indications of Non-Sensory Perception and the Claim of a Direct Intellectual Faculty

The text offers examples of phenomena in which a person feels that someone is looking at him and then discovers that it is true, presenting this as an indication that there is perception that does not pass through the five senses. It argues that attributing this to the senses seems strange, since no physical information is being transmitted from the person who is looking to the one being looked at. It concludes that faith is an interaction with the world in the sense of “a different kind of looking,” which is perception rather than argumentative analysis.

Three Conclusions About Intuition and Their Extension to Axioms and Science

The text formulates three conclusions: there is an intellectual faculty called intuition; this faculty is relevant to every field and not only to theology; and there is no insight that does not rely on it, because every proof depends on basic assumptions whose source is intuitive. It argues that laws of nature and inductive generalizations are not direct observation and therefore rely on intuition, and adds that even everyday judgments such as “he is a kind-hearted person” are intuitive generalizations. It brings the example of geometric axioms and emphasizes that when we are dealing with claims assumed to be true about the world, their source is intuition rather than arbitrariness, and explains that the existence of multiple geometries does not make the axioms arbitrary but rather reflects different kinds of spaces.

Uncertainty, Probability, and the Synthetic Position Versus Fundamentalism and Skepticism

The text adds a fourth conclusion according to which intuition is not certain, and presents the price of accumulating information as the surrender of certainty. It presents fundamentalism and skepticism as positions that demand certainty and therefore reject claims that are not certain, and it defines a synthetic position according to which certainty is not a condition for acceptability—probability is enough. It argues that the possibility of error does not turn “everything into doubt,” and that common sense and gradual correction still exist even when there is no absolute confidence.

Testing in Science, Applying It to God, and the Claim That Science Strengthens Faith

The text distinguishes between intuitions that can be tested and those that cannot, and argues that the success of testing in science provides a basis for trusting intuition even in areas that are not testable. It states that the claim that God exists is not a scientific claim, because there is no way to conduct an experiment that would decide it, but that it still relies on tools that prove themselves in science, and therefore science strengthens faith rather than weakens it. It rejects the conclusion “it can’t be tested, therefore there is no God,” and argues that if intuition works reasonably well in science, there is no justification for throwing it away in meta-scientific matters.

Intuition, Morality, and Normative Claims as Descriptive

The text argues that moral claims are descriptive in the sense that they describe “moral facts” and not merely preferences, because otherwise one arrives at relativism in which there is no right and wrong. It distinguishes between a neutral physical fact and an ethical fact that obligates action or restraint. It applies this to belief in God and argues that it is descriptive, but more similar to an ethical fact because obligations of obedience follow from it.

Criticism of Atheist Claims and a Declaration of Willingness to Give It Up if Persuaded

The text presents the atheist claim that God is “the gap in what has not yet been understood,” and rejects it as a position that assumes atheism from the outset. It argues that he defines God carefully and holds what he considers “good evidence” for His existence, and he declares that if arguments are brought that overturn his intuitions, he will give up the conclusion just as he would in science. He emphasizes that his persistence in belief stems from not being convinced by the criticism, not from fundamentalist attachment.

Intuition as a Cognitive Faculty and the Dependence of Content on Reality

The text distinguishes between the intuitive faculty itself and particular intuitive contents, comparing this to sight and hearing as stable faculties whose contents change depending on the reality standing before them. It argues that if “the spiritual world” or “the meta-scientific world” changes, the contents of intuition change accordingly, while the faculty itself remains. It concludes that intuition is a tool for knowing the world, not something embedded in a person in a way that does not respond to reality.

A Framework for Ways of Arriving at God, Definitions, and Occam’s Razor

The text presents a transition from introductory remarks to a systematic framework of “ways of arriving at God,” and argues that each way presupposes a different definition of God, so that in principle it may seem as though different entities are being produced. It suggests that Occam’s razor allows us to unify the results into one object with different facets, and brings Maimonides’ parable of the elephant to illustrate how different angles lead to partial conceptions of the same thing. It states that in the next stage he will spell out the various ways and clarify what is not relevant.

Rejecting Emotions, Experiences, and Pragmatism as Evidence for the Existence of God

The text states that emotions and religious experiences in the emotional sense are not evidence for the existence of an object in reality, because they can appear in other contexts and among atheists as well. It agrees that an argument inferring from the experience that there is an external source is already a possible philosophical argument, but the experience itself does not decide the matter. It rejects pragmatic arguments in the style of “without God there is no morality/meaning” as psychological rather than philosophical claims, and argues that the fact that an idea is useful does not prove that it is true.

Seven Ways to Faith and a Commitment to a Systematic Discussion

The text lists seven ways: Pascal’s wager, which he calls nonsense; the three proofs in Kant’s classification—ontological, cosmological, and physico-theological; direct intuition (“simple faith”) as a legitimate way; theological proofs, which he presents as a reversal of direction from Kant’s three ways; and the proof from tradition (“the testimony argument”), identified with the Kuzari, which he intends to defend as “not a bad” argument. He says he will discuss each way carefully in light of objections and objections to objections, and that the goal is to avoid slogans and arrive at clarified definitions.

Moving from the Philosophical God to Religious Commitment

The text describes a future stage in which he will move from the philosophical conclusion that God exists to the question of what the religious meaning of that is, including the distinction between deism and theism. He acknowledges the common claim that philosophical belief does not obligate tefillin or commandments, but argues that the connection between the fields is not as sharp as people usually think. He concludes by saying that the philosophical path is required before the religious discussion, and that this will guide the continuation of the series.

Questions from the Audience and Accompanying Clarifications

The text replies that the question of whether “maternal instinct” is intuition depends on whether it actually proves itself in practice, and that nothing should be inferred from the feeling itself without checking whether it succeeds. It offers a reading of Leibowitz according to which the use of the term “arbitrary” stems from positivism and an inability to speak about intuition, and argues that Leibowitz meant an intuitive axiom that is “correct even without justification,” not arbitrariness in the sense of “just because I feel like it.” It addresses a question about the High Court of Justice and rabbinical judges, and explains the possible logic of “agreement in error” in shared property as depending on the conditions of the agreement, while clarifying that without reading the rulings themselves he is not arguing about the details. It answers that Jewish custom is binding by virtue of “do not forsake your mother’s teaching,” but is not necessarily correct, and that when it is clear that we are dealing with a foolish or harmful custom, there is room to abolish it.

Last time I presented a certain picture, and in the end we reached a conclusion—well, I reached a conclusion, and I hope you did too. I came to the conclusion that intuition, or some intellectual faculty, has to exist somewhere between thought and perception. Meaning, contrary to the common dichotomous view that divides our insights into insights that come from observation, from perception, from use of the senses, and insights that come from reasoning, from thinking, which is something detached from the external world, something that happens only inside me—the conclusion was that there must be something that combines these two things, or stands in the middle between them. Some ability of ours to apprehend certain elements in reality in a way that is not sensory observation, but also not merely subjective thinking taking place inside us, because otherwise it has no validity. I didn’t elaborate much, because that’s the whole discussion around Hume and Kant, but bottom line, that’s the conclusion. And this particular faculty I call either intuition or faith / belief; to me those are synonymous terms. Meaning, when I believe in something—not necessarily in the Holy One, blessed be He, yes, just when I believe in something—what do I mean when I say I believe in it? On the one hand, if I had seen it, I would say: I saw it, I know. I wouldn’t use the expression “I believe.” On the other hand, if it’s only internal thinking inside me, then the fact that I believe in something merely testifies to how I’m built. What does that have to do with what is happening in the world itself? And therefore that too cannot serve as the basis for saying “I believe” in the sense of “I am making a factual claim.” And we discussed that belief is a factual claim about the world, not merely a description of a subjective state, my own mental state. And therefore there is no escape from saying that when I say “I believe in something,” I mean that same thing we spoke about last time: my ability to grasp things in reality by means of the intellect, not by means of the senses. Meaning that in my intellect there is some component or some faculty that has the ability to grasp things in reality. And this does not pass through the senses, and it is a different kind of looking at reality—but it is looking, not thinking. That is the important point, and I think there is almost no escape from this conclusion unless you are either fundamentalists or skeptics. Those are the three possibilities. But if someone does not find himself among the fundamentalists and not among the skeptics, then he necessarily relies on this faculty called intuition, even if he is not always aware of it. But the basic insights on which he builds his worldview come from there, from that faculty called intuition.

I think I spoke a bit about the confusion between this faculty and emotion. Very often people relate to this faculty as though I have a feeling that such-and-such; when I say “I believe,” the meaning is that I have a feeling that such-and-such. That is a very, very unfortunate expression—I would even say miserable—because emotion really is a subjective matter, and it is not a source for making claims about the world. Say, I’m afraid when I walk at night, or I love so-and-so, this man or that woman. Okay, so that’s a report about my sensations, about my feelings. But here I am not claiming anything about the world. If someone else says, “I’m not afraid when I walk at night,” or “when I walk in high places,” or “I don’t love this person or that person,” I have no argument with him. I have no argument with him because I am not claiming anything about reality in such a way that if he doesn’t love and I do love, then we have an argument. I’m telling him that inside me there dwells a feeling of love, and inside him it does not. What does that mean? It means I’m built differently from him: I do feel love toward such a person, and he does not. That’s not a dispute. Why is it not a dispute? Because I’m not making a claim about reality; I’m simply reporting what the state is inside me. He does not dispute that this is the state inside me; he is only telling me that inside him the state is different. And therefore there is no dispute here at all.

By contrast, when I speak about intuitions, about insights that I attribute to intuition, these are insights that speak about the world. Meaning, whoever thinks otherwise is mistaken. We have a dispute. Meaning, one is right and one is wrong. I gave the example of that genius who solves a mathematical equation. Someone sits for months doing the calculation, and in the end reaches some answer. Then some genius comes along, looks at the equation, thinks for half a minute, and says: the solution is such-and-such. And that is the correct solution. So I ask him: how? How did you get there? He says: I had a feeling that this was the right solution. Again, the word “feeling” is not a good term. Because if it were a feeling, then he would not be claiming that this really is the solution. He would only be saying that this is what he feels is the solution. Okay, you are entitled to feel that it’s the solution—but when I plug the solution into the equation and see that it really is the solution, that means not only that he felt it was the solution, but that he understood that it really was the solution. And that is a claim about reality outside him; it is not just a report about what he feels inside. And in that sense we are not dealing here with emotion in the emotional sense, like “I love someone” or “I’m afraid” or “I’m depressed,” but rather with some statement about the world.

But on the other hand, he did not do the calculation. So how did he arrive at that result? Through intuition. Because he is a genius, he can look at the equation and see that the solution is there. But he sees that it is the solution. That is a claim about the world; it’s not something that only tells me how he is built inside. So in that sense, the fact that people often call this kind of insight “emotion” stems from exactly the confusion I’m talking about here all the time—that people are unwilling to accept that there is such a sector belonging to the intellect. That in the intellect there is some ability to grasp directly, immediately—not by arguments and not by this or that analysis—but to grasp directly something in reality. Someone who does not recognize that, naturally treats every statement of this kind as an expression of feeling. Fine, inside you there is such a feeling because that’s how you’re built. But I am proposing here the synthetic alternative, which says: no, this is not emotion. It is a branch of the intellect. The intellect has some ability to grasp things in reality even though they do not appear before our eyes.

You can discuss all kinds of psychological phenomena, you know—for example, a person feels that someone is standing behind him, or even looking at him from a distance. You have some sense that someone is looking at you. And many times that feeling turns out to be correct. I don’t know whether this has been tested scientifically, but it seems to me that everyone knows these phenomena. Now, one could of course attribute this to some sort of sensory perception—that something in my senses somehow manages to sense that someone is looking at me. I don’t know, that sounds a little strange to me, because when he looks at me he does not send me any physical information, any information connected to the senses. On the contrary: when he looks at me, the rays of light coming from me reach his eyes, but he is not sending me anything. So how do I feel that he is looking at me? Apparently I have some ability to grasp that someone is looking at me not by means of my five senses. A human being has some ability to grasp things in the world not through the senses. I’m just bringing various indications for this. It sounds terribly mystical, but there are very strong indications for it. And therefore my claim—which is where I ended last time—is that belief, on the one hand, is not emotion; on the other hand, it is not thought taking place only inside me. It has a dimension of interaction with the world, of some connection or relation or joining between me and the world. I observe the world in some sense—not with the senses, but in some other sense. That is the first conclusion.

The second conclusion is that if we have such a faculty—and again, I’m saying, a person can refuse to accept the existence of such a faculty and be a skeptic or be a fundamentalist—but anyone who is not a skeptic and not a fundamentalist, there is no escape from such a faculty. Nothing will help; it’s a mathematical statement. Meaning, he can deny it, and it may scare him because it sounds mystical, but nothing will help him. If you are not a skeptic and not a fundamentalist, then you trust your intuitions. There’s no getting around it, there is no other option.

So I said the first conclusion is that this is something that connects, something that stands between perception and thought; we have an intellectual faculty, an intellectual-perceptive kind of faculty. The second conclusion is that this faculty has nothing specifically to do with belief in God. There are many things we believe in that have nothing to do with God, such as sensing that someone is looking at me—yes, the example I gave earlier—or seeing the solution to a mathematical equation, “seeing” meaning without doing the calculation, yes, understanding directly that this is the solution; or scientific intuition of a genius kind, I don’t know—Einstein’s theory of relativity, or quantum theory, or all sorts of brilliant scientific intuitions which in the end, of course, do not merely point to the structure of the person who discovered them. After all, in the end this is a scientific claim; you can test it and see that it works in reality. Therefore there is a claim here about reality that does not emerge from observations—or not only from observations. This too is basically founded on intuition.

And more generally, I say the following: intuition is the source of our basic assumptions. After all, logic draws conclusions from basic assumptions. Observation can give me certain cases that I observed, and that too is assuming that observation is really reliable—that itself is an assumption; who said so? But let’s grant it. Still, how do I get to insights that are not pure observation? Including laws of nature, which are also based on seeing isolated observations and from them making a general law. I did not observe that the general law is true; I have no observation of that. So how do I arrive at all this? I claim: from intuition, or from belief. We have some ability to grasp certain aspects of reality not through the senses, but this is not thinking; it is some kind of generalization.

Now notice what this means: not only is this not confined to belief in God, not only is it some faculty or branch of our intellect that is present in all areas, not only regarding belief in God—including science, including all other areas. More than that: there is no insight of ours that does not rely on intuition. That is my stronger claim. There is no such insight. Because every insight that is not of the trivial sort—yes, I saw a computer in front of me, so I concluded there is a computer here. Let’s say that is not based on intuition, though even there there is the intuition that my senses are reliable. But let’s leave that aside. Every interesting statement, every statement that contains a generalization, every statement that says something about something that is not direct observation—I perceive that here is a kind-hearted person. Who says? I saw how he speaks, I saw how he behaves, but maybe that is incidental. But no, I draw the conclusion that he is a kind-hearted person. That conclusion too is really a use of the faculty I am talking about, a use of intuition.

So that means our third conclusion is: first, that we have such a faculty; second, that this faculty is general and not only in theology, not only in relation to God, but in relation to all fields of thought; third, that there is no alternative to it. There is no insight in the universe, in the world, in life, that is not based on intuition. Because even if there is something for which we have a proof, that proof relies on axioms—and where do we get the axioms from? From intuition.

Think about the axioms of geometry. How do I know that between two points there passes only one straight line? Maybe there is another one I haven’t seen? How do I know that two parallel lines never meet? What, did I follow them all the way to the end to see that? No. I know because intuitively it is clear to me that this is true. Of course I look at it with my eyes, but looking with my eyes is not enough. I saw one straight line—who says there isn’t another straight line? The eyes cannot show me that. What shows me that is intuition. When I look at the situation, I understand that this is the case.

That’s actually not a good example. First of all it’s an assumption, it’s an axiom; second, on a sphere or something it isn’t true—there are others. That is exactly the point—the opposite. Those are two claims that strengthen what I’m saying. First, what I’m saying is that this is an axiom—that’s exactly the point. But how do you arrive at your axioms? Through intuition. That is exactly the point: it has no proof, it is intuition. So how do you know it’s true? You relied on intuition. And again, I’m speaking here—and this is a point that needs much more expansion; I’m doing it very briefly here—I am not speaking about axioms in the arbitrary sense. Mathematicians often relate to axioms as some set of arbitrary assumptions, measured by whether they are fruitful, not whether they are true. That is, is it interesting to look at them and derive conclusions from them? I am not talking about such axioms, like non-Euclidean geometry. I’ll get there, I’ll get there.

This is somewhat like the dispute between Chomsky and others over whether language and understanding language are built into us or not—whether we are tabula rasa. Yes. Are we born tabula rasa, or do we have a linguistic faculty, a language faculty? Yes, that is what Chomsky claims, correct. Yes. In the book Two Wagons I bring Chomsky precisely on this point. In any case, the claim is that if I understand that between two points only one straight line passes—as a claim about the world now, leave geometry aside—that claim I did not see. So apparently my intuition tells me that it is true. Not in the mathematical sense that I assume it as a premise and let’s see what comes out of it, as a kind of game. I am talking about assumptions that I really think are true.

Second, regarding spherical geometry or geometry in non-Euclidean, non-straight space—there, that is exactly the claim. In straight space it is clear that between two points one straight line passes. On a sphere it is clear to us that not so. Now regarding a sphere, we can see with our eyes that not so—draw lines, you can show several geodesic lines, yes, that there are several such lines. But in straight space I have no way to show that there is only one. How do I know? When there are other geometries, it is not that the decision about what the geometry is is arbitrary—that is a common mistake. It is exactly the opposite. The fact that there are additional geometries with other assumptions and other results stems from the fact that they deal with a different space. Euclidean space has only one geometry. And spherical space has its own geometry. Therefore the fact that there are several geometries is not a refutation of the claim that these are true claims, that the axioms are true; on the contrary, it is evidence for it. Because the very fact that when you arrive at other assumptions you need to assume the space is different—you cannot say there are other assumptions for the same space. In straight Euclidean space that does not happen, and nevertheless I assume there are three straight lines between two points—that doesn’t work, because in straight Euclidean space it doesn’t happen. Therefore it is true that these axioms describe truth. It is not something we decided arbitrarily.

Yes. No, but I can talk about non-Euclidean geometry when I do not know reality. I don’t know what a sphere is. I have such assumptions—does this exist in the world, maybe yes maybe no. But even then, the truth is one. If you can’t know, then you can’t know. But the truth is one. Because in a given geometry there are only certain axioms that are true; contradictory axioms will not be true. But that doesn’t come from intuition—maybe there is no such geometry in the world. Why? Why? There is. It comes exactly from intuition. My perception of the geometry of the world is intuition. It may be that I am a little mistaken in my intuition. I said intuition is not certain; we’ll get back to that. I’m only saying: suppose I assume there is some domain where the sum of the angles is less than 180. Does that exist somewhere? No. It’s an assumption, and from that I build a geometry. Whether such a thing actually exists in the world—maybe yes maybe no—it’s just an assumption. No, no, that’s something else. You are talking about a system of axioms that you adopt not about the world. You examine: you have a set of axioms, let’s see what follows from them. That’s a mathematical game. That’s why I said I’m not talking about that. I am talking about axioms that I assume are true about the world. Incidentally, in my view—I am a Platonist—so in my opinion even with respect to mathematical assumptions in the sense you are talking about, those are assumptions that speak about some abstract space, not the space in which I live, and still I activate intuition regarding that space. But that is another discussion, about Platonism. At the moment I am speaking about assumptions I make about the world, not about a collection of assumptions I make just for amusement to see what comes out of them. Okay?

So the fact that after Einstein discovered relativity it became clear to us that our space is not really straight, only approximately so—that means there is a truth here that can be tested through observations and seen. So my claim here is that this again—this is exactly my point. They started from assuming that something is such-and-such, and afterward they found that it really is… But where did they get that assumption from? Why did they assume it? Because they said: why must the sum of the angles in a triangle be 180? Let’s see what happens if it is less or more, and then years later they found… I’m asking the opposite… I’m asking the opposite, the opposite. Why did they assume from the outset that it is 180? Not why was it later challenged. Because Euclid thought “plane.” He thought—why did he think that? And why did the whole world after him think the same thing? Because they had the intuition that it is so, and incidentally it really is so approximately. What Einstein discovered is that there are very, very, very tiny errors. And that’s all—but it is true. It really is true. And they thought so because they had a clear intuition that this is so, and this is a correct grasp of the world. It was not arbitrary, absolutely not. Even the error Einstein discovered is a small error; the intuition was basically correct. Our space, at short distances certainly, is completely Euclidean.

So what I really want to say in short is that I want to summarize three conclusions. First, we have an intellectual faculty called intuition. Second, it is relevant to all fields, not only theological and faith-related areas of belief in the Holy One, blessed be He. Third, it is the only one. There is no insight at all that is not based on it. Because everything we prove, we prove on the basis of axioms—but the axioms we get from intuition. Therefore nothing can be without intuition.

And a fourth conclusion is that this faculty of intuition is not certain. We spoke about the fact that in order to accumulate information, you have to pay in the currency of certainty. Meaning, no—you cannot expect certainty. That is the fundamentalist or the skeptic; they want certainty. For them, a claim is unacceptable if it is not certain. The synthetic position attacks this common denominator, and it says: certainty is not a condition for acceptability. It is enough for me that the thing be reasonable. I see it with my intuition, it sounds right to me, I go with it. It may later turn out that I was not right, or not precise. Okay, true—what can you do? Whenever I acquire information, I always have to take into account the possibility that it is not correct—that is, it is not certain. And nevertheless, unlike what the postmodernist or the skeptic will say, the fact that it may not be certain does not mean that everything is now doubtful. “Doubtful” means that every thing is as true as its opposite. That is not so. There is common sense, there is probability, sometimes I make mistakes and then I try to correct them, but still I do go with my intuitive perceptions. That is basically the synthetic position.

Is there a difference between discoveries through intuition that, after I discover them, I can test—like the formula—and ones that even after I have the intuition I still cannot test? Of course there is a difference, of course. But on the other hand, once in the areas where I can test, I discover that my intuitions worked not badly—not one hundred percent, but not badly—I have a basis for saying that even in areas that I cannot test, if my intuition says something, there is a decent chance that it is true. Do you understand the difference? And of course this is a very important question, and we will get to it later, because what I have just said is that intuition is also the basis of science. Therefore I say that one can also use intuition with respect to God. And the claim that sets science against God is an incorrect claim; it ignores the fact that science too is basically founded on intuition, or on belief, beliefs. Okay?

But then people always tell me, when I say this claim, exactly what you just said: in science, however, I can still subject it afterward to a test of falsification and see whether it works or not—and with God I cannot. There is no way to test whether God exists or does not exist in a scientific experiment. We already spoke about this earlier; there is no such way. So I say: very true. Therefore the claim that there is a God is not a scientific claim, but it is a claim based on tools that prove themselves in science. Meaning, science is an area that strengthens faith for me rather than weakens it. Why? Because in the scientific sphere my intuitions can be tested in the laboratory, and when I test them I see that they work not badly; sometimes they fail, but in many cases they hold up. It is not a shot in the dark; it works reasonably well. Once I understand that my intuitive faculty is reliable—that is, it can be followed, not with certainty, but it can be followed—then I am willing to apply it also in areas where I cannot test the results, as with God. I cannot test the results—what can I do? So to assume that God does not exist because I cannot test it? That is nonsense. If I cannot test it, then I cannot test it—what am I supposed to do with that? If my intuition says there is a God, then I will assume there is a God, because all in all intuition works not badly in science, so why throw it away in other fields? That is basically my claim. So it is not the same thing, but one can certainly teach us about the other and strengthen the other.

Does intuition produce only descriptive claims? Does intuition produce only descriptive claims about the world, or also normative claims? I ask because a few lessons ago, when you defined what it means to believe in God, your definition was fairly normative—that someone whose word must be obeyed immediately. No, so I claim that this itself is descriptive. As in the context of morality, for example. Whoever views morality as non-descriptive claims ultimately—despite the fact that many try to deny this—ultimately arrives at moral relativism. So I think this way and someone else thinks it is proper to murder, and I think it is proper not to murder. Who is right? There is no right and wrong here, because this is not something in reality itself; rather I am built this way and he is built differently.

When I speak about valid morality, for me moral claims too are descriptive. They are descriptive in the sense that they describe—we will get to this—but that they describe moral facts. Now what distinguishes a moral fact from a physical fact? A moral fact, when you become aware that it is true, also obligates you to act—or not to act, to refrain from acting. Yes, it is forbidden to murder, one should help another person, one should honor parents—all these are facts in my view, ethical facts. And therefore these facts, unlike the fact “there is a table here,” which is a neutral fact—it says nothing in terms of what I must do or what is forbidden to me. But ethical facts are non-neutral facts.

And in that sense too, the claim that there is a God is a descriptive claim. I devoted all our first meetings to this. It is a claim about the world. You are right in what you said: it is a descriptive claim, but not about a physical fact; rather about a fact more like an ethical fact. And it is a fact from which things are derived that I must do or must not do. Because God is something such that, if He says, one must obey. But still, first of all there is such an object called God—He exists—and I claim that in that sense this is a descriptive claim.

Rabbi, there is an essential difference between science and belief in God, because in science by definition I can test it—maybe I will succeed, maybe not. The definition of God is exactly the opposite: I cannot; I know that I cannot test it. That was the previous question but one, and I answered it. I said that when I test my intuitions in the scientific sphere, I get fairly good feedback; it works pretty well. If so, then even when I apply it in fields where I cannot test it, I still place trust in it. What can I do? I can’t test it; if I could, I would gladly test it, but there is no way to do that. So because of that, should I throw away my intuitions? No. In the scientific domain they work, so why not assume they work here too? So it is not the same thing, but one teaches us about the other.

Rabbi, just an aside: in physics too there are things that cannot be tested—astronomy and string theory and things like that, non-experimental. Therefore it’s not science, but on the other hand that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Right? Even evolution can’t really be falsified—the survival-of-the-fittest part—because if something survived, that means it was fit, so that’s a tautology. And still people think it’s true. Rabbi, string theory isn’t clear; there’s a dispute among the physicists whether it’s right or wrong, but there are no proofs and probably it will almost never be possible to have proofs. Maybe yes maybe no. Some would say that if so, then it is only on the intellectual plane and it does not make claims about the world; rather it is just a way for us to unify all the other theories into one framework. But it does not really make a claim about the world—that is what the positivists would say. Or perhaps there will indeed be some empirical confirmation of the matter. But there is also a third path according to what I’m saying here: if it makes sense, then I assume it is true even though there is no empirical way to test it.

Rabbi, you said that in science we discover that our intuitions are correct, scientific intuitions. But there are also many, many—Rabbi can correct me if I’m wrong—but there are many, many scientific intuitions that in experiments turn out to be false, and then they’re thrown in the trash. No, I don’t agree; this “many, many” I really do not agree with. There are, and usually, by the way, even what turns out to be incorrect is incorrect because of some small error, some correction. But it is very rare that it turns out that we simply lived inside a complete mistake. Now for me it is enough if this works eighty percent—or you know what, even fifty percent. If it works, that is enough to say that there is a significant tool here. Because if I were shooting in the dark, then the intuition’s chance of being correct would not be fifty percent; it would be almost zero. And if I am right twenty percent of the time, fifty percent, eighty percent—in my opinion eighty percent is closer—then that means this tool is a good tool. Not certain—I said, always, there is no certainty. If you want information, give up certainty. That was the introduction I gave earlier. But it is definitely a useful instrument—not only useful, we have nothing else. What, we have nothing better than this. This is the only thing that works, both in science and in every other field.

Yes, but if we want to sharpen what he said, then anyway, what is intuition really? The way I see it, if we take a child who can add a hundred numbers in one shot—for a normal person he has to sit and do one plus one and so on—and he has this intuition, as we called it, I think it’s the ability to see the whole picture at once, to take in all the data at once rather than one by one, and then in one stroke he skips over all the little details and reaches the conclusion. You are saying, basically—that’s an interesting claim, let me make it clearer. What you really want to say is that in intuition there is nothing beyond sensory perception; it’s just faster. Meaning that in the end, instead of doing it step by step, we see everything, but it doesn’t really grasp things that go beyond the sensory. That’s what I think. Many think that way. I don’t think so. And I’ll tell you: sometimes that is certainly the case, but I say not always. Because for example when I feel someone looking at me, I don’t think that even if I waited a long time there would be sensory indications of it, and still I feel that someone is looking at me. That means it is not just shortening the time; it is a different kind of perception.

The same thing is discussed regarding returning a lost object through visual recognition, yes? Through the visual recognition of a Torah scholar, which the Talmud says in “These are found objects.” In yeshivot they are used to saying that there is visual recognition of a Torah scholar—that Torah scholars have some faculty called visual recognition. That is of course nonsense, because the Talmud says you return it only to a Torah scholar based on visual recognition because he does not lie, not because only he has visual recognition; every person has visual recognition. But what is this visual recognition? There the same question comes up. Some understand that when I identify an object as mine without it having identifying marks, then how do I know it is mine? Some suggest exactly what you suggested: that there are really many little signs here; I can’t describe each sign precisely because it’s not something I know how to formulate, but I understand from the overall picture that this object is mine. And there is another view that says: no, I have some ability to identify the presence of an object that is mine. It’s a little mystical, but that is the alternative claim, and these are exactly the two possibilities we are talking about here.

What I only want to say is that with the basic intuitions that underlie science, there are no two possible interpretations. There I am certainly right. Because in those intuitions, this is not doing a fast calculation instead of a slow one; it is arriving at an insight that cannot be reached observationally or computationally. There is no way. Therefore if you decide that it is true, that is intuition in the sense I am speaking of. There there is no other option. Like the principle of causality, like induction, the basic assumptions of science, and many other things. When I meet a person and ask him what time it is and he tells me a quarter past one—who says he isn’t tricking me? I get the impression that he isn’t tricking me. On what basis do I get that impression? I don’t know; I grasp that this is a reasonable person. And what can I attribute that to? I have some sort of sense of smell, as it were—I don’t know exactly what to call it—that’s what I mean.

My mother, fifty years ago, when people discussed matters of faith, used to say, “I can feel it tangibly; for me it’s really something concrete.” But that is a metaphorical expression. You understand that she does not literally feel it; she does not feel it with any sense. That is exactly what she wants to say. She wants to say: I grasp it, but not with the senses—that is the intuition I’m talking about.

Right, but what I want to say is: with that genius, or that gifted person who solved the complicated formula, or that child who summed the hundred digits in one shot and all that—if it turned out that it was one-time only, for example, they would say: coincidence, luck. If he repeats it, then we accept it so long as it really does not contradict something. Whereas in our faith, in religion, it is exactly the opposite. First we marked the circle. Now when questions arise, contradictions arise, then we sit and come up with some… There are several possibilities. Either we come up with some convoluted apologetic, or… or we say okay, then we’ll make an enactment. Here—today you can’t live without interest, so fine, we’ll find some… No, that’s Jewish law, not faith. Those are two different things. No, I mean, I mean, if things don’t fit with our reality. If things don’t fit reality, then you have to make sure they fit—what do you mean? I’m talking about beliefs, not Jewish laws. Beliefs are exactly the same as in science. If I arrive at the conclusion that my belief is wrong, I give it up. But that’s just it—we don’t arrive at such a conclusion, because that is already the basic assumption. If something bothers us, we find some anchor. No, because it is true—not because there is some basic assumption here. Everything is a basic assumption. But a person who is not a fundamentalist—and also in the sphere of belief in God I am not a fundamentalist—if I become convinced that my basic assumptions are not correct, I leave them. But you won’t become convinced, because for everything you will find an explanation, or say okay, we don’t understand this, this is a red heifer. Or if it doesn’t fit our life, we’ll find some enactment to get around it. There’s no way you’ll say, “Oh, really, I was wrong, let’s leave religion.” There is such a possibility. Why do you say there’s no way? You can speak for yourself. As far as I’m concerned, there is such a possibility.

I just want to say, you are mixing together two things. I am talking about the question of the red heifer and Jewish law and whether it fits reality or not—that is another discussion. There the question is whether I understand how the red heifer works and why it works. There I say: if I have faith in the Holy One, blessed be He, then I assume it works. I am talking about belief in the Holy One, blessed be He Himself. About my conclusions regarding reality. I have a conclusion about reality that there is a God. If there I come to the conclusion that my intuitions are not correct, then my conclusion is that there is no God. I leave it. That’s all, exactly like in science. There is no difference at all. You surely know that fellow, that philosopher who said: what is God really? It’s that part of our reality that we still haven’t managed to decipher, that we haven’t yet managed to give laws of nature for. After all, once people believed in rain, in a sun god, in a fire god—for everything they didn’t understand, they called it a god. And over time, as they established the laws of nature and found the laws that operate these things, this territory left the domain of divinity, the domain of the unexplained. And the more… Look, if you assume atheism, you’ll get atheism. That’s obvious. That philosopher you’re quoting is simply saying what all atheists say. Atheists say that when you believe in God, that really means inserting Him into all these places you don’t understand. And I disagree with them. And I’ll show you later that they are talking nonsense. All right? But let’s wait, I’ll get there. They are talking nonsense. I define God very clearly. I insert Him not into places I don’t understand, but because I have good evidence that He exists. And if someone brings me arguments that refute my intuitions, or show they are not correct, I will give it up. Exactly like any other intuition, there is no difference at all. That is exactly what I want to claim: belief in God is no different from belief in anything else. I adopt it in the same way, and I also give it up in the same way. That’s all. And the fact that they bring me various arguments and I don’t give it up is simply because I really haven’t been convinced. So what? The fact that I wasn’t convinced—well, obviously I’m not going to give it up just because somebody raised an argument.

Probability is really the main point here, as we discussed. I walk on the road even though there is a chance I’ll get run over, but since the greater probability is that I’ll cross safely, I accept that. That’s true. The question is whether in this case the greater probability really is that it exists. And that—to that—I’m about to get. We are only in the preliminaries at this stage; we’ll get there, and then we’ll talk. I’ll show you why I think the probability is high. All right?

Can I ask one more question? Before you move on, one more question? I’m trying to understand this mechanism of intuition in your view. If I have a clear intuition, and it is established on the basis of previous intuitions that proved themselves regarding the world, and now something changes—the thing about which I had that intuition changes—you assume that my intuition too will change accordingly. And so I want to ask: in your view, is intuition a causal result of the world, or is it imprinted in me a priori, as in the example you gave? This is the substance of what I’m saying. I say there are two things. Intuition first of all is a cognitive faculty—not a specific intuition. Not intuition that what I see is true, not causal intuition, not intuition that there is a God, and so on. The very ability to grasp things in this way—I call that the intuitive faculty. This intuitive faculty is found in me just like the faculty of seeing with my eyes and the faculty of hearing with my ears. Now, if I have the faculty of seeing with my eyes, that faculty doesn’t change. What I see through it changes. Because if I stand in front of a yellow wall, I see a yellow wall; if I stand in front of a red wall, I see a red wall. Now if the world—the spiritual world, let’s call it, or the meta-scientific world—changes… changes, then the contents of my intuition will be different, because I am simply encountering a different reality. But the faculty of intuition, the ability to grasp those things, is the same faculty, just like sight. Meaning it is causal. Meaning it is a faculty for grasping reality. I don’t know what “causal” means. I have such a faculty just like I have the faculty of sight. Obviously the faculty doesn’t determine what I will see, because that depends on what I am standing in front of. So if what I am standing in front of changes, then obviously I will see something different. I will see something different not because something in me changed, but because my eyes show me a different reality—or the eyes of the intellect, yes, my intuition shows me something else. Fine, there is no problem with that at all. On the contrary, if intuition is a reliable tool, it has to behave that way. Because if it is a reliable tool, then when reality changes it ought to give me a different result. Otherwise it would not be reliable. Otherwise it really would be something imprinted in me, rather than a tool for knowing the world. Everything I am claiming is that intuition is a tool for knowing the world, and not merely something imprinted in me. And that is the whole point.

Good, so let’s move on. What I want to say now—in fact, now we come to it. Up to this point this was all introduction. Now I want to get to the paths to God, or in other words, to answer the question why I think this thing, belief in God, is plausible. And the paths to the existence of God—I will ultimately claim that there are six kinds of such paths. Okay? We will deal with those six kinds one after the other, but I want to begin by saying what is not relevant here. Two introductions in the second part of the series, yes.

One introduction: I will try to show that every path to the existence of God, every argument for the existence of God, assumes a certain definition of God. And a different one. Every path assumes a different definition of God, and therefore in principle someone who accepts several of these paths may arrive at the conclusion that several gods exist, and that not all the paths are aimed at the same object. For example, one path will seek the perfect being. Another path will seek the being that is the fundamental basis by whose power reality was established. A third path will seek the basis for the validity of moral laws. It doesn’t matter—various paths, we’ll talk about that. But each one of these gives me a different object. One is the object that validates morality, one is the Creator of the world, one is the perfect being, and so on.

So basically one has to understand that before setting out to prove the existence of God, one must define who God is. Who is this object whose existence I want to prove? And again, “prove” in the same sense I’ve been speaking about all along: not certainty, but proving on the basis of reasonable assumptions. That is one point. But I am already adding here in advance that there is also the possibility of Occam’s razor. Suppose I concluded that there exists something that gives validity to moral laws, there exists something that created the world, and there exists something that is the perfect being. It may well be that this is the same object. It both created the world, and gives validity to moral laws, and is also the perfect being. Occam’s razor even says there is an advantage to this. Why assume there are three objects? Let us assume this is one and the same object, with three different aspects, and each of the proofs grasps it through a different aspect of it. Therefore the fact that I will show several ways to arrive at belief does not mean there are several gods. It only means that each way of reaching Him reaches a certain aspect of Him, and there is no contradiction here either. Like Maimonides’ parable of the elephant, yes? Someone looking at the elephant from the right side sees two legs and an ear and a trunk. Someone looking at the left side also sees that. Someone looking from the front also sees that. Only this one sees the two right legs, that one sees the two left legs, this one sees the two front legs—and of course they are all mistaken, because it has four legs and a trunk, not two. But from every side you look, you see two. You see different twos, because of the different aspects. But if you prove the elephant’s existence through the two right legs or the two left legs or the two front legs, there is no contradiction. You have proved the existence of the same elephant, only each time from a different angle. Okay? That is the first introduction.

The second introduction: there are certain ways that I do not include in these six. Maybe I’ll mention two of them here: emotions and experiences. Not relevant. Emotions in the emotional sense. A person says: I am very moved by religious experiences. Okay—and I am moved when I take an LSD pill. But that does not constitute evidence for anything. As I said earlier, belief in God is a factual claim, a claim that there exists in the world such an object. The fact that I am built in such a way that I have this or that emotion is completely irrelevant in light of all the definitions I gave so far for belief. One has to understand: experiences, emotions—not relevant.

True, a person can come and argue philosophically that if something causes me experiences of this type, then presumably it exists, presumably there is something outside that is the source of these experiences. That is already a legitimate argument. And that is already a philosophical argument that needs to be discussed—maybe it is true, maybe not—but at least it is an argument that really leads us to the existence of an object in reality. But the mere existence of experiences or emotions or such feelings and the like does not interest me at all. I already mentioned that quite a few artists report the existence of religious feelings when they engage in art or consume art. Okay, so what does that mean? They themselves define themselves as atheists. Therefore the mere existence of an emotion or an experience, for me, is not a path in any way.

There is another argument, which follows the same logic—the pragmatic argument. “If there is no God, kill me here and now.” Yes, without God what would our society look like? What would our values look like? Everyone would do whatever they want. Nietzsche’s “death of God,” and so on. Therefore one must believe in the existence of God. Okay? This argument too is a failed, invalid argument. Because the fact that something is useful does not mean that that thing is true. You can say: yes, but I have a justification or interest in lying to people, in claiming to them that there is a God so as to make sure they don’t kill me. Fine, health and happiness. I am not speaking now with such people—and in general I don’t like noble lies—but that is another argument. I am asking whether this is an indication that there really is a God. And my claim is that pragmatism is not philosophy. Pragmatism is wishful thinking. If someone says the thing is useful and therefore I adopt it, that is a psychological statement, not a philosophical one. If you want, adopt whatever you want—take pills too, if you like—but don’t make claims to me about reality. I am looking for evidence for the existence of God as a being that exists in reality. And the fact that this assumption or this belief is useful to me in various ways, or makes the world more moral—even if that is true, let us say, I am not now getting into whether it is true—that does not constitute evidence for the existence of God. It constitutes evidence that our character is built in a defective way, such that belief in various fictions causes us to behave in a certain manner.

There is a question. One of the so-called proofs for God is what is called “clock”—if a clock exists, then there must be someone who built the clock. William Paley. Okay, and is that a proof in your eyes? Yes, I’ll get to it later. I said I’ll go through all the proof-paths; we will give Paley a place of honor. I claim that it is an excellent proof, but we’ll see later.

This point about pragmatism is important because I think that a great many people, when you ask them, raise this argument. “That’s how I was educated, it’s my way, it stabilizes my world, it guarantees moral behavior, it binds society together.” Ahad Ha’am said that the Sabbath preserved the Jewish people—that is, Sabbath observance preserves our national and cultural cohesion. All of that is very nice in sociology, in the psychology of the individual person or of the masses. It doesn’t interest me. I’m asking whether there is a God, not whether it is useful. Those are two completely different things. Therefore arguments of this sort are not relevant.

And again, here too I’ll note: if someone comes and says he has a philosophical assumption that if something is useful then presumably it has an anchor in reality, because otherwise it would not be useful—that is already a philosophical claim. One can discuss it. I’m not sure I agree, but that is already a philosophical claim worth discussing. Therefore one has to distinguish carefully: both on the emotional-experiential plane and on the pragmatic plane, on the face of it these arguments in all these forms are not relevant. If you add to them the assumption that whatever evokes experiences in me, or brings me benefit, presumably has an anchor, exists in reality in some sense, then you have turned it into a philosophical claim. Now it needs to be discussed. I’m just not sure I agree with it, but it can be a legitimate claim.

Okay. Rabbi, someone says that if I don’t believe in the existence of a god, my life will have no meaning, therefore I must believe. Where does Maimonides put that? I said—it can be interpreted in two ways. If you use the Holy One, blessed be He, as opium—opium for the masses, as Marx said—in order to receive meaning in your life, then you are living by a noble lie and enjoying it, health and happiness, but that is not evidence that there is a God. If you are making a philosophical claim, that once this belief gives me a sense of meaning, presumably there is something true in it—that is a philosophical assumption, and it should be discussed, but it can certainly be raised for discussion. So then you are making a claim, a claim worth discussing. You see? These are two things that are quite close, but really completely different when you look at them. In the first, God serves as therapy. In the second, God is a factual conclusion. I’m claiming that what gives me therapy probably really exists; otherwise how does that happen? Okay, that is already a philosophical argument. So what I said earlier applies to this claim too.

Now I want to give a schema so that in the coming meetings we can orient ourselves as to where we are. I actually want to present six ways—after removing emotions, experiences, pragmatism, and all the rest—I want to present six ways of reaching a conclusion regarding the existence of God, and then I will start going through them one by one. I’ll actually bring seven, and regarding the first one I’ll explain why I think it’s not correct, and the other six we will discuss.

The first way is Pascal’s wager. It’s very amusing, well known—we’ll talk about it. I think it’s nonsense, but we’ll talk about it. So Pascal’s wager is the first way. Yes, if your expected gain from belief in God—you understand the pragmatism here, it’s really a pragmatic route—if you believe in God you stand to gain a lot, if you don’t believe in God you may lose a great deal. The greater expected payoff is to believe in God, therefore believe in God. That is Pascal’s statistical argument. That is the first path.

The second path—or rather the second, third, and fourth—are three paths in Kant’s classification in the Critique of Pure Reason. He classifies the proofs for the existence of God into three kinds: the ontological proof, the conceptual proof; the cosmological proof; and the physico-theological proof. These are three philosophical ways to arrive at belief in God. He claims that none of them is valid; I disagree with him. But in his classification these are another three paths. What is the difference between them? The conceptual path assumes no premise. Through analysis of concepts one reaches the conclusion that there is a God. That is the first direction—the proof of Anselm, for example, in the Proslogion.

Kant’s second path, which is the third in our overall count, is the cosmological proof. From the very fact that something exists—and if something exists there must be a reason why it exists—therefore there is a God. That is the cosmological proof. The physico-theological proof is a proof based on the complexity of the world, or the fact that it appears planned. Okay—not just that something exists, but that something exists with a special character: complexity, appearance of design, or things of that sort. That is the physico-theological proof.

So these are Kant’s three paths. So far we have four: Pascal’s wager and Kant’s three paths. Beyond that, there can be direct intuition. As I said before, intuition is a tool for grasping reality, and even when I bring an argument, the argument is based on assumptions—and how do I know the assumptions? From intuition. So someone can come and say: my intuition tells me directly that there is a God. I don’t need basic assumptions that come from intuition and from which I then derive the conclusion that there is a God. I have an intuition that there is a God, a direct intuition. That too is a path. There are many people, by the way, for whom it is like that, and it is a completely legitimate path. Very often people call it simple faith. Simple faith is a completely legitimate path. I don’t think everyone has to be a philosopher. That too is a path—we’ll discuss it. So that is the fifth path.

The sixth path is… wait. The sixth path is proofs that I call theological proofs. Meaning, it is the reverse direction of Kant’s three proofs. This is a path that I am essentially proposing; Richard Taylor, an American philosopher, basically proposed this line of thought and I expand on it. So I’ll explain when we get there—that is the sixth path.

And the seventh path is the proof from tradition. As is often brought in the name of the Kuzari: we received it from our fathers, and our fathers received it from their fathers; at Mount Sinai the Holy One, blessed be He, was revealed, and this is proof for the existence of God. We have a tradition from people who encountered Him. All right? And in philosophical thought this is called the testimony argument. A lot has been written about it; there is a great deal of philosophical writing on it, and philosophers for the most part—I don’t know, most of them… In any case, the testimony argument is regarded by many philosophers as a kind of fallacy. I think they are the ones failing. The testimony argument is not a bad argument, certainly not a fallacious one, and when we get to it I will try to deal with it too.

That is the overall picture. So again: there was Pascal’s wager; there were Kant’s three, meaning the ontological proof, the cosmological proof, the physico-theological proof; direct intuition, that makes five; the theological proof—that is, the reversal of Kant’s three paths—I’ll explain later, that is the sixth path; and the seventh path is tradition. We received a tradition, and therefore we have an indication that there is a God.

What we are going to do from here on is go one path after another and try to see how well each one holds water. And each of them requires finer clarification than people usually give it. There are many refutations and refutations of the refutations, and I think all these things require clearer definition in order to conduct the discussion intelligently and not through all kinds of bombastic slogans. So that is what we are going to do from here on. And after we finish going through these seven paths I mentioned, in the end maybe six will remain, because in my opinion the first is nonsense. Then I will want to move from the philosophical conclusion that there is a God to what that means on the religious plane. Does the philosophical God—which after all many people who define themselves as non-believers, or atheists, or whatever, say that in some philosophical sense they too believe in God—but that doesn’t mean one should put on tefillin or go to church or slaughter people in the name of Allah. They do not accept the practical commandments or revelation. So how do we move—if at all—from a philosophical conclusion about the existence of a philosophical God to religious obligation, from deism to theism? All right? That is what I’ll conclude with after we go through the philosophical proofs.

I’ll just say here that very often, the moment you begin getting into philosophical proofs for the existence of God, people stop you and say: leave it, leave it, I philosophically believe in God; I’m talking about the religious God, about observance of commandments. What is the connection? Those are two completely different things. I claim that it’s true that they are two different things, but not completely. There is a connection between them, and it is important to go through the philosophical route before entering the religious discussion. There is a connection; it changes the picture, despite the distinction, which is correct in itself, but not nearly as sharp as people are usually accustomed to think.

So that is the framework, and from here on I will now break it down in detail. That will basically carry us through to the end of this series, but we still have work to do. Shabbat shalom. Okay, does anyone else want to comment or ask? If so, you can.

I just wanted to note, maybe, that when I hear the Rabbi I think of that midrash about Abraham at the beginning of his journey. So apparently it wasn’t logical, it was intuitive. Maybe. Or although he says, “Who is the master of the mansion?”—because who turns the wheel—that depends which midrash you mean. “Who turns the wheel” is one of Kant’s proofs exactly; it’s the physico-theological proof. It depends which part of the midrash you mean. For example, “the owner of the mansion peeked out at him”—that sounds like some kind of revelation, psychological revelation or metaphysical revelation. But there too arguments also come up, and as Maimonides brings at the beginning of the laws of idolatry, Maimonides brings the physico-theological arguments. But we’ll discuss that further.

That’s it? Then Shabbat shalom. Rabbi, is maternal instinct a kind of intuition? One more time? Is maternal instinct—when all mothers—maternal instinct. Ah. Either it’s intuition or it’s a myth. You have to test and see whether it works. The fact that mothers have instinct doesn’t mean it also works. If it works, then it’s intuition. Who says it doesn’t work? They have it. They have instinct, but the question is whether that instinct proves itself. I have an instinct that there are, I don’t know, ten billion ants in the world. I have such an instinct to think so. Is it true? I don’t know, count them. If it turns out true, then you can discuss whether it is intuition or not. If it turns out false, then it is simply my psychological makeup, that’s all. Why? What is the connection between intuition and truth? Intuition means plausible, not true. True means plausible—what do you mean? True and plausible are the same thing. It’s not certain. Right, “true” means plausible. So when it is true, it’s intuition, and when it isn’t true, what is it? So I said: intuition is not certain. Yes, so is intuition true or not? It can be true or not true. The intuitive claim may be true or not. The intuitive faculty, your ability to grasp claims, is a faculty that works. Understand? That does not mean that every single thing it gives you is true. Some things may be and some may not, but there is such a faculty—it is not a shot in the dark. Because otherwise, among the things it gives you, the chance that even one of them would be true would be negligible, and that is not the case.

Now regarding maternal instincts—whether that is part of intuition—run statistics and see whether they are right or not. If the statistics give you something significant, then apparently there is such a thing. I have never checked; I don’t know. Understood, thank you. The fact that someone feels something does not mean anything. He feels it—okay.

Rabbi, can I ask something general that isn’t related to this? Yes. I read some article on the Rabbi’s website and I didn’t completely understand what the difference is between what Yeshayahu Leibowitz describes there about values, that the source of values is arbitrariness, and what the Rabbi explains differently. I didn’t really understand the difference. There is no difference at all. In my opinion what I say is what Leibowitz intended. The problem is that he was a positivist, and he was not willing to say these supposedly mystical words that I am saying here—that we have an intuitive ability to know things directly—and so he calls it arbitrary. But he does not mean truly arbitrary. That is my claim. I have an article about Leibowitz—you can read it on the website too—and there I explain that I think he did not understand himself well because of his positivism. What does “positivist” mean? Positivism means clinging to observation and to logical, demonstrated, certain definition. You are not willing to speak about anything that does not fall into one of those two categories, and therefore you cannot speak about the existence of values in some mystical sense, about my mystical ability to see values—not see with the eyes, but with the eyes of the intellect. These are things positivists simply cannot bring themselves to say. But he meant that; he himself did not understand that he meant that. Because if we say it is arbitrary, then it is meaningless. Why doesn’t the Rabbi accept the term as he wrote it? Because I don’t think that is what he meant. You do not kill human beings on the basis of something arbitrary, and he was willing to kill on that basis. He claimed that it is true, not that it is arbitrary. When a positivist uses the word “arbitrary,” he means “without justification.” But “without justification” does not mean arbitrary in the sense of “just because I feel like it,” but rather because it is an intuitive axiom—I know that it is true even without justification. It’s just that in Leibowitz’s conceptual world there was no such thing, so he had no concept with which to describe it. That is a limitation of positivists.

If we’re already discussing matters of this world, how does the High Rabbinical Court rule that an adulterous woman loses her property? What is the logic in that? What do you mean? She does not lose her property; she loses the property that the husband brought with him and agreed to share with her. And the claim was that if he had known she would commit adultery, he would not have agreed, so it is consent given in error. She cannot lose property of her own; property that belongs to her she cannot lose. No, no, I mean the joint property. The husband leaves with the house; if she is raising a family, then the property grows—it’s joint property. As far as I did not read the rulings, as far as I understood what they said there, it was not about property that was hers; it was about property the husband brought with him, and there is a presumption of sharing, that he shares it with her. So they say his agreement to share the property with her was conditional on her fulfilling her part of the agreement. If she did not fulfill her part of the agreement, then it is consent in error. At least that is how I understood it without reading. If it is not so and he took property that was hers, then I see no justification for that. Makes sense. But if that’s true, then how did the Supreme Court overturn it? Because the Supreme Court thinks the agreement is not conditional on that. It is a question of whether a person makes his consent conditional on that or not. I don’t know—again, I didn’t read the ruling, so I don’t know how to argue with them. I’m saying: you ask me what my opinion is—that is my opinion. What the rabbinical judges wrote and what the Supreme Court wrote needs to be read in order to see; I don’t know. And that actually gives an explanation, possibly—okay.

Rabbi, one more question? Yes. When a Jewish custom is widespread throughout Israel and it has no logical basis, does it fall under the heading that “the custom of Israel is Torah,” and must it be accepted? So here, first of all yes—first of all yes, that is the meaning of “Do not forsake the teaching of your mother.” But two comments need to be made here. First comment: one has to distinguish between two things. First, the fact that it is binding does not mean that it is also true; rather there is some value in not deviating from the public practice even if it is not correct. Therefore this is not necessarily connected to our discussion. Because if this were also collective intuition, then the claim would be that it is also true, not only that one ought to obey it. Those are two different things. That is one comment. The second comment is that in a case where it is clear to you that the custom is wrong, that is not the same as when you simply don’t understand why it is right. And if it is clear to you that the custom is wrong, or that the custom is harmful, that is what halakhic decisors call a foolish custom, and a foolish custom should be abolished. Okay.

Good. Okay then, goodbye, Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.